One of the people working in my building is not generally sought out socially. He has developed a reputation for being strongly opposed to manual labor and having a complete aversion to independent thought.
I will say this, some of our corporate behaviors actually do seem to make it pretty clear that our company does not think a person with his specific job title should be getting carried away with the independent thought side of things. Unfortunately, my job puts me in an excellent position to see why exactly that is our (unofficial) policy.
The problem comes from him having an aversion to manual labor too. I’ll say this, he’s not the youngest guy here. No one is really expecting him to be moving mountains. But from his body shape, you sort of get the feeling that maybe he might try moving a molehill every once in a while to get the old heart rate up.
But he doesn’t do that. So over time, he has gotten the jobs that involve less labor, but require more independent thought. Unfortunately, he does not use the thought to advance his job progress. He just tries to delegate his work onto other people and spend his time doing… well, I’m not sure anyone knows what he does because people avoid him for always trying to delegate work. He’s also horribly socially awkward, even if he appears unaware of that fact. It’s important to note that his job description does not give him the power to reassign work. When I was a new hire, this guy confused me initially by trying to give me some of his work as a training exercise. He came up with that idea all on his own. I have to give him credit, that took some balls. I outrank him a great deal. However, it did not take me long to look into and discredit this “helpful” gesture and completely ignore it.
It took him about a year, but he eventually noticed that I had casually adopted a policy of agreeing to “look at” any of his work that he wanted to leave in my hands. If it actually concerned me in some way, I completed my end of things in a timely manner and passed off having done so. However, if he was clearly just trying to con me into doing his work (as was often the case), I’d take a look at it all right. I’d look at it as it aged in a file of papers in my office he had given me that had absolutely no bearing on anything I do here. Since I never agreed to take over responsibility for any of those things, he eventually noticed that his buck passing was getting him in trouble. His supervisor knows what he should be working on and does not take kindly to stories that he “reassigned it” to someone six pay grades higher than he is. That problem thus worked itself out nicely, and I no longer have to deal with that sort of thing.
Unfortunately, this guy has simply decided to morph his delinquencies into new forms. Right now, I am listening to a series of test beeps and buzzes over the alarm system intercom in my building. It’s a mildly annoying sound. It has never bothered me before. Today, however, it has me extremely annoyed and writing a post to slam this coworker.
You may be thinking, “Are these alarm testing sounds related to the story about the lazy manipulative coworker somehow?” Why, as a matter of fact, they are!
About a month ago, I got a phone call at my desk. From the sound of the ring, it was clearly an internal call. Over the course of any given day, I get about 5 phone calls. Often it’s someone from maintenance hoping I can muscle our production staff into letting a piece of critical equipment be repaired. Often its one of the shift supervisors with a technical question. Sometimes it’s a chemist looking for advice or my input on a project. Occasionally it’s a chemical operator with a real concern.
On the days when he’s here, it’s also often this schmuck (who is also a chemical operator). He likes to call me. Sometimes he likes to call me several times a day. He’s the sort of person who likes to avoid work by “raising issues.” Now don’t get me wrong. Frankly, not enough issues get raised around here. I often discover things that need doing when someone really should have just told me about them when the problem started. I’m not opposed to that. However, I do have a policy of wanting the issues raised to, oh, say, “exist.” Real issues are good. Issues about things that might exist some day do not fly well with me. This guy is a master at spotting all sorts of “potential” issues and telling me to fix them. My solution to all of those: “Waiting until it a problem exists” works perfectly every time.
But a month ago was different. I got a call in the afternoon, picked up cheerfully, immediately recognized the voice, and didn’t even bother to disguise the abrupt shift to a somnambulistic tone of voice. I inquired what was on his mind. He told me there was a problem during alarm testing
I should break for a quick second to add some context. This guy does all of the alarm testing for our building now. It’s the sort of job that’s perfect for him, because it doesn’t require much energy and because the test signals (ringing right now) clearly announce to the entire building (and his immediate supervisor) if he is actually working, or if he has just wandered off to try to talk someone into doing his work for him.
Back to the phone call. He explained to me that he had put the alarm system into test mode and that when he tried an alarm, rather than beeping (like the building is right now), nothing happened. This got my attention. We need those alarms to work. I asked him how widespread the problem was. Long pause. He told me he just tried the one button, then gave up and called me. Long pause, this time on my end. I tell him that we’re going to need to know what the problem is before we can figure out the best way to fix it. I then asked him to continue on with the alarm testing so that we would know how big a problem we were seeing. I hung up, and began to ponder the options.
If the alarm system was actually down, I would be giving a very sudden call to shut down the building. But I wanted to understand what we were looking at, so I waited to hear back. I did not have to wait long. 30 seconds later, my phone rang. Same guy. I asked him what he needed. He told me that the button right next to the one he pushed in the first place, on the same speaker, in the same place, didn’t work either.
Another long silence on my end. Finally, I informed him that when I asked him to find out the full scope of the problem, I wanted him to try a little harder than that. I told him to try alarms in three places that I picked randomly (chosen for being in relevant, separate areas) and THEN call me back. He didn’t sound happy about that, but he said ok and hung up.
About half a quiet hour later, I got another phone call telling me that all of those alarms were also silent. Now he had my full interest. This did not seem to be a local speaker out. That suggested a big problem. I mentally prepared myself to call in and shut down the building. But then I had a hunch.
Me: “Do you still have the alarm testing mode on?”
Him: “Yes.”
Me: “ Shut it off please.”
Him. “Ok. … Ok, it’s off.”
Me: “Now go push that first button again.”
Him: [long pause] “But the test mode is off.”
Me: “I’ll make the announcement. Just go push the button please.”
So I announced to the site that for engineering reasons I was about to send an emergency alarm signal over the site alarm system. Two minutes later, the alarm went off in full force, as expected. Obviously, the alarm system was on and working fine.
He called me back and told me that the alarm I had just cleared went off. (I had noticed.) He told me to contact someone to fix the alarm testing mode. Seriously annoyed, I told him to write the work request himself (like everyone else does), since it was for the problem he had found personally, especially since he was the one who knew exactly how the testing had gone. After a pause, he agreed.
I checked up on this the next day and discovered that maintenance had discovered no problems at all with the system. So I chalked it up to a programming fritz and added that repair to a project on the system I was already working on. Since test mode not working is a minor problem, I was not overly concerned.
It has taken me this past month to finally finish the contractor projects required to call in the alarm people to do the work for me. I repeat, they have not come yet.
So why, you may ask, am I hearing the alarm testing tones in my office this morning? That’s a good question, since no one has come to fix them.
The reason the alarm testing mode works now is the same reason that I am writing this very, very annoyed entry. A certain favorite person of mine clearly discovered that the alarm test mode can be set to run silently. You have to set it up to do so, but it can be done. If someone did that, they could easily stage the illusion of a failing alarm system and get out of alarm testing for at least a week.
Heck, if contractor issues prevented the engineer from having someone in to look at the system for a while, it might even take a month. But what amazes me most of all about this is the boldness in turning it on now. I can clearly explain what happened. He realized that the month is ending. His one checked duty is to finish all the alarm testing every month. I was just getting ready to tell his boss to let it slide this month because the problem was on my end. But I hadn’t yet, and my favorite operator clearly assumed I wasn’t going to. So rather than risk the failure be noted on his review, he has turned on the alarms now and is pretending to me and everyone else that the “problem” magically healed.
If I could prove that, I would have him fired today. He’s literally the last person in my building left who I want to see gone. (Two out of three gone already.) Unfortunately, I can’t prove that, and it would be a hassle for me to try. But he had better watch his back if he knows what’s good for him. I can be easy going about most in life, but sabotaging my alarm systems and almost making me shut down my building are NOT amusing ways to f* with me.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Clothing
Sometimes people are skeptical as to if I’m really an engineer. This doesn’t happen very often. It’s pretty much confined to people who don’t know any other engineers. There are many ways in which I am not a stereotypical engineer, but there are also moments when I rise to the head of the pack.
Right now, I am equipped with a black permanent marker, a red pen, a black pen, a flashlight, a tape measure, a 4” knife, both types of screwdrivers, a file, a small saw, and a heavy duty pair of pliers. I don’t use any of those things regularly for my desk job, but on days when I actually have to wander out into the bays for some reason, they’re often handy. Having all that equipment on hand is actually less conspicuous than you might think. I wear it every day at work. Sometimes I carry more.
At work, I rarely if ever put gel in my hair. It’s kind of pointless, because many times during any given day I have to wander into or through hardhat areas. My spike does not care for my hard hat. Regardless of if I have gel in my hair or not, the hardhat turns my hair into a wild topiary the likes of which would make Einstein proud. It’s excellent engineering hair.
Recently, I came to work in my white Sigma-Aldrich polo shirt. I spent 5 hours wearing it and walked past full mirrors several times without noticing anything unusual. Eventually, during an impromptu speech to five people on a little-known aspect of the control logic for our reactor heating and cooling systems, my manager asked me if I was wearing my shirt inside out. A quick glance down revealed that, sure enough, the buttons were on the inside of my collar and the SAFC logo stamp was nothing more than a confusing mess of threads from the back. I had, however, “unpopped” the collar to a correct-ish inside out position. After silently pondering how I had managed to not notice that at any point during the almost-over day, I looked up and asked, “Well, yes. Looks like. But would you rather learn about the DCS control logic from someone who has trouble getting dressed in the morning but knows exactly how the computer programming works, or from someone wearing a nice shirt properly who doesn’t know what a K-value is?” This got a few bemused smiles, but no one argued with the point. It actually works better in your head if you realize that the manager and myself were the only two people in the room wearing standard clothes anyway. All of the other guys wear white uniforms. Many times, they even wear these uniforms inside out on purpose to hide chemical stains. That lowers the bar enough that an engineer can get away with pretty much any fashion atrocity except one. I can’t show up to work in sweat pants. Since I was not wearing sweat pants, I was still the second best-dressed person in the room by default. Someone should call GQ for me immediately for pulling that off.
I think the point best proving that I am an engineer is that I have to stop and think why that suggestion wouldn’t work. (I can come up with the right answer, I just have to justify it to myself. Further, it sounds less clever than the fact that I can be second-best dressed in a crowded room while wearing a polo shirt inside out.)
Right now, I am equipped with a black permanent marker, a red pen, a black pen, a flashlight, a tape measure, a 4” knife, both types of screwdrivers, a file, a small saw, and a heavy duty pair of pliers. I don’t use any of those things regularly for my desk job, but on days when I actually have to wander out into the bays for some reason, they’re often handy. Having all that equipment on hand is actually less conspicuous than you might think. I wear it every day at work. Sometimes I carry more.
At work, I rarely if ever put gel in my hair. It’s kind of pointless, because many times during any given day I have to wander into or through hardhat areas. My spike does not care for my hard hat. Regardless of if I have gel in my hair or not, the hardhat turns my hair into a wild topiary the likes of which would make Einstein proud. It’s excellent engineering hair.
Recently, I came to work in my white Sigma-Aldrich polo shirt. I spent 5 hours wearing it and walked past full mirrors several times without noticing anything unusual. Eventually, during an impromptu speech to five people on a little-known aspect of the control logic for our reactor heating and cooling systems, my manager asked me if I was wearing my shirt inside out. A quick glance down revealed that, sure enough, the buttons were on the inside of my collar and the SAFC logo stamp was nothing more than a confusing mess of threads from the back. I had, however, “unpopped” the collar to a correct-ish inside out position. After silently pondering how I had managed to not notice that at any point during the almost-over day, I looked up and asked, “Well, yes. Looks like. But would you rather learn about the DCS control logic from someone who has trouble getting dressed in the morning but knows exactly how the computer programming works, or from someone wearing a nice shirt properly who doesn’t know what a K-value is?” This got a few bemused smiles, but no one argued with the point. It actually works better in your head if you realize that the manager and myself were the only two people in the room wearing standard clothes anyway. All of the other guys wear white uniforms. Many times, they even wear these uniforms inside out on purpose to hide chemical stains. That lowers the bar enough that an engineer can get away with pretty much any fashion atrocity except one. I can’t show up to work in sweat pants. Since I was not wearing sweat pants, I was still the second best-dressed person in the room by default. Someone should call GQ for me immediately for pulling that off.
