3 Questions You Should Just Let Me Ponder

If you use your child’s name as part of an online or network password, do you actually run the risk of forgetting your child’s name?

Like you’re sitting there one day, dying to check the spam building up in your “second” email account – which you use for retailer and airline spam and questionably tasteful picture-of-the-day subscriptions – and as you begin typing the password (starting with a month/day code of a child’s birth of course), you realize you don’t know which child’s name you used, or if you used the entire name (Samantha) or the abbreviated/nick-name (Mantha), and then as you rack your brain trying to work all this out, you realize…OH NO… the name escapes you entirely! To add insult to injury, you’ve just forgotten your password, too. Which, as we know, is inevitable. Later, you run into your child – also inevitable since you live with them – and all your flustered brain can manage to send through your mouth is “Oh hey there, uh, password to my Hotmail account. How was your day?”

If you lose your mobile phone, and nobody is around to call you, did it ever exist?

I was faced with this conundrum recently whilst on a sports-watching holiday in friendly Florence, Alabama. Florence is quite easy to find on a map: look at the dangling protuberance at the southwest corner of Alabama – call them Alabamacles? – and then go straight north all the way to the Tennessee border. It’s within 300 miles of there. OK, maybe not the most direct way to point it out, but I did get you to see Alabama in a whole new way. (Thanks, Matt, for the inspiration.) Anyhoo, I lost my Samsung Omnia touch screen web-browsing text machine, which places something called “telephone calls” from time to time, somewhere around the place in which we parked for the game many hours earlier. Inexplicably, we made it all the way back to the hotel in Decatur (again, Alabamacles, then straight north but a little further east) before I realized the device was no longer in my coat pocket, nor in a pants pocket, nor in the trunk, nor in my hand. And there was no chance of finding it now that it was dark and we were 50 miles away. Strangely, a sudden calm descended on me as I realized I no longer needed to compulsively check for new texts. I had no desire whatsoever to check my Fantasy Football scores the following day on my mobile browser. I spent less time in the bathroom since I didn’t have to start a new game of Jamdat Bowling. I even used a PAYPHONE. You remember those; they’re the silvery boxes where you put in quarters and get a friendly, female voice to let you know you have 5 minutes to place a call and you’d better get yakkin’ cuz you just used up 2. This oasis of personal freedom lasted a good 2 days, until my mobile’s insurance carrier zipped me a replacement, no questions asked. Now it’s back to—hold on, I have to go. Texts coming in.

If IKEA furniture were harder to put together, would we ever put up with its chipped edges and dodgy fasteners?

We have no less than 17 pieces in our home (including each dining room chair) which Annie or I assembled using the illustrated, non-gender monster guided instructions. Assembled well even, although it’s probably hard to do a poor job of assembling pre-drilled boards with wooden pegs and lock screws. It’s essentially Tinker Toys for grownups, let’s be honest. I shouldn’t really complain; our furniture looks great in our home and has afforded us some modernity and matching color schemes which we might not have otherwise achieved. In college, for example, my shared rented house had a set of donated couch, chair, and ottoman that matched (in lovely green plaid) and then 24 other miscellaneous TV stands, folding chairs, long mirrors, coffee tables, handy plastic crates, and upside down wastebaskets covered with a towel (end tables). Clearly I have experienced a major furniture upgrade in my life and for that, IKEA, I thank you. And for the Marabou chocolates and Daim candies, too. And Swedish meatballs.

Why Reading is Good

[NERD ALERT! This is about reading.]

It's not because your parents tell you it's good. They're right, but the reason they say it at the time is because they simply want you to quit asking for snacks.

"No, you can't have a brownie sundae with crushed candy canes on top. What even made you think of that? You should go read a book or something. It's good for you."

Seriously, if my kids haven't asked for a snack during a particular 15 minute time period, I start to worry. And if I haven't responded in complete disbelief that these children ask child-like questions with impunity, they start to think I'm not an old grumpy bugger after all. But I normally do. This paragraph is like a triple negative. I’m not even sure what it says now that I haven’t continued writing it.

