Making it Work

Making it work takes a little longer;
Making it work takes a little time;
Making it work takes a little longer;
Making it work takes a little time...

Doug & the Slugs, 1982

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Recently, we switched the cable, internet and phone provider for our house. I am a little embarrassed to say that the process created a surprising amount of stress in my life. (Must be a pretty nice life, right?)

It got me thinking about a few things.

I started my career as a programmer years and years ago. In High School, I first learned about computing using punch cards. In University, it was languages like COBOL and Fortran and JCL. During my co-op work terms, I was programming chips, writing command-line processors, and even tinkering with machine-level techniques (writing Assembly language code, re-routing system interrupts...) to make DOS do crazy tricks.

It took a long time and a lot of effort to make those "early" computers do what you might believe to be laughably simple today. And when one encountered a bug, it could be days and even weeks of digging through bytes and bytes of dumped data to find the problem.

Eventually, it was always possible to find a solution. Sometimes, you didn't know why the solution worked, but it did and you would carefully document what you had done, cross your fingers that the fix (or workaround) would keep working, and move on.

Then all that machine-level stuff - having become relatively stable - would be neatly encased within higher-level languages, function calls, APIs, objects (etc.) so that no-one would ever have to re-write it and things would keep working. The low-level stuff became a construct we could count on.

And of course, that's the legacy inherited by everything that relies on computing today. Including the cable and internet in my house: Constructs within constructs that tend to work.

In the course of switching my house over from one cable/internet/phone provider to the other, some of the stuff that was working stopped working: My television could no longer connect to the internet so that I could use it to watch Netflix; My phone stopped being able to tell me when somebody left a message on it; TV shows would intermittently freeze for no reason; Network passwords changed and kept getting lost; My beloved TV channels were all over the place without any meaningful connection to where they used to be; And so on.

To get on top of it, I had to fix a bunch of micro things that I hadn't had to touch since the original provider had installed their equipment. My constructs were under siege!  

Observation #1: When stuff you count on stops working, even minor stuff, it is very very stressful. And when you change what's working, or change is thrust upon you, it inevitably stops working for a while (or it at least stops working the way it used to). It is far easier not to change, even if the end-state will leave you better than you were. 

Extrapolation #1: When change isn't a choice, the stress is worse.



Now in the case of my provider switch, MAKING IT WORK took a bit longer, took a bit of time...but a few weeks later, everything had pretty much reverted to normalcy...except some TV channels were still occasionally freezing.

We called in the technician.

The technician wasn't an idiot. He seemed like a nice and very intelligent guy. His training told him that when some TV channels freeze, try switching the cable box for another one. If that doesn't work, try switching the modem for another one. If that doesn't work, try switching the cables themselves, and the cable connectors. If that doesn't work, try switching the cable box again. And again. And again.

The technician sat in front of my family room TV for 4.5 hours working his way through 7 cable boxes (the first 3 were refurbished and the next 4 were brand new). He never once opened a cable box to see if something was wrong inside. He didn't tinker with any code. He didn't call another technician. The cable box was a construct for him. It worked or it didn't work. If it didn't work, it was broken.

I remember a few years ago one of the PC manufacturers started "fixing" your laptop's problems by sending you a new one. Presumably, that was a far easier, far less expensive solution than trying to actually find out why something was going wrong. We all lauded the manufacturer for their amazing customer service.

Other technology companies started doing the same thing, and today I'm guessing most of them do. I think, for example, that smart phone manufacturers will give you a new phone when something goes wrong with your old one rather than trying to fix the old one (if it's still under warranty, that is). Clearly, the cable/internet/phone providers have embraced the same service model.

Great when it works. Frustrating and pretty silly when it doesn't.

At around 11:00 pm, I put on my programmer hat and engaged the technician in a brief dialog about what else might be going on (beyond an amazing streak of broken cable boxes). Within 5 minutes we had hypothesized that maybe my TV's Netflix-enabling internet connection was conflicting with the cable box's internet connection. Within 10 minutes we had proven that to be the case and had found a work-around (connect the cable box first, then connect the TV). It may keep working. It may stop working again. The technician and I are both crossing our fingers.

Observation #2: We come to rely on our constructs.  When they stop working, we don't particularly feel like expending the effort to look inside and find out what's wrong. Sometimes, it doesn't even occur to us to do so.

Extrapolation #2: Change sometimes puts our constructs in jeopardy. Making them work again might take a little time and effort, including looking inside, but it is entirely possible.