I think the point best proving that I am an engineer is that I have to stop and think why that suggestion wouldn’t work. (I can come up with the right answer, I just have to justify it to myself. Further, it sounds less clever than the fact that I can be second-best dressed in a crowded room while wearing a polo shirt inside out.)
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Aborted Practical Joke
A few months ago, I noticed that one of our equipment storage rooms was rated as a sound hazard area. As a result, it has a large sign on the door reading, “DANGER! 2 FORMS OF HEARING PROTECTION REQUIRED.” Expanded, that basically means, “Look people, we know you love to blare your rock music and show how manly you are, etc., but we’d rather you not have a good reason to sue the company when you go deaf. Since we know perfectly well that it’s loud in here, this sign means you are required by your job to put in earplugs and wear a dorky pair of hearing protection that looks like headphones if you want to go in here. Try suing us now! Haha!”
The reason I found that odd, is that it’s one of the quietest areas around. Certainly a lot quieter than many of our non-sound-rated areas. So I looked into that matter, and, just as I suspected, the sign was put up to warm people of the boiler system. You know, the huge, loud boiler system that was moved out of there 10 years ago.
Anyway, I eventually got around to derating the area. As the final step, I went out to pry the sign off the door. Here’s where the amusing part kicks in. Our new warning signs are printed metal plates that are glued onto doors. This sign, in contrast, turned out to be nothing more that a gigantic plastic sticker. I quickly discovered that it would easily peel off the door in one piece if I was careful.
A smile flashed across my face. “DANGER! 2 FORMS OF HEARING PROTECTION REQUIRED.” I saw myself buying a blank white T-shirt. I imagined gluing the sticker onto the T-shirt and then giving the shirt as a practical joke to someone I know well and tease often. (You know who you are.) I was very pleased with this wonderful, unplanned joke idea.
Unfortunately, the sticker warped during the peeling. So it wouldn’t look good enough to wear if I made it into a T-shirt. However, since the idea was a good one, I immortalize the joke here, where the intended recipient will hate me just as much for it as if I had actually made the shirt. And that’s really the goal here.
The reason I found that odd, is that it’s one of the quietest areas around. Certainly a lot quieter than many of our non-sound-rated areas. So I looked into that matter, and, just as I suspected, the sign was put up to warm people of the boiler system. You know, the huge, loud boiler system that was moved out of there 10 years ago.
Anyway, I eventually got around to derating the area. As the final step, I went out to pry the sign off the door. Here’s where the amusing part kicks in. Our new warning signs are printed metal plates that are glued onto doors. This sign, in contrast, turned out to be nothing more that a gigantic plastic sticker. I quickly discovered that it would easily peel off the door in one piece if I was careful.
A smile flashed across my face. “DANGER! 2 FORMS OF HEARING PROTECTION REQUIRED.” I saw myself buying a blank white T-shirt. I imagined gluing the sticker onto the T-shirt and then giving the shirt as a practical joke to someone I know well and tease often. (You know who you are.) I was very pleased with this wonderful, unplanned joke idea.
Unfortunately, the sticker warped during the peeling. So it wouldn’t look good enough to wear if I made it into a T-shirt. However, since the idea was a good one, I immortalize the joke here, where the intended recipient will hate me just as much for it as if I had actually made the shirt. And that’s really the goal here.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Cell Phone Shopping
[Note: I have since purchased a phone that did not exist at the time.]
Sales people find me fascinating. Depending on their capacity for challenge, I am either the best or worst customer ever. Here’s a paraphrased transcript of what happened when I went cell phone shopping earlier this week:
[Scene opens with Lake circling a Verizon kiosk in the mall warily. Keeping just enough distance to avoid attracting one of the two bored sales clerks, he quickly scans all the display models. Having circled twice, he approaches a small clump of Blackberries, head down, and starts to test them.]
Sales clerk: “Can I help you find something?”
Lake: [still examining Blackberries, typing out trial sentences on their tiny keyboards] “As a matter of fact, I was wondering if you had any PC cards for connecting to your G3 network.”
Sales clerk: “Any what?”
Lake: “It’s a chip you can put in a computer to get data service. I know Verizon makes them.”
Sales Clerk: [pause] “Oh, you mean the laptop cards?”
Lake: “Yes.”
Sales Clerk: “Do you know what size port you need?”
Lake: “I’m pretty sure I want a PCMCIA II model.”
Sales Clerk: “Ok, I don’t know what that means.” [Retrieves two boxes of cards] “Big or skinny?”
Lake: [looks up for the first time] “Big.”
Sales Clerk: “Ok. Well, the data plan for this is about $50.00 per month. That gets you the phone number, and unlimited data.”
Lake: “It gets a phone number? Can you use it to make calls?”
Sales Clerk: [long pause] “Uhm. I don’t know. Maybe?”
Sales Clerk #2: [looks up from her magazine with raised eyebrows]
Lake: “Hmmm. Ok, well, you said that it’s $50.00 per month. Is that the only option? Aren’t there usually tiers?”
Sales Clerk: “Well, with phones, yeah, but I think there’d be a chart for that in here if this did.”
Lake: “Uhm. Ok. Well, let’s try this another way then. First off, how much is this card by itself again?”
Sales Clerk: “$50.00”
Lake: “No, I mean, the cost of the card, not the service plan.”
Sales Clerk: “$50.00”
Lake: “The phone cost and per month usage fee are exactly the same?”
Sales Clerk: “I think so.”
Lake: [pause] “Ok. Well, let’s look at the other options then. Am I right in thinking that you can plug one of these…” [gestures at Blackberries and Treo’s] “…into a PC with a USB cable and accomplish the same thing?”
Sales Clerk #2: [slides in, cutting off Sales Clerk #1 who wanders over to the other side of the booth.] “Yes, you can do that. You just need to have the install CD set up.”
Lake: [more or less fails to notice that the sales person has had a sudden change of gender and job ability] “Ok. That’s probably a worthwhile option then. But I can’t help but notice that all of these…” [gestures at Blackberries and Treo’s] “…totally suck.”
Sales Clerk #2: [eyebrows jump for half a second at the flippant dismissal of the entire rack of high end phones]
Lake: “Do you have any phones more like this?” [pulls out his old Sidekick II] “The keyboard on this thing is easily two to three times the size of any of the ones on these. The form factor is excellent, and in general I think it’s an amazing phone. To be honest, the one and only reason I’m here is because you guys have a much, much better data network, if we can find something to use it with.”
Sales Clerk #2: “So you want something with a bigger keyboard?”
Lake: “That sounds like an excellent place to start!”
Sales Clerk #2: “We do have this phone…” [pulls out a phone with a good sized keyboard concealed within a sideways-opening flip-up]
Lake: “Actually, that looks just about perfect. Do you mind if I hold it?” [takes phone, types a test sentence] “This is great. And this can use the G3 network?”
Sales Clerk #2: “Yes, but…”
Lake: “But it doesn’t have a full internet browser. It just does mobile format pages.”
Sales Clerk #2: [pause] “Right.”
Lake: “Ok, never mind that then. So pretty much, you don’t have any phones I’d be interested in?”
Sales Clerk #2: “Well, there is one thing…” [pulls out a pamphlet] “We could special order one of these.” [points to a VX6700]
Lake: [reads page thoroughly] “Actually, this might just work. But I’d really need to hold one to find out. Could you get me one to try?”
Sales Clerk #2: “We special ordered one once a while ago. I could see about doing it again. That model is $500.”
Lake: “Can it make phone calls too?
Sales Clerk #2: [brief, stunned silence, followed by a quick recovery] “It sure can!”
Lake: “It’s probably asking for a lot, but I’d be very unhappy if I couldn’t get data reception in two very specific places. Is there any way that I could test this out before I bought it?
Sales Clerk #2: “Actually, you can try it out for 15 days.”
Lake: “That’s more than enough. So you think you can get one of these?”
Sales Clerk #2: “I can try. Can I get your phone number?”
Lake: “Absolutely.”
Sales Clerk #2: “I’ll let you know, hopefully soon.”
Lake: “Great, thanks!”
And then, a few hours later, a friend more in the know about this sort of thing than I am informed me I should just wait a few weeks until the VX6800 comes out and just try that instead. Which I now plan to do.
That story should pretty much explain why I have a great deal of sympathy for the sales people who have to deal with me. I feel better knowing I’m just as bad when I don’t need sales people at all. Case in point: last weekend, I bought a new audio cabinet from Target, drove to Home Depot, bought some lumber, drove home, opened the furniture box, threw away the top shelf and support beams, cut replacements for them out of the wood to meet my specifications, painted them to match the original set, and assembled it according to my revised directions. Elapsed time: two hours. Out of the box, the original cabinet was rated to support 20 lbs on top. I’ve got 80 lbs sitting on top of the revised version, and it looks great.
I am told this is not how normal people go furniture shopping, but that just sounds silly.
Sales people find me fascinating. Depending on their capacity for challenge, I am either the best or worst customer ever. Here’s a paraphrased transcript of what happened when I went cell phone shopping earlier this week:
[Scene opens with Lake circling a Verizon kiosk in the mall warily. Keeping just enough distance to avoid attracting one of the two bored sales clerks, he quickly scans all the display models. Having circled twice, he approaches a small clump of Blackberries, head down, and starts to test them.]
Sales clerk: “Can I help you find something?”
Lake: [still examining Blackberries, typing out trial sentences on their tiny keyboards] “As a matter of fact, I was wondering if you had any PC cards for connecting to your G3 network.”
Sales clerk: “Any what?”
Lake: “It’s a chip you can put in a computer to get data service. I know Verizon makes them.”
Sales Clerk: [pause] “Oh, you mean the laptop cards?”
Lake: “Yes.”
Sales Clerk: “Do you know what size port you need?”
Lake: “I’m pretty sure I want a PCMCIA II model.”
Sales Clerk: “Ok, I don’t know what that means.” [Retrieves two boxes of cards] “Big or skinny?”
Lake: [looks up for the first time] “Big.”
Sales Clerk: “Ok. Well, the data plan for this is about $50.00 per month. That gets you the phone number, and unlimited data.”
Lake: “It gets a phone number? Can you use it to make calls?”
Sales Clerk: [long pause] “Uhm. I don’t know. Maybe?”
Sales Clerk #2: [looks up from her magazine with raised eyebrows]
Lake: “Hmmm. Ok, well, you said that it’s $50.00 per month. Is that the only option? Aren’t there usually tiers?”
Sales Clerk: “Well, with phones, yeah, but I think there’d be a chart for that in here if this did.”
Lake: “Uhm. Ok. Well, let’s try this another way then. First off, how much is this card by itself again?”
Sales Clerk: “$50.00”
Lake: “No, I mean, the cost of the card, not the service plan.”
Sales Clerk: “$50.00”
Lake: “The phone cost and per month usage fee are exactly the same?”
Sales Clerk: “I think so.”
Lake: [pause] “Ok. Well, let’s look at the other options then. Am I right in thinking that you can plug one of these…” [gestures at Blackberries and Treo’s] “…into a PC with a USB cable and accomplish the same thing?”
Sales Clerk #2: [slides in, cutting off Sales Clerk #1 who wanders over to the other side of the booth.] “Yes, you can do that. You just need to have the install CD set up.”
Lake: [more or less fails to notice that the sales person has had a sudden change of gender and job ability] “Ok. That’s probably a worthwhile option then. But I can’t help but notice that all of these…” [gestures at Blackberries and Treo’s] “…totally suck.”
