10 year old references? or Rivas vs. Penn

Since I am looking into other options, I was intrigued by a program at a nearby university. It's the Fels Program at Penn, and it's a government and non-profit management masters program. I like the program and figure it would be a good background, but I was intrigued by one reference requirement. They want 1 recommendation from an academic institution. I have not been in college in *ahem* a while so I asked if this was really necessary.

The response left me dumbfounded. Part of it said, "..we have applicants who have to go back decades to get an academic letter..." They continued to say it would "not be to my best advantage" to provide 3 references from non-academic sources. Seriously, a decades old letter of recommendation has value? I don't know any professors from my college years. Maybe that was an error, but it's not possible I have learned something in the last 10 years? Isn't what I have accomplished the last five years more valuable than what I did when I was 20? Does this mean the program is theoretical and not practical, because I would consider my actual life to be more important than my college years. I was not impressed.

With a wave of my hand, I have written off Penn. Once, in high school, when Penn had sent me information, my sister saw it and scoffed, "Penn! That's the basement of the ivies!" Indeed!

And yes, my sister did go through a big arrogant bitch phase when she was in college, but she is over it now. Mostly.

Define management

An interesting thing happened at work today. Actually, a few interesting things. After I resigned (with 4 months notice so I could play frisbee this summer, save some money, and figure out what I wanted to do with my life) a few weeks ago, people have actually started to listen to me. They say they like my honesty. I was honest before, you just never bothered asking me anything. Anyway, the culture at my company has turned for the worse, it's no fun to work there, and let's be honest, working sucks anyway so when you stop having fun with your coworkers it's time to consider moving on. So he asked me why. And I told him. He asked me to write "an essay" with my thoughts so he could take it back to the management team because they don't believe him the culture is getting negative.

My initial response is then management doesn't walk around the company enough and see everyone scowling at each other. Grrrr! I haven't given that much thought to the essay yet, but it's intriguing when someone asks me to just throw my thoughts out. That's how I developed my tax ideas a few months ago. That's how I developed my master plan to breed humans and penguins. That is how i realized life is really just a crock of shit and all I really need to worry about is being happy and forget being so damned neurotic about retiring.

Anyway, I thought about responding with a single statement: Define your style of management of people. As a company, we help companies organize themselves around their strategies. Internally, we are a mess, we really are. I worked at a company before and when I left, I hated it. But it wasn't disorganized, it wasn't a mess, I just didn't agree with their expectations of workers and that famous work life balance. So I thought about making each manager define that, then actually prove they are doing it. They aren't, it doesn't matter what they say.

Here is my thought. I think I will pose a series of somewhat rhetorical questions for them to respond to, such as:

1. Why do people work?
2. When was the last time you asked someone randomly what they thought of the company?
3. Did you believe their answer? If not, why? Can you address that?
4. Do you believe your workers are trying to make the company a better place to work, or is everyone doing their work and going home?
5. Are you making the company a better place? How?

I could go on, and I will. I figure once I list the questions, I'll spend a few thousand words expounding my beliefs. People work primarily because we need money to live. That's obvious. But as much as I make fun, I don't want to be retired, I would go crazy. I would just end up doing something full time even if I didn't get paid. So at some level I want to work. What do I want to do? I have been thinking about that a lot lately as I consider my next move. I want at least 1 of 2 things: 1) A job that interests me, one that challenges me, one where i need to think and I learn new things or 2) A job that means something, meaning a non-profit that actually makes a difference. That's it, I can't think of anything else. I need enough salary to live on, but I can live really cheap if i have to, but i need one of those two things to be fulfilled to make it worthwhile.

So I am assuming most people more or less agree with those two ideas, although I'm not basing that on anything. If I were walking my management team through this exercise and we came up with this as the list, I would then pose the next obvious question: Are you providing this type of environment to your employees? If not, can you fix it? If not, have you at least addressed it with your employees? If not, you aren't managing, you are working. It's not the same, not at that level.

