The sun shined

Almost the only way to get the car, boat, motorcycle, etc. exactly the way you want it is to order it new. But, then you pay a premium price and take the massive first year depreciation hit. Once in a while, a great while, the stars align and you strike gold in the pre-owned market. But that’s very rare. And, it’s probably why I vividly recall the few times the wheel stopped at my number. The most notable example occurred shortly after I graduated college. I was pretty close to flat broke and a new car was out of the question. But, I got a burning desire for a specific car. It was a Firebird. The color was a metallic brown or bronze, kind of the color of a Japanese beetle wing. I don’t even know how I got that in my head because I cannot recall ever seeing a Firebird in that color. It may sound a little mundane but it wasn’t, especially if it was set off with a cream colored vinyl roof, which were very rad then. Trust me on this one, youngster. And, not any vinyl roof. It would be a half roof (the latter portion). This image was burned in my brain. Don’t ask me how. I had never seen one. I did need a car. But, my enthusiasm for looking had about the same magnitude as my bank account. One lunch hour, I took a walk around downtown. There was a big car dealer there at the time (believe it or not) and as I neared it, I pulled up abruptly. There, in the front row of the used car section, shining in all its glory was the car. I mean, THE car. The very one I had envisioned. Actually, it was even better, if that’s possible. Instead of the leading edge of the vinyl roof being cut straight across, it came to a subtle point, with a very cool arrow effect. Great nuance. No question about it, I had to have that car. If I had to beg, borrow or steal, I just had to. I did forgo the last option. But I did engage the first two. The odds of this kind of opportunity coming around again approached infinity. Fast forward. One of my favorite kayak makers came out with a new model. It was a bit radical and I was hesitant to pull the trigger. Besides, for some reason, this company had lapsed into a mode of incredibly unappealing choices in color. The only one that appealed to me is their Spiderman motif, a garish combination of bright reds and blues. I deliberated and deliberated. More conventional genres of boats had priority and I did nothing about this one. A model year and then some passed and the fire reignited. The selection of used ones was extremely meager, probably because this wasn’t a boat that would appeal to many. However, kayaks aren’t all that expensive and I’d be willing to bite the bullet for a new one. I am horrified to find that they’ve dropped the Spiderman option favoring one that looks like the surface of a stagnant pond and another that seems to depict a white rabbit that got run over while eating a raw egg. For months, I scour the country for used boats and retailers who might have some old inventory or demo kayaks. I can barely find the boat in the right size let alone one that’s in a color that wouldn’t make a vulture puke. I gave up. A couple friends of mine own a paddling shop and are had a demo event yesterday. One of them had to go to a funeral so I volunteered to help out. I got there early to help unload the trailer. There’s this bloated recreational boat the color of Bozo’s wig and that one in beige, a hue reminiscent of filing cabinets of the 70’s. And, so on. I’m working my way through the layers of mundane craft toward the center of the trailer when I’m pulled up short by a flash of brilliant blue and red. It can’t be. But, it is! Right model, but is it the right size? I’m almost afraid to look because of the potential letdown. Please, don’t tease me. I check and it is the right size, It’s THE boat! Better yet, it’s a demo. That is to say, cheap. A long time ago, I had a coach who would say, “The sun don’t shine on one dog’s ass all the time.” I’ve found that to be true, but I’m just glad yesterday it was my turn. Bu, it’s a little bigger than having your wish come true. It sets a tone that you’re on a roll. Today has been a great day.