Sales Clerk #2: [eyebrows jump for half a second at the flippant dismissal of the entire rack of high end phones]
Lake: “Do you have any phones more like this?” [pulls out his old Sidekick II] “The keyboard on this thing is easily two to three times the size of any of the ones on these. The form factor is excellent, and in general I think it’s an amazing phone. To be honest, the one and only reason I’m here is because you guys have a much, much better data network, if we can find something to use it with.”
Sales Clerk #2: “So you want something with a bigger keyboard?”
Lake: “That sounds like an excellent place to start!”
Sales Clerk #2: “We do have this phone…” [pulls out a phone with a good sized keyboard concealed within a sideways-opening flip-up]
Lake: “Actually, that looks just about perfect. Do you mind if I hold it?” [takes phone, types a test sentence] “This is great. And this can use the G3 network?”
Sales Clerk #2: “Yes, but…”
Lake: “But it doesn’t have a full internet browser. It just does mobile format pages.”
Sales Clerk #2: [pause] “Right.”
Lake: “Ok, never mind that then. So pretty much, you don’t have any phones I’d be interested in?”
Sales Clerk #2: “Well, there is one thing…” [pulls out a pamphlet] “We could special order one of these.” [points to a VX6700]
Lake: [reads page thoroughly] “Actually, this might just work. But I’d really need to hold one to find out. Could you get me one to try?”
Sales Clerk #2: “We special ordered one once a while ago. I could see about doing it again. That model is $500.”
Lake: “Can it make phone calls too?
Sales Clerk #2: [brief, stunned silence, followed by a quick recovery] “It sure can!”
Lake: “It’s probably asking for a lot, but I’d be very unhappy if I couldn’t get data reception in two very specific places. Is there any way that I could test this out before I bought it?
Sales Clerk #2: “Actually, you can try it out for 15 days.”
Lake: “That’s more than enough. So you think you can get one of these?”
Sales Clerk #2: “I can try. Can I get your phone number?”
Lake: “Absolutely.”
Sales Clerk #2: “I’ll let you know, hopefully soon.”
Lake: “Great, thanks!”
And then, a few hours later, a friend more in the know about this sort of thing than I am informed me I should just wait a few weeks until the VX6800 comes out and just try that instead. Which I now plan to do.
That story should pretty much explain why I have a great deal of sympathy for the sales people who have to deal with me. I feel better knowing I’m just as bad when I don’t need sales people at all. Case in point: last weekend, I bought a new audio cabinet from Target, drove to Home Depot, bought some lumber, drove home, opened the furniture box, threw away the top shelf and support beams, cut replacements for them out of the wood to meet my specifications, painted them to match the original set, and assembled it according to my revised directions. Elapsed time: two hours. Out of the box, the original cabinet was rated to support 20 lbs on top. I’ve got 80 lbs sitting on top of the revised version, and it looks great.
I am told this is not how normal people go furniture shopping, but that just sounds silly.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
My Chronic Obesity Problem
It is impossible not to love my company’s annual health fair. They clear out the large training room, invite in anyone and everyone who could be said to have something to say on the topics of health and wellness, and either pay them to provide free tests and goodies, or demand them as a price of admission for the “free advertising.” Basically, you get to wander around booths, let people do things like measure your blood chemistry, give you chair massages, do chiropractic screenings, and inform you of the benefits of breathing the aromas of ancient eastern herbs. (Did I mention diversity of viewpoints earlier?) All of this is done while filling up goodie bags with tons of free stuff and informational pamphlets.
This year was my third such fair. I’m now a once-annual friend of the Aurora Health Services lady, who actually remembers me from my first time and waves me over, excited to poke me with a needle for my free blood test. I encourage my enemies to just assume that the cheerful nurse enjoys making me bleed. Anyone who likes that theory is invited to pretend that was the take home message of this entry and stop reading now, while you’re still smiling. Rejoin everyone below, after the second big gap. Have someone scroll for you if you’re worried about accidentally seeing controversial pro-Lake text.
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…
…
Still with me? Ok. Actually, she looks forward to my blood test because she remembers back from April of 2005 that I was the only person on my production site with exactly in-spec blood chemistry, including cholesterol (all types), white blood cell count (low, but just barely in range, as is to be expected for me), blood sugar, triglycerides, etc. Everyone else failed something. Apparently passing a blood test is rare around these parts.
The second year (2006) I sat down with her, she looked at me funny, sort of squinted, and asked me, “Are you a vegan?” I was kind of shocked, since I didn’t think I’d ever seen the woman in my life. I said yes, and asked her how on Earth she knew that. Apparently I had told her as much during the chitchat as we waited for the machine to test my blood back in 2005, because I figured it would be pretty clear from the results. She had fed me some lines about the importance of making sure to have a balanced diet, and predicted some various imbalances in my blood ahead of the official results. As usual, I ignored this argument as biased (but true for most instinct-eater, moral vegans) and flushed it immediately out of my memory. My results came up perfect, she said that everything was great, and I went on my merry way. And then, every single other person on my site failed their tests. Apparently that struck her as, “Not what I was expecting.” So, completely unbeknownst to me, this woman spent a year researching the effects of a vegan diet on blood chemistry when her real work slowed down. And apparently this free-time research eventually caused her to completely rethink her previous spiel. And apparently she had spent a year waiting to see if she’d get the chance to see if I could ace the blood test again. So I hear about all this, laugh cheerfully, and say, “Well, let’s find out!” and I ace it a second time. I found out this year (2007) that she has taken to advocating a vegan diet to people whose blood tests come back looking… how to say… different than mine. If I’m not careful, PETA will see me sitting around some day in my leather shoes, coat and belt, try to buy me a drink as a way of saying thanks, then have me shot. On the other hand, that’s the response I get from most organizations (and individuals), so I suppose it’s nothing new.
Anyway, that story only shares the setting with what I had intended to write about. A few booths down from that, there was a nice, older lady who was calculating people’s BMI’s (Body Mass Indexes). This was a new development for the heath fair, and I had never heard of the measure. With some curiosity, I told the lady my height and weight, watched her do something with those two numbers and a chart, and listened with rapt fascination as she informed me I was overweight, pushing obese. This was very interesting to me. I briefly wondered if I had some sort of reverse eating disorder, in which my body image looked fine –- only to me -- regardless of how much I ate. The old lady gave me a sort of odd look, said something along the lines of, “But I wouldn’t worry about it,” and sent me on my way.
Twenty minutes later, I came to a different station, where a different lady (I think someone somewhere is discriminating against male nurses, female doctors, or both.) offered to measure my percent body fat with some electric doohickey that reminded me of an enormous PS2 controller. Apparently, it measures your body fat by sending an electric pulse through your hands, both arms, and chest. The theory is, if your pacemaker stops working and you collapse, you have a high percent body fat. If you have no pacemaker, nothing happens and you are fine.
…Ok, so maybe that’s not exactly how it works, because it gave me an answer in terms of a percent. My body fat, she claimed, was excellent – exactly where it should be. Somewhat disappointed, I pointed out that the lady a few tables down had promised me I was obese. I pointed to my paper scorecard (we get a sheet of paper that lets you record your various test results) as proof of my high score.
Much laughter ensued. The dream-crushing nurse informed me that the BMI basically assumes you have 0% muscle mass. So if you are short and normal weight, or if you are tall and are secretly a mostly-metal android… I mean… muscular, the measure tells you that you are overweight or obese. Grinding my hopes with her heel, she told me that her test was more accurate.
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…
…
Ok, Lake detractors can pick up reading again at this point. Assume we’re still talking about the same nurse, but that it was discovered that she has multiple personalities and that each of them insisted on making me bleed separately.
Always the skeptic, I rejected the claims of that cruel PS2 nurse! In fact, I rejected the claims of the mean first nurse as well. Not only am I obese, but I hereby upgrade myself to “chronically obese” just to be patriotic. I’m pretty sure I accidentally told that first nurse that I was 75 feet tall. That’d lower the old BMI. Correcting for that error, I’ll bet my BMI is on the same order of magnitude as a lottery payout.
I plan to use my new handicapped status to demand the special parking spaces, movie theater seats, and an entire row of airline seats when I fly. It would just be unfair for me to bury neighbors under my rolls like I used to do.
This year was my third such fair. I’m now a once-annual friend of the Aurora Health Services lady, who actually remembers me from my first time and waves me over, excited to poke me with a needle for my free blood test. I encourage my enemies to just assume that the cheerful nurse enjoys making me bleed. Anyone who likes that theory is invited to pretend that was the take home message of this entry and stop reading now, while you’re still smiling. Rejoin everyone below, after the second big gap. Have someone scroll for you if you’re worried about accidentally seeing controversial pro-Lake text.
…
…
…
Still with me? Ok. Actually, she looks forward to my blood test because she remembers back from April of 2005 that I was the only person on my production site with exactly in-spec blood chemistry, including cholesterol (all types), white blood cell count (low, but just barely in range, as is to be expected for me), blood sugar, triglycerides, etc. Everyone else failed something. Apparently passing a blood test is rare around these parts.
The second year (2006) I sat down with her, she looked at me funny, sort of squinted, and asked me, “Are you a vegan?” I was kind of shocked, since I didn’t think I’d ever seen the woman in my life. I said yes, and asked her how on Earth she knew that. Apparently I had told her as much during the chitchat as we waited for the machine to test my blood back in 2005, because I figured it would be pretty clear from the results. She had fed me some lines about the importance of making sure to have a balanced diet, and predicted some various imbalances in my blood ahead of the official results. As usual, I ignored this argument as biased (but true for most instinct-eater, moral vegans) and flushed it immediately out of my memory. My results came up perfect, she said that everything was great, and I went on my merry way. And then, every single other person on my site failed their tests. Apparently that struck her as, “Not what I was expecting.” So, completely unbeknownst to me, this woman spent a year researching the effects of a vegan diet on blood chemistry when her real work slowed down. And apparently this free-time research eventually caused her to completely rethink her previous spiel. And apparently she had spent a year waiting to see if she’d get the chance to see if I could ace the blood test again. So I hear about all this, laugh cheerfully, and say, “Well, let’s find out!” and I ace it a second time. I found out this year (2007) that she has taken to advocating a vegan diet to people whose blood tests come back looking… how to say… different than mine. If I’m not careful, PETA will see me sitting around some day in my leather shoes, coat and belt, try to buy me a drink as a way of saying thanks, then have me shot. On the other hand, that’s the response I get from most organizations (and individuals), so I suppose it’s nothing new.
Anyway, that story only shares the setting with what I had intended to write about. A few booths down from that, there was a nice, older lady who was calculating people’s BMI’s (Body Mass Indexes). This was a new development for the heath fair, and I had never heard of the measure. With some curiosity, I told the lady my height and weight, watched her do something with those two numbers and a chart, and listened with rapt fascination as she informed me I was overweight, pushing obese. This was very interesting to me. I briefly wondered if I had some sort of reverse eating disorder, in which my body image looked fine –- only to me -- regardless of how much I ate. The old lady gave me a sort of odd look, said something along the lines of, “But I wouldn’t worry about it,” and sent me on my way.
Twenty minutes later, I came to a different station, where a different lady (I think someone somewhere is discriminating against male nurses, female doctors, or both.) offered to measure my percent body fat with some electric doohickey that reminded me of an enormous PS2 controller. Apparently, it measures your body fat by sending an electric pulse through your hands, both arms, and chest. The theory is, if your pacemaker stops working and you collapse, you have a high percent body fat. If you have no pacemaker, nothing happens and you are fine.
…Ok, so maybe that’s not exactly how it works, because it gave me an answer in terms of a percent. My body fat, she claimed, was excellent – exactly where it should be. Somewhat disappointed, I pointed out that the lady a few tables down had promised me I was obese. I pointed to my paper scorecard (we get a sheet of paper that lets you record your various test results) as proof of my high score.
