A Look Inside

Thank You, Mr. Pharmacist

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 22:32:33 -0500

My 5-month-old is on Tamiflu and her flu symptoms are basically gone, but she’s not eating well and generally acting as though something, like her stomach, is still bothering her. We read that one of the side-effects of Tamiflu was an upset stomach and since she obviously can’t tell us we just have to go by the signs. So we called the Pharmacist at CVS in South Lyon to ask him if it was like an antibiotic in that she needed to take the full dosage. Initially when my wife asked he said that yes, she should take it for the full five days. Then when she told him our daughter was experiencing discomfort he confirmed that it’s hard on the stomach and said that we could go ahead and stop giving it to her. Before she could question him on the conflicting information he followed that up with this gem, “Tamiflu is nothing more than a glass of water really.”

Awesome. Thank you, Mr. Pharmacist.

Wolverine Woes

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:36:24 -0500

This is the story of the Michigan Wolverines’ season: Offensively - flashes of brilliance followed quickly by terrible play calling and bad execution. Defensively - can only seem to make a play when it is handed to them, otherwise utterly miserable and incapable of tackling or anything else that makes a defense effective.

Worst team in the Big Ten two years running. Wahoo.

Of course if they beat Ohio State all is forgiven.

Giving the Shure e4c headphones a workout. Definitely higher...

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:36:54 -0500

Giving the Shure e4c headphones a workout. Definitely higher quality lows and highs over the e2c’s. Still some distortion when the decible levels are really pushed, mostly noticeable on the lows, but that’s just a good reminder to dial it back and save my ear drums. The highs seem to get a little hissy but that’s probably more a testament to the sound card and EQ of the laptop they’re plugged into.

Thanks @freemantim

Arguing for Innovation

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:46:46 -0500

Arguing for Innovation:

Excellent article on how debate builds strong teams and helps in making better decisions.

The quote at the end is what really caught my attention:

Encourage healthy debate. Peter Drucker recounted how Alfred P. Sloan, legendary CEO of GM, handled this:

“Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here,” Sloan said. After everyone around the table nodded affirmatively, Sloan continued: “Then I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about.”

(via @ZaneSafrit)

Mother's Day Gift Idea

Mon, 04 May 2009 17:04:00 -0400

Mother’s Day is coming up this Sunday, May 10th. Have you figured out what to get your mom yet? If you’re still contemplating it maybe you should consider donating to a charitable organization or cause on her behalf that is near to her heart. In these tough economic times her favorite charity could use help now probably more than ever. It’s a great way to show mom that you know what’s important to her while giving to a good cause in the process.

They say

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 15:32:57 -0400

They say that if you schedule a mtg for an hour it will take the full hour whether or not it needs to: people will find a way to fill the time because it’s been blocked off.

What do they say about a meeting scheduled for 30 minutes that ends up needlessly taking an hour?

Tea Party

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 21:55:16 -0400

I have no political comment on today’s tea parties but I did see an interesting picture. It was at a local gathering and was of two people holding signs. The first sign said:

Taxed
Enough
Already

The other sign read: HONK If I Pay Your Mortgage

The punchline: They were kids. One looked to be maybe ten and the other probably six.

True story.

Spirit of Detroit statue won't don Sparty gear

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:13:00 -0400

Spirit of Detroit statue won't don Sparty gear:

This is really too bad. It seems like a jersey on the statue is effective promotion of both Detroit and the team on the jersey: a mutually beneficial advertising campaign. Think about the number of times this would show up on National TV for the Spartans alone during the final four on CBS.

Mr. McDuffee should be honest and just say that they found another way to make a profit in addition to the rent from the building’s tenants. If they really wanted to protect the statue from damage they would make the teams sign a waiver that would require them to compensate the building management for any damage done to the statue as a result of putting the jersey on and taking it off.

The quote at the end is priceless because in effect they discouraged the Spartans from taking on the cost even if it wasn’t their intent.

Thoughts?

(via @amitchowdhry)

Mac and Poo Anyone?

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400

This is truly disgusting, so if you get squeamish easily this is your stop, get off here.

I received a phone call from my wife at work this afternoon. It seems that an object that she described as a turd came in a box of Kraft mac and cheese that we had purchased at our local grocers. Now I have this problem, I have a visual reflex. You say it to me, I visualize it. And with the information I was provided the image in my head was both appalling and disgusting. It would have been hilarious had it been a truly fictional “Saturday Night Live” skit.

