Rick’s Rants and Raves

Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting on my back patio, enjoying a beer, when I saw a bird with a massive wing span fly over the park behind my house. I watched for a moment, unaccustomed to seeing such a large bird in my neighborhood, trying to figure out what it was. As it landed on the roof of a house 500 feet from my house, I could tell it was a great blue heron. Unfortunately, it landed on the far side of that house’s roof peak, so I could only glimpse its head twice more  as it bobbed up and down. I told my family what I had seen, and Anne could just see it for a moment from our second floor den.

I decided to grab a camera (and my flip-flops) and try to get some pictures of it. I wasn’t sure what kind of chance I had of getting a shot, but I figured it was worth the short walk. Nathan tagged along, curious, but skeptical.

Nathan: You probably won’t be able to see it.

Me: How do you know that? Isn’t it worth the chance that we will see it?

Nathan: I just think it will already be gone.

Me: It might be, but I definitely won’t see it again if I’m sitting on my butt. Its worth a shot, right?

Nathan: Yeah, I suppose. I just don’t think you’ll find it.

Me: You don’t have to come along, if you’re so sure its gone.

Nathan followed me for about 3 minutes, until we’d looked at the front of the house where the bird had landed, and couldn’t see it. I decided to swing around to the other side of the block, so that I could try to see into the back yard of the house it had landed on. I still couldn’t see it from there, and was heading back home, a little disappointed that I had missed it. I knew it was near by because I could hear other birds chirping their warning calls, but I wasn’t willing to start climbing through back yards without permission.

As I was walking, I saw a man walking to the edge of his back yard with a camera. He saw me with my camera, and with a brief “Do you see it? Can I come into your yard?” I was able to take my first set of shots. A moment later, he flew just a bit out of sight, but was near a yard where I’d seen a lady washing her car.  I took off at a jog to get to her yard, and asked her if I could go in to take some pictures of the heron. She told me that she’d seen it before. I stepped into her yard, and got a few more shots before the heron flew off.

Unfortunately I don’t have a long zoom on my camera, so I’ve had to crop the pictures down a bit to make the heron obvious. In the end though, I’m pleased I got off my butt to go find it.

It was ten minutes until four o’clock, and as I undocked my laptop, I congratulated myself on what was sure to be an on-time arrival at my boss’ desk. He works in a different building than I do, and it is a solid 7 minute walk from my desk to his. I was taking my laptop and my exercise duffel with me so that I didn’t need to come back to my desk after the meeting–I had a cub scout den meeting to lead, and still had not planned the activities. I figured in my spare three minutes, I might even stop for an espresso at the little coffee shop that likes to prey on my coworkers.

As I approached the coffee shop, I realized that I hadn’t noticed whether the meeting was at my boss’ desk, or in a conference room. I grinned as thought how fortunate I was: with my laptop in hand, I’ll go straight to his desk, and be a tan-nosing (not as bad as brown-nosing) 3 minutes early if he’s there, or I’ll have time to check my calendar and find the room and still be on time.

He was not at his desk, so I opened my laptop and waited for it to come out of hibernate. And waited for it to respond after it was booted. At 4PM on the nose, I shut it down cold for a reboot. With my boss still not at his desk by 4:03 (he’s very punctual), I figured I had better call and ‘fess up to missing the room. He didn’t answer, so I assumed he was in another meeting, and would be back to his desk momentarily. Just as my laptop was fully functional, and I was starting Outlook, he called back. “Hey, I’m sorry, but I missed whether you had a room or if we would talk at your desk” was how I answered the phone. “I’m waiting for you in 3F7. It was in the invite.” Ouch. “My apologies. I’m on my way. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Outwardly he wasn’t irritated with my tardiness, and I don’t know him well enough yet to determine how upset he was inwardly. Our meeting went well, and ranged over a broad set of work topics. One of our business VPs had set up a meeting for later this week to introduce our team to one of her new direct reports. I didn’t recognize the name of the person, so when my boss asked “Will you be there?” my response was “If its in my calendar, I’ll be there.”

After what felt like a lifetime, he stifled the near-mocking laughter. “If its in my calendar, I’ll be there” he repeated. He went on to explain that this was something he hated about our corporate culture (and he didn’t blame me personally)–that we were so driven by our calendars, and frequently so overbooked that we had to show up to meetings completely unprepared. Meetings were frequently a room full of people “just winging it”. He suggested that it wasn’t that hard to look a day ahead, and spend a little time preparing. I replied that it was tough to prepare for meetings when we’re booked 6+ hours a day. I didn’t mention that the other two hours are spent in a futile attempt to keep up with the 200 e-mails that flooded in during the meetings.

The rest of our meeting went well, and he showed a lot of respect for my commitment to leaving at 5PM so that I could be a cub scout leader. He wasn’t able to do that when his son was that age–”I had so little free time that I couldn’t commit to it.”

As I walked from the conference room toward my car, I thought about the concept of “winging it” and how it applies to the rest of my life.

• The most obvious and foremost on my mind was my barely pathetic attempts to plan cub scout den meetings for my son and three other boys. I do a little better than “wing it” only because I can prepare most meetings in 10-15 minutes. I’m sure the kids don’t notice. The parents are probably happy to have someone do it at all.
• This past weekend, my wife and I bought a birthday present, card, gift bag and tissue paper on the way to the birthday party for our niece. Yeah, we were winging it. This isn’t the first time we’ve done that.
• Back when we went to church, and it was our turn to help host the coffee-hour, we bought donuts or cookies or whatever on the way to church.
• Evening dinners are a mixed bag for our family. Anne frequently tries to do menu plans, and I appreciate those efforts. If we have a plan for dinner, it usually gets followed. But as often as not, we’ve run out of menu plans and are just winging it. Tonight was tacos, but we didn’t have any lettuce. So I stopped at the store and bought one item–89 cents of lettuce. When was the last time I’d been to the grocery store? Last night.
• Last week we tore up the carpet from our stairs, hallway and bedroom. Preparation time for undertaking this task? 10 seconds — “Hey, you wanna pull up the carpet today?” “Uh, yeah, sure.” Rip.
• I haven’t seen Scott in weeks. Why? I call him at 8PM and say “Wanna get a beer?” and he has, not surprisingly, other commitments.

