Networking and Mingling, Developer Style

A coworker (further up the corporate chain than me) emailed me a statement/question today noting that some of her developers were feeling isolated from the rest of the company because their project didn't intertwingle (courtesy of Peter Morville - see my post on Ambient Findability) with other projects at the company, particularly outside their department, so they were feeling sort of on their own and isolated. I think this coworker asked me because I've never really seemed to have that problem. If someone has technology or theory, and I can figure out how to get them alone for a few minutes, then I can figure out how to insert myself into at least enough of a discussion to learn the outline of what it is they have and how I might apply it to what I'm doing, now, or in the foggy future. If it's of no use to me whatsoever, then I file it away until such time as I can give it to someone who can use it. It's not trading, it's not networking for the sake of networking or promotion, I just really like talking technology when someone gives me a chance, and I'm very aware that there are a million things I don't know, and any single one of them is likely to make what I'm working on better, or give me a foot in the door at some point to find that piece of information that makes my project and/or code better, or at least more interesting. And that piece of knowledge may be code, or it may be domain-related. To that end, I always try to make myself available to other programmers and coworkers if they can use what I know, even if it means a little bit of extra time beyond my normal 8-9, because that knowledge sharing isn't part of my current project.

So I'll post what I told the coworker, and I'm interested in what other people do if they're willing to share. I don't claim these all work, or that any of them work in all cases, and I absolutely don't claim that I do all of this in some sort of calculated manner. I'm too lazy to be calculating, which might surprise people who know my puritanical attitude to work, but in a sort of spiritual way. I don't have the time to calculate--I do things because I like people and I like tech and I like having fun. If I had to work at it, I wouldn't do it. Truth is, I like talking technology, and I like talking about technology over beer and coffee the best.

1.) Talk to someone with more experience or at a higher level (technology position wise) when you have a good question. They're not as busy as you think they are (or if they are, they'll still talk to you if they perceive you're interested and paying close attention), and most of them really like to talk about what it is they're working on, what frustrates them, and what they'd do differently if they could. They're a gold mine of information, and churn up a lot of contact names for things you might be working on. Conversely, they'll often learn something from you, particularly if you work in a group that's outside their normal stomping grounds.

2.) Apply #1 to selected tech and project leads from other groups, the ones you think are competent and laid back (even fast talkers will generally let you ask questions and get clarification, but some people will not, they just like to hear themselves talk and won't even give you a chance to steer them towards mutually useful information - stay away from them). Get 'em a cup of coffee if necessary - if your tech people are stingy, and you're the lead or manager, give them a coffee card or two and tell them it's for networking purposes and you expect them to buy two cups at a time. Ask those leads what they're working on, technologies, etc. If your people are uncomfortable "cold calling", then figure out where the corporate wikis are, read a few pages so you have some base knowledge, and then go out to coffee. Leads like to talk. They like to talk about leading they like to talk about technology. If you don't feel you have something to talk about, ask them about their favorite blogs, their favorite sites, what kinds of training they like and from where, what specific conferences, "how do I get my boss to let me go to that when s/he says there's no training budget", what works best for them. Read a book on what you think is their area of interest (like leading geeks or ambient findability) so you have information.

3.) #1 and #2 lead to more opportunities - people sharing what they have, etc. You just have to touch base now and then, not all the time, and everything keeps cycling and everyone is happy. You don't want it to become a job, or to take up all the time on your job, you want it to be those extra 15 minutes during the day, and you want it to be fun for you and for them.

4.) Make some opportunities for #1 and #2. Find a developer and invite them to coffee. Walk with them to some place they like to frequent - coffee at the other end of the building, afternoon walk, water upstairs, anything. Some developers have their own happy hours (drinking alcohol isn't a necessity, but allowing others to is - no one cares if you don't drink, that's why happy hours have appetizers and meals), and you can be certain that there are never enough people and that they're interested in a new brain. They're always happy to add a person or two that seems like a good fit (i.e. don't be irritable because you're a low-level programmer and you're not invited - sometimes leads and up meet and take information back to their group. If that's the case, create your own happy hour at a different level, and find people on the liminal of moving up that will bring down the things you need from those other areas). Send out a general request to your contacts to see if they're going to a particular tech event, or even a non-tech event if you've talked enough to identify their hobbies. Invite a group of people to lunch - if it's a big enough group, enough of them are moving between jobs over the years that it will stay fresh. You always talk shop with coworkers, it doesn't matter where you are.

5.) Per the drinking advice in #4, information flows down; follow the cohort system. If you get your leads engaged with other leads and architects and finding information, they'll generally bring it back to their best developers, who in turn will disperse the ideas to the group. While that doesn't seem like engaging your lower-level developers, it is, as long as you let them know that information is reaching them from other groups and other people in other groups. You don't have to say "Jim Smith the Architect said...", but you can say, "Information Architecture is working on this", "The Large Database group recommended this", "This other group is doing this, and their lead is really interested in this aspect of it..." If you're not specific about who it is, no foul. You've still told them that their project is reaching beyond the boundaries of the group. If any of your programmers seem to be reaching for more, you've developed a network that allows you to hook them up with someone that's a good fit and you've created an mentoring network. That's just identifying talent - flow with it.