My poor wife is 8 months pregnant and already gets easily grossed out by these kinds of things. Not by blood or the disgusting things inside people’s mouths (seriously people, just brush), but I guess that’s what you get from a dental hygienist. So here she is trying to extract the specimen while dry-heaving.

After further clarification I learned that it was much smaller than my vivid imagination had allowed me to anticipate. I chuckled at this incident from the safe distance of my office 15 miles away. It was gross, but mildly humorous that this discovery was made. (Remember, I’ve got the SNL skit playing in my head.)

Let me tell you, though, that upon arriving home, I found nothing funny about what I saw. It’s truly gross. We’re not talking mouse feces here, you know like little grains of rice or something. And it’s probably a good thing, she may not have noticed that.

No, what we are talking about looks like it would, if it is in fact animal feces, have come from something larger. It’s more like the size of a large jelly bean, maybe even two stuck together. Far less appealing that a jelly bean though, and don’t just take my word for it: I took pictures. View at your own risk.
Gross
Still Gross
Side view of grossness with noodles attached (you’re welcome)

It’s actually probably a good thing that it stayed fully intact through the boiling process. (It was discovered during the straining process). Otherwise I shudder, literally, to consider the ramifications of it fully dissolving.

My wife promptly called Kraft to make them aware of the situation. The kind lady on the phone was attempting to handle it in a way that I’m sure she’d been trained to, and she read the script like a champ. They take the utmost precaution in the cleanliness of their facilities….blah, blah, blah. They are truly sorry that this happened….blah, blah, blah. They’ll send a bag out, we can mail it back so they can investigate and they promise to keep us apprised of their findings….blah, blah, blah.

Oh yeah, AND they’d be more than happy to send us a voucher for a replacement box. *SCREEEEEEECH*. (That’s the sound of a record stopping not me really excited about the nerd from “Saved by the Bell”.)

Really? Because you know what sounds really appealing right about now? A free, turd free box of Kraft mac and cheese.

Except for the part that it doesn’t sound appealing at all. No, in fact I’d rather that they send me a voucher for a competitors box of mac and cheese. Because I’d least then I don’t have to wonder if I’m getting a box from the same batch that already have one special gift in it and might have more.

Thanks for the voucher, Kraft, I feel better that my wife almost served herself and our two year-old a turd straight out of one of your factories.

So what do I do now, call the health department?

Conversations with a Child

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 14:23:27 -0400

I’m thinking this might be a running item here. We parents are crazy. We all think our kids are the cutest kids ever (some obviously aren’t, sorry folks) and the smartest little rugrats on the planet. The reality that so few parents are able to see where and when their kids are going wrong doesn’t surprise me because it is easy to hold your child in such high regard because you love them so much. Doesn’t excuse it, I can just see how it happens.

But enough about my parental rant, on to the conversation:

We were sitting at dinner yesterday evening with my parents and brother to celebrate my wife’s 30th birthday. My two and a half year old son was sitting to my right, my wife to my left and my parents and brother across the table. The little angel was loudly playing with his cars, sometimes sending them zooming wildly across the table to Grammie. In the midst of his play he randomly and adoringly looks up at me and says, “Daddy, I need you forever.”

In an amazing coincidence, the extreme dustiness of the establishment we were in really started to get to me. It was either that or the pollen off the fake plants on the ledge just to my right. I found myself blinking rapidly and reaching for my napkin in an effort to combat the effect.

As everyone else at the table started to respond, mostly to my dust/pollen averse reaction, my son realized he had created an audience. With a huge grin on his face he followed up that fine comment with, “Just for pretend”.

We all cracked up. I laughed so hard I cried (imagine that). Enjoying the laughter he tacked on another gem with all the gusto he could manage, “I’m just kidding me! I’m just kidding me!”.

It was a fine series of moments.

The Real Twitter/Cisco Story?

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 21:43:00 -0400

The Real Twitter/Cisco Story?:

Update: since it’s not eminently clear that the title is the link, click here for the story

Before you read a blog post on how twitter can cost you a job opportunity and commend the author for their work, or share it with others as something worth reading (as I believe I did), it’s important to know the facts.
I think we all have to be careful to keep our commentary to topics on which we are fully informed, or at least as fully informed as possible. Here’s hoping traditional reporting and the process of investigating all sides of a story doesn’t die with the newspaper.
Let’s take this story and the many other communication “faux pas” stories as an opportunity to learn how we ourselves and our organizations can be more effective and maybe even more forgiving in and through our use of social media.