Much laughter ensued. The dream-crushing nurse informed me that the BMI basically assumes you have 0% muscle mass. So if you are short and normal weight, or if you are tall and are secretly a mostly-metal android… I mean… muscular, the measure tells you that you are overweight or obese. Grinding my hopes with her heel, she told me that her test was more accurate.
…
…
…
Ok, Lake detractors can pick up reading again at this point. Assume we’re still talking about the same nurse, but that it was discovered that she has multiple personalities and that each of them insisted on making me bleed separately.
Always the skeptic, I rejected the claims of that cruel PS2 nurse! In fact, I rejected the claims of the mean first nurse as well. Not only am I obese, but I hereby upgrade myself to “chronically obese” just to be patriotic. I’m pretty sure I accidentally told that first nurse that I was 75 feet tall. That’d lower the old BMI. Correcting for that error, I’ll bet my BMI is on the same order of magnitude as a lottery payout.
I plan to use my new handicapped status to demand the special parking spaces, movie theater seats, and an entire row of airline seats when I fly. It would just be unfair for me to bury neighbors under my rolls like I used to do.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Ultimate Frisbee, Anyone?
Here’s a fun story from high school gym class. I'm hoping it will make the people who read my post for Feb. 13th forgive me for being much less readable when I'm feeling philisopical and logical at the same time.
Please note that the state of Illinois requires (required?) high school students to have four full years of gym class for graduation. That is only relevant in explaining why gym classes in a large high school such as mine were the one place where students from all skill sets and backgrounds found themselves mixing. Otherwise, my high school experience was highly stratified in terms of scholastic ability.
Naturally, this is a story of me being amused by irrational conflict.
In my gym class during my senior year, I got really lucky with my classmates. The vast majority of the time, I had put my gym class in odd places in my schedule to open up other opportunities. By senior year, my obvious gym schedule options were shared by the people who were taking the same specialized classes I was. Put directly, I had a gym class with a bunch of friends.
But it was 20% friends at best. The rest of the class was random people, most of whom I had never met before. The antagonist of this story was just such a person.
She was a friend of a friend. Both she and the friend we shared were on the girl’s cross country team. For reasons I never understood, she decided that I was her enemy.
When I say I don’t understand her reasons, I am being dead serious. I had never spoken to or even noticed the girl until I was told that she hated me. Her hatred was not very well researched, because it eventually became clear that she was under the impression that I was stupid and in immediate danger of failing out of half my classes. She seemed to think I was some sort of Neanderthal whose value system was based entirely on sports. Being in gym class with me should have gone a LONG way towards killing that notion, but it didn’t seem to register to her. It’s not that she wasn’t clever, because she was, but not about this. She was also pretty cute and reasonably popular, so the typical bitterness factors shouldn’t have explained it either. It’s just that somehow, she got a fictional impression of me lodged in her head, and it refused to leave.
Most of her aggression was vented by her telling our shared friend how stupid she thought everything I did or did not do obviously was. This absolutely delighted my friend, whose competitiveness (especially with me) can best be described as “prone to cage-matches.” Emboldened by this illusion of support, my self-proclaimed enemy began going public with her mockery by actively mimicking actions I was taking, exaggerating them to look caveman-esqe.
I thought this was the best thing ever. It is worth noting that I defied description in high school. I’m still impressed with one quirk that I still have, but have learned to hide better. From grade school through to about the 12th grade, I openly found people making fun of me hysterical, so long as it was either clever or ironic. This was highly disconcerting for people trying to pick a fight, because on many separate occasions, people trying to make a fool of me in public had to deal with me laughing hysterically and gasping out that I loved their word choices. Apparently, I was supposed to confirm or deny what was being discussed instead, but I don’t argue with comedians. To me, it’s a waste of happiness.
Anyway, you have to imagine a skinny, cross country girl with a cute ponytail, competitive personality, and utter contempt for my existence mimicking my every move and portraying me to a large crowd of people as a modern caveman. She managed to make me look forward to gym class I was having so much fun laughing at myself/us. This reaction, I believe, made her decide that I was clinically retarded.
Naturally, things escalated over time. Eventually it got to the point where she would actively make caveman “roars” to accompany my athletic actions, especially during team sports. After I noticed the amusing pattern, I started to roar back, which she seemed to find beyond amusing, presumably for different reasons.
Eventually, the curriculum came to a slow-paced sport. During a chunk of bitter cold winter, gym class was confined indoors in the field house. We played ultimate Frisbee. Unlike what we had done so far, indoor ultimate Frisbee was a sport allowing for plenty of banter, and the teams get to freely mix on the court, unlike in, say, volleyball. We had reached the tipping point.
On day three, I intercepted a Frisbee pass from her team, and landed from a jump with a smile on my face and an audible thump as my sneakers hit rubber. She was the person who had thrown the pass, from about 20 feet away. She was not pleased. Since I planned to throw the Frisbee the other way, in her direction, she had plenty of time to close the distance. In a matter of seconds, as I scanned for a pass, she was about five feet in front of me.
She balled her hands into fists, locked her arms straight out at her sides, put both feet firmly down in an open stance, and roared at me.
I roared back, with a huge grin on my face.
She roared right back, louder than before so that half the gym stopped and looked at her.
Suddenly noticing how many people were now staring, I very casually stood up straight, shifted my weight conversationally onto one leg, raised an eyebrow, smiled knowingly, and loudly asked, “Orgasm?”
Five seconds passed in complete, frozen silence.
Then, suddenly, she tilted her head back, clenched both fists so tightly that her knuckles turned white, and shouted at the ceiling, “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEW!”
I passed to a teammate behind her, and my team moved easily down the court to score.
We turned around, point made, to see her entire team (minus her) literally rolling around on the cold rubber floor in tears, laughing. From across the room, we clearly heard her shout down at them, “THAT’S NOT FUNNY!”
The gym teacher eventually came over to see if the pile of bodies rolling on the floor had something to do with widespread injuries.
From that day forward, the girl never spoke to or about me again. I considered it my loss.
Please note that the state of Illinois requires (required?) high school students to have four full years of gym class for graduation. That is only relevant in explaining why gym classes in a large high school such as mine were the one place where students from all skill sets and backgrounds found themselves mixing. Otherwise, my high school experience was highly stratified in terms of scholastic ability.
Naturally, this is a story of me being amused by irrational conflict.
In my gym class during my senior year, I got really lucky with my classmates. The vast majority of the time, I had put my gym class in odd places in my schedule to open up other opportunities. By senior year, my obvious gym schedule options were shared by the people who were taking the same specialized classes I was. Put directly, I had a gym class with a bunch of friends.
But it was 20% friends at best. The rest of the class was random people, most of whom I had never met before. The antagonist of this story was just such a person.
She was a friend of a friend. Both she and the friend we shared were on the girl’s cross country team. For reasons I never understood, she decided that I was her enemy.
When I say I don’t understand her reasons, I am being dead serious. I had never spoken to or even noticed the girl until I was told that she hated me. Her hatred was not very well researched, because it eventually became clear that she was under the impression that I was stupid and in immediate danger of failing out of half my classes. She seemed to think I was some sort of Neanderthal whose value system was based entirely on sports. Being in gym class with me should have gone a LONG way towards killing that notion, but it didn’t seem to register to her. It’s not that she wasn’t clever, because she was, but not about this. She was also pretty cute and reasonably popular, so the typical bitterness factors shouldn’t have explained it either. It’s just that somehow, she got a fictional impression of me lodged in her head, and it refused to leave.
Most of her aggression was vented by her telling our shared friend how stupid she thought everything I did or did not do obviously was. This absolutely delighted my friend, whose competitiveness (especially with me) can best be described as “prone to cage-matches.” Emboldened by this illusion of support, my self-proclaimed enemy began going public with her mockery by actively mimicking actions I was taking, exaggerating them to look caveman-esqe.
I thought this was the best thing ever. It is worth noting that I defied description in high school. I’m still impressed with one quirk that I still have, but have learned to hide better. From grade school through to about the 12th grade, I openly found people making fun of me hysterical, so long as it was either clever or ironic. This was highly disconcerting for people trying to pick a fight, because on many separate occasions, people trying to make a fool of me in public had to deal with me laughing hysterically and gasping out that I loved their word choices. Apparently, I was supposed to confirm or deny what was being discussed instead, but I don’t argue with comedians. To me, it’s a waste of happiness.
Anyway, you have to imagine a skinny, cross country girl with a cute ponytail, competitive personality, and utter contempt for my existence mimicking my every move and portraying me to a large crowd of people as a modern caveman. She managed to make me look forward to gym class I was having so much fun laughing at myself/us. This reaction, I believe, made her decide that I was clinically retarded.
Naturally, things escalated over time. Eventually it got to the point where she would actively make caveman “roars” to accompany my athletic actions, especially during team sports. After I noticed the amusing pattern, I started to roar back, which she seemed to find beyond amusing, presumably for different reasons.
Eventually, the curriculum came to a slow-paced sport. During a chunk of bitter cold winter, gym class was confined indoors in the field house. We played ultimate Frisbee. Unlike what we had done so far, indoor ultimate Frisbee was a sport allowing for plenty of banter, and the teams get to freely mix on the court, unlike in, say, volleyball. We had reached the tipping point.
On day three, I intercepted a Frisbee pass from her team, and landed from a jump with a smile on my face and an audible thump as my sneakers hit rubber. She was the person who had thrown the pass, from about 20 feet away. She was not pleased. Since I planned to throw the Frisbee the other way, in her direction, she had plenty of time to close the distance. In a matter of seconds, as I scanned for a pass, she was about five feet in front of me.
She balled her hands into fists, locked her arms straight out at her sides, put both feet firmly down in an open stance, and roared at me.
I roared back, with a huge grin on my face.
She roared right back, louder than before so that half the gym stopped and looked at her.
Suddenly noticing how many people were now staring, I very casually stood up straight, shifted my weight conversationally onto one leg, raised an eyebrow, smiled knowingly, and loudly asked, “Orgasm?”
Five seconds passed in complete, frozen silence.
Then, suddenly, she tilted her head back, clenched both fists so tightly that her knuckles turned white, and shouted at the ceiling, “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEW!”
I passed to a teammate behind her, and my team moved easily down the court to score.
We turned around, point made, to see her entire team (minus her) literally rolling around on the cold rubber floor in tears, laughing. From across the room, we clearly heard her shout down at them, “THAT’S NOT FUNNY!”
The gym teacher eventually came over to see if the pile of bodies rolling on the floor had something to do with widespread injuries.
From that day forward, the girl never spoke to or about me again. I considered it my loss.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Trust and Love
A question that has been on the minds of philosophers and artists throughout time remains with us today, but in a rare, embattled form. Whereas literature abounds in essays and treatises on the true meaning of romantic love, few practical answers have ever been suggested. Generally, the theme most commonly agreed on today is that love is a powerful force that defies description, but is unmistakable when encountered.
This definition serves well enough in most situations for the simple reason that the idea of mistaking romantic love for something else is generally thought of as laughable. In many regards, this is an acceptable philosophy. Rarely has an exclamation of “I love glazed doughnuts!” inspired romantic jealousy. Similarly, a declaration of “I love you!” is rarely followed by a question of, “What do you mean by that exactly?”
Despite that fact, it remains a compelling question. The general assumption is that love is a sensation shared and defined by the couple experiencing it. Outsiders to a particular relationship are unaware of the depths and sensations of the love that holds it together, though spotting the existence of some form of love is generally assumed to be easy. But is this a reasonable assumption? Can it truly be argued that couples defined by love are bound by a sensation strictly the same for both members? Is it reasonable to think that couples held together by love may in fact be held together by sensations wildly disparate for each member, but complimentary to the union of the pair? If yes, is there a limit to how different these sensations can be before the idea of a shared love seems less credible?