6.) Again, ask for help. Find an infrastructure bit that needs to be improved and send someone out to canvas for what's out there. For instance, if you're not fond of your automated build process, pick someone and tell them to ask around. If you know a starting point, so much the better. What you're looking at doesn't even have to be a build process in your technology area - there's something to learn in Java from looking at a .NET build process or a Team Services installation (and vice versa). Even if it's an area where you're sure your implementation is cool beans, where it's the end all of solutions, it doesn't hurt to go ask for alternatives. Web 2.0 isn't just SOA, it's innovation and new models and a changing paradigm of how to do things - you don't learn those things without other people.

7.) Have some of your group do an interview or two. That's scary - and you could lose an employee to a different group, so that's not really one you may want to follow if you're a manager. But the individuals who interview will learn volumes about other groups and their ideas. If someone does leave, and it's on good terms, get them to report back about what they're doing. Not some surreptitious maneuver. Put a programmer on them to talk to them about what they're doing over an event or coffee or whatever. Blatant is fine - let them know you want information, it's flattering. Those first 3-6 months someone is in a new position, they're excited about what they're doing, particularly around the 3 month mark when they've gotten over the paranoia that they don't know what they're doing and they're in over their head and get a real idea of what's in front of them and how they can make a difference. Tap that energy and expose your developers to it so they can cycle it in their own position.

8.) Last one, although there are more, but I'm wearing out. Teach your developers to mingle. Not crappy mingling like in the mingling book I read which warned against work-related topical mingling, but work-related, developer-related, mingling. At work - learn to recognize the other developers by sight, even if you don't know them or work with them, and take some time to sit down with them at lunch, or say "hello" to them in the coffee line if they're alone. Ask them about REST and microformats and their current project. If you talk to 1/6 of them, you'll always know someone the other 5/6 know, so you'll have conversation fodder. If you talk to 1/12 of them, find the next 1/12 that know the first 1/12, and then you have access to the other 5/6. You have to start somewhere, it doesn't matter how small. Do the same thing at the coffee shop - the non-work coffee shop. If you see developers working on their laptops and they're not engrossed (don't interrupt - rude, and it takes an effort to snap out of code brain), talk to them about their technology focus, who they work for (not what they're working on, that can be sensitive), and offer details about yourself first so they know what the boundaries are. The more you talk to other techies, particularly the ones you're not comfortable with from your own close-knit group, the better you get.

Winnie the Pooh Honey Pot

Winnie the Pooh Honey Pot inflatable bed, courtesy of Kyle. He's pretty sure there's something seriously wrong with the fact that Amazon thought he needed one. Me, I'm not as surprised, given his Eeyore-themed rec room.

Freudian Thought

When I first read this, "instant messaging for daily microcoordination at one's workplace", I read "microindoctrination" instead of "microcoordination"...a Freudian brain slip perhaps? I'm surprised, my company is very good about letting me think whatever I like. I'm guessing it's all those dystopic novels and commentary I read (I have commentary on Brave New World sitting on the table upstairs right now). After a while, everything is newspeak and indoctrination. I should probably copyright microindoctrination. I bet it's a new word.

The source of the quote is from some social computing and social networking articles I was rereading on Wikipedia today. Good stuff. I think social computing is fascinating, particularly as you can almost see it after a while if you work with the same sets of data day to day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_computing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network

How to View All Your Posts

I learned this from Chris Crowhurst's Brit Blog - how to view all your blogger posts at once. Note, you can just change the number portion to adjust, and you may time out on your pictures, but just refresh once or twice while your browser caches and you should get everything.

http://nodtonothing.blogspot.com/search?max-results=1000

Ambient Findability (UX/IA)

Peter Morville's Ambient Findability was a happy find from the corporate library. Some of the Amazon reviews note that it's rambling, bloggish, and tackles technology at such a high level that it doesn't have solid focus, but this is what made it such an enjoyable book. Rather than try to point at specific web 2.0 technologies (which are really more than just SOA - there's javascript technologies that aren't hooked into services - i.e. prototype extensions -, RDF [which is really about metadata] and RSS and Atom [which look like SOA, but offer accessible versions of RDF], piles of new usability features, particularly client-side, mash ups [and not just the SOA and APIs behind them, the very act of creating them], the extension into ubiquitous hardware [so many phones, so many iPods, so many Blackberries and handhelds, so many bluetooth ear pieces, so many people with wireless laptops...just consider how it looked three years ago, there's a difference], microformats, and new ideas about how to extend all of that stuff into the lives of consumers), he tackles the changes in technology from a holistic perspective. What does it mean to live in the age of information? How do we find things? How is the way we find things changing, and how is it still similar to the way it has always been? What is it like to spend almost all our time in a built environment? What are the consequences for those who don't know the appropriate ways to find data, or don't have access to systems that are evolving to deliver data in better ways? How is information becoming even more accessible - including what we can access? Will we eventually be able to find the history of any object and the history of all objects that have tangentially impacted that object? Not can we track a can of soda, but can we track that can of soda, who drank it, and which other cans of soda they drank?