After freaking out a little the other day concerned about what i would do, I am ok now. I'll be fine. My company offered to send me to San Fran again. I turned down this offer last year, and most people thought I was crazy turning it down, asking how often a company would offer to move you to San Fran! And I might turn it down again! Maybe I am crazy. Yet here is the thing. Rumour is that I was interested in San Fran. I spoke to a friend out there, and she said the 2 top guys at our San Fran office asked her if I was interested in moving to San Fran. She asked me. I said yes. She told them. They still haven't spoken to me directly. She is younger, less experienced, and has a "lower" job title than I do (but she's a great employee and more positive than me- it's the youth...we carpooled for while, and it was a good matter/anti-matter conversation every day). Anyway, I said until one of the bosses in CA talks to me, I'm not even considering it a valid discussion. Conversation over. Theoretically, they are going to call me. I bet I get an email, or they wait until I am about to leave. What' wrong with people? The press wonders why the economy won't grow? These idiots are consulting other companies! We're doomed.

Endings and beginnings, the follow up

So after yesterdays post which I wrote to try to calm myself down, written after a rant to my boss and his boss and another guy in an attempt to calm myself down, after sitting for about 1 hour trying to calm myself, after drinking a gin and tonic in an attempt to calm myself down, after brooding and thinking and pondering in an attempt to calm myself down, after all that I was 85% certain I was resigning today.

Then a few things fell into place and something occured to me: there are two active projects in the company, one of which is my project and I am the only one who can complete it. The other is something I was slated to do through September. So I went into work today and made a proposal: I will work on and complete both by the end of September, then we can part ways on happy terms. The company wins because I complete the projects, one of which is a new product which will hopefully bring them new success. My client wins because I help them complete a transition from outsourcing to internal processing. And I win because I get 3-4 months of summer to hang out in Philly, play frisbee, and save money. So far, after day 1, my company seems to be going for it. I convinced my VP, my boss a little less so but somewhat, and I think it will just sail through because nobody else will care. I'm excited, it's time for me to start planning the next adventure in my life.

All options are open, many ideas will be considered.

Beginnings and endings

Everything we experience is built upon what we have done before, everything that happens is built upon something that already passed. Even new things, even things as crazy as christ depicted in feces in a modern art gallery, are built upon things that happened before. None of us are truly original, and none of us are entirely fake. The desire to be original means you are a copy of another person who tried the same thing, and even if you do something new, it doesn't matter.

I realized today I hate my job. I hate it. I haven't felt this much hatred in a long time, I haven't felt this beat up or tired or demoralized since, well, the last time I left my job. The last time I left my job I agonized for months, maybe even a year. I was younger, a little less confident, not sure how or where or even if I really fit into the world. I wondered if anything else would come along, or how i would survive in the interim. I don't worry about that anymore. I have designed my life in a such a way that I have savings built up which allows me the financial flexibility to leave, i have built my own personality so I am strong enough to do it. Work, rather the work that I am supposedly trained to do, should be empowering. I should be learning new things and meeting people and helping companies run themselves better. It may not be the most noble enterprise, but it should be interesting. It has given me, in a fairly short amount of time, the ability to save money again and build up some savings. I realized tonight, after coming home and responding to some email, after I left work to work at home on a document I'll never bother to write that nobody at my company really cares if I ever do, after reading an email that somebody changed a password without telling me so I need to email 22 people for the second time in 3 months that the password changed and nobody told me, that i hate my job. I believe managers should empower people to make decisions, to learn, and to guide them in that. I don't get that. I have no hope for promotion, excitement, or interest in my job for at least 6 months. I am supposed to run this project that nobody else in the company understands and help build our online training courses. I am doing the latter because when I had free time, I went looking for work within the company to help someone. I am now in a career spiral because I was trying to be a good employee on one hand and, probably more accurately, was bored and trying to fill my day. Now, I am writing training courses. Somewhere towards the end of Catch-22, there is a line where Yossarian is saying they won't send him to the Pacific to continue fighting because he is certifiably crazy. He says, "They can't send me, I'm crazy." The other guys looks at him, and you can almost feel not only the pity that he doesn't get it but the absolute hopelessness of the line, and he says, "Who else would go?"