 

To reading, then. I started writing a thoughtful, what-does-it-all-mean essay on the effect reading has on our psyches, but it disappeared. Twice. I saved it as a draft here in this Blogger control center, and it completely vanished. So I re-wrote it, naively in Blogger again, and it vanished again. It was Blogger's way of saying, "Dude, that was way over your own head. Stop now before you subject your readers to this painful, meandering interpretation of the long-stirring thoughts in your usually sealed off brain."

 

So instead, I'll try and summarize in a few sentences. The more I read, the more information I absorb. Duh. More specifically, the more I read books set in historical, real-life contexts, the more I understand about myself and my own humanity. I haven’t even read these books with that purpose (I’m off to find myself! blah blah blah), but the result is just that. Confused? I’ll use a quick example with the book I’m reading now, Angela’s Ashes. Frank McCourt, the author, is a kid growing up first in Brooklyn, then back in native Ireland in the 1930s and '40s. He’s Irish-Catholic of course, lives in squalid conditions I’ve never had to endure, sees the depression in America and something altogether more bleak in Ireland; basically, we have nothing in common. Except he is a boy, and he is human. And when I find myself relating to the dreams, needs, questions, and “sinful thoughts” of little Francis in his boyhood, I just feel like my life is a little more normal. I also feel really grateful to have been born and raised in the late 20th century in America, in West Michigan, to my parents, in my little world.

 

See? That’s just one perspective out of one part of one book! I go through this like 3 or 4 times every time I read something now. Reading is good because the stories are experienced in your own head, using your own creativity, and stirring your own emotions. I love TV and movies, but they’re created with someone else’s imagination, and often produce false senses of emotion through musical crescendos or REALLY INTENSE CLOSE UPS.

 

Your teachers were right. Reading is good. They just weren’t explaining it right. It’s not because you’ll know the correct answers to a test, or because you’ll be able to recite Shakespearean lines when you’re picking up chicks, or because you truly need to understand transcendentalism. It’s because you’ll understand your place in this world a little bit better.

 

And you may pick up a few answers (questions?) on Jeopardy!, which is never a bad thing.

U/P Overload

U/P Overload is coming. It has nothing to do with the Upper Peninsula, Michiganders. It's a new phenomenon in which your brain reaches maximum capacity on one tiny part of its memory: Usernames and Passwords. And it's coming for society. Think it's not?

Allow me to remind you the myriad forms U/Ps take: account nicknames, frequent flier #s, credit/debit card #s, that 3-digit code thingy on the back of credit/debit cards, padlock combos, garage or car door codes, social security #, student ID, employee ID, copy machine account code (at my work, it's different for the color and b/w copiers - seriously), any one of your seven email addresses, and don't even get me started on the dreaded PIN! Incidentally, it's not PIN #, because PIN stands for Personal Identification Number. You wouldn't say, "Personal Identification Number Number", would you? Well, maybe if you were playing that drinking game, which I heard about from a friend, where you create a rule that everyone must say the last word of any sentence twice twice. You have PINs for voice mail access on your mobile and work phones, online account access, ATM cards, debit swipe machines, your fuel rewards card, telephone banking, your wife's ATM card ... er, you get the idea.

Website access is clearly the worst offender, though. At work alone I have usernames and passwords, which may or may not be the same, for the following sites: intranet, expense reports, payroll, benefits, half a dozen vendors (all with different 'rules' for password wackiness), logging on to the network, and, of course, logging back on to the network after I step away for five, no, three seconds. "It's for your security!", they say. I also have several files and folders protected by passwords. Again, that's just at work. How many personal online accounts do you access? If you're like me, at least a dozen. But if you're under the age of 22, it's ranging somewhere around 18 Jillion.

"But Steve," you might say if you were inclined to speak out loud to a web log, "don't you use the same username and password for a lot of those?" Well, yes. Sometimes. When they let you. But over here, it's your full email address and an eight character password. Simple enough. However, over there, it's just the username part of the email address followed by a 6-to-10 character password which includes at least one capital letter and no, and I mean NO swear-word symbols. $#%^@! And back on that site, you get to make up a cute account nickname (bobbin4apples), choose a visual queue (I'll take the rubber ducky), and use your keyboard to type the letters that correspond to the numbers on the on-screen keypad. Ahhhhh, the letter 2.