Toward that end, Morville tackles RFID chips, search engine optimization (SEO - now making its way into the hands of those who create the sites, rather than residing with consulting companies), large search engine theory and search engine advertising (p. 112 - most users don't go past the first two pages of results, a user is five times as likely to buy an item after searching through a web site than by clicking in banner ads), sociosemantics, push, pull, precision, recall, decision-making traps, pattern recognition and, the favorite topic at Computer Assisted Legal Instruction conferences, taxonomies and folksonomies.

His book isn't perfect, and the field is changing too fast for it to be completely current, even though it was published in September 2005, but if you've never taken a good look at the direction things could be going, Morville's book can give you a big picture, a wide swath, of what may lay ahead in the immediate future.

If you're interested in findability and user experience (UX) and information architecture, Morville has both a findability site, where he blogs, and some information at his Semantic Studios site. He'll be coming to town (Minneapolis, St. Paul) for a Thomson Dialog conference and one other conference in mid-March and April if you scan the right column at the findability site.

Locally, visit MNteractive (who writes MNteractive), which posts a pile of material about the local UX/IA (interface design) scene, with frequent complaints about using Flash on your website, the direction of Groovy and JRuby, notes about local mashups, etc.

Cooking With Scooter

Creme de Menthe/Chocolate Chip Cookies

By virtue of an accident (self-rising flour) and a lack of a bag of chocolate chips (only half a bag of creme de menthe and half a bag of chocolate chips), I bring you a cookie that turned out pretty damn well.

1/2 c. butter (salted) - just one stick, so better for you than chocolate chip cookies which generally require two sticks for the same size batch
3/4 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. white granulated sugar
1 t. baking soda
1 t. baking powder
2 t. vanilla extract
2 eggs

Mix.

2 2/3 c. self-rising flour (I used Gold Medal self-rising specialty flour)

It'll get too thick and clumpy to be good cookie dough, so add some cold water a teaspoon or two at a time until it just quits being little clumps and becomes dry, but mixed cookie dough.

Add 1/2 bag of creme de menthe bits (I used Andes)
Add 1/2 bag of chocolate chips (I used Nestle semi-sweet morsels)

Mix in the chips.

Bake at 350 degrees on a non-stick pan (I use a stoneware pan) for about 12 minutes. Cook for a few more if not browning (move to a higher rack if necessary) until a respectable brown on top. Cool and eat. Probably really good with ice cream.

Coulterish

Why do news sources so often state in articles about Ann Coulter things like in this AP article, "an attractive, articulate blonde conservative". No. She is not attractive. And I don't say that as a liberal who finds her unattractive because of her views. I'm not simply flipping the conservative feminists-are-ugly line. She's simply, unequivocably, to me, unattractive. I strongly side with those who refer to her as a bit mannish, and absolutely agree with anyone that thinks she looks just a little off, a little crazy, and not in an I-know-there's-a-conservative-behind-those-eyes crazy way, but in a non-partisan batshit sort of way. Angelina Jolie does all sorts of work for the U.N. Do news sources preface articles about her work with refugees, "hot, articulate, brunette humanitarian"? No...they don't have to. Because she is hot, so you don't have to be told she's hot. That's how it works.

If you're concerned about politicos and hotness, here are 27 pages you can read about Australian politicians and attractiveness = votes. Although I fail to understand how there could be attractive female politicians in Australia. After all, their men come here and marry our sisters, so the pool of attractive women must be rather limited.

Anyway, back to Coulter. While the AP is insisting she's hot, I think Yahoo advertising is on the ball. I hope she appreciates the advertisements that they place next to articles about her.

Brief Moment

Scooter, flipping channels to find something to watch.

Eryn: "Daddy, I want to watch the Simpsons!"

Scooter: "What? Oh, honey. That's Ashley and Jessica, not Homer and Bart."

Postpourri

ARGH...lost post. I hate that. Stupid IE7. You heard me...I program(med) .NET and I'm cursing at IE7. The whole browser dropped, not Blogger. There's no excuse for that crap, and no excuse for not saving what you were working on in the cache if it does drop. Curses! Now I shall have to remember what I wrote, but better!

TechCrunch has a link to the Kegulator. Never again will you worry about whether you have enough beer to appropriately inebriate your guests. Ample allowance is given for spillage, so a stray cup or two (I've set one upside down in my time) won't ruin anyone's buzz.