It might be time for me to go. It might be time for me to give notice on the apartment, sell some books, sell this computer, sell my car, store some pictures like buble wrapped memories and disappear for a while.

I told a story as I was in a canoe in Mosquitia in Honduras about spending a week on a beach in Mexico. I didn't really speak spanish, and it was a small town on the Pacific coast and nobody spoke english. I had a good book and a notebook and I spent all day alone with those 2 friends. I was happy. The joke was that that was paradise for an introvert. Maybe it was, and maybe i am. Maybe I need that again, I felt alive again when I was travelling a few weeks back in central america on a trip I still haven't figured out how to write about. maybe it's just time to pick up and try something new. I told people I was working from home in the morning tomorrow. I'll take a walk, drink a coffee and watch the river flow. I'll pretend I don't understand anyone and they don't understand me. I've been to busy lately and I lost touch with myself again. I promised myself before I would never let that happen and I would never do a job I absolutely hated. I fear I might be 0-2 right now.

Carpal tunnelling for amusement

For those who don't know and contrary to popular opinion, carpal tunnelling is not how you fish in a cave, it is in fact a moderately annoying disease. So I haven't been writing here much because my wrist have been bothering me. I think I am developing carpal tunnel but I can't be sure, although I asked a friend who is in Med School and she said probably it's not and then she called me a "lazy weak pussy". All that money and time in med school and they can't teach her any manners. Anyway, it's always sad when you realize your friends aren't any good at their chosen profession huh, because it's definately carpal tunnel. I am trying to make an appointment with my doctor the hack, but I'm a little concerned. The last time i was there he had a vial of blood in his shirt pocket and it fell out when he leaned over and he told me how it was supposed to have been refrigerated hours ago and he tried to lean it against the wall on the desk and it fell so he put it back in his pocket because he couldn't get it stay upright. Ummm, I'm afraid if I say my wrist is bothering me he'll ask to see it then just hack it off. That would be a bummer, although I might be less depressed by the cloudy days to focus my depression on my hand, or my stub :( . I guess I could always have my severed hand stuffed and put it on my mantle, at least it would give a conversation starter. That's not as bad as it sounds, I realized years ago I have anywhere from .5-2 hours of conversation with most people and then one of us wanders off, physically or mentally. I can stretch this if I need to, or if we only see each other sometimes. It's unfortunate and depressing, but it's who I am.

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be." That's Vonnegut (more or less, can't remember it exactly), I think I quoted it before, and I figured it was appropriate to toss in since he recently passed. I was sad when he died, he always seemed to be on the right side and had an extremely interesting and creative way of expressing himself. He also had one hell of a tough life at times, being in Dresden when we fire bombed it, cleaning up cadavers afterwards, people dying (ok that's all of us, but his sister and brother in law died close together, something like days, etc). Anyway, even though I said above only 1/2 in jest that i have approximately 8 hours of conversation with someone, it's rare that someone finds me interesting or that i find them interesting for long periods of time. I have and will continue to reread Vonnegut and, even if he wouldn't have found me interesting, I continually find his writing to be. And so on.

Just as an afterthought, think about how recently it was that we were firebombing entire cities during wars, and how different it is now. Seriously think about that, what that means. It's crazy, in all the good and all the bad ways that modern society is crazy.

April is the cruellest month

This has been the worst april ever. I know this because I just took a walk around town this evening and while tapping into the greater collective consciousness of my fellow citizens, I was able to trace all the april's back a hundred years or more. I passed through the sunny sterile Aprils of the 50's and the shocking zoot suit scandalous aprils of the 20s, to the tumultous Aprils in the 70s and all the other aprils in between. They were all nicer than this april, the worst april ever. It is possible there was a worse april at the dawn of the century, but the women who was offering up her memory to the collective consciousness had alzheimers and we had to move on.

So what does this matter? It means I'm still depressed. I hate the cold. I hate the winter. I hate the cloudy days and the lack of sun. It isn't that I am tired of them, I actually hate themm. When I stepped outside today into a blistery cold, snowy day in mid-April, I was immediately in a bad mood, and I still am. This weather just makes the oppressive meaningless of my life feel that much heavier. When it's sunny, I get a little freedom as I can float around after work on a walk and sit along the river and think or run or walk, or just enjoy being outside. Not days like today though, nothing really cheers me up on days like today.