Conversations with a Child

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 20:06:41 -0400

As I’m watching the Michigan game my two and a half year-old son comes up to me and says, “Dad, can I go outside with my hat on?” This is his way of making a concession. He doesn’t like wearing his hat but maybe if he offers to willingly wear it, dad will be more likely to take him outside.

“No,” I respond, “it’s almost bed time.”

“BUT IT’S SUPER-SUNNY OUTSIDE!” (Actually it’s very much dusk here in Michigan, nothing even resembling sunny.)

Seriously, he’s two and a half. I’m in for it.

"A nation that has consumer debt and obesity as its top two problems, it’s not because we..."

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 10:17:58 -0400

“A nation that has consumer debt and obesity as its top two problems, it’s not because we don’t have enough, it’s because we don’t manage what we have well.”

- Perry Noble (commenting on the current economic times http://ow.ly/11vp)

"It is estimated that a week’s worth of the New York Times contains more information than a..."

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:19:08 -0500

“It is estimated that a week’s worth of the New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century.”

- http://identitypr.com/blog/2009/02/did-you-know/ (via @bchensutt)

Exposed

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 23:34:55 -0500

Today was quite a day. It started with about 5 hours at church doing video production. That was followed up by a brief respite, if it can be called that, of Lions football before Mason got up from his nap. When he got up the little man and I went out and joined the Sunday afternoon madness at the grocery store.

Our path around the store, if it could be charted out on a map, would probably be comical. You see Shannon does all of the grocery shopping, so I have no idea where anything is, and the signs they hang at the ends of each of the aisles can be less than helpful. Retrospectively I realize the cooking spray would be in the baking aisle, but in the moment I went up and down 4 aisles, two of which I had already been in, in order to find it. (And that’s only one example.)

Back from the grocery store my tasks fell to putting the groceries away, finding room in the fridge for everything (so doing a bit of cleaning there) and cooking dinner ready for Mason, Shannon and I. Mason feeds himself most things but not after 6:30. After 6:30 he decides we’ve addressed his dinner needs far too late for his liking and he’s not eating. So then it’s 1/2 an hour of coercing him into eating most of a grilled cheese sandwich. (Those of you have never experienced issues getting your kid to eat food put in front of him or her are more blessed than you know.)

After I inhaled my dinner it was time to clean everything up, and give Mason his bath. Thankfully bath time is a favorite of his so it’s easy to make this happen. After he went to bed pretty much everything was done for the evening. Just a bit of vacuuming and some laundry to fold.

I’m not sharing this to impress you with how much I did around the house. And I’m definitely not sharing it to be mocked for my generally goofy inability to effectively do some of these things. I’m sharing to let you know that I’ve been exposed, exposed as immensely selfish.

I say this because normally what I just described would be Shannon’s average day. Sure I’d pitch in here or there, maybe helping get Mason to eat his dinner, or doing the dishes, but generally speaking she takes the bulk of these duties and handles them with ease and grace and I…hopefully subconsciously…just expect that they be done.

I don’t say thank you enough, I don’t look for ways I can help out enough and I certainly don’t think about how she probably doesn’t enjoy doing many of those things much the same way I don’t enjoy doing them. Much like me, she’d probably rather be watching football too…well, not that at all, but whatever her desired activity is over cooking and cleaning. Today I did all those things because they have to be done and if I don’t do them Shannon will try when she is supposed to be in bed. In the future my intention is to step in and help do them more often so that she doesn’t have to.

So my hat is off to single parents and to parents who take the primary responsibility for caring for the household needs. But most especially my hat is off to Shannon for everything she has done for the past four years of our marriage and the past two years as a mother. Thanks, honey, so much, and I love you.

Media Frustration

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 23:06:00 -0500

I canceled my cable b/c I was paying an obscene amount of money for a bunch of content I didn’t consume and I would waste my time watching things just b/c the TV was on. The primary goal is to watch less TV and fill my time with productive things (like playing Guitar Hero World Tour….just kidding…kind of).

The rub, however, is that there is still some content that I’d like to consume, and most of it is available for free over the internet. (Sadly this does not include my precious Tigers, Pistons and Red Wings.) So I began investigating options for a good cable replacement alternative.