TechCrunch is a fun blog. They primarily talk about mashups and web 2.0 technologies. Like Beer Hunter, so you don't ever have to worry about finding a beer in Toronto again. Worrying about that is one of the reasons I seldom go to Canada.

Project Guttenberg has me concerned. The other day I looked at their most popular ebooks, and they had listed the books below. "Hey, baby, want to see my new 'machine'? I built it myself."

• Kamasutra by Vatsyayana
• Manual of Surgery by Alexander Miles and Alexis Thomson
• Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases by Grenville Kleiser
• The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci

And I was going to post this bit about the Twiddler, because I saw it online and thought it sounded an awful lot like Diddler. Yes, I'm twelve...leave me alone. But then this exact same picture showed up in a book I was reading about Ambient Findability, along with a story about a guy who made a velcro holster for it so he could draw it into a useable position in under two seconds. And the guy who wrote the book is going to be in Minneapolis to speak at two conferences. One of the conferences sponsored by one of my company's affiliates. That's just weird. Six degrees of Scooteration.

The Art of Mingling

I discussed The At of Mingling: Proven Techniques for Mastering Any Room with Sandy and Erik today. So in many respects, I was actually mingling using the topic of mingling. Ironic...or just sad. I bet you can make a scientific guess.

That may be as much as I get out of this book as I absolutely hated it. Why? Because the art of mingling is pretty much making crap up and lying. Can you help me find this person at the party? Can you tell me what color this shirt is (even though I don't care, or may actually know because I bought it from Land's End and it said "Purple Fusion" in the catalog)? Where did you get those earrings? Can you watch the punch for me? Can you watch the punch for me? That's right, two people watching the punch, now you have them mingling. Ever see that episode of Seinfeld where the gang goes to a party and they all get jobs like stowing the coats or watching the fish so no one taps on the glass? Yeah...that's a way to encourage mingling among your non-mingling friends.

I was hoping to learn something about mingling, because I recognize that I'm not very good at it. I prefer to know someone a bit via other avenues, like work or gaming or blogging, before I engage in witless banter. What I learned is that I already know most things about mingling, I just refuse to engage in 90% of them because they're insipid or dishonest or involve blatant suckuppery. I'm also not very good at laughing pretentiously. For instance, would you ever offer a toast at some function, just because...just to mingle? "Simply pick out someone else in your group and make a toast to her..." (p. 98). Strangely, I know someone who does something very close to this. I think they may have read the book. If you don't know someone like that, I toast your good fortune.

I think the best information I got out of The Art of Mingling was a factual tidbit or two. For instance, girl "wingmen" are called "pivots". Seriously, just Google it. And here's a whole 1999 annoying exchange on pivots via the Pick Up Guide (warning - offensive unless you're comfortable with a lot of using the word "bitches").

And there are classifications of drunks (p. 137): "hilarious, lachrymose, loquacious, taciturn, argumentative, magisterial, belligerent, sentimental, amorous, and vomitous", at least according to Alice-Leone Moats book No Nice Girl Swears. This is good information, as it allows me to categorize myself in ways I hadn't previously considered. Although any drunk worth his weight in Summit would need to mix and match his (or her) drunktypes, just like you mix drinks. I think I may be a loquacious argumentative with a touch of magisterial (that last one is a nod to my friend's ex-wife), which is an evolution from the loquacious, argumentative, amorous drunk I once was. It's an improvement. Just ask Pooteewheet.

When I mentioned the book to Mean Mr. Mustard, I accidentially typed "minging". There are two well-known Mings in our area. He was pretty sure that's something only they could get up to with any validity.

I Meant It, I Submitted an Article

Wow...back in the St. Louis Park days...that was a while ago. So here's my unpublished article on Magic: the Gathering™ I mentioned in the last post. The geekiness is palpable. At least Kyle has a postcard from my sister thanking him for a gift of MtG cards, so I'm not alone.

CAPITALIZING ON YOUR CARAVAN OF COMMONS

Have you ever really sat down and counted how many extra Magic: The Gathering™ common cards you own? Are there whole boxes of Prodigal Sorcerers and Mesa Pegasii in your closet? Are you approaching that point where your parents won't let you have any more storage space in the garage unless you can find some other place to store the car? Are they willing to buy your commons off of you because it would be cheaper than buying cordwood?

In two boxes of Ice Age™ cards, you are likely to end up with four full sets of common cards (484 cards), and 208 additional, assorted duplicates. If you attempt to obtain one copy of each rare card, approximately four boxes of boosters, your stock of additional commons skyrockets to 904 extra cards! Now try to collect four of each rare card, about 14 boxes of boosters—total extra commons: 7,864! Double that number if you are as avid about collecting Fourth Edition™ cards as you are about Ice Age™. With smaller expansion sets, the common overload can be even more acute (not to mention the issue of land accumulation from Third Edition™ boosters and decks). So what should you do with all these extra cards? Below are some sound ideas:

1.) Bookmarks - don't just put a card in the current book you are perusing; put a card in EVERY book you own! Not only will you always have access to a bookmark, but you will leave a curious discovery for future archaeologists (maybe even Argivian Archaeologists?) to ponder. Give cards to friends with books! Tell the local librarian you would like to leave a pile on the library counter for all those Magic-deprived visitors who file through the doors. Make sure to point out the cards with Chaucerian, Biblical and poetic references on them—they are a strong selling point.

