A picture is worth a thousand words

I just came across a post that I never finished. As I wrote it I began the process every good journalist (remember, I am not a journalist, I just play one on the web) should do; fact checks.

I was disturbed to find out that the humorous tales I learned in my business classes at WMU were either completely false, or at least under suspicion. *sigh* Can't anything be on the up and up any more? Not that I want to live in Mayberry with Sheriff Taylor, but come on people! A little straight forwardness and honesty, is that too much to ask? But I digress...

Point is, I liked my original idea for a story, and who can resist an opportunity to brag about their kids? The "business tales" I will leave for you to decide.

8/27/2008 I wrote:
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A colleague of mine was commenting on this great picture we have of our five month old daughter with a big bright smile on her face. She said, "Wow, looks like you have a Gerber baby there!". This brought to mind the picture on the front of all Gerber products and I remembered a funny thing we learned in a business class I took at the Haworth College of Business here at WMU.

Gerber baby in a jar: In South Africa the literacy rate is very low, so most products have a picture of the containers contents on its label. Wanting to understand why it's hugely successful line of baby food was not selling well internationally, Gerber flew some executives to Africa. They were informed that no one would buy a jar of ground up babies...Gerber as you may know, is famous for having a picture of a cute baby face on its labels!

Nova = "No go": Chevy took its successful Nova model to Mexico where sales were beyond abysmal. When they investigated further they discovered that the name Nova quite literally means "No go" in Spanish. They changed the name to Caribe and sales took off.
Note: This one is under a bit of scrutiny and Snopes.com lists this tale as "False", although I think their supporting argument is a little suspect and the fact that this tale was in my Business 4200 textbook leads me to believe it. Plus, it's too funny to dismiss!)

John Deere adultery hat: In Asia there is an idiom that translates roughly to "I wear a green hat", which means that you cheat on your spouse. John Deere has found that their hats sell better in white, or yellow. Anything but green!
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If the stories are true or not, I find it interesting that they appear in college text books. I seem to find myself frequently using web sites like snopes.com to check things of this nature. It seems to be pretty reliable, although you can't blindly trust any one site, and some of their supporting arguments seem suspect to me.

I do find Snopes to be effective at debunking the e-mail rumors and virus alerts that seem so prevalent these days. I once briefly believed an e-mail sent to me with a picture of a 27' Aligator that was taken out of a local river in my home town. Very realistic with pictures and references to real places, people, and newspapers. I double checked in Snopes, and sure enough the length was exaggerated (largest 'gator ever recorded was under 20') and the photo was taken in Texas somewhere. Seems there are several versions of this e-mail sent around, customized to your local area, in an effort to get you to forward to all of your friends. This gives the creator access to your e-mail address book and the ability to spread viruses. Crazy people...

So, when it comes to the stories you have heard here, you be the judge. I just wouldn't recommend that you wear your green hat on your next visit to Japan.

http://semicoherentramblingsofamadman.blogspot.com/

The fine art of umbrella purchasing

So today has been "one of those days" for me. I love that phrase because everyone just read that and went, "Ahh, I know exactly what you mean. I am having 'one of those days' myself" even though you can't possibly know what I mean. But I digress...

I woke this morning with a lovely chest cold to kick off the day. Then the dark clouds rolled in as I fed the dog and got myself ready for work. After Joe Namath’ing through the morning (This is a term I now use in place of the word 'struggling'. For clarification see the video of Joe Namath drunk on the sidelines of a Jet's game, trying to make out with sideline reporter Suzie Kolber, and struggling to pronounce the word 'struggling'. The video can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gc65NC44dSk) I decided to hit the pharmacy for some cold meds.

I ventured to the parking lot with my cheap WMU logo umbrella and started toward my car through a down poor. As I opened Old Faithful, the nickname given my trusty umbrella of several years, I was greeted with a dreadful sound. SPROING! My shield from Mother Nature virtually exploded, and I was left holding the shaft in one hand and the umbrella in the other while springs and pieces clanked to the ground. Not what I needed right then.