Well, how do we manage all this information without totally losing it, literally AND figuratively? We create cheat sheets, of course! Don't act like you don't have one. A sticky note here and there. A Word document, deftly hidden on our hard drive and not on the shared network - password protected, of course. Or maybe we just make SURE SURE SURE that we use word/number combinations that we just can't forget! Note to everyone: Stop using your oldest child's birth date in 8-digit format as your password. Because then we all know your password. 03131975 isn't fooling anyone!

Fortunately, technology will eventually catch up and provide us with new solutions. Take Apple, for instance. Their Mac computers have an application called "Keychain" which stores U/P combinations for websites and other stuff. Of course, it has an administrative password, for when you need to remember your actual passwords. And kudos for calling it "Keychain", because I can't think of any personal item people lose less than keys. Seriously, what word better completes the sentence, "Honey, I can't find my ____"? Maybe "cell phone", which is also where you keep that notepad entry with all your password reminders. See why U/P Overload is a serious threat?

Enjoy the confusion while you can, I guess. Soon, when we're systematically implanted with RFID tags broadcasting everything about us and our brains are integrated with the World Wide Head, which controls everything - sort of like The Force, but with a wireless network - we won't have the option to use the Spanish word for "orange" followed by "1" as our password any longer. And that, my friends, is a day in which I will click the Log Off button one final time.

Okay, that was a bit melodramatic.

Can't you imagine the conversations of that fully integrated web-human future?

[3 guys, gathered around the holographic copier]

"Hey, do you remember 'logging on to the network'? Man, what a crazy time that was."

"You aren't kidding. I used to log on to the network 5, 6 times a day. Never thought twice about it."

"Did you ever log on to the network, then log off, then try and log in as someone else, just to see what it was like?"

"Only EVERY DAY!"

"HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. Yeah. Hey, I just realized we're inter-men, and we can't think or feel or experience anything on our own anymore."

"Oh @#$%^&"

Christmas2Christmas Review

Many writers, bloggers, and entertainment news shows do a Year In Review, which I'm essentially doing now. But since I really need to start at last Christmas to get the big story in, I'm doing a year in review from NOW. This is no 2008 calendar review. And so I present my first annual Christmas2Christmas Review!

I'm calling it the Christmas2Christmas Review because I really wanted to use a title incorporating a number which acts as a word. See, the "2" acts as "to" and connects last Christmas to this Christmas in a really neat way. Additionally it gives me a little visual trick - I can use the 2 with no spaces around it. If I tried it with the word, it would look like ChristmastoChristmas, and then people would ask me if I'm celebrating the new Greek holiday "Christmasto" (kris-MAS-toh) and that would be uncomfortable. My other title ideas were "52 Week Pickup", which is a takeoff on an hilarious card game my parents used to trick us with when we were kids; "My 30th Year: What Have I Done?", which has a more reflective quality and a cute double meaning; and my last choice was "Read My Last 33 Posts", which is just rude.

LAST CHRISTMAS I GAVE YOU MY HEART...
Let's start there. It's been one year since I proposed (SBBEYAS nominee), and in that time you could say...I've been busy. I maintained the engagement, got married, and now have two wonderful children, 9 and 7. It took some real parenting to raise rapidly aging kids in just one year, but we did fine and they seem to have a well adjusted life. After the new year, we're shopping for colleges!

Weddings were a theme of the past year, and they helped me rack up the frequent flier miles: Matt Murray's wedding in Northampton, MA in March; Josh Pepper's wedding in June back home in G.R., which ended with a lost wallet (SBBEYAS nominee); my cousin Beth Ann's wedding in G.R. a few weeks later over the 4th of July weekend, which gave Annie and me our only cottage trip of the year; and finally, our wedding in Chicago. Of the 4 weddings, mine was the best because I got to go on the Honeymoon.

We visited Chicago multiple times this year, including an early wedding planning session in January where we tried to get some amateur engagement photos. Problem was, it was -93 degrees (with the windchill) that weekend and smiling for pictures meant your face would freeze that way. But we picked our reception site and surveyed a couple other locations. We also hit Chicago in May, in August for our wedding, and at the end of October for a mini-vacation with Annie, after I finished nearly 3 straight weeks of travel for work, which included a stop in Chicago.