2.) Tournament Business Cards - glue or shellac your name, address and phone number to the back of a common card and hand it out at tournaments, or to players you meet elsewhere. Personalize! Take all those old high school pictures and replace features on the reverse side of the business card: Benalish Betty, Pestilence Petes, or Giant Albatross Alberts - be original. Convince the gaming stores that sold you the cards to take back the commons and make their own business cards.

3.) Beat the world record for free-standing playing-card structures. According to The Guiness Book of Records 1995 you need to manage at least 81 stories and a height of 15 ft 8 in—that's without adhesives. A few months ago on CNN, I saw someone break this record—he was using a step-ladder; so your common collection should just cover the necessary matériel. Think of how much more colorful your edifice will be than one made merely of white, red, and black playing cards.

4.) Teach local children to use the cards like your parents did, placing them in the spokes of their bicycle wheels. Not only do you have the satisfaction of irritating every adult on the block with day-in, day-out chattering, but if you charge a penny a card, after 2,500-3,000 cards you can afford that spare Jester's Cap you've been eyeing.

5.) Make decks of standard playing cards for non-Magic players as Christmas gifts. Land works best, but any four colors will work to make the four suits. Two cards from the odd color out serve as Jokers. Tailor the deck so it looks like there is a method to its madness:

Blue: Tim the King, Creature Bond Queen, Zuran Enchanter Jack, Unsummon Ace
White: Samite Healer King, Abbey Matron Queen, Mesa Pegasii Jack, Mesa Falcon Ace

And so on...you get the picture. For that professional effect, visit your local art store and for just a few dollars, buy some press-on numbers and letters, or run your cards through a laser printer. (Be careful, I take no responsibility for jammed printers!)

6.) Buy a sibling a single booster pack and, in conjunction, give them a complete set of commons—I once gave my sister over 300 common cards after a bout of collecting Fallen Empires™ and Third Edition™. Declare that because 15 cards cost $2.95 (use the newer, more expensive prices, not the price you really paid for them), your present is worth well in excess of $60.00! Make sure they know that you expect a gift of equal value in return.

7.) SDI hockey pucks - with reinvestment in America's Strategic Defense Initiative a Republican certainty, the funding for the accelerated-hockey-puck dispenser may be coming back. Shellac your cards together into small blocks and offer them to the government at a price significantly below what they're paying for contract-produced projectiles (you may need to coat the cards with a heat-resistant, semi-ablative surface for upper atmosphere shots, but who said making a profit was easy?). At $500 a puck or so, you'll make $4-$5 per common, and can sleep peacefully at night knowing that your cards are arming a slingshot for world peace—part of the anti-nuclear umbrella.

8.) Hold an unofficial Magic tournament with a 1,000 card grand prize! Forget to mention the prize is common cards...just make sure you're not in the building when the awards are passed out (and make sure it's not at your house, if you ever want to sleep peacefully again). On a less conniving note, invite your friends to join in commons-only day. Play for ante: the winner gets the loser's whole deck!

9.) Wallpaper! It's possible - it's weird - it makes other people nervous! Use the most disgusting commons you can find, particularly some of the thrulls from Fallen Empires ™. My favorite is the Necrite licking his rusty knife. Do your walls; do your ceiling; think about doing your floor. Touch up some cards with glow-in-the-dark paint until your room looks like something out of a King or Koontz novel. Charge your little sister and her friends for guided, late-night tours during slumber parties.

10.) Make a variety of common decks and hook your friends on Magic. Using common decks, you can play for ante pain-free. Ante is also more exciting, allowing you to hook more players (thus, more opponents, more people with whom to trade, and more tournaments). When your friends are done playing with you, encourage them to take your deck: take both! You can always score a few commons back later if you need them. In the meantime, they become your friend's storage headache...

A Few Stupid Observations for the Day

Observation #1: there's a button on voice mail (at work) that, if you bump it, slows down the speed at which your voice mail is delivered. Not the time between items, but the actual voice speed. It feels like it's coming across at about 70% normal speed. I got the treat of feeling like my brother was addressing me like some sort of mental defective as his one minute message took like 100 seconds. I wonder if the world just sounds like that to some people.

Observation #2: a guy came out of one of the company bathrooms carrying a Magic the Gathering collectible card game card box. What the hell are you doing in the bathroom with a box full of cards? Sorting them? Ick. Little known fact that should probably stay unknown, but what the hell...I have a refusal letter for an article from the Magic magazine people. Seriously. And I've placed first and second in two tournaments. In my defense, it was all like seven years ago, and I didn't win playing anyone in a bathroom stall.