I went to the local haberdashery to procure myself a replacement for Old Faithful, and I found the beautiful model pictured above. This baby has a graphite shaft, a two layered canopy for precipitation protection, an ergonomic grip, AM/FM tuner, GPS, espresso maker and it glows in the dark. Ok, so I embellished some of that, but compared to my broken down poor excuse for an umbrella now lying in pieces on the cold dark pavement, this thing was awesome!

I knew I had picked the correct umbrella the first time I opened it after leaving the store. I was a bit perplexed at first when I pushed the blinking red button to deploy the canopy and nothing happened. Then I realized I had forgotten to release the second, yes second strap holding the thing together. After remedying this, I held on tight and braced myself for the show.

FffffwwwwhaaaaBuuuuush!!!!!!! (Read: overly dramatic sound of an umbrella opening in slow motion. I think that is how you spell that sound, although it is not listed in Merriam-Webster. Useless). This thing is awesome. I have to admit I may be easily impressed as Old Faithful was purchased for a specific need, that being I was a broke college student who needed something that was cheap and would fit in my book bag. My new umbrella seems so huge by comparison. I almost felt compelled to use it to shuttle poor umbrella-less saps to their vehicles, or find a small family to gather under my new mobile shelter.

So, my new umbrella should last me a while. If not, it is covered by a very comprehensive bumper to bumper warranty. 10 years or 100k miles, whichever comes first. I hope that my experience has helped you in your quest to find shelter against the storm.

Menagerie

Since I started this blog I have been focusing on quality over quantity. Sometimes it is hard to stay politically correct and keep from offending someone, and this narrows my choice of topics to "burn on" (to steal a phrase made popular by T.V.'s Jim Rome).

Having said that, here is a list of things I am thinking about right now, in no particular order and in no way related to anything other than random thoughts floating in my head.

Yesterday I was accosted at MIS by GropeZilla. The whole incident was caught on tape by my friend who was trying to capture a posed pic of me in front of the Dale Earnhardt Jr. merchandise trailer. I was just goofing off with a funny pose in front of a huge picture of Dale, when from out of nowhere I feel someone come from behind and mount me! We are fond of such silliness in my family and group of friends so my first thought brought to mind my brother trying to sneak into the pic. As such I began to reach down to grab hold and complete the pose. Providence stepped in just before I grabbed a handful, because I had looked up and noticed that all members of my party were present and accounted for in front of me. Hmmmm.

As I turned around I noticed that a women had made the best of an opportunity to make her friends, and subsequently my whole group, almost die of laughter. Thank god I did not grab hold. As luck would have it, when I handed my camera to my friend I had left it on movie mode, so the whole thing was captured on a 20 sec youtube worthy clip. Thanks must go out to my wife who quite calmly muttered under her breath after seeing the clip, and did not try to track down GropeZilla. Honey, I love you. Thanks also to dad for a great day!

I can not believe the summer is almost over! Where did time go? I guess hours of watching my daughter saturate herself with slobber while trying to master the "motor boat sound" has made time fly by. This past Saturday I had the opportunity to return to a class held at the hospital for prospective dads. This time I was the "veteran" returning in glorious fashion to regale the wide eyed group of newbies with tales of meconium, afterbirth, epidurals and other things that would make most young men queasy.

It was a lot of fun to share my experience and answer questions as a respected member of the dad community. They hung on my every word as I remembered how I felt only a few short months ago when I was in their seat. I assured them that the head would not fall off when they picked baby up (one of my irrational fears as a newbie) and told them they would get through this just fine. Emily screeched and fused the whole time, so I am not sure how effective my message was, but it was fun none the less...

Is it a good thing or a bad thing that social networking software such as Facebook exists? I am on the fence. I am a late adopter (I only started because I had to give a presentation on it at the library, so I would have felt hypocritical to teach it without using it). I like some of the features, for example I just last night discovered a long lost high school friend, but it also has some drawbacks.

