Solution in Desperate Need of a Problem

I saw this (sadly very real) commercial while we were out of town for Christmas and it caused me to blow red wine out of my nose at the five second mark.  

If you decide to watch all two minutes, though, you should come away with the definite feeling that there is very little overlap between folks that a) have the ability to earn and collect achievements and awards and b) need this thing at all.

Perfection Through Incompetence (Part II)

(Continued from Part I)

So now you have a basic framework for why I volunteered to be the go-to guy for this year's Angel Tree effort at work.  My job would have been to get 15 tags from the Salvation Army, give them out to sub-coordinators, wait a few weeks, then collect and deliver the bags, but I wanted to see how the whole thing was run from beginning to end.  Getting the tags and waiting around is just the middle part of this process.

The Salvation Army is always looking for volunteers to do this and that so it was no surprise to me when the local rep told me they needed people to "process applications".  I said "Cool. Sign me up." and picked a two-hour shift from the available times.  I figured I would be sifting through a pile of paper or electronic forms in some back room somewhere.

No.

I showed up at the local SA and stood outside with a crowd of other folks waiting to get in - the door was locked.  After a few minutes someone recognized me through the glass and showed me in to the gymnasium.  The door was promptly relocked.

The gym floor was divided into three sections by tarps and dilapidated wooden equipment shelves.   The first section contained 140 folding chairs and was where the interviewees could sit and fill out their paper applications.  The second section, behind the tarp, was where after-school kids could play basketball or whatever until someone came to get them.  The third section is where people like me would be interviewing people and approving or disapproving their applications on a case-by-case basis.

After a short training session the doors were unlocked and we (the interviewers) were sent off to our tables.  Most of the other SA employees there were clustered around socializing - there really wasn't much for them to do except hand out the occasional clipboard or write a name on a list.  They were just doing what any close group of co-workers would do during their downtime, but I am not quite sure what they were doing there in the first place or why six of them were needed to do it.

We (I and the other interviewer) had both come directly from work and were dressed as such. Way, way overdressed for the job of looking over hopeful applicant's paperwork and pawing through birth certificates, social security cards, letters of Power of Attorney, gas bills, and whatever other evidence these sometimes-clearly-sometimes-not-so-clearly needy folks had to present to be allowed the chance of getting a couple of new shirts or a winter coat or a cheap RC car for their kid(s).

I felt like a 1930‘s banker.  I felt like a fraud.

As I would peruse these documents some folks were obviously embarrassed to be going through this.  They were nervous and sad and would spontaneously go into great detail about why they were there as I was going down my checklist.  Some of the stories were truly heartbreaking - especially ones involving the newly born or the newly departed. It was plain the person just wanted someone to sit and listen to them for a while.  2011 has been a hard year for a lot of people.

That said, for every one of these terrified and nearly apologetic applicants that I saw, four would come through that were deadened or otherwise ambivalent to the process, and one other would come through vocally annoyed that there was a process at all - this  program was their God-given right, after all.

For what it's worth, I didn't turn away or recommend against anyone being helped during my shift.  I mean, even if someone didn’t demonstrate the proper level of need (they all did, FWIW), who the hell am I?  I’ll tell you who - I am just some overdressed jackass with ten minutes of training who is one cosmic coin flip from sitting on the other side of the interview table.

(To be continued.)

Fool's Errand Du Jour

While the boy was down for his nap, the wife and I chatted over tea and coffee and sorted thousands of Lego pieces by color.  Well, technically "translucent", "wheel", and "minifig" are not colors, but you get my drift.

We are well aware that this will be the only time ever they will be sorted at all (unless "the pieces are all within plus or minus one degree of latitude and longitude" counts as "sorted") so you might be asking yourself "Why bother?"

I guess my response to that is a mumbled and embarrassed "I dunno... Neat picture, though."

Perfection Through Incompetence (Part I)

[Editor's Note: It took a lot of internal debate and conferring with family and friends on whether or not I should write this article.  Please forgive me if it comes out non-linear and unfocused (well, more so than the stuff I usually write about) - I just can't figure out how to get all the thoughts out there in an order that makes for a smooth read.  Maybe the disjointed, clunky, and often self-contradictory nature of this post can be seen as a metaphor for how this whole experience has left me feeling.

Sure.  Let's go with that.]

This holiday season I volunteered to help out with the Salvation Army's Angel Tree program. 

If you are not familiar with it, here it is in a nutshell.  Needy families apply at the Salvation Army for Christmastime aid.  If they are below a certain income/expenditure ratio they qualify to have their children receive items through this and an associated effort, Toys for Tots.  As the name implies, Toys for Tots is (mainly) toy-based but the Angel Tree program is more focused on clothes, although there is a little overlap there.