I’m sure there are other examples, but I’m just winging this blog post, so it isn’t fully fleshed out.

My life feels like I’m constantly winging it. For the most part, it works out OK. But how much better would it be if I actually spent a little time to prepare more than 10 minutes into the future? The odd part is, I feel some anxiety over putting events on my calendar. How do I know I can keep that commitment? What if something comes up? This weekend Anne and I tried to talk about planning my birthday party–and it was uncomfortable talking about an event 2-3 weeks in the future. Maybe that’s a good sign that I’ve got too much on my calendar.

As I approached the parking lot where my car was parked, I realized there was a fatal flaw in my plan to leave at 5PM–I had left my car keys on my desk.

A coworker, Kevin, had a really sweet motherboard that he no longer had a use for, so he sold it to Cracker (not his real name), another coworker, for a bargain-basement $40. Cracker returned it to Kevin the next day because it had bent pins in the CPU socket, and Kevin graciously assumed that the pins were bent when he gave it to Cracker. The three of us toyed around with trying to straighten the pins, but ultimately agreed that we wouldn’t be willing to risk damaging a CPU in that socket.

These guys know that I’ve dabbled in  “techno craft“–they’ve seen my previous projects: hard drive clocks, digital picture frames, hard drive mirrors, etc.  Passive-aggressive Cracker has an idea…

Cracker: Could you make a clock out of it?

Me: Absolutely. That wouldn’t be too difficult at all.

Cracker: That’d be great! I’d really love a motherboard clock.

Me: Fabulous! I’ll sell it to you for only $40.

Cracker: But my birthday is coming up…

Me: Congratulations!

Cracker: A motherboard clock would be a sweet birthday present.

Me: Let your friends know they could buy it from me for only $40.

And so we bantered back and forth like this for a while. A day or two later, Cracker writes on my white board, in my “to do” list, “make clock for [Cracker] b-day“. So, I finally made the clock. I really hope he likes it.

You may be wondering, how can I make such a cool motherboard clock myself? Here’s what you need to do.

1. Get a motherboard
2. Using a bowl or other round object, trace a circle on a file folder. Cut out the circle.
3. Label the hours on the clock using your favorite marker.
4. Cut clock hands from the folder. Color with your favorite marker.
5. Punch a hole in the center of the clock face and each of the hands. Put a brad through all three and bend back the legs.
6. Use tape to attach the clock to the motherboard.

Now you have your very own motherboard clock. All your friends will be amazed at your craftiness.

This weekend, Nathan and I participated in the “Scout Night with the Crew”, and I’ll start my description of the event at the end. As Nathan and I were walking off the Crew Stadium field this morning, he said “These were the best two days of my life.”

OK, now back to the beginning. Our council organized an event available scouts of all ages to participate in a Crew game, autograph session, camping overnight, breakfast and a “soccer demonstration”.

When we got to the stadium, we set up our tent in a nice grassy area, and then had a little time to kill. Nathan played on the playground, and in a couple of inflatable activities. The wind was blowing so hard that some of the activities never got fully inflated. We ate some dinner, then prepared to go on the field for the opening ceremony. Having never been at the Crew stadium, this was a fabulous experience, with fireworks, streamers, and a t-shirt canon filled with mini-soccerballs. The crowd in the Nordecke was completely insane. We then ascended to our seats to watch the Crew win 3-2 over the Kansas City Wizards.

After the game, Nathan and I were nearly first in line for the autograph session. We ended up in the line for Andy Iro, who signed Nathan’s new shirt. Since I didn’t have anything for him to sign, I picked up one of the pictures he was signing.

After autographs came a movie on the “big screen”–Inspector Gadget. Nathan enjoyed the movie, which was pleasantly short at 78 minutes. I was more interested in trying to get a picture of the trash under the seats.

We climbed into our tent around 11:30PM, and tried to fall asleep. For me, this was the worst part of the event–trying to sleep with a ton of light all around (I don’t know when they finally turned off the stadium lights), a freeway 100 yards away, and birds that started chirping at 3AM. Getting out of the sleeping bag at 6AM to pack up was actually a relief.

It was a beautiful morning, and we were allowed to wander the stadium a bit. The Crew catering staff served us fruit and french toast, juice and coffee. Then we went to the “soccer demonstration and Q&A”. I really didn’t expect much since I figured they wouldn’t want 300 scouts and parents trampling the field. It started with an informal Q&A with Andy Gruenebaum, Adam Moffat and Andy Iro. Then, much to my suprise, they invited everyone on to the field, where they split the scouts into three groups. Nathan first went to a goal tending session with Andy Gruenebaum. Next was “passing” with Adam Moffat. Finally, Andy Iro worked on teamwork. As Andy, who is from England, was talking with the scouts about scouting, he was shocked to learn that they were able to learn how to use firearms. I called out “This is America man!” which got a big laugh from the crowd.

After we all said thank you to the players for their time,  I was able to grab a shot of Nathan with each player.

As Nathan and I were walking off the Crew Stadium field this morning, he said “These were the best two days of my life.” Absolutely buddy, absolutely.