Observation #3: Planet Dan has a cool link up to the Rasterbater. That's not nearly as dirty as it sounds. It's just a way to take a picture and turn it into the same picture, but on 60 sheets of paper (or more, or less, depending on your preference). Not the same picture on sixty different sheets, but the picture spread across sixty sheets so you can make a big 6x10 foot picture on, oh, someone's cube wall - maybe a picture of them hanging out with Condoleeza Rice. Don't fear Mean Mr. Mustard, I stuck to rasterbating the picture of the Boss lounging in front of the corporate offices. Maybe I'll scare Pooteewheet some day by putting a big picture of me on our bedroom ceiling.

Eryn's Telescope

Another kids' story. I know...where are the stories for adults? I have a notebook full of science fiction and horror stories, I just haven't pushed them into the computer yet. I'm a little slow to do the typing because I know just how much I'm going to modify it during the entry process. So instead, you get things I know don't need a ton of rewrite and that I can get double duty out of because I can read them to Eryn for bedtime.

Eryn's Telescope

On Christmas Day, Eryn ran downstairs from her room and dug through the stocking her parents had pinned to the fireplace mantle, looking for candy. While she found an assortment of chocolates, candy canes and nuts, she also found a small box full of plastic stars. She turned it over in her hands, watching the stars fall against the inside of the box.

“I think they’re for your room,” said her father, walking down the stairs in his housecoat. “If you stick them to your ceiling and let them sit in the light for a while, they’ll glow in the dark.”

Eryn’s eyes lit up and she rushed back upstairs to where she’d just been dreaming of ribbon-wrapped boxes and noisy toys and dumped the stars in a little pile on her bed. Mixed in with the stars was a block of putty for sticking them to the ceiling. So Eryn crawled up on her bed and tried to stick a star on her ceiling. But she couldn’t reach. Being three had its drawbacks. She looked at the ceiling for a while, feeling sad, and then looked at the wall. What was a wall, she thought, if not a ceiling on its side. And she could reach the wall. At least she could reach the parts that weren’t that high off the ground. So she stuck a star to the wall, and then another, and another, until there were a few dozen stars on the wall.

In the meantime, her dad had come upstairs and was watching her from the doorway. “That’s a good job, honey. Would you like some help putting some on the ceiling?”

“Sure, Dad,” Eryn stretched her arms upward as high as she could.

Her dad grabbed her under the arms and lifted her up until she was close to the bumpy white ceiling.

Eryn stuck a star between a few bumps. And then another. “Down, please!” she asked. Dad set her down on the bed and she quickly put putty on the back of a few more stars. “Up, please!” And up went Eryn, and up went two more stars. This continued until her dad was puffing a little and almost all the stars in the box were gone. There were stars all over the ceiling, all over the walls, and all over one or two other things, like the closet doors and the book shelves.

“Want to see them with the lights out, Eryn?” asked her dad.

Eryn thought about that for a moment, torn between seeing all the stars glowing and her new presents under the tree. “No,” she declared. “Tonight. When it’s dark.” And she ran back downstairs to look at her new things.

One of the presents Eryn received for Christmas was a new telescope. It was a black and yellow telescope with a three-legged stand – a tripod, Eryn’s mother called it – and three different lenses. One lens pointed up, so you looked down into it. The other two lenses pointed forward, just like the telescope itself. Eryn’s dad said the different lenses were for making the telescope look closer or further, because sometimes things were not so far away, like the trees behind the house, or the neighbor’s playset. But sometimes things were very far away, like clouds, stars, and planets. Eryn thought airplanes were also far away, and her dad told her that sometimes they were and sometimes they weren’t, and that when they weren’t, they moved too fast to watch with the telescope.

That night, Eryn’s mother took Eryn outside and set up the telescope so they could look at the stars. She said it was best when it was very dark outside, so it was a good night for watching stars because the moon was only a crescent. Dad said, “A croissant moon?”

Mom replied, “No. A croissant is like a French donut. You eat it with breakfast. A crescent is when you can only see a part of the moon, not the whole thing.” And she pointed up where only a part of the moon glowed brightly, but not so bright that it was hard to see the stars.

“I can see stars over our house!” exclaimed Eryn. “And a shooting star!”

“That’s an airplane, honey,” said Eryn’s dad.

“Well, it’s shooting,” insisted Eryn.

“Yes it is,” laughed Dad.

Sandy, Eryn’s dog, wanted to help look at the stars. She sat on the porch, near the chair and table, and wondered when they would get around to looking at the dog star, Sirius, which was in Canis Major. That was Sandy’s favorite group of stars, because it was like a big dog in the sky. Sandy liked to imagine that she was in the sky, chasing all those other stars that looked like birds and cats.