New, unwrapped toys are donated to the Toys for Tots program and don't go to a particular child.  Under the Angel Tree program, numerically-coded tags like the one shown on the left are labeled with a needy child's first name, age, gender, shirt, pant, and shoe sizes.  These tags are then hung on Christmas trees at participating locations - usually malls or big box stores - around the region, where people can pick one, then buy some stuff that fits the criteria on the card.  At that point they can deliver the stuff to the SA directly or sometimes back to the tree where they picked up the card.  Sometimes businesses can request a certain number of cards be set aside for pickup and a central coordinating person distributes the cards as they are requested.

As Christmastime approaches, the families that applied for aid are notified of where and when to show up to get their clothes, toys, books, and games.  By its very nature, the Angel Tree program is more uncertain than Toys for Tots since a tag may or may not be picked, it may or may not be lost, it might be picked and simply forgotten about, etc.  In any case, if a bag of clothes gets returned along with the tag before the submission deadline, the parents are notified that clothes are there for them to pick up, too.

A little history on my part.  As a kid, I had been on the receiving end of charities like this, although not this one in particular.  Church handouts, government assistance - stuff like that.  The why's and wherefores aren't important, and it wasn't all that horrible.  As with most kids I wasn't really plugged in to the family finances, but even as I look back I can't justify the logic of having had both cable TV and government cheese in the same house.

The point is I now choose to do some volunteer work now and then to close the karmic loop a little and to show my three-year-old son that no man is an island. 

I have no illusion about the role "dumb luck" plays in the events in someone's life, for better or for worse.  I mean, sure, we are all the sum total of the key decisions we make, but each of these decisions is tied to the next by the most tenuous, gossamer thread imaginable.  If you were to go back and give any one of these threads the tiniest of pulls you would yank everything out of alignment in a nearly random fashion and the whole thing would come crashing down around your ears.

But the most frightening part of that is that you don't get to control these threads holding life's events together.  Hell, most of the time you don't even get to know they are even there until you look back over your life and appreciate how ridiculously improbable the particular sequence of events that have led up to build Now-You actually is.

I will go as far as to say I can convince myself that I would literally not have anything I have now (most importantly my wonderful wife and child) if it weren't for the fact my sister and a friend of hers intentionally left an unsmoked cigarette in an ashtray twenty some odd years ago.  I chose to smoke it (my first cigarette, it was) and here I am today, writing this paragraph.  The chain goes something like: if I left it be, I would not have had anything in common with certain high-school friends, I would never have been convinced to join the military, I never would have gotten the G.I. Bill, moved to the area, met my wife-to-be, etc, etc.

So, yes, I understand and appreciate "dumb luck".

However, to those unaccustomed to hard work and the making of measured decisions and who instead prefer to wear inertia around like a comfortable pair of well-worn sneakers, the achievements of others through their efforts can be dismissed as "luck", too. Not only does this provide those folks with a certain amount of comfort for making horrible choices (it's not their fault, after all), it also gives them a reason to never make new choices at all (because success is only achievable to those who have been helped or are lucky).

You have to admit that this is an excellent survival strategy but it only works in the long term if others are around to pick up the slack.  

(To be continued...)

What a Bargain!

Two-for-One religious holidays and free shoe rental?!?!  Rejoice, indeed!

Someone Else's Home for the Holidays

Well, we are out of here for the weekend.  Sorry about not writing in a while.  Same excuses apply - busy at work so no time to write at lunch, this netbook's keyboard has just about had it, sun got in my eyes, etc.

I have been piecing together my next big article, though, about my time volunteering at the Salvation Army this season.  I have given it the working title "Perfection Through Incompetence"... I hope to have it done by Tuesday.  We will see.

In any case, all our love to all of our friends and family this Christmas.  God bless!

New Product Review, Old Product Update

A while back I saw an episode of Man v. Food where the challenge was to eat six Atomic wings from a place called Quaker Steak and Lube.  He passed the challenge but those six wings looked like they kicked his butt pretty good.

We have one locally, I love spicy food, and they sell the sauce there so I picked some up.  That's it on the left.  Yep, that's a gen-yoo-ine medicine bottle and medicine dropper.   Not shown is the campy release form that comes in the bottle allegedly indemnifying the company from and damage you are going to do to yourself by ingesting this stuff.

Duly warned and respecting that caution is the better part of valor I cooked up some chicken nuggets and put a single drop on one.   It was hot, flavorful and delicious - not just pure heat.  I put a bit more on another and I was sweating.  I put enough on to coat the entire topside of a piece and I sweated a bit more and my tongue and throat definitely were feeling it, but in no way was this stuff the hottest sauce I have ever had.