Advertising, the double edged sword. Your page is farmed for keywords, your birth date and gender provide key demographic info, your likes and interests page make you all too easy to target. Yet, without these advertisers willing to pay top dollar for this market research that is worth its weight in gold, things like Facebook would not be free and probably would not exist.

Another disturbing trend that I am almost against (read: I will apply it to others but object to it being applied to me) is the use of Facebook as a pre-job interview discovery tactic. Today, a student inquired about an open position I have. So I "Facebooked" him. He is a friend of a former student I had employed and I got the skinny on him. No need to interview him. It is a bold new world we live in!

Life is worth living

Awe. Here comes the soft side. Look out, I'm about to get all mushy.

During the first couple of months of my daughters life I experienced almost every emotion a human can go through. I was happy, excited, hopeful, giddy and all of those 'good' emotions. Believe it or not, I also had a healthy dose of nervous, sad, worried, apprehensive and anxious.

It is hard to put into words the roller coaster that you go through from the time your wife tells you that she is pregnant to that precious moment that your first child takes her first breath. Personally, I was a wreck. I was happy to see her, but scared that I would do something wrong and let her down while raising her. I was hopeful for a long life of happiness with my small family, but I was nervous that we were in for a long tough road ahead.

The first few weeks of my daughters life were some of the most challenging I have faced in years. Finishing finals during my senior year of college was nothing compared to trying to calm and sooth a screaming baby with colic. It was a very nerve racking and trying time for both my wife and I. Yet from the challenge breaks a new dawn. Tonight I realized as I sat watching my wife spoon feed "big girl" food (banana flavored oatmeal) to my beautiful baby girl that we have become closer and more fulfilled as a family than ever before.

I am not proficient enough with words to describe how it feels to have that beautiful bundle of joy look at you and smile when you catch her attention. I now know why I was put on this earth, and I feel like now I have finally accomplished something that will make a difference in this world. When I am gone, my impact on this planet will continue on. Her happiness is worth all of the struggles I have ever faced, and at the same time makes my troubles seem so trivial.

Not Dead Yet...

'Tech' is a four letter word to most. Microsoft does nothing to make it easier to digest. In the past year or so they have released into the wild their new operating system for PC's, Windows Vista. This has been meet with much resistance, prompting many to demand that Windows XP be given a stay of execution.

While XP is not dead yet, understand that the end is near. I recently 'upgraded' a PC for someone from Vista to XP (MS calls that a downgrade, but that is a matter of opinion), only to find that new hardware is manufactured for Vista only, and not compatible with XP. This person was stuck between a rock and a hard place because her children's large collection of beloved games and educational software was not Vista compatible. We had to change the hardware on a brand new machine just to install XP.

Alas, the industry evolves. It was the same thing when XP was first announced (although I think the growing pains were eased by the fact that XP replaced arguably the worst operating system ever created called Windows ME). Since its introduction XP has become the most stable and prominent operating system out there, which explains why people are woe to move away from it.

All good things come to an end, and whether you believe MS is just pushing Vista to make money, or this is the next step in the evolution of computing, the fact is you can't stop it. Eventually at some point you will either have to buy new hardware or upgrade to Vista for some new software you need that does not work with XP (or, ***shudder***, switch to Mac or Linux).

In the mean time take heart in the fact that XP is still supported with updates and technicians through the year 2014. If you are contemplating buying a new PC though, your option to get XP on it is fast running out. Jan 2009 is the end of all retail sales for XP, and most places have already stopped selling any new hardware that is XP compatible.

If you are considering Vista, make sure it works with all of your software and peripherals (printers, scanners, cameras, etc. Assume anything manufactured before 2007 is not Vista ready). From what I understand, most of the kinks have been worked out of Vista and it should prove to be a good OS in the long run. Just make sure you have plenty of RAM and can live without your old software/hardware.

Remember, there are techies like me out there who enjoy this stuff because we can charge large amounts of money to fix it! Hey, diapers are expensive people!