I'm not an adult, I'm a child. If i can play outside, I'm generally ok. Remember that song I'm Only Happy When it Rains by Garbage? That was one of 3 popular songs on my spring break when I died my hair some shade of red and drove with some friends to some disgusting spring break destination in Florida, the spring break where i got a nose ring in the back of a club and we poured rum on it that night to stop it from getting infected. It didn't work. Anyway, I used to like that song. I used to understand that song. That song is stupid, and I might be a child but that song is for angsty 15-22 year olds, which fortunately I'm not anymore. I also think anyone who wants to return to that time is stupid, but maybe i didn't have enough fun in college. Maybe I don't have enough fun now, who the hell knows, but I'm trying. Anyway, this weather has got to change before I just get really annoyed and move to central america forever.

My request to all my readers, and since I haven't been writing much I'm not sure if you are even still there, is this: go buy a Hummer! I want accelerated global warming! I want Boston to be 55 all winter so I can move back, I want people to retire to the Carolinas like it's Florida, and Florida to just melt in a sickening ooze of decaying skin and bone into a giant everglade. Texas can just go to hell and arizona is already a desert, I'm not sure why anybody lives there anyway. We can always take over canada when we need space, populate it with humenguins, and we'll have plenty of space and we'll all live happily and sweatily ever after.

Worst april ever.

Fo shizzle! Is Snoop Dog the reincarnation of John Lennon?

If you have been scouring the news as I have recently, you may have heard that famed rapper Snoop Doggy Dog was recently either kicked out of or barred from England because of the possibility that he might smoke marijuana. If my history is correct, we seem to be repeating a case that came up years ago when the US tried to evict a one time famous British musician named John Lennon from the US, partially on the grounds that he was also smoked marijuana. Does this make Snoop Dog the reincarnation of John Lennon? I think it does. I realize that Snoop was born before Lennon sadly passed away, but that doesn't mean the soul can't reincarnate itself in someone who is already living, like a young Snoop fo shizzling around LA as a child. And why not hide in a youthful body in the sunny skies of LA? From my shallow and meaningless understanding of real religions that believe in reincarnation, and from a recent listening of an Indigo Girls song around that very theme, I dare to say yes, the soul may incarnate itself where it wishes. That is why Mother Theresa and Gandhi aged so quickly, they were constantly beset by souls trying to reincarnate within them.

Could the cycle come full circle? Are we about to be presented with a new young lady friend as Snoop and this partner bed themselves for a week to protest of the current war, singing folk-hop about peace and love? If this does come to pass I beg you dear readers, please remember I scooped it.

April fools day

So I had to pass on a story from my sister about what might be the greatest april fools day prank ever. My sister is a teacher and has this unexplainable soft spot for quirky geeky kids, not sure where she gets that. Anyway, one of her former students is a high schooler now and my sister still keeps in touch with his mother who is a professor of medieval studies. On Sunday, the kid setup their home computer so every time anyone typed the letter "a", the word asshole appeared. He also set it up so every time she typed the letter "f", the word fish showed up. My sister said he has always had a thing for fish, see my comment about quirky geeky children.

Anyway, apparently the mother doesn't bother to look at the screen when she types or spell check, so she actually composed email and sent them with the word asshole and fish sprinkled throughout the emails. The kid was apparently surprised his mother didn't notice this before she sent the emails. Not only that, my sister received one of these email and thought the women was being oddly self deprecating by using the word asshole and fish so much. Seriously I generally like my sister, what the hell does that even mean?

I figure the mother has an excuse because they didn't even have computers in medieval times, but my sister? Just further proof she was adopted and should be written out of the will (hint hint dad).

Now thassholet's a classwolessic! To fishunny!