That's not snobbery or false machismo.  I have ordered hot chicken fingers from places in Western New York where I was forced to roll down the car window before I made it home because my eyes were watering so badly from the fumes.  It is possible the stuff they sell via the drive through at Quaker Steak is intentionally less hot than the wing challenge stuff they advertise inside.  Also, I did not slather the nuggets with the sauce - I might be writing a different review if I did, possibly from the comfort of a hospital bed.

So either a) it is not as hot as advertised b) I got the dosage wrong or c) I pulled a Wesley and built up an immunity to the Iocane powder within this “highly dangerous” product super quickly. I will try the Atomic wings the next time I swing by the place and give an update later.

As tasty as this condiment is, six bucks for two ounces of the sauce precludes slathering vast amounts of this stuff on otherwise bland food every day but this might make for a fun stocking stuffer for the spicy food lover on your Christmas list.

The friend I bought the Whiskey Stones for had this to say about them:

I still like the stones, but I cannot use them for the broad application I had hoped for. While they seem to work perfectly for, say, whiskey, for wine they are absolutely horrible. The stones make the wine simply undrinkable. I put them in some port wine, which tends to be sweet and the outcome, while cold, was not drinkable.

I am thinking with really strong liquor like whiskey the stones don't alter the flavors but something tannic like wine seems susceptible. I don't know if it matters if the stones are either soapstone or granite.

So there you have it. Whiskey stones: for whiskey :)

Cheatsmith

Even WolframAlpha knows the answer to the question “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?”

I am shocked and disgusted that when you ask the Google any question about Rocksmith, though, you are fed page after page of people offering up cheats and hints for the game. Oh, I realize that a lot of the responses from the search engine are automated – it sees you are asking about Game XYZ and it offers up the Cheats and Hints page to XYZ from some game site where you can get infinite lives, unlimited ammo, and a false sense of accomplishment. It's the same mechanism that causes Amazon to unthinkingly ask you if you would like to see a Kindle version of the kid's pop-up book you are ordering. I understand.

If going to these sites twelve minutes after you buy a game is your bag, I've got no issue with that. I'm all like “Whatever, man...” Don't get me wrong, I understand frustration. It's just not my style to throw down my controller, stick out my lip, stomp my foot, and pout “Oh, hard things are hard!” and storm off to find out how to “Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-B-A” my way to success.

After all even I was reaching my limit in GTA San Andreas and would have given anything for just a smidge more RC airplane fuel in that idiotic “Supply Lines” mission. But, after enough flight hours to qualify me for a small aircraft license from the FAA, I did it. I finished a nearly meaningless task. Huzzah.

See, I have a stick-to-it-iveness that borders on the clinically insane for some things. Of course, I have a very W.C. Fields attitude when it comes to lots of other things as well - “If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no point in being a damn fool about it.”

Gosh, I'm complex...

I do have a huge problem with the idea of a Cheats and Hints page for Rocksmith. Now, these pages might be totally automatically generated and completely blank or otherwise devoid of shortcuts – I hope I never find out. I mean, what would be the point? To turn yourself into the guitar playing version of this guy?

I had an epiphany a couple of nights ago. Quite a sobering one, in fact. I was staring down dejectedly at my guitar after yet another failed attempt at the Rolling Stones song “Play With Fire”. Angry. Silent. I felt robbed. Cheated. I knew I was doing everything right, yet I only earned 90% of the points I needed to progress to the next level. What the hell did this freaking thing want? There must be something wrong with the game. Or the guitar. Maybe if I adjusted the delay settings...

Just then the playback started. I usually skip by these because either I pass the song and I want to go on to something else or I fail it and I want another try right away. This time I listened to me playing without the distraction of, well, actually playing.

It was awful. The cacophony that was emanating from my TV speakers... I... I did that...

And then it hit me.

It's me. The problem has always been me. For three full decades I have been blaming the P.O.S. controller or the game or some other imaginary nonsense for what has always been a shortfall of talent on my part. Whether it was failing to guide Pitfall Harry over the scorpion, misjudging a leap to the next girder in Jumpman, getting devoured by hellspawn in Doom, failing to rescue a homie in need in Saint's Row, or missing a power chord switch in Rocksmith, it has always been me. The evidence is right there in beautifully rendered color and faithfully reproduced audio.

Me.

Well, that simply won't do.

I am not a very musical person and I am unfamiliar with most of the songs in this game. Sometimes it feels like I am trying to play a fractal or like I am in an uncontrolled horizontal free-fall into my television as notes and chords with no discernible relationship to those before them or after them zip by me either mangled or completely untouched. It's been that way for each of the songs so far until I have heard them enough to appreciate the structure of the music I am listening to.