For that matter, the general assumption is that love is an experience reserved for a pair. This is generally accepted as common knowledge, and suggestions to the contrary are alarming to some and infuriating to others. Granted, there are occasional dissenters to this point, but they are widely agreed on as being radical, fantastic, or proponents of an “untrue” love. However, even those willing to brand as radical those who believe love can extend beyond a couple are likely to admit that they have had numerous loves over the span of their lives. Given that, the definition is not that love is reserved for a set couple, but instead that love is reserved for one set couple at a time.
Taken individually, none of these minor questions pose much threat to common thoughts on love. However, as a group, they have the potential to raise troubling questions about the fundamental assumptions held about what is generally regarded as a universal, desirable phenomenon.
Take for example the idea that a couple is capable of holding member-specific sensations of love. This seems reasonable for the simple fact that, given that a couple contains two separate people, they must be – in the very least – capable of loving aspects of the partner not found in themselves. However, taken to extremes, this leaves open the idea that a couple can love each other on the basis of wild disparities in personality that do not lend themselves to traditional definitions of love. One partner can love the sensation of having complete control over the other – conscious or not – while the submissive partner loves the sensation of security this may or may not bring. Such imbalances of power can open the door to questions of manipulation or the concept of one party taking advantage of the other. Should such a situation exist, and if it does not lessen the sensations drawing a couple together, is the relationship held together any less by love? Is this chasm in the sensations of love within the pair still supportive of a love compatible with more traditional thoughts on love? If not, what holds such couples together?
The second question raised is that of romantic love existing in only one location, per person, per moment. For many, this notion is the cornerstone of the definition of love. But how stable a foundation is this? It seems logical that if one strongly feels that love can be felt for only one person at a time, then the idea of “lingering feelings” for a former lover are based on something that is not love. What then is this? Is this an experience unique to only a small portion of the population? And if so, does this then essentially require that a remarried widow or widower fall out of love with his or her deceased spouse before the idea of remarrying for love is conceivable?
Debate on this point is sure to exist. However, I feel that a compelling case can be made for the idea that, no, a person may continue to love a former spouse long after he or she has been taken and another lover has assumed a comparable place in the mind of the survivor.
If debate on this point is even accepted as existing, then a troubling corollary rises immediately in its shadow. Does one member of a couple have to die for the survivor’s love to be reassigned? If not, what form of distance must be attained for the idea to be widely accepted? And what name is to be given for the sensation felt if a long-removed, yet ever-dear lover should reappear to find a new couple established?
If the idea of “one couple, per time, per place, per person” is assumed to be true, then the answer is obvious. The person whose love is unexpectedly shared by two people both with respectable claims is forced to announce – relatively quickly – where his or her true love lies.
Let us assume – for the moment – that this is the natural order of things. We then accept that one couple will form (or continue to exist) from this mix of three people and that the unfortunate third party is out of luck. Does this unfortunate turn of events mean that the love of the “extra” third party is now a lesser form of love? In agreeing that this is the case, a troubling issue arises. The love the third person feels is likely exactly the same love that it was before the decision. That is, the love that society fully supported before the unexpected reunion has suddenly – by an outside force – been decreed a lesser, undesirable form of love. If the lover rejected is the newest lover, then the love felt as recent as a day ago becomes undesirable purely from circumstance. If the lover rejected is the elder of the two, then the fidelity of the older lover despite circumstance is actually used as the force bringing criticism to his or her continued attachment.
Is either of these possibilities, fantastic as they are, an acceptable scenario in the modern definition of love? Or is the idea of “one couple, per time, per place, per person” really a cover for an emotion or impulse separate from love itself?
Similarly, is unrequited love any less love for its lack of reciprocity?
Should the answer to either of these questions deviate from the most common answers – should “one couple, per place, per time, per person” be simply overwhelmingly common instead of outright necessary or unrequited love be thought of as love all the same – then the modern definition of love is unstable and insufficient.
What then is missing? Perhaps the most reasonable approach to answering this question is less than rigorously logical. In its essence, the “common” definition of love seems to deal entirely with passions felt and for whom. The unstated, missing part then seems to be what makes that a tenable position. Simply stated, love is presented as a force holding couples, families, and society together at the basest level. If it is nothing more than a matter of overpowering passion, this supposedly cohesive force would likely do more damage than good.
The missing piece of the definition must be a stabilizing element. Further, it must be a stabilizing element that explains how, on some level, we have sympathy for the passions of those who experience loves less tenable than others.
In its essence, this missing piece must be based on trust. Initially, this seems to be something of a logical leap. However, the core point is simply that there is a mutual hope and understanding between lovers that the passion of the other is compatible with their own best interests or desires. As passionate love is without logical basis or contractual obligation, this simple stabilizing assumption can be reduced to nothing so much as a sensation of trust.
Couples for whom the sensations of love are different within their match trust that the impulses and desires of their partner do not conflict with their own – regardless of how baffling this estimation may be to society at large.
The couple is overwhelmingly the base unit of love not because it is necessary, but rather because it is overwhelmingly the point from which estimations of mutual goals, trust, and reliance can be judged. Jealousy can be thought of as simply the mind of a lover interpreting the actions of his or her love as serving another individual or individuals above regard for the viewing lover. If there are no other individuals who can be thought of as relying on the trust of one’s lover, one can feel completely secure in having all available love, all available trust, to one’s self.
Similarly, while there may be nothing more than habit mandating the notion of “one lover, per place, per time, per person,” it is inarguably the simplest arrangement of lovers to ensure that the foundation of trust is secure. As such, it certainly deserves respect as a conservative and safe position from which to feel love. Despite this, it seems that the only reason that it must be held by individuals as the only respectable form is simply that to imply otherwise may unwittingly imply to current or future lovers (or even to one’s self) that one has not yet found all that one is looking for. To do that, even unknowingly, is to undermine the foundation of trust backing love in the first place.
If a hypothetical argument – that love for one person only is not necessarily the highest form of love – offends or alarms the reader, then it seems safe to assume that the reader has more than enough passion fuelling his or her love, and that that love is more than secure by the broad, modern, passion-based definition. However, the potential sense of alarm or anger calls into question just how impervious to attack the underlying stability – the trust basis, if you will – of passion-based love really is.
It should be a harmless enough thought exercise, at least, to stop and ponder hypothetical (or more familiar) transgressions in love. Are they in fact violations of passion? Or are they rather violations of trust or security? Perhaps they may be both. But if that is the case, is the loss of passion the result of a loss of trust? Or is the loss of trust the result of an assumed loss of passion? Perhaps there is some truth to be had in the idea that a loss of one will almost certainly bring about a loss in the other.
If this is the case, then how necessary are most of the conventions of love? For that matter, is it sensible to establish any unrealistic or self-defeating basis of trust for a lover without directly viewing such an arrangement as an inevitable affront to their passion?
This definition serves well enough in most situations for the simple reason that the idea of mistaking romantic love for something else is generally thought of as laughable. In many regards, this is an acceptable philosophy. Rarely has an exclamation of “I love glazed doughnuts!” inspired romantic jealousy. Similarly, a declaration of “I love you!” is rarely followed by a question of, “What do you mean by that exactly?”
Despite that fact, it remains a compelling question. The general assumption is that love is a sensation shared and defined by the couple experiencing it. Outsiders to a particular relationship are unaware of the depths and sensations of the love that holds it together, though spotting the existence of some form of love is generally assumed to be easy. But is this a reasonable assumption? Can it truly be argued that couples defined by love are bound by a sensation strictly the same for both members? Is it reasonable to think that couples held together by love may in fact be held together by sensations wildly disparate for each member, but complimentary to the union of the pair? If yes, is there a limit to how different these sensations can be before the idea of a shared love seems less credible?
For that matter, the general assumption is that love is an experience reserved for a pair. This is generally accepted as common knowledge, and suggestions to the contrary are alarming to some and infuriating to others. Granted, there are occasional dissenters to this point, but they are widely agreed on as being radical, fantastic, or proponents of an “untrue” love. However, even those willing to brand as radical those who believe love can extend beyond a couple are likely to admit that they have had numerous loves over the span of their lives. Given that, the definition is not that love is reserved for a set couple, but instead that love is reserved for one set couple at a time.
Taken individually, none of these minor questions pose much threat to common thoughts on love. However, as a group, they have the potential to raise troubling questions about the fundamental assumptions held about what is generally regarded as a universal, desirable phenomenon.
Take for example the idea that a couple is capable of holding member-specific sensations of love. This seems reasonable for the simple fact that, given that a couple contains two separate people, they must be – in the very least – capable of loving aspects of the partner not found in themselves. However, taken to extremes, this leaves open the idea that a couple can love each other on the basis of wild disparities in personality that do not lend themselves to traditional definitions of love. One partner can love the sensation of having complete control over the other – conscious or not – while the submissive partner loves the sensation of security this may or may not bring. Such imbalances of power can open the door to questions of manipulation or the concept of one party taking advantage of the other. Should such a situation exist, and if it does not lessen the sensations drawing a couple together, is the relationship held together any less by love? Is this chasm in the sensations of love within the pair still supportive of a love compatible with more traditional thoughts on love? If not, what holds such couples together?
The second question raised is that of romantic love existing in only one location, per person, per moment. For many, this notion is the cornerstone of the definition of love. But how stable a foundation is this? It seems logical that if one strongly feels that love can be felt for only one person at a time, then the idea of “lingering feelings” for a former lover are based on something that is not love. What then is this? Is this an experience unique to only a small portion of the population? And if so, does this then essentially require that a remarried widow or widower fall out of love with his or her deceased spouse before the idea of remarrying for love is conceivable?
Debate on this point is sure to exist. However, I feel that a compelling case can be made for the idea that, no, a person may continue to love a former spouse long after he or she has been taken and another lover has assumed a comparable place in the mind of the survivor.
If debate on this point is even accepted as existing, then a troubling corollary rises immediately in its shadow. Does one member of a couple have to die for the survivor’s love to be reassigned? If not, what form of distance must be attained for the idea to be widely accepted? And what name is to be given for the sensation felt if a long-removed, yet ever-dear lover should reappear to find a new couple established?
If the idea of “one couple, per time, per place, per person” is assumed to be true, then the answer is obvious. The person whose love is unexpectedly shared by two people both with respectable claims is forced to announce – relatively quickly – where his or her true love lies.
Let us assume – for the moment – that this is the natural order of things. We then accept that one couple will form (or continue to exist) from this mix of three people and that the unfortunate third party is out of luck. Does this unfortunate turn of events mean that the love of the “extra” third party is now a lesser form of love? In agreeing that this is the case, a troubling issue arises. The love the third person feels is likely exactly the same love that it was before the decision. That is, the love that society fully supported before the unexpected reunion has suddenly – by an outside force – been decreed a lesser, undesirable form of love. If the lover rejected is the newest lover, then the love felt as recent as a day ago becomes undesirable purely from circumstance. If the lover rejected is the elder of the two, then the fidelity of the older lover despite circumstance is actually used as the force bringing criticism to his or her continued attachment.
Is either of these possibilities, fantastic as they are, an acceptable scenario in the modern definition of love? Or is the idea of “one couple, per time, per place, per person” really a cover for an emotion or impulse separate from love itself?
Similarly, is unrequited love any less love for its lack of reciprocity?
Should the answer to either of these questions deviate from the most common answers – should “one couple, per place, per time, per person” be simply overwhelmingly common instead of outright necessary or unrequited love be thought of as love all the same – then the modern definition of love is unstable and insufficient.
What then is missing? Perhaps the most reasonable approach to answering this question is less than rigorously logical. In its essence, the “common” definition of love seems to deal entirely with passions felt and for whom. The unstated, missing part then seems to be what makes that a tenable position. Simply stated, love is presented as a force holding couples, families, and society together at the basest level. If it is nothing more than a matter of overpowering passion, this supposedly cohesive force would likely do more damage than good.