IT Angst

This may qualify as a rant so I wouldn’t blame you if you bailed out now. And, it’s more grumbling about the world of IT. For years I resisted the siren call of the tablet. The swim team my son coaches chipped in and presented him with an iPad and all he could do was extol its virtues to me. About that time, I was in a computer store and the next generation of those infernal devices had debuted. They were fire saling the older ones and I bit. One usage I saw applied to the many trips I do, mostly kayaking in beautiful places. If I wanted to view the photos and videos at the end of the day, I was relegated to do so on the stamp-sized screen on the back of the compact camera. Through my aging eyes, it appears to be a lab slide of amoebas. Since graphics are highly touted for the iPad, I could simply dump the work product into it each evening and enjoy the show. Or, so I assumed. Since Apple does not play well with others, there was but one port and it was limited to charging the beast and sucking up overpriced Apple software. So, the device was largely used for slingshotting avian projectiles at their porcine adversaries. On a recent trip into darkest Appalachia, the iPad was stolen from our campsite. Human depravity respects no bounds. As miffed as I was about this, there was a silver lining in that I was now free to get something more accommodating. I waited out the computer store for their holiday sale and bought a Windows-based tablet of a popular brand. It had a variety of ports. Although none appeared to be a direct match with the camera components, I was sure the solution must be simple. Back to the computer store. I found a clerk whose eyes appeared to focus in the same plane and asked for a micro USB to micro USB cable with two male ends, reflecting the connection I had to make and showing amazing IT acumen for me. He looked at me as though I were speaking the Vulcan tongue. I repeated my request more deliberately, like a tourist on foreign soil. “No such thing.” Did I detect a sneer? No such thing? If there are two ports like that that require connection, there must be. It’s a law or something, isn’t it? Time for another approach. This had to be a common application and simple, and I may have erred by jumping to my own solution. So, I simply stated what it was I was trying to accomplish. He nodded sagely; a post-adolescent Buddha. “You need an SD card reader.” It would be easier if I could just plug in the card, but the tablet did not accept the full-sized ones. But, I could live with one more device that would be in peril of loss in the morass that is my camera cabinet. “Okay, I’ll go for the card reader. Show me where it is and I’m on my way.” “Not so fast. The reader won’t hook up with the tablet. You’ll also need a converter cable.” Yeah, and some kid to show me how this daisy chain will have to be configured. So now, with the help of some high tech spaghetti, I can link the devices. At the risk of sounding like a geezer, I miss the days when makers of wall outlets and, say, coffee makers knew people would want to hook up and designed the products so a lot of extra crap wasn’t required. Bonus rant. The tablet comes with Windows NT, the evil twin of Windows 8. You can’t find half the common functions without wending your way through multiple cryptic screens. Except, of course, the Windows Store. That tile is front and center in your opening screen. I am generally suspicious of apps, but they did have one I could find useful and I bought it. It appeared to download with no fuss. But, when I opened it, the title screen would show for two seconds and then would disappear. I tried this multiple times with the same results. I restarted the tablet, updated it and did about everything else I could think of. I attempted to contact Microsoft. Phone help advised me that there was a wait that could extend to infinity. The “call me” option glitched when you clicked on “submit.” Probably a double entendre, there. Going to the forum of the users page revealed that I was far from the only one to experience the problem. However, it did include a response from a Microsoft tech who offered five possible solutions. While they appeared to be written in Pig Latin, or assumed you had an advanced degree from MIT, mere hours of web searching helped me decipher the suggestions. It took another couple hours to execute the instructions. And, you guessed it, no joy. I had sent a plaintive plea to the app publisher. The response was fairly prompt, informing me that the app had a glitch and they were working on an update. Really? If you had a defective product that wouldn’t function, would you put it out on the market? If you had a store, would you sell it?

Message Received

When I’ve taught communications, one of the things I stressed was that the normal result of an attempt to communicate something is partial miscommunication and you must adjust for it. That is, the message you think you’re sending isn’t exactly what is received. I’ve had a series of encounters this week that underscored that. The first was that I was invited to dinner by a former employee. I hadn’t seen Dave in decades. In his approach, he had said that he had learned a lot from me, came to be a success and wanted to express his appreciation. We met and, after the small talk, I asked what he remembered the most. He laughed and said it was my stories. He always repeated them and, in fact, when he told one of his current employees that he was meeting me for dinner, the guy replied, “Is that the guy in the urinal cake story?” Dave laughed at that. Having taught weekend college, I sensed that people didn’t absorb what they had little interest in. So, I wrapped lessons in entertaining stories. I’ve led a pretty entertaining life so coming up with them was no problem. The challenge was building a lesson into them to make them a management tool. “Did he get the lesson that was in that story?” I responded. Dave looked puzzled. “There was a lesson in that?” So much for people receiving the intended message. Then Dorothy was telling me that she had been discussing Bob’s shortcomings with some mutual acquaintances and they had the same perceptions as she did. Guess again. I’d heard from some of them and what they took from the discussions was that Dorothy sure likes to dish the dirt. I doubt that was her intended message. Today, I kayaked with a guy who taught me whitewater paddling many years ago. He said I had developed a good stroke. I reminded him that he had told me that a number of times during the paddling course. “No, when I said you had quite a stroke there, I meant it was one of the worst I’d seen.” The lesson in this (and I won’t obscure it with a story) is that the message you think you’re sending isn’t always the one that’s received.