I turned 30 this year (5 months and 5 days after my wife did). In related stories, my company went bankrupt and emerged, and our house started falling apart. Seriously, as I'm writing this, I'm waiting for the plumber to come to fix our 2nd faulty shower of the year. The past two nights I spent time Gorilla Gluing pieces of our stone tile countertop back together, which involved moving the dishwasher out - not something I do every day. Last week I spider-bombed our basement, and in order to safely fill your basement with toxic fog blasters, you have to turn off things called "pilots". Apparently, both our water heater and furnace have them. Luckily I read that instruction before I did the fog thingy, so our house didn't explode. I have to admit though, that whole process caused me incredible anxiety. First, I had to deal with the fear that I would improperly stop/start the gas pilot functions. They put very strong wording on those labels that say "IF YOU SMELL ANY GAS WHATSOEVER IMMEDIATELY LEAVE THE PREMISES AND DO NOT LIGHT A MATCH LIKE YOU DO WHEN YOU SMELL GAS IN YOUR BATHROOM". Secondly, my brain envisioned legions of spiders sensing their impending doom and scrambling from all corners and cracks in the basement to jump on my head and neck as I ran upstairs to let the killer fog do its work. Blessedly, I saw not a single arachnid and haven't since. In summary, turning 30 for me meant a lot more housework, and our house is certainly obliging. My body actually feels fine, and I'm in decent shape after spending more time in the gym the past 2 months than I had in the past year. That's not a cry for help, right? "Hey, after 29 years without a single shred of desire to lift heavy metal bars, I think I'll start lifting heavy metal bars and grunting more!"

ARE YOU GOING TO TALK ABOUT SPORTS?
Well, duh. The best moment was clearly Lloyd Carr's final game with Michigan. A high scoring battle with Florida, a bowl win, lots of winged helmets in the air - a great way to start 2008! Little did we know it would be the only positive Michigan football story of the entire year, and maybe the next few. I made my first attempt at a Super Bowl ad review on my blog in February, revealing the fact that since I never have a team to care about in the Super Bowl, I'm now in that group of people that finds the commercials more interesting than the game. The Pistons won a whole bunch of games again, and ran out of gas in the playoffs again. They seem to be poised to repeat the feat this season, even with the addition of Allen "Practice?" Iverson, who is the reason Detroit traded my favorite dude of this era, Chauncey Billups. I'm further ticked because I have a t-shirt with Chauncey's name/# on it, and I don't want to have to buy new team gear for those days when I really, really need to show how much I love my home teams by wearing shirts. What if we showed our loyalty to, say, hair care products in the same way? "Dude, nice Suave shirt. You jumping off the Dep bandwagon?"

Let's see, what else? The Tigers added a bunch of dudes you've sort of heard of, then did much, much worse. I'm pretty sure the Wings won the Stanley "Stan" Cup but I maybe watched 2 periods of hockey all year, and they were the last 2 periods of the Cup-clinching game. Some fan! If you're in Michigan, the cold and prevalence of ponds just sort of makes you watch more hockey. Here in Utah, hockey takes a major backseat to skiing, the Jazz, and producing children. And back around to Michigan Football which, as we all know, lost to their 3 major rivals (Utah, Toledo, Northwestern) during their worst season EVER. But hey, the basketball team is back, baby! We owe West Virginia half a thank you.

STIZL, WE REALLY WANT TO KNOW WHAT WORDS AND PHRASES YOU WISH WOULD DIE, SINCE NO OTHER PEOPLE THINK TO WRITE ABOUT THAT
Actually, a surprising few columns were available on this subject. Lake Superior Sate University apparently has this topic locked up. Really? We can't do better than that? Harvard, Yale, and Davenport were too busy to put one of these together? [Note: When I researched this, LSSU had their 2008 word list - today, it shows the 2007 version...not sure why. Check back maybe.] Anyway, a few phrases have been bugging the crap out of me, so now I will talk about them, proliferating their existence on the interweb for eternity:

1. "We overcame a lot of adversity" Alternate misuse: "We've had lots of adversity" (generally in sports): Athletes and media love to talk about the momentous hurdles facing teams and individuals in sport, like "the opponent also likes to win" and "sometimes you get owies". I heard a QB from a football-factory powerhouse, who was 11-1 at the time, talk about the "great adversities" they "overcame" to "get to where they were at". Aside from the poor grammar, what great adversity did you face? Losing one game? Injury? Those things affect every single team/individual in all sports in all corners of the earth for all time. Those things are normal, not unusually challenging or contrary or even unlucky!