The PS3 browser supports hulu, but doesn’t truly do full screen, and hulu doesn’t support HD content globally (yet) which is one of the criteria. I also tried installing playon, which really just gets me non-HD hulu fullscreen, but found that I can only play something for 2 minutes before it starts getting jumpy. Combine that with their licensing fee and the fact that shannon isn’t really going to go for games being played in the living room and the PS3 was out.

The next solution was to hook my vista desktop up to the television. This in fact worked perfectly. The major issue is that the tower is big and ugly and I don’t want it sitting in my living room. Some additional issues are that I plug in all my peripherals and our printer into it and and I don’t need wires all over the living room. Plus I’m mostly going to use this device to watch TV and my tower is too much machine to reduce it to that.

The most recent acquisition to further experiment with is an Apple TV. I made the purchase because it syncs with iTunes which I already use, mostly just for music, and there are software hacks that can be done to get internet content on it. The first piece of software is boxee. Installing it, however is no easy proposition. You need a mac computing device to create bootable usb key for the Apple TV, and not all usb devices are compatible with the Apple TV. Thankfully I have Dave Webber and his laptop, and we got lucky on our 2nd try with a 2 GB Kingston memory card with a usb card reader.

There are unfortunately multiple problems with boxee. First and foremost I am again using hulu which means limited HD. Second it appears that they don’t acquire all the network feeds nor does hulu, so not all the content I’m looking for is available. Third, hulu restricts some legitimate content to 17 and older and boxee has no way to log in to my hulu account so that I can validate my age. So Boxee doesn’t look like it’s the alternative.

I also tried to install Couch Surfer (formerly Safari HD), a browser that runs on the Apple TV along with some other devices. I thought this would be the solution to my hulu hd content issue as well as provide me the content direct from the major networks sites and nfl.com. I’ve been unable to successfully get any content to play through Couch Surfer, so it’s actually useless at this point, and it turns out that you can’t watch the streams in full screen which makes it useless even if it did work.

So I now am thinking that the Apple TV is not the solution because the hacks are either too much trouble, or they don’t accomplish what I need. The next step is most likely to fix one of the broken PC towers I have sitting around and put a new video card in it, or to pick up a Mac Mini. I’m not sure though I want to spend $600 dollars on a device that I’ll pretty much use to watch TV over the internet (much like with my vista desktop).

What I’m looking for is a plug ‘n play device that I can pull out of the box, hook up via hdmi to my TV and watch fullscreen HD content over the internet. Is that too much to ask? I guess I’ll just keep doing my research or maybe I should just stop watching TV altogether.

Cultural Values and the Economy

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:08:44 -0500

Just had a great conversation with some folks at work about how the difficult economic times we are in are probably due in a large part to our cultural value system. The “new every two” mentality has inflated demand and production to unsustainable levels. The fact that so many individuals own homes (many of which are new), drive new cars every two years and do it as a societal norm have driven the companies that provide those goods to do so at levels that have now become unsustainable.

Our current plight, if I might call it that, is probably as much a natural economic correction as it is a correction of our broken cultural values. Would it be so bad if families and/or close friends had to consolidate living situations? Our culture would look a lot more like what the rest of the world looks like. Would it be so horrible if our cars weren’t new off the lots and we drove them for 10 years instead of 2, or until the broke? The answer to these questions should be no. The reality is that we have become so accustomed to a way of life that it has become the value system that we live by, so those things probably do sound horrible to most of our society.

If this ends in an economic depression, or even a strong recession, I believe that will not only be a righting of our economy but also a righting of our current cultural values system.

"Yes we can” is not just a slogan for the ages, it’s the optimist’s fundamental creed. Optimists..."

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 14:16:29 -0500

““Yes we can” is not just a slogan for the ages, it’s the optimist’s fundamental creed. Optimists don’t deny that bad things happen, they just believe that they can cope with them which of course means that they cope much better than pessimists.”

- Alexander Kjerulf (http://tinyurl.com/5m47wd)

"One should not only be able to criticize but should always have a suggestion to make. Don’t..."

Thu, 29 May 2008 11:26:00 -0400

“

One should not only be able to criticize but should always have a suggestion to make.

Don’t challenge others’ statements, have them repeat them over again.

Conditions which are best for workers will give best production!

Ask about prospects who didn’t buy product.

Always challenge the statement that nothing can be done about a certain condition.

”

- Georges F. Doriot (courtesy of Fred Wilson)

Just wow….

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 12:44:07 -0500

Just wow….