Puzzles vs. Mysteries

While I was on vacation in Roatan, I read a fascinating article by Malcolm Gladwell, the author of the books Tipping Point and Blink. Both are very interesting and worth reading, although you may not agree with everything Mr. Gladwell states, which is fine. They should both make you think, which is better than blindly agreeing with him anyway, and I think he would agree.

Anyway, in this New Yorker article, Mr. Gladwell talks about the difference between a puzzle and a mystery. He seems to base much of this on information from Gregory Treverton, who is or was a national security expert of some sort. I googled him to actually add some facts to this blog, which i don't normally bother to do, and he has a number of books and papers you can read.

Anyway, I won't try to explain the difference in detail because I think it is done well in the article. To paraphrase, a puzzle is something that has a solution, and if you have enough information, you can solve it. An example from the article is Bin Laden's whereabouts. We don't know where he is, but he is obviously someplace and if we had the correct information we could find him.

Mystery's are more complicated. No matter how much information we have, we don't know whether Iran will kill the British sailors or what would happen in Iraq after we overthrew Saddam. The article itself argues that Enron, which seems to have created an intentionally convoluted accounting system to hide it's lack of revenue/cash flow, was a mystery although you think it's a puzzle. The information was hidden and convoluted, but it was there if you asked the proper questions. Then Mr. Gladwell gives examples of people who did, including a college study group and a reporter for Fortune, I think. Anyway, the most telling fact from the article, and the one that proves to me people who value companies and recommend stocks are not as qualified as we like to believe, is this: Enron didn't pay taxes for 4 of it's last 5 years because it didn't have any money. Their annual reports used an accounting practice of booking future revenue (which was I believe based on a best guess of the future cost of energy), but they didn't receive any money. The IRS only cares about actual money. Enron didn't have any for 4 out of 5 years! They didn't pay any taxes! They still recieved awards and were modelled as a leading company of brilliant thinkers. It wasn't a mystery though, it was a puzzle. The piece of information someone needed from Enron to realize the company was in trouble was the tax statement. That is explained much better in the article, and I highly recommend you take the time to read it. REgardless, their accounting firm should be out of business and their CFO/President/CEO should all be in jail because of their ineptitude or lies, or both. The documentary "The Smartest Guys in the Room" is an interesting overview of the entire fiasco.

Anyway, I just wanted to throw out my opinion on the mystery concept as it relates to current events. The problem becomes how do you solve a mystery, how do you know you are asking the right questions, asking them of the right people, and getting honest answers? The Iraqi was seems like a good example. Let's forget any ineptitude or lies or both from our leaders and assume, as did happen, we were going to invade Iraq (this way we can ignore all the infighting, the outing of CIA agents, bad intelligence, etc, and focus on the post battle problems which is really what we need to resolve now). The mysteries around this seem to be as follows:

1. If we pull out immediately, what will happen? Nobody knows for sure.
2. If we make a timetable and pull out in 18 months, what will happen? nobody knows.
3. If we don't make a timetable, what will happen? Nobody knows.

My point is, it seems with mysteries you have to deal with a lot of unknowns. How do we deal with unknowns, how do we resolve these issues? Well we all deal with unknowns in our lives. We deal with unknowns around our jobs, our personal lives, our families. What do we do? We try to focus as best we can and make a decision. Some of us are more detailed with this (job = money, I want to save to travel therefore this job is best now), others just wing it (I want to travel, so I'll quit my job and worry about retiring later).

I want a little more detail, clarity, and forethought on the mystery of Iraq from our government than I am seeing, and I am including both democrats and republicans. Ultimately, it seems to me we are dealing with tradeoffs and percentages, but we never really discus it this way. The political rhetoric involves making Iraqis safer, or brining home our troops, or saving money, or bringing democracy to the region (except in Palenstine, we apparently don't support their elected leaders or agree they are even a nation - that's another blog). Anyway, there are a lot of variables. Let's take a step back and start with 1 assumption: given the state of the world right now, we are bettter off with a stable Iraq that produces oil and isnt' a trouble making state. That's a bit vague, but I think you get the concept. What are the mysteries:

1. Will Iraq be more likely to be stable in 2 years if we leave our troops there?
2. If the answer above is yes, how much more likely is it to be stable in 2 years than now, or in 1 year? We then need to balance this percent by the cost of the war in both dollars and bodies. Remember the cost in bodies is not only deaths but ongoing medical treatment for the rest of the soldiers lives. I am not in favor of the war, but i am strongly in favor of supporting them when they return.