The missing piece of the definition must be a stabilizing element. Further, it must be a stabilizing element that explains how, on some level, we have sympathy for the passions of those who experience loves less tenable than others.
In its essence, this missing piece must be based on trust. Initially, this seems to be something of a logical leap. However, the core point is simply that there is a mutual hope and understanding between lovers that the passion of the other is compatible with their own best interests or desires. As passionate love is without logical basis or contractual obligation, this simple stabilizing assumption can be reduced to nothing so much as a sensation of trust.
Couples for whom the sensations of love are different within their match trust that the impulses and desires of their partner do not conflict with their own – regardless of how baffling this estimation may be to society at large.
The couple is overwhelmingly the base unit of love not because it is necessary, but rather because it is overwhelmingly the point from which estimations of mutual goals, trust, and reliance can be judged. Jealousy can be thought of as simply the mind of a lover interpreting the actions of his or her love as serving another individual or individuals above regard for the viewing lover. If there are no other individuals who can be thought of as relying on the trust of one’s lover, one can feel completely secure in having all available love, all available trust, to one’s self.
Similarly, while there may be nothing more than habit mandating the notion of “one lover, per place, per time, per person,” it is inarguably the simplest arrangement of lovers to ensure that the foundation of trust is secure. As such, it certainly deserves respect as a conservative and safe position from which to feel love. Despite this, it seems that the only reason that it must be held by individuals as the only respectable form is simply that to imply otherwise may unwittingly imply to current or future lovers (or even to one’s self) that one has not yet found all that one is looking for. To do that, even unknowingly, is to undermine the foundation of trust backing love in the first place.
If a hypothetical argument – that love for one person only is not necessarily the highest form of love – offends or alarms the reader, then it seems safe to assume that the reader has more than enough passion fuelling his or her love, and that that love is more than secure by the broad, modern, passion-based definition. However, the potential sense of alarm or anger calls into question just how impervious to attack the underlying stability – the trust basis, if you will – of passion-based love really is.
It should be a harmless enough thought exercise, at least, to stop and ponder hypothetical (or more familiar) transgressions in love. Are they in fact violations of passion? Or are they rather violations of trust or security? Perhaps they may be both. But if that is the case, is the loss of passion the result of a loss of trust? Or is the loss of trust the result of an assumed loss of passion? Perhaps there is some truth to be had in the idea that a loss of one will almost certainly bring about a loss in the other.
If this is the case, then how necessary are most of the conventions of love? For that matter, is it sensible to establish any unrealistic or self-defeating basis of trust for a lover without directly viewing such an arrangement as an inevitable affront to their passion?
Monday, February 12, 2007
Metaphorical Description of the Development of the Capacity for Love
I wrote this some time ago. When I first wrote it, I opened with a preface that claimed it was a two-part story. I pointed out that part one would probably be unpopular. Because of that, part two would sound insulting if for no other reason than that it’s posed as a sequel to part one. It still is a two part story. And the same relationship will probably be true. Feel free to voice your own opinion.
Part One.
In their youth, people are flexible and impressionable creatures. It’s a miracle that children ever manage to make it out of the sandbox without having killed each other with plastic shovels over arguments about candy, killing bugs, building castles, and making mud pies. But, by some freak chance of evolution, the miracle happens more often than not. The kids DO make it out of the sandboxes, leave the shovels behind, and move on to kicking the crap out of each other with much more dangerous weapons.
Strangely, it’s all uphill from there. All of childhood is spent learning how and how not to deal with other people. From such simple lessons as “stealing will make you enemies” to “being nice will make you friends,” slowly but surely, kids learn that other people exist to do more than please them. Or, in the very least, some of the more gifted kids manage that lesson.
Then puberty hits and replays the whole drama. It’s basically the same story as childhood. People suddenly have to come to terms with the fact that people are attracted to and must interact with other people in new and often disturbing ways that didn’t exist before. At first, it is a complete mystery to most that those other people do not exist solely for their own pleasure. It seems instinctively obvious that other people are sex objects. The idea that they might see the world differently is generally about as clear to the inexperienced person as the difference between a sandcastle and a mud pie was in the sandbox. Back then, intense dramas played out when the bully thought that the sand making up the castle would make an excellent mud pie. And he was right. Just not in the eyes of the person who built the sandcastle. But it took an awful lot of sandcastles being built for everyone to realize that the mud pie turns back into a sandcastle just as easily as it turned into the mud pie the day before. The only real secret was picking friends who either liked mud pies, or friends who liked sand castles.
When the sandbox arena grows to include sex/love though, everyone is quick to notice that there are a LOT more possible ingredients to work with than just sand and water. This time though, experience and society have already been so good as to inform everyone that the secret is just to find proper teammates. But society inevitably is either too vague, or worse, too restricting, to actually provide a helpful answer on what too look for in teammates. As a result, picking the “friends” to build castles, mud pies, whatever, can be a very, very complicated process. But it doesn’t go any faster being shy.
Part Two.
Weeding out most of the bad teammate choices is pretty easy. They never even present themselves. The sandbox is plenty big enough to make playing with everyone not only unnecessary, but impossible.
And with a few encounters, it even becomes pretty easy to notice that maybe you just don’t get a rush feeling the squishy mud when making mud pies.
So you get bored with mud pies and just hang out with the castle makers from then on. Pretty soon you’ll start to notice that maybe even most castle makers are boring unless they like having a good set of turrets.
And then, as you get even more experience, you start to realize that even turret makers are kinda predictable unless they’re prone to add a good tower.
Right about then, courtyard design becomes fascinating.
Eventually, everything just seems unfinished without a moat.
And by the time the moat is dug and filled, you find that either you’ve just set up a life-sized, fully functional castle with possibly as small as a duo team…
…Or you’ve built yourself an excellent private fortress.
I have a lot of faith in two things. 1) You can’t rush building your castle, simply because you don’t know what it will look like until you finish it. Since it might eventually be a house for two, it would be wise to build it with space for both occupants. 2) If you try to rush build it anyway, you just end up with a small fortress that neatly anticipates the needs of its one designer but frightens everyone else away.
Part One.
In their youth, people are flexible and impressionable creatures. It’s a miracle that children ever manage to make it out of the sandbox without having killed each other with plastic shovels over arguments about candy, killing bugs, building castles, and making mud pies. But, by some freak chance of evolution, the miracle happens more often than not. The kids DO make it out of the sandboxes, leave the shovels behind, and move on to kicking the crap out of each other with much more dangerous weapons.
Strangely, it’s all uphill from there. All of childhood is spent learning how and how not to deal with other people. From such simple lessons as “stealing will make you enemies” to “being nice will make you friends,” slowly but surely, kids learn that other people exist to do more than please them. Or, in the very least, some of the more gifted kids manage that lesson.
Then puberty hits and replays the whole drama. It’s basically the same story as childhood. People suddenly have to come to terms with the fact that people are attracted to and must interact with other people in new and often disturbing ways that didn’t exist before. At first, it is a complete mystery to most that those other people do not exist solely for their own pleasure. It seems instinctively obvious that other people are sex objects. The idea that they might see the world differently is generally about as clear to the inexperienced person as the difference between a sandcastle and a mud pie was in the sandbox. Back then, intense dramas played out when the bully thought that the sand making up the castle would make an excellent mud pie. And he was right. Just not in the eyes of the person who built the sandcastle. But it took an awful lot of sandcastles being built for everyone to realize that the mud pie turns back into a sandcastle just as easily as it turned into the mud pie the day before. The only real secret was picking friends who either liked mud pies, or friends who liked sand castles.
When the sandbox arena grows to include sex/love though, everyone is quick to notice that there are a LOT more possible ingredients to work with than just sand and water. This time though, experience and society have already been so good as to inform everyone that the secret is just to find proper teammates. But society inevitably is either too vague, or worse, too restricting, to actually provide a helpful answer on what too look for in teammates. As a result, picking the “friends” to build castles, mud pies, whatever, can be a very, very complicated process. But it doesn’t go any faster being shy.
Part Two.
Weeding out most of the bad teammate choices is pretty easy. They never even present themselves. The sandbox is plenty big enough to make playing with everyone not only unnecessary, but impossible.
And with a few encounters, it even becomes pretty easy to notice that maybe you just don’t get a rush feeling the squishy mud when making mud pies.
So you get bored with mud pies and just hang out with the castle makers from then on. Pretty soon you’ll start to notice that maybe even most castle makers are boring unless they like having a good set of turrets.
And then, as you get even more experience, you start to realize that even turret makers are kinda predictable unless they’re prone to add a good tower.
Right about then, courtyard design becomes fascinating.
Eventually, everything just seems unfinished without a moat.
And by the time the moat is dug and filled, you find that either you’ve just set up a life-sized, fully functional castle with possibly as small as a duo team…
…Or you’ve built yourself an excellent private fortress.
I have a lot of faith in two things. 1) You can’t rush building your castle, simply because you don’t know what it will look like until you finish it. Since it might eventually be a house for two, it would be wise to build it with space for both occupants. 2) If you try to rush build it anyway, you just end up with a small fortress that neatly anticipates the needs of its one designer but frightens everyone else away.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
EtOH
One of the things that even my closest friends overwhelmingly dislike about me is my almost complete aversion to alcohol. Paired with a nearly-perfect obliviousness to all forms of peer pressure, this can be distressing for more active devotees.
I wasn’t always like that. I gave the sauce a pretty fair chance, all told. In fact, though it’s currently all but unheard of for me to bother, my favorite drink is a dry, dirty gin martini. Not exactly a Shirley Temple.
Here’s the thing though. I don’t see what all the fuss is about. I enjoy the martini because it has a somewhat interesting feel in my mouth and it has a pleasant “salty olive” taste to it. I can spend unexpectedly long periods of time pooling sips of that drink in my tongue and inhaling over it, trying to get used to the odd sensation that comes with the solvation of my lungs. (If you were skeptical of my claim of being oblivious to peer pressure, let’s just say that I have spent hours not seeing anything that made me want to stop “breathing” my martini in the middle of crowded parties.)
That said, I also have more than enough knowledge of chemistry and cellular biology to explain how getting drunk works. Oh, and I know that alcohol, ethanol, EtOH are the same thing. Excepting that “alcohol” means a beverage, “ethanol” means a fuel additive, and “EtOH” refers to a cleaning solvent (as they are most commonly used).
Let’s call the debate of “to drink, or not to drink” a tie so far, just to prolong discussion.
To explain why I stopped drinking, given all that, we have to turn to my personal experience. Before we get into details of that, I’ll tell a story from college.
At college, I had a few friends who secretly felt that I did not spend nearly enough time in severely altered states. I had a good friend who thought that cough syrup made for an excellent high, until one night he vomited up a large quantity of Robitussin on his white sneakers and dyed them pink. Nobody likes pink sneakers, unless you have to choose between them and practical-minded engineer-types.
Anyway, this friend and another friend of his decided to find out what I would be like roaring drunk, so they decided to make it happen. They knew that I would be unlikely to go along with this goal as written, so they decided not to give me a vote in the matter.
The close friend dabbled in pottery and because of this had a large selection of opaque, very-oddly shaped drinking glasses around. The capacity of such a glass, on average, was about two cans of soda. But because of shape issues, you would tend to guess that it was the size of one can, at best. Anyway, the two of them sat me down with a glass full of ice in my hand, poured me an amaretto on the rocks, and got me telling a story in which I had strong, amusing opinions. The point was basically to keep me distracted as they continually refreshed my drink when I wasn’t paying attention. Their plan half worked. I thought I had about a half glass of the stuff when in reality I was pushing half a bottle in half an hour.
But I said the plan half worked. After half an hour, the friend asked me if I was feeling ok. I said that I was fine and asked why. I was told that with all the sneaking me drinks, the two friends had become unaware of the amount of liquor they were slipping me until one of them remembered that the bottle had started out full and I was the only one drinking it. After thinking about that, they decided to cut me off.