Eryn’s mother pointed the telescope at a bunch of stars in the sky and pointed them out to her, showing her how they twinkled and sparkled. Through the telescope they looked like shiny holiday lights decorating the sky. Without the telescope, they looked like a man with a bow and arrow and a belt. Eryn’s mother said that was because that constellation was Orion, the hunter. A constellation, she said, was a bunch of stars next to each other that looked like something: a man, a swan, a fish, a dog, or even a house. She showed Eryn where Orion’s belt held up his pants, because if he had to hold them up with his hands, then he couldn’t hold his bow and arrow.


After a while, everyone started to get cold and they picked up the telescope and went inside to sit by the fireplace. Eryn thought about the crescent moon and all the stars she had seen.

She thought about the groups of stars that looked like things, the constellations. Like scorpions and crabs and cups and lounging ladies. And she thought about the stars that were so far away and the trees that were not and the airplanes that sometimes were and sometimes were not.

And then she remembered something funny and she ran upstairs to get ready for bed. Mom and Dad came up to tuck her in and asked her why she had such a big smile, a smile so big they could see it in the dark, just by the light from the open door. Eryn snuggled up under her covers and pointed her favorite flashlight at the ceiling where the plastic stars she had glued up glowed in the dark. “Not all stars are far away, Daddy.” She hid the flashlight back under the covers.

“I guess they’re not,” said Eryn’s dad, looking at all the stars she had glued around her room. “Some are very close.”

“But there are still constellations,” Eryn added, pointing to one area of her ceiling. “See that spot? It looks like you and me and Mommy.”

“Why so it does,” said her dad. “So it does.”

“I’m going to call it The Family,” Eryn declared, kissing her parents good night. And with that, she asked them to close the door so that she could watch the stars, now and then, when their light waned, making them glow brighter with her flashlight. She watched them until the flashlight fell out of her hand and she dozed off comfortably under her stars that were under the real stars in the crescent moon sky.

If You Kiss Ass in the Woods and No One is Around to Hear It...

If you work with me, and you watch all the corporate newspeak, you understand exactly how much sucking up reading this book, Humble Pie, entails. It wasn't a book recommended by my boss. Or her boss. Or her boss. Or his boss...wait...maybe his boss, I can't remember the corporate tree well enough to say for sure whether there's an intermediary between that boss and the boss who recommended the book. Although I can say I once took the "lesser" boss (still, three bosses up) for all his chips in an after-work poker tournament, and pilfered his offfice chair when mine wore out, so the verticality isn't as lofty as it could be. Back to the sucking up...it wasn't even recommended in person. It was recommended by company video as a book Boss-to-the-fourth-or-higher really liked.

Unfortunately, it's my least favorite form of book. The personal memoir. I took a course in personal memoir once. Why? Because as someone with a Master's in writing, I felt it might be useful to try my hand at a style of writing I'm pretty sure I suck at - suck in a way that's almost as suck as reading a personal memoir just because a corporate big wig suggested it. I'm not a personal guy. Yes...I have a blog. Yes...I post a LOT of crap on my blog. Yes...if you read it obsessively...god help you...you can probably read enough between the lines and in them to get a somewhat rounded picture of the gestalt that is Scooter. But if you know me, you know that I'm just not that open. Not because I'm closed, but because I don't have that much to be open about, and I'm not really angst-ridden about anything. So if you ask, I'll just tell you straight out what the deal is on pretty much any topic pertaining to my life. Really...don't believe me...pick a topic and ask. I don't go on a bender offering information, but I generally pony up when a friend goes Fisher King. When that's your attitude, your personal memoir skills are pretty much sh*t.

(whoa...a quick aside...that's a big spider next to my face that just dropped off the ceiling in the computer room. If this had been Pooteewheet, this post would have been seriously over!)

So, Humble Pie by Anne Dimock...personal memoir from someone who didn't have enough pie recipies to do a cookbook. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad. The writing is exceptional. It's really good. And if I was one of those writers who likes really good writing without an engaging story, I'd highly recommend it. Or, if I was someone who wanted to make an apple or rhubarb pie. But all those years in Montana eating rhubarb have pretty much burned that out of me. If you LIKE making pie and you LIKE personal memoir, I have no doubt you'll love the book. And if you meet my boss to the fourth (or so) at the company Christmas party, you'll have more to talk about than he and I will (although I can now argue pie with him, if that's what it takes to get ahead).

"Scooter, it's fruit or nothing. Our company has no room for schismatics. You need to be a team player."

"Sir, I have to disagree. If we can't embrace pies like French Silk, the pies of the new generation, we'll never get the niche market share that's driving the micromarketing movement embraced by web 2.0."

"I'm talking about pie, you fool!"

"Really? No metaphor? Sorry, sir. But I think we can create a very valid correlation between banana cream and our online presence."