So now, if you're still with me, I have a few questions for you:

• What change in your life is currently undermining one or more of your carefully protected constructs? Are you recognizing the stress that change is creating for you, understanding where it's coming from, and accepting that the stress is perfectly okay? 
• If you are stressing about a change, are you able to identify what constructs might be under siege? Can you see them for what they are (carefully created layers of solutions upon solutions that you stopped challenging long ago) and somehow muster the energy to look inside them to see what's no longer working?
• Are you willing to invest the time and effort to make it all work again?

Just because the technology companies have adopted a customer service model that says if something is broken just replace it with one that works, doesn't mean we should. To me, that's a dangerous construct that renders things (relationships? careers? people?) disposable once they stop working.

And that, dear friends, is my attempt at a little wisdom on this cold and miserable morning. 

The Little Sister

Once there was a little girl with two much older sisters.

When she was born, her sisters were
very excited to bring her into the family.









The little girl loved her sisters very, very much and hoped that she could be like them one day.

Her oldest sister was a world famous musician. She could make wonderful music from just about any instrument and people paid lots and lots of money to hear her play.


The little girl wanted to be a musician too.

 

The other sister was a supermodel and superhero, whose many heroic deeds and trend-setting fashion sense brought her fame and fortune worldwide.



The little girl wanted to be a supermodel superhero too, and see the world.

But as she grew older, she discovered that

...she didn't have her oldest sister's musical talent,

...she wasn't nearly glamorous enough for fashion,

...and nobody took her seriously as a superhero.



So instead she tried to be other things to impress her sisters.
...a plumber

...a ballerina

...a chef

...a pirate

...a figure skater

...a cowgirl

...and a gymnast.

She even tried joining the army.






But none of those things fit.

So the little girl made wishes and prayed for guidance.

And one day the answer came.

 "I'm a pretty darn good little sister. For now, that's more than enough..."

"...but later, when I'm older, I'll be a princess and lock the two of them away in my castle forever."

THE END

The Snowman

On a cool January late-afternoon, a father and his young daughter discovered that the conditions outside were (finally!) perfect for playing in the snow. Without a moment's hesitation, they threw on their winter coats, snow pants, scarves, gloves and hats, and made a dash for the door.

The sky was just showing hints of the evening to come, it was cool but not cold, snowflakes fell with no hint of menace, and the week's ample deposit of powder had just turned the corner to packability.

They helped each other over the driveway's carefully shoveled white bulwark and dove onto the snowy lawn, which until that moment had been pristine and untouched. Lying on their backs and flapping their arms, they formed an angel daddy and an angel daughter. And then like all snow angel makers, they struggled (and failed) to stand back up without damaging their work.

As they stood there comparing their imperfect creations, the daughter flung a small handful of snow at her dad. He playfully returned fire, but missed wide and right. She threw another handful, and dad dropped to the ground in feigned agony. She waddled over while he lay there, fell on top of him, and gently dropped another concealed handful onto his face.

A few more minutes in the front yard, and all traces of untrampled, unrolled-in, and unflung snow were gone. It was time to move to the back of the house so they could build a snowman.

With light draining from the day, they surveyed the large and blank canvass behind the house. As if worried that too many boot prints would somehow spoil the scene, they tiptoed out to the middle of the lawn and began to form the snowman's base, torso, and head. After stacking the three sections together, smoothing the surface, and patching imperfections with more snow, they stepped back to consider their next move. The body they had formed certainly looked snowman-like, but without facial features, clothes and accessories, it was just a pile of snow.

In the shed, they found two large green garden tees and carefully inserted them into the snowman's face. Some scavenged red and green beads became his mouth and buttons. And after trying for several minutes to secure a perfectly nose-like stone, they instead took a plastic carrot nose and other parts (scarf and pipe) from the snowman-making kit they had bought last spring on clearance.

The finishing touch was a simple, black work cap, turned to the side.

And now standing before them was a short and funny, obviously happy little guy.

The dad snapped a picture of his daughter and the snowman, and they went in for dinner (just the two of them, not the snowman).

 
-----------------

The weather turned brutal overnight: Blinding snow, freezing rain, and high winds conspired to coat the world in ice.



But the snowman stoically weathered the storm: Despite being half-buried and completely ice-crusted, he kept on smiling.

His wide green eyes seemed to stare expectantly, awaiting the return of the girl and her father who had lovingly formed him the night before.



But it was a school day, and a work day, and nobody came.