I was mildly concerned, but had actually not noticed anything unusual. I felt fine, but slightly warm. The larger group was getting ready to leave to go out, and I went along. On the sidewalk, we ran into a guy who was then in charge of the Residence Hall Association, in which I was then a President. The guy wanted to have a long serious conversation with me right then and there on the sidewalk. I told my drunken friends to go on without me, because I was somewhat concerned about them making an intoxicated scene if I kept them waiting. It occurred to me that I was the drunkest person in the crowd according to the sheer math of it, but decided I was already caught in the trap and would just have to see how it went.
Twenty minutes later, he left and I rushed off to catch up with my friends. The conversation with him had gone about the same as any conversation I ever had with the man, and he clearly had not noticed anything unusual. I say this because 1) the man was the biggest power-hungry NARC I have ever met, 2) he took delight in busting anyone for anything, esp. drinking/drug use irregularities – a skill he was very good at, 3) he hated me personally and professionally for disagreeing not only with his policies but also with his methods, 4) he had voiced a desire to uncover anything suspicious in me to several of my friends “in confidence,” and 5) I noticed with some surprise that despite the amount I had had to drink, the only change in my outlook seemed to be that I felt a little warm.
I never got any “drunker.” On certain rare occasions, I have had to consciously “correct” my balance when walking. The thing of it is, I always succeed and no one ever notices a change. I used to routinely have two strong-version long island iced teas in a bar, leave, and then run into random friends who (on the way home) would accuse me of being cold sober. Similarly, the only change in my behavior as I get more drunk is a growing fascination with correcting that development. I start to drink massive volumes of alcohol-free liquids. This, paired with the fact that just using mouthwash is enough alcohol exposure to make me have to pee incessantly means that I then just spend the rest of my evening in the restroom. Logically, there is a point at which I would lose my ability to keep full (or any) control. But 1) I have no interest in getting there on any level and 2) if I did, I’d have instinctively hidden myself away somewhere to deal with it as a problem I needed to fix.
None of that makes for me being more interesting at parties. In fact, it makes me look like an anti-social loser with bladder control issues. Further, drinking has always resulted in me having significantly less fun if I notice anything at all.
Many people hear this and reply, “That just means you haven’t had enough to drink!” But here’s the thing. I have provided here the well-established trends describing how I respond to alcohol. I am not bashful about sharing those trends, even though I am aware they are extremely atypical. Even so, faced with those facts, even reasonable people will reflexively spout the above conclusion. No, really, consider the facts again. Your conclusion is not implied. I have more respect for the conclusion of, “Maybe you just need to relax/let go.” However, that’s the sort of comment that comes from people who don’t know me very well. When you get right down to it, there’s not much left in life that I didn’t start laughing about from all perspectives a very long time ago.
In a nutshell, after years of pondering all that, I have arrived at the point where when someone says, “You need a drink!” I reply with, “Why?” It’s a friendly “Why?” until I’m ignored as I prove that I know perfectly well that drinking would make me less happy and interesting for the fourth time.
I know drinking is a major social convention (here). And I know that a great majority of people enjoy it (here). But given that I don’t, why on Earth would I want to?
I wasn’t always like that. I gave the sauce a pretty fair chance, all told. In fact, though it’s currently all but unheard of for me to bother, my favorite drink is a dry, dirty gin martini. Not exactly a Shirley Temple.
Here’s the thing though. I don’t see what all the fuss is about. I enjoy the martini because it has a somewhat interesting feel in my mouth and it has a pleasant “salty olive” taste to it. I can spend unexpectedly long periods of time pooling sips of that drink in my tongue and inhaling over it, trying to get used to the odd sensation that comes with the solvation of my lungs. (If you were skeptical of my claim of being oblivious to peer pressure, let’s just say that I have spent hours not seeing anything that made me want to stop “breathing” my martini in the middle of crowded parties.)
That said, I also have more than enough knowledge of chemistry and cellular biology to explain how getting drunk works. Oh, and I know that alcohol, ethanol, EtOH are the same thing. Excepting that “alcohol” means a beverage, “ethanol” means a fuel additive, and “EtOH” refers to a cleaning solvent (as they are most commonly used).
Let’s call the debate of “to drink, or not to drink” a tie so far, just to prolong discussion.
To explain why I stopped drinking, given all that, we have to turn to my personal experience. Before we get into details of that, I’ll tell a story from college.
At college, I had a few friends who secretly felt that I did not spend nearly enough time in severely altered states. I had a good friend who thought that cough syrup made for an excellent high, until one night he vomited up a large quantity of Robitussin on his white sneakers and dyed them pink. Nobody likes pink sneakers, unless you have to choose between them and practical-minded engineer-types.
Anyway, this friend and another friend of his decided to find out what I would be like roaring drunk, so they decided to make it happen. They knew that I would be unlikely to go along with this goal as written, so they decided not to give me a vote in the matter.
The close friend dabbled in pottery and because of this had a large selection of opaque, very-oddly shaped drinking glasses around. The capacity of such a glass, on average, was about two cans of soda. But because of shape issues, you would tend to guess that it was the size of one can, at best. Anyway, the two of them sat me down with a glass full of ice in my hand, poured me an amaretto on the rocks, and got me telling a story in which I had strong, amusing opinions. The point was basically to keep me distracted as they continually refreshed my drink when I wasn’t paying attention. Their plan half worked. I thought I had about a half glass of the stuff when in reality I was pushing half a bottle in half an hour.
But I said the plan half worked. After half an hour, the friend asked me if I was feeling ok. I said that I was fine and asked why. I was told that with all the sneaking me drinks, the two friends had become unaware of the amount of liquor they were slipping me until one of them remembered that the bottle had started out full and I was the only one drinking it. After thinking about that, they decided to cut me off.
I was mildly concerned, but had actually not noticed anything unusual. I felt fine, but slightly warm. The larger group was getting ready to leave to go out, and I went along. On the sidewalk, we ran into a guy who was then in charge of the Residence Hall Association, in which I was then a President. The guy wanted to have a long serious conversation with me right then and there on the sidewalk. I told my drunken friends to go on without me, because I was somewhat concerned about them making an intoxicated scene if I kept them waiting. It occurred to me that I was the drunkest person in the crowd according to the sheer math of it, but decided I was already caught in the trap and would just have to see how it went.
Twenty minutes later, he left and I rushed off to catch up with my friends. The conversation with him had gone about the same as any conversation I ever had with the man, and he clearly had not noticed anything unusual. I say this because 1) the man was the biggest power-hungry NARC I have ever met, 2) he took delight in busting anyone for anything, esp. drinking/drug use irregularities – a skill he was very good at, 3) he hated me personally and professionally for disagreeing not only with his policies but also with his methods, 4) he had voiced a desire to uncover anything suspicious in me to several of my friends “in confidence,” and 5) I noticed with some surprise that despite the amount I had had to drink, the only change in my outlook seemed to be that I felt a little warm.
I never got any “drunker.” On certain rare occasions, I have had to consciously “correct” my balance when walking. The thing of it is, I always succeed and no one ever notices a change. I used to routinely have two strong-version long island iced teas in a bar, leave, and then run into random friends who (on the way home) would accuse me of being cold sober. Similarly, the only change in my behavior as I get more drunk is a growing fascination with correcting that development. I start to drink massive volumes of alcohol-free liquids. This, paired with the fact that just using mouthwash is enough alcohol exposure to make me have to pee incessantly means that I then just spend the rest of my evening in the restroom. Logically, there is a point at which I would lose my ability to keep full (or any) control. But 1) I have no interest in getting there on any level and 2) if I did, I’d have instinctively hidden myself away somewhere to deal with it as a problem I needed to fix.
None of that makes for me being more interesting at parties. In fact, it makes me look like an anti-social loser with bladder control issues. Further, drinking has always resulted in me having significantly less fun if I notice anything at all.
Many people hear this and reply, “That just means you haven’t had enough to drink!” But here’s the thing. I have provided here the well-established trends describing how I respond to alcohol. I am not bashful about sharing those trends, even though I am aware they are extremely atypical. Even so, faced with those facts, even reasonable people will reflexively spout the above conclusion. No, really, consider the facts again. Your conclusion is not implied. I have more respect for the conclusion of, “Maybe you just need to relax/let go.” However, that’s the sort of comment that comes from people who don’t know me very well. When you get right down to it, there’s not much left in life that I didn’t start laughing about from all perspectives a very long time ago.
In a nutshell, after years of pondering all that, I have arrived at the point where when someone says, “You need a drink!” I reply with, “Why?” It’s a friendly “Why?” until I’m ignored as I prove that I know perfectly well that drinking would make me less happy and interesting for the fourth time.
I know drinking is a major social convention (here). And I know that a great majority of people enjoy it (here). But given that I don’t, why on Earth would I want to?
Friday, February 9, 2007
"Bunghole" Is Actually a Real Word
I did not find the sport of debate remotely intriguing in high school. Or college. And I rarely find it interesting in its most used forms, especially those seen on the news.
I argue that the reason is that I am too literal-minded. I have very little interest in debate about topics that cannot be proven one way or another. In such cases, I reduce arguments down to to which side appears to be advocating a position that would prove the debate one way or the other, esp. if their efforts appear even-minded enough to possibly prove their original idea wrong, thus allowing everyone to move on.
That sort of philosophy does not lend itself well to debate as a scored competition. Let me give you an example of a recent “debate” that I was forced into during my job.
Backstory: While most of my job is predictable, I end up with occasional random tasks that would otherwise never cross my desk. If everyone else in my building has failed to solve a problem, no matter how silly or simple it might be, it is given to me to decide. This recently reared its head after three people had failed to obtain a drum adapter that would allow us to transfer material into and out of a new style of drum. The project was simple. My manager said, “I am going to forward you about 15 emails from people trying to find an adapter for these drums. They all failed for reasons which may be good or bad. I don’t care why they failed. Here are all the adapters they have tried. Please be the guy who makes it work, preferably without sending me more emails.”
Anyway, I get on the phone with some people and discover a rich backstory behind how we arrived at the current debate. It would make for dry reading, so we’ll skip over it. I’ll just say that it makes it clear why so many people could be confident in a wide variety of opinions about a yes or no question (“Does this adapter fit?”) without being overwhelmingly a group of morons.
Anyway, I end up on the phone with a sales rep after narrowing my search down to a few possible solutions. See if you can spot why I should not enter debate tournaments.
Sales Rep: “The two inch bung (drum hole) size refers to a hole that’s two and three quarters of an inch in diameter.”
Me: “Really? Interesting. Let me check, since I have one right here. Hmm. No, this two inch bung is clearly exactly two inches, since I am measuring it right now. I do have one of your adapters that is about that size, though.”
Sales Rep: “No, that’s impossible. There are no two-inch bungs that are less than two and three quarters of an inch wide. That’s how you can tell a two-inch bung.”
Me: “I’m holding a two inch bung right now as we speak.”
Sales Rep: “No one makes those. Is it a foreign drum?”
Me: “[pause, as I decide that there is no reason to pursue that line of thought] Hmmm. Not sure. But hey, let’s talk about something else. I see that you offer three types of bung adapters for this type of drum. I notice the one we bought looks wider than this other one. How would you describe the diameter of [model number] in relation to that other adapter?”
Sales Rep: “The one you have is wider. [model number]’s are for smaller bungs.”
Me: “Please send me one of the [model number]s to try out.”
Sales Rep: “Is that for some other kind of drum you’re interested in trying to use instead of the foreign drums you have now?”
Me: “Yes.”
I argue that the reason is that I am too literal-minded. I have very little interest in debate about topics that cannot be proven one way or another. In such cases, I reduce arguments down to to which side appears to be advocating a position that would prove the debate one way or the other, esp. if their efforts appear even-minded enough to possibly prove their original idea wrong, thus allowing everyone to move on.