As I have argued before, any argument must begin with the same assumption. I believe we need to ignore why we are in the war when discussing what to do. Sure, people should be tried for treason but that's another story. So if you agree we want a stable Iraq, we need to decide how likely this will be in 2 years. Also how likely is it that this is possible. And does stable require us to have a democracy? That's anothe subtelty. So this analysis gets more and more complicated, but it can be broken down and analyzed. Let me repeat that: it can be broken down and analyzed. Anything can. If you can agree to our current state and our desired state, then define the potential scenarios are at each step, the only debate becomes the probability of each scenario. This would be political but informative, and also allow us to make a reasoned decision. I don't believe this is happening. The rhetoric is just that, feeling based speeches to get votes. It's not logical, and I believe we moved into this war based on feelings. We should not get out of it for the same reasons.

This type of analysis was part of my college education in operations research. I won't bore you with details because I still don't truly understand it, but the mathematical part of the class focused on giant probability matrices. One class was called "Stochastic Equations: The study of probabilistic systems as time goes to infinite." I got a D- in it, and believe me, it was a pity D- because I never got above 20% on any homework or test. Fortunately, my glorious alma mater doesn't give pluses or minus so it looks like a solid D on my transcript - rock on MIT! In another class we reviewed studies that showed how inconsistent we are when we make decisions based on feelings. I'll try to find examples of this, but you can identify these by making a list of priorities. For example, a person might prioritize saving for retirement, saving for education, then money for going out. However, in a given month, they will use money they set aside for retirement in order to go to a 5 star restaraunts. It's not logical. People are not logical. Commercials attempt to manipulate us, politicians manipulate us, religion, friends, family. Sometimes, although it's heartless, our best decisions should be analytical. It may be a mystery, but by breaking it down as much as possible, we can at least make the best decision and, hopefully, be prepared for all the possible alternate scenarios. This didn't happen in Iraq (obviously). Let's not let it happen again.

Dogging for love

So I was sitting with a friend the other day in Rittenhouse and she was talking about how she wanted a dog to play with at the park. She didn't want a dog to take care of day and day out, but she wanted one to play with at the park. She said wouldn't it be nice if people rented dogs by the hour. I had to stop her there because I had already been down this path with a male friend, who thought we should rent dogs to guys because girls love dogs and this would be a great way to meet women. Ding! Then the lightbulb went on.

I'm going to start renting dogs to both girls and guys. Girls are renting cute little dogs to play with in the park. Guys are renting dogs to meet girls, maybe even the girls who are renting dogs from the other side of the park to play with. The key is I rent all the dogs, they are all very friendly, and all the dogs already know each other so when they meet in the park, they run to each other thus bringining people together. I'll call it "Dogging for love" or some other clever name. Is that name clever? I don't like it, but i'm not feeling creative now so we'll work with that.

Anyway, after thinking about it, I think we can take this a step further. Lets say somebody comes up and says they want to "dog for love" and meet a guy with brown hair and a good job. He wants to meet a piece of blonde arm candy. By giving them the appropriate dogs that are already friends, we can increase the likelihood of a "random meeting" in the park with their dogs. I would be doing something good for the world (increasing love), which surely must come back and improve my karma, right?

Maybe by collecting enough information, I could begin to piece together personality types and the types of dogs they like. For example, annoying rich female socialites seem to like purse dogs, which is reason enough to hate purse dogs without getting into the annoying yapping and barks. Maybe a big burly mans mans likes a husky and sporty people like greyhounds and on and on. In time, you don't even need a dog yourself, you can just look for someone walking a dog that matches your personality type. In this way, I could write off the business start up costs as being part of a "thesis" or something. I could publish a book and retire, all on the concept of dogging for love. It seems so easy, all I need is a lot of dogs.