2. "From Wall Street to Main Street" (politics/media): Uh, yeah - let's go ahead and group all companies, all people, all communities into two convenient groups (which happen to make a clever, poetic phrase). On one hand, "Wall Street" - an actual place, but the idea of which has become completely un-relatable and, frankly, disreputable to most Americans; and on the other hand, "Main Street" - a quaint reference to small town, middle-American communities which is myopic if not condescending. Thanks for this one, Economy!

And the best one of the bunch from LSSU's 2008 list:
3. "It is what it is": This vague phrase is often used when someone totally under qualified is asked to comment on a very specific issue. I'd explain it further but it's just, well, it is...

STIZL'S BLOG BLOG ENTRY OF THE YEAR AS AWARDED BY STIZL
Thanks to all those who commented on their favorite posts, lines, or topics this year. I received over 3 suggestions for the SBBEYAS, a new record! Several posts discussed pants, and those seemed popular. But the runaway winner, and the reason to start this review at Christmas, is...

Ring A Ling.

(wild applause, awwwws from the ladies, groans from the guys...)

WHAT HAVE I LEARNED?
Don't invite Sue to a surprise party.

Also, you absolutely do NOT have to enter microwave times in :05 increments! I don't know why this unwritten law seems to control our actions, but it does. And you don't even have to use only :15 or :30 multiples either. What, like if your oatmeal is set for 1:30 it will be perfect, but 1:26 it's lukewarm soup, and at 1:48 it's burning oat-paste? And think about this: Every time you enter, say, ":30" on the microwave, you waste a ton of energy by moving your finger from the 3 at the top to the 0 at the bottom. Next time, just try hitting ":33". If you're not big into saving fractions of seconds on finger motions, then just do random #s that are near enough to your target time - :47 to reheat your coffee, maybe. It's fun - trust me, you'll feel like you're doing something naughty. And we all know, in today's depressing economy, we need to find elements of fun in the little things, like microwaving or putting on seatbelts (SBBEYAS nominee).

Speaking of the depressing economy, hope you had a Merry Christmas!

Seatbelt update

If you haven't read about the Seatbelt Shot, consider yourself lucky. It hit me last week that I hadn't tried it since then, so after I picked the kids up from daycare the other day, I tried it about 5 or 6 times -- never got close. The kids also thought I had suddenly become entirely inept, mechanically speaking. (In reality, I'm only MOSTLY mechanically inept).

It just proves that the Seatbelt Shot is something to be admired and treasured. Feared even.

The Seatbelt Shot

I have a pair of jeans with pretty tight hip pockets. This story ends with a call to action, so hang in there. I also have a mobile phone which I keep in my pocket most times - I don't have one of those clip things. I've had those belt clips before with 2 other phones, and they both broke. They both broke in the same way, too. Getting into the car. They would somehow catch on the edge of the seat or on the seatbelt buckle as I sat down, and it would snap the clip off. They should make mobile phone belt clips stronger.

I like to call them mobile phones lately, not 'cell phones'. I know that 'cell' is really short for 'cellular', but I don't know what 'cellular' means in relation to the phone. Does it mean it's a living, breathing thing? Mobile phone makes much more sense, because the key benefit of mobile phones is that you can take them with you. Well, that's the original key benefit. Now the key benefits of mobile phones are the ability to play music or set your lineup for fantasy football (nerd alert!).

Anyway, I was driving the other day and my phone was really uncomfortable in my tight hip pockets, and I wanted to get it out. Actually, I can't say if the phone itself was experiencing any discomfort, but my hip certainly was. But due to the tightness of the jeans and the lap portion of the seatbelt, I couldn't get it out. So at the next stop light, I unbuckled quick and pulled the mobile phone out.