As a very important addendum, I should note if you like fruit pie, you'll like her book. She's a self-proclaimed pie conservative who feels pumpkin pie is not real pie. Therefore, Mr. Mustard should steer well clear of the book, otherwise he may feel oppressed.

If you're looking for an alternative pie book, Eryn and I prefer this one, Enemy Pie. Any old pie will work as enemy pie if you're trying to fool your kid. The trick is to get him/her to play with said enemy for a day and make nice, while simultaneously leading your kid to believe that the pie really is somehow damaging, perhaps even poisonous, while you eat a great big slice. I'm not quite clear what the long term psychological effects are as that's not addressed in the denouement, but the important thing is your enemy becomes your friend and you get to spend some quality time on his trampoline

Like A Record Baby

Mean Mr. Mustard asked me this morning what I had been up to this weekend, and I replied that it was pretty relaxed. I forgot to add that I spent upwards of 40 minutes or more spinning Eryn around in an office chair, first one way, then the other. I'm going to be in big trouble when she's old enough to go to Valleyfair, because I was getting sick just watching her. At least she was a little queasy spinning when she was on her stomach, so there's hope that I'll be able to avoid the truly gut-churning rides.

For the first several spins, she had me singing You Spin Me Round as I spun and unspun her. I won't subject you to that, and it's just not the same when you can't see me sitting in the background with a purple vellure shirt, eyepatch and teased 80's hair. But after I was done singing, she took the song and made up her own song to almost the same tune...something about Berry Berry Boat Baby. Almost as catchy.

Eryn spinning in the office chair:


Dead or Alive singing You Spin Me Round:

Christopher Moore

I was going to jokingly tell Klund that he should hurry up to the cities this Thursday so he could meet Tad Williams in person at Uncle Hugo's. Maybe he could get one of those books I told him not to read signed.

Then I noticed that Christopher Moore will be at the U of MN bookstore on Friday, March 30, at 7:00 p.m. to discuss "You Suck". Well not as snarky as suggesting an autograph from Tad Williams, it certainly makes much more sense, and has the benefit of being next to a better class of post-reading bar (sorry if that makes me a snob, but I'd rather drink at the U of MN then on Lake Street near Abbott Northwestern). Kevin? Brad? Kyle? Any takers for an outing?

By the way, this tidbit on the U of MN bookstore site is pretty neat:
Signed Copies - Looking for an autographed copy, but can't make the reading? Simply order your book online and we will have the author sign a copy for you.

Vandals!

When we weren't looking, vandals messed with our driveway! I wonder if it was Mean Mr. Mustard.

Asian Week

I'm not going to talk about that whole North Korea no-enriched-uranium (Carpter Bagger Report via the Wege), now they have plutonium weapons, crap, ala our act-first, think-second, executive branch. That's just...just so f-ed I can't stand it.

Instead, I'm going to point you at this piece about why Asians hate Blacks (Generic Heretic) - ala Kenneth Eng. I've never really given any thought to the idea that there might be Asian Supremicists. But there are Black Supremicists (wiki - neutrality disputed), so I guess it makes sense. If you're interested, Asian Supremacy has a stub at Wikipedia that needs an owner (come on, LissyJo, you know you want to p0wn it). Here's an alternate bit at Editor & Publisher. Personally, I take the Shakespearian approach...a racist by any other name is still a racist, who cares who they're racist against, the attitude sucks.

Sleep Positions

Yeah...I don't know what to think either (via The Blotter).

Son of a Bitch - Chipotle Angst

I didn't care about the snow for the most part. Yeah, it's bad, sure I'll have to shovel more and my back is a little tender already, but I knew my car would make it home and that shoveling is just part of the penance for a life of dissolute sin in Minnesota. I did care that my burrito lunch was snowed out, but I consoled myself with the fact that I could pick up a burrito dinner for my family on the way home from work, after all, it adds all of 1/10th of a mile to my drive.


Then this showed up in my mailbox around 2:30 p.m. Heaven. It's like a free burrito, and just because it's crappy and cold out, which is really the best time for a burrito. So I followed the link to the ordering site to place an order for Pooteewheet, Eryn and myself.



Son of a bitch!

That's like...well, it's like all sorts of perverse things that don't end like you hope they're going to end. They not only took away the free burrito, they took away all of the burritos! I'm boycotting. I will not have a burrito from Chipotle today, as a statement of protest.

I would like to add that if I were going to be snowed in someplace, my choice would not be in my house, with my family, where there's a meager selection of canned food if I have to hunker down for the end of times, but at Chipotle, where there's on the order of 1000 chicken burritos if no one is allowed to redeem their 50% off online order. Seriously, if you work there, I can't imagine you're not better off just staying at work and claiming you had to eat the food to stay alive.

Here's my neighborhood Chipotle in some sort of homoerotic, community college, video. I'm not sure if they're targeting a gay audience, or if it's supposed to be funny, but it doesn't ruin Chipotle for me, it just makes it better for Pooteewheet.