I shut down the Xbox and got to work. The main chord progression in “Play With Fire” is G-D-G-C-Em. I know this because I strummed it well over 1,000 times over two day's time on my sofa and out by the grill until I felt I was doing it well enough, fast enough, and consistently enough to try the song again without tripping over the notes that follow it.

It took me a few more tries but I got it. The entertainment-starved virtual people at my gig even enjoyed it.  Cool.

What was even cooler was going back and playing some of the songs and technique challenges that tripped me up so badly earlier in the game. I swear, it looked like the notes were balloons floating at me in bullet time and my hands were acting of their own accord. I still play the songs badly but it does appear that I am learning.

The timing of this article is especially apropos since I just learned that Jimmydunes passed “Surf Hell” by Little Barrie after dozens and dozens of attempts. Congrats, man! I have had that song in my set but at a much simpler level so far than he has to deal with recently. He said that when he finally passed it he felt like handing out cigars. I can totally dig that.

I am currently stuck on “Well OK Honey” by Jenny O. It's a good song to be stuck on. After I nail this one (this week , I think, time permitting) I will play my first 5-song gig, get maddeningly stuck on some other song, rinse, and repeat. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to get off my soapbox. Carnegie Hall awaits.

Ow, My Sides

Thanks to Jimmydunes for sending me a link to the funniest thing I have seen in a very, very long time. Enjoy.

Happy Fun TIme

[NOTE: It has been brought to my attention that there was something wrong with posting comments recently. I think the problem was somehow related to having an expired poll in the sidebar. Now that I have deleted it the problem seems to have gone away. So, if you had posted a comment over the past few days and you never saw it approved and put up, most likely it is because I never saw it. Sorry for the inconvenience.]

So, fine, I don't have a book to read. Big whoop. I've got other stuff to fill my meager free time when the boy is asleep and I am not.

For example:

Thanks to Rocksmith have been spending a lot of the past month holding a guitar. I have honest-to-God calluses on the fingertips of my left hand, and it feels weird to type. I am loving this game/tool. I will put up a progress post tomorrow, I hope.

On a quieter note, I finished Blueprint 3D. An unknown 2-D blueprint is exploded into 3-D space, the pieces are re-scaled, and then the whole thing is given a couple partial rotations. The goal is to rotate the mystery drawing around the three axes until the pieces line up and, from your point of view, become a line drawing of the Taj Majal or a Jeep or whatever. It is beautifully done and relaxing but not very challenging. There are too many pieces of text that immediately clue you in to two of the axes and you can usually nail the third in just a few seconds. I won't be buying any add-ons unless the text is removed.

Also “finished” W.E.L.D.E.R. It's a game that is a combination of Tetris and Scrabble, but without the time constraint of the former and without the full dictionary of the latter. Again, it's beautifully done but not very challenging. There are twelve levels but, while each one is a little harder than the last, it's far from impossible to come up with good-scoring words especially with unlimited time to do so. The types of tiles they throw at you (red hot ones you can't touch, broken ones that can't move) increase the difficulty quite a bit but that only makes the game feel like a chore you are chugging through. Meh.

I watched the last four minutes of the Bills-Jets game last Sunday. It is good to know that if Steve Johnson ever escapes his handlers and goes on a rampage through downtown Buffalo the best way to defeat him is to hit him in the damn hands with a football, cuz he is probably not gonna know what to do with the thing.

While getting stuff together to wash the wife's car this past weekend we discovered it was windy enough to fly a kite. So we did. [Editor's Note: As I re-read this prior to posting it occurs to me that I am implying that a) I wash my wife's car at night and/or b) enjoy flying kites at night with her while the boy is sleeping. Creeeeeepy. Neither of these things is true. We were all awake. It was daytime. I just felt like putting the kite stuff in this post.] For my sister-in-law's edification:

Happy kite: soaring, majestic, a joy for all to behold:

Sad kite: ripped, faded, alone:

The kite looks like it might break loose any minute now, though. It has been 263 days since my sister-in-law piloted it into the tree roughly twelve seconds after taking the controls. Will it be a cheap Christmas gift for someone or will it stick there for another seven months? Only time will tell.

Finally, the British government has put out a code breaking challenge as a recruitment tool for the Government Communications Headquarters (GHCQ). It looks fun so I will be spending some time at night working on this one. I hope it is not a purely computer-based cipher that only requires clock cycles or specialist knowledge to solve. I get the feeling it is more general and clever than that, though. I guess we will see since it is only going to be up for the next ten days. Good luck, all!