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Days passed and the bitter cold turned into unseasonable warmth. The dad concentrated on trying to get the thawing but still thick ice off the driveway and out of the eavestrough. His daughter played inside where it wasn't wet and slushy.

The snowman stood where he was - looking lonely and a little concerned, but smiling nonetheless.

At night, his eyes were cast on the inside of the house as occasionally a shadow would move across the kitchen blinds, or the top of someone's head would appear in the upstairs window. The lights would go on and off throughout the day. But still nobody came.

Once... a squirrel on a dash across the lawn paused for a moment to see if his nose was food. But it wasn't, so he kept on running.

And some more days passed.

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Yesterday...just yesterday...the man and his daughter were eating dinner and the talk turned to the weather. Suddenly they both remembered their little friend in the backyard. With great trepidation they opened the patio door and turned on the light...

...they didn't like what they saw.


How lonely he must have been in his silent vigil behind the house.

How neglected he must have felt, after being left alone to melt.

How disappointed he must have been that nobody said goodbye...




Now....

This is the story of a pile of cold water, some beads, a hat, a scarf, a plastic carrot and a plastic pipe.

There is nothing to feel bad about.

The hat wasn't lonely. The beads didn't feel anything.  There was nothing to say goodbye to except some water.

But the little girl cried.

Children know that something is lost when a snowman melts. Children cherish things they create and the time it takes to create them. Children can give life to things with their imaginations.

And parents who can see the world through their children's eyes - even if it's only every now and then - can remember what that feels like.

The girl's father didn't cry for the snowman, but he chokes up at the thought that someday she won't cry for such things anymore.

In My Day...

Given that we're well into the first month of the year-long celebration of my 50th year on this planet, it's high time that I share some of my curmudgeonly thoughts with all of you. In today's post I angrily reflect on how the world has changed since I was a youngster in stretch polyester pants, happily playing hopscotch in the schoolyard with the other hep kids:

In my day...

• Stretch polyester pants were considered hep. And hep people used words like "hep" to describe activities like playing hopscotch and wearing polyester pants.
• Brownies were young Girl Guides, not squares - and they were hep, not square. No one would talk of hash brownies because hash was "a dish consisting of diced meat, potatoes and spices" and this made no sense when referring to young Girl Guides (and those few times when we referred to the brownies that were square treats with nuts, even the thought of hash brownies would be a complete gross-out, which used to be a hep term for such things by the way). Hash tags were labels that we would put on dishes consisting of diced meat, etc. Or they were pound signs, which just meant "number", as in #1 or #2.
• Birds twittered and tweeted. People who tweeted were locked away.
• Corduroy pillows made headlines, not 'celebrities' who were famous for nothing more than being famous. Crooked politicians resigned or were impeached. Mayors were the face of the city, even if they sometimes needed help from superheroes like Batman and Superman (whom they would call in to capture bag guys that did bad things like lying to the city, using drugs, or threatening others with violence). Political correctness wasn't an oxymoron, nor was it something we were all responsible for.
• Global warming was what Coke commercials did. And coke was something everybody did, but they drank it and it was good. And it had calories and caffeine. And people sang about it on a hill in hippie clothes. And they either didn't wear deodorant while doing so, or they sprayed it (which is why global warming is what it is today).
• Visible butt cracks were the domain of plumbers and carpenters. Thongs were things you wore on your feet - and today's thongs were called g-strings and they were only worn by exotic dancers (and occasionally plumbers and carpenters, which wasn't okay then but is now). Rubbers were used to erase mistakes, not prevent them.
• People were sometimes awful and mean and ignorant and racist and sexist and homophobic and that was bad. But most of them weren't able to spew their badness on the masses (just the people who had direct contact with them). And people weren't anonymous. And they didn't carry cameras. And they were free to make a mistake (like exposing their butt crack) and then put it behind them. (Get it? Get it?)
• Toronto sports teams weren't very good. Oh, wait.
• Ice cream was good for you (it had milk in it, which was also good for you). Yogurt was for hippies. Food wasn't organic, unless you grew it yourself - which was easier to do because of all the great pesticides and fertilizers you could buy at the store. Nobody (who was alive) had a life-threatening allergy to anything, especially peanut butter.
• Forget seat belts - we didn't even have seat belts in some cars and in all back seats. And even if there were seat belts in the back seat, we wouldn't need them because we were lying on the floor or sitting on our parents' laps up front. And air bags were the people who talked a lot. And they'd distract drivers by talking to them a lot from the passenger seat. Which would cause accidents. Which without air bags and seat belts were pretty serious always. But not being allergic to peanut butter compensated.
• There were only 10 or 11 TV channels. There was nothing on, but it only took a quick glance at the TV Guide to know that. If something good was on, we all watched it. All of us. And then we talked about it the very next day because if you missed it, you could never ever see it again.