That sort of philosophy does not lend itself well to debate as a scored competition. Let me give you an example of a recent “debate” that I was forced into during my job.
Backstory: While most of my job is predictable, I end up with occasional random tasks that would otherwise never cross my desk. If everyone else in my building has failed to solve a problem, no matter how silly or simple it might be, it is given to me to decide. This recently reared its head after three people had failed to obtain a drum adapter that would allow us to transfer material into and out of a new style of drum. The project was simple. My manager said, “I am going to forward you about 15 emails from people trying to find an adapter for these drums. They all failed for reasons which may be good or bad. I don’t care why they failed. Here are all the adapters they have tried. Please be the guy who makes it work, preferably without sending me more emails.”
Anyway, I get on the phone with some people and discover a rich backstory behind how we arrived at the current debate. It would make for dry reading, so we’ll skip over it. I’ll just say that it makes it clear why so many people could be confident in a wide variety of opinions about a yes or no question (“Does this adapter fit?”) without being overwhelmingly a group of morons.
Anyway, I end up on the phone with a sales rep after narrowing my search down to a few possible solutions. See if you can spot why I should not enter debate tournaments.
Sales Rep: “The two inch bung (drum hole) size refers to a hole that’s two and three quarters of an inch in diameter.”
Me: “Really? Interesting. Let me check, since I have one right here. Hmm. No, this two inch bung is clearly exactly two inches, since I am measuring it right now. I do have one of your adapters that is about that size, though.”
Sales Rep: “No, that’s impossible. There are no two-inch bungs that are less than two and three quarters of an inch wide. That’s how you can tell a two-inch bung.”
Me: “I’m holding a two inch bung right now as we speak.”
Sales Rep: “No one makes those. Is it a foreign drum?”
Me: “[pause, as I decide that there is no reason to pursue that line of thought] Hmmm. Not sure. But hey, let’s talk about something else. I see that you offer three types of bung adapters for this type of drum. I notice the one we bought looks wider than this other one. How would you describe the diameter of [model number] in relation to that other adapter?”
Sales Rep: “The one you have is wider. [model number]’s are for smaller bungs.”
Me: “Please send me one of the [model number]s to try out.”
Sales Rep: “Is that for some other kind of drum you’re interested in trying to use instead of the foreign drums you have now?”
Me: “Yes.”
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Standardized Fittings
Here’s a party story I tell. Note that, like many of my favorite stories, it actively invites the listener to decide if I am making fun of myself, or if I’m an arrogant prig who hates all other people. I always come down on the side of “I like to make fun of myself” in such debates. Virtually all of the rest of humanity insists that, no, actually, I’m an arrogant prig. I try to rationalize that disconnect with this observation: "If my stories don't make it seem like I’m making fun of myself -- if they seem to be serious -- then the only logical conclusion is that the rest of humanity is doomed." I say that anyone who decides to come down agreeing with something like that is over-thinking things and isn’t considering many obvious exceptions. One such obvious exception is that humanity has not yet been successfully doomed.
Here’s the story. I tell it to people who hear my job description and say, “Wow, that’s a lot of responsibility for a guy who think ‘personal fashion’ should be interpreted literally!” (Ok, maybe that’s not exactly what they say.)
One noteworthy decision I made as a chemical engineer involved shooting an idea out of the sky. I was approached by a shift supervisor and two chemical operators with a proposal designed to cut down on wasted time and save money. The idea was to standardize our connectors for gas transfers to operate equipment.
Yes, I will explain what that means. My building has three types of gas piped into the process bays.
1) Pure Nitrogen. It is used to create a non-flammable environment over reactors full of flammable chemicals. It stops fires. We like that.
2) Instrument air. It’s the same stuff that we breathe, but it’s at very high pressures. We use it to provide non-electrical power to equipment we don’t want to plug in. We use it to power industrial pumps in process bays where electricity is an invitation to start fires.
3) Breathing air. We hook this stuff up to operator’s respirators. The operator then breathes it in when the area they are entering is especially hazardous. It is literally breathing air pushed in from a room upstairs.
All three of these lines connect to hoses via different connections. You cannot force-fit a connection from one system onto an incompatible piece of equipment.
The idea I shot down was this: The group approached me and suggested we move from three types of fittings to one. That way, we could simplify our ordering process and prevent people from having to search around for special fittings when something broke. It would also allow us to solve a problem we had where the instrument air in an area broke. We could have just hooked up the (high pressure) Nitrogen to the pump and used it until the instrument air pipe was repaired. (Note: Technically, there is a way that very-specific suggestion could work, but even that one special suggestion is a bad idea for several boring reasons.)
I turned the question around and dared the group to think of two reasons why moving to a standard fitting for those three systems would be a very bad idea. No one could think of any.
The punch line is that “I’m the guy who makes sure people trying to breathe Nitrogen or high-pressure instrument air can’t.” It’s the sort of story that works best on cold-sober people. Then again, most of my stories are like that.
Here’s the story. I tell it to people who hear my job description and say, “Wow, that’s a lot of responsibility for a guy who think ‘personal fashion’ should be interpreted literally!” (Ok, maybe that’s not exactly what they say.)
One noteworthy decision I made as a chemical engineer involved shooting an idea out of the sky. I was approached by a shift supervisor and two chemical operators with a proposal designed to cut down on wasted time and save money. The idea was to standardize our connectors for gas transfers to operate equipment.
Yes, I will explain what that means. My building has three types of gas piped into the process bays.
1) Pure Nitrogen. It is used to create a non-flammable environment over reactors full of flammable chemicals. It stops fires. We like that.
2) Instrument air. It’s the same stuff that we breathe, but it’s at very high pressures. We use it to provide non-electrical power to equipment we don’t want to plug in. We use it to power industrial pumps in process bays where electricity is an invitation to start fires.
3) Breathing air. We hook this stuff up to operator’s respirators. The operator then breathes it in when the area they are entering is especially hazardous. It is literally breathing air pushed in from a room upstairs.
All three of these lines connect to hoses via different connections. You cannot force-fit a connection from one system onto an incompatible piece of equipment.
The idea I shot down was this: The group approached me and suggested we move from three types of fittings to one. That way, we could simplify our ordering process and prevent people from having to search around for special fittings when something broke. It would also allow us to solve a problem we had where the instrument air in an area broke. We could have just hooked up the (high pressure) Nitrogen to the pump and used it until the instrument air pipe was repaired. (Note: Technically, there is a way that very-specific suggestion could work, but even that one special suggestion is a bad idea for several boring reasons.)
I turned the question around and dared the group to think of two reasons why moving to a standard fitting for those three systems would be a very bad idea. No one could think of any.
The punch line is that “I’m the guy who makes sure people trying to breathe Nitrogen or high-pressure instrument air can’t.” It’s the sort of story that works best on cold-sober people. Then again, most of my stories are like that.
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
How to Smoke the GRE
31 Simple Steps to Outstanding GRE Results:
1) Forget to eat during at least the 24 hours before the test.
2) Avoid serious studying. Procrastinate, under the theory that, “The first try is just for practice anyway.”
3) Make up an imaginary, incorrect top score of 1200 for the non-writing test sections and believe it’s real.
4) Accidentally schedule your test for an excruciatingly cold day with winds that blow small cars off highways.
5) Own a small car.
6) Learn the address of the test center, but avoid knowledge of where geographically that might be.
7) Leave on the serious road trip with what you assume is just about enough time to get to the test center.
8) Put blind faith in the directional guidance of a GPS navigator.
9) Put blind faith in your home state to not significantly renumber addresses after you purchase a GPS.
10) After arriving to a pristine winter pastoral, shut off the GPS and attempt to deduce logically where the test center might be.
11) Finally identify a large clump of identical unmarked buildings resembling crosses between an unlabeled office building, a vacant warehouse, and an “Applebee’s.”
12) Blindly park by and enter the only such building with cars near it.
13) Have a small, private celebration over the fact that the random guess about the building was miraculously correct.
14) Take the GRE.
15) View the score report. Become depressed that the scores reported are less than 1200.
16) Copy reported scores down onto the top page of the scrap paper in huge, labeled numbers.
17) Make chitchat with the guy who collects scrap paper and babysits ID’s about retaking the test as you are handed a sheet of paper entitled “Interpreting Your GRE Scores.”
18) Copy your scores over the pre-printed text of said “Interpreting Your GRE Scores” sheet of paper.
19) Do not read “Interpreting Your GRE Scores.” Continue writing your score in large numbers over the printed text instead. Allow scrap paper guy to read huge score from either sheet.
20) Become shocked and mildly offended when the bemused scrap paper guy answers by asking how exactly you plan to do much better next time.
21) Collect your ID and leave, leaving only the wake of your sudden, stony silence.
22) Impulsively have a change of heart and decide to read “Interpreting Your GRE Scores” while packing up to go home.
23) Become confused. Ask receptionist why sheet of paper does not cover scores in the 801 to 1200 range.
24) Realize you have spent 10 minutes being a total tool.
25) Allow audible, delighted laughter to overtake mortified embarrassment.
26) Seriously consider carrying your car home to burn off a sudden rush of energy.
27) Step out side and remember why you came dressed as a chilly “Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man.”
28) Choose to drive car instead.
29) Drive to nearby vegetarian restaurant and order several full meals, greatly amusing the bored waitstaff with unprecedented vegan gluttony.
30) Go home.
31) Annoy GRE-nervous friends with outlandish “practice” test story.
1) Forget to eat during at least the 24 hours before the test.
2) Avoid serious studying. Procrastinate, under the theory that, “The first try is just for practice anyway.”
3) Make up an imaginary, incorrect top score of 1200 for the non-writing test sections and believe it’s real.
4) Accidentally schedule your test for an excruciatingly cold day with winds that blow small cars off highways.
5) Own a small car.
6) Learn the address of the test center, but avoid knowledge of where geographically that might be.
7) Leave on the serious road trip with what you assume is just about enough time to get to the test center.
8) Put blind faith in the directional guidance of a GPS navigator.
9) Put blind faith in your home state to not significantly renumber addresses after you purchase a GPS.
10) After arriving to a pristine winter pastoral, shut off the GPS and attempt to deduce logically where the test center might be.
11) Finally identify a large clump of identical unmarked buildings resembling crosses between an unlabeled office building, a vacant warehouse, and an “Applebee’s.”
12) Blindly park by and enter the only such building with cars near it.
13) Have a small, private celebration over the fact that the random guess about the building was miraculously correct.
14) Take the GRE.
15) View the score report. Become depressed that the scores reported are less than 1200.
16) Copy reported scores down onto the top page of the scrap paper in huge, labeled numbers.
17) Make chitchat with the guy who collects scrap paper and babysits ID’s about retaking the test as you are handed a sheet of paper entitled “Interpreting Your GRE Scores.”
18) Copy your scores over the pre-printed text of said “Interpreting Your GRE Scores” sheet of paper.
19) Do not read “Interpreting Your GRE Scores.” Continue writing your score in large numbers over the printed text instead. Allow scrap paper guy to read huge score from either sheet.
20) Become shocked and mildly offended when the bemused scrap paper guy answers by asking how exactly you plan to do much better next time.
21) Collect your ID and leave, leaving only the wake of your sudden, stony silence.
22) Impulsively have a change of heart and decide to read “Interpreting Your GRE Scores” while packing up to go home.
23) Become confused. Ask receptionist why sheet of paper does not cover scores in the 801 to 1200 range.
24) Realize you have spent 10 minutes being a total tool.
25) Allow audible, delighted laughter to overtake mortified embarrassment.
26) Seriously consider carrying your car home to burn off a sudden rush of energy.
27) Step out side and remember why you came dressed as a chilly “Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man.”
28) Choose to drive car instead.
29) Drive to nearby vegetarian restaurant and order several full meals, greatly amusing the bored waitstaff with unprecedented vegan gluttony.
30) Go home.
31) Annoy GRE-nervous friends with outlandish “practice” test story.
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