The light turned green, and I quick shoved the phone into the cup holder and resumed driving. I'm a left handed driver, by which I mean I steer 95% of the time with only my left hand. I grew up driving stick shifts, so my right hand was often shifting gears and I was 'left' with only one hand free to steer. (I apologize for that horrible use of single quotation marks.) Also, steering with both hands is something only done by driving instructors, and driving students.

Needless to say, I needed to buckle up again. And this is when the cool thing happened. The cool thing happened, and I'm sure it has happened many times before, but for some reason I thought about how cool it was this time. I'm steering with my left hand, and my right hand reaches under the left arm, grabs the seatbelt, and in one swift motion, my eyes up on the road ahead, shoots the seat belt directly into the buckle. CLICK.

"Big deal", right? But think about it. Seatbelt buckles are generally perched on the end of a semi-rigid piece of plastic, or sometimes just on thick vinyl material. The flat part on the belt-portion of the buckle obviously must go squarely into the buckle. How do we do this without even looking, much less in a quick one-shot pull? Think of the spatial variance between where the belt is mounted and where the buckle happens to be angled that day. What if your hand bumps your hip on the way down? Even worse, what if you smash your hand into the buckle and pitch the fat part of your hand into the buckle? Now stop thinking about those things, and go take a drive. And unbuckle your seatbelt at a traffic light. Then, because you instinctively fear being unbuckled in your vehicle for even one second because of the Click It or Ticket campaign, go for it:

The Seatbelt Shot

A moral lesson from the can

WARNING: This post contains material of an awkward subject. I would encourage you not to form visual images of me. But since I just said that, I know you will. So enjoy that.

Most public men's rooms have a particular stall layout - one or several skinny, minimum space stalls whose doors open inward, and then one larger wheelchair-accessible (W.A.) stall whose door opens outward. Generally, the W.A. stall is furthest from the door, tucked in a corner. Dudes can be weird about using stalls. Some prefer space and comfort in order to properly relax while some prefer a sort of quiet anonymity, dreading that some other man may be aware that they, too, endure working bodily functions. The W.A. stall can satisfy both preferences, at times.

I was guilty of using the roomier, corner-located W.A. stall at work sometimes, for whatever reason. Regardless, it struck me recently that it would be rude and potentially disastrous if I was occupying said stall at a time when someone who truly needed the clearance and support rail entered the bathroom. This seemingly obvious scenario made its rude entry into my mind while I was using the stand up potty, and a gentleman in our office came in with a walker and two braces on his feet. I knew this man from around the office, but was not aware of his situation on a personal level. Needless to say, I swore a silent oath that I would never use the handicapped stall on this floor, in this building, ever again. It is not for me.

The story doesn't end there. Like I said, I didn't know the man on a personal level. He was gone from the office for quite some time, but I didn't notice. One day, I was playing the bowling video game on my phone (that's what I do when I'm toilet bound), and I hear the men's room door open. Normally, that is followed by footsteps and the familiar sounds of relief, flushing, washing, the auto-towel motor, and annoying small talk about how weird the last employee meeting was. This time, there were no footsteps... but I did see a wheelchair's wheel roll by under the door of my narrow stall. Later that day, I see the man in the wheelchair, and it was that man who previously had two braces on his feet. Now he only had one brace on his feet, primarily because he only had one remaining foot! I find out that the infections that were causing his foot pain and problems had gotten so bad, that amputation was the only remedy.

Thank goodness for the startling epiphany I experienced weeks earlier. Imagine the discourtesy I would have done by occupying the one and only wheelchair accessible stall, that very day, in that very place, denying a man who recently lost his foot the access he needed! Before you judge my description and discussion of the man's unfortunate situation, realize that he had the grace and humor with his new found structure to show up for a pirate-themed employee meeting (see what I mean?) wearing an upside down plunger that was painted black and duct-taped to his knee as a peg leg! AWESOME.

The lesson here is that certain things are in place for a reason. People who need a little extra room, a little closer space, a lift, a support bar, whatever - they really need it! And some of us have strange, selfish agendas (like video bowling with more elbow room) that need to be sacrificed for the good of mankind. Bottom line: Don't park in their spaces, and don't s#!t in their stalls.

It says 'sit'- my keyboard had a malfunction...