Wow, this is surprisingly easy (I don't think that's a good sign). I guess I'll need a second installment to get it all said. So until the next "In My Day...", enjoy yours. Harrumph.

Getting to Know Your Nonno

Yesterday would have been my Father-in-Law's 79th birthday.
 
My youngest daughter's middle-name honours him, but she will never have the chance to get to know him. So my intention here is to give her a just a glimpse of the man he was. This is addressed to her...

Your Nonno made time for people.

Let me start with his funeral. I don't remember all of the details of the funeral home and the visitation period, but I do remember seeing vast crowds of people come to pay their respects. There were the people I knew (of course), the people the rest of the family knew (of course), and then there were scores of people that we didn't know at all. These strangers (to us) all knew your Nonno. They all had stories to tell about meeting him in the mall, on the street, at the gas station, in the grocery store, ... That's because unlike most people, your Nonno not only liked to meet people, he loved to engage them. He made time for people. He made them smile and he made them laugh. He was so engaging, and hard to resist, that a simple meeting became a lasting relationship.

Your Nonno appreciated the little things.

I remember warm summer days, sitting on his back porch after a brief game of bocci, your Nonno and I would be sitting at his patio table eating something from the garden and playing scopa or briscola (Italian card games at which he'd love to beat me). He'd look up with a glint in his eye and say something like "I'm very rich. I have good food and a nice house. I have a beautiful family. What else do I need?" And he always meant it. To look in his face was to see what true contentment looks like. You will rarely find someone who is as completely satisfied with life as your Nonno was. He genuinely appreciated the little things.

Your Nonno was selfless.

Nonno used to buy lottery tickets. Not because he wanted vast sums of money for himself, but because he wanted to be able to give vast sums of money to the rest of us. One Saturday night, he dutifully checked his numbers and saw that he'd won millions (he actually hadn't, there was some sort of glitch on the news channel he watched and they had the wrong numbers). Apparently, by the morning he had planned out how he was going to give all of the money away to all of us. I like to think that amongst all of that benefactoring, he would have kept enough money for himself to buy the truck he always wanted, but I wouldn't put it past him to save that for his next big lottery win.

Your Nonno cared.

I've told this story many times before - including in the words I spoke at your baby naming ceremony when I talked about the man behind your middle-name - but I want to tell it one more time...

The first time I attended a Catholic mass with your Nonno, he (of course) sat next to me. This was pretty soon after I first met him, and long before your Mom and I were married. Because of my religious beliefs, I didn't kneel when it came time to do so. Stealing an uncomfortable glance around the Church, I saw that I was pretty much the only person there not kneeling. Then looking to my right I saw that your Nonno had decided that he too would take a pass on kneeling just then, so that I would feel a little less out of place. If I could show you the look on his face that moment as he knowingly nodded at me, you would see what it looks like to truly care about someone else.

Your Nonno loved life.

Whatever he did, whatever time of day it was, your Nonno enjoyed himself: Eating, for sure - he loved a good meal more than anyone I've ever met; after the meal, when we were making "a nice 'deegest'" by playing bocci, or going for a walk; whenever his grandkids were anywhere near him (except when they cried, but then his anger was always directed at the nearest adult - never the child); when he was teaching me to plant a tree, or water the garden, or peel a grilled pepper - and I was failing miserably... Whatever he did, whenever it was, he always had a smile on his face and - very, very often - his telltale baritone chuckle infusing the space around him with joy.

Your Nonno would have adored you.

It goes without saying that your Nonno would have adored you, as we all do. What makes me sad is that you won't be able to experience that adoration first hand. Your sisters and cousins will tell you that nobody gave a hug like Nonno. He was a giant teddy bear. He was their protector. He was their playmate. And he took pride in absolutely everything they did.

When I see you eating a meal in your undershirt, or complaining that your socks aren't comfortable, or giggling in the chuckling way that your Nonno did, I see echos of him in you. You carry his name and his blood. I hope you'll learn what you can from how he lived his life as well, and honour his memory by trying to be the kind of person he was. Make time for people. Appreciate the little things. Be selfless. Care. Love life.

Love, your Dad and a grateful Son-in-Law.