Category Archives: Do the right thing

“Sweat the Details” or “Done Is Better Than Perfect”?

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The downside of performing the same job for over 10 years has been experiencing a revolving door of supervisors and managers. The range has been wide, from “great leaders” to “I’d rather swallow my iPad before I work another day for this moron.” Oh, and knowing more about the work than they do.

These are my new work pants and shoes. Trust me when I say I thank my lucky stars every day and wish all of life's good parts could last forever.

The true challenge is staying up with the various, and sometimes contradictory, team-building ideas, motivational techniques, and management styles the new managers bring with them.

Just a few years ago we lived something close to the Facebook saying: Done is better than perfect. And we churned out substandard work. Lots of it.

Yes, a large number of projects were checked off as complete, but we always felt dirty and embarrassed because our names were associated with the work, and the results lived on long after the managers had left the building.

Then a new management team would arrive and review what was done and say, “we can do better than this, people. It’s a good thing we’re here to save you.” But then they would fall victim to the “more is better” rule of the 2000s and we’d explain to the next group of managers that followed them why it was what it was.

And change was always promised, but not delivered, in the game we played to keep our jobs: Quantity is easier to measure than quality.

And then Steve Jobs up and died and now we worship his 10 commandments and the popular, Sweat the Details, which may be the most amusing of all, as volume hasn’t changed. Now we sweat the details on certain projects, with certain being the key word.

It doesn’t say “sweat some details,” which made my wife wonder if sweating all details is healthy. She thinks it should read “sweat the important details.” I agree because I always agree with my wife and I really do agree with her this time.

It’s an odd contradiction of the workplace, these “mantras du jour” that keep us on track and motivated.

I do, however, look at a another of Jobs’s rules and dream to adopt it: Kill a 1,000 Projects. Now Sweat the Details makes more sense to me. It’s easier to sweat the details on 10 projects than 1,000.

And yet, when you have a boatload of projects on your to-do list, and half the time you need to complete them, apply the Facebook mantra and you may live longer.

How men treat my wife when I’m not around

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My wife pulled into a gas station talking on the vehicle’s hands-free phone system. She parked at the far pump, turned off the engine, and transferred the call to her handset. She had just come from the hospital where her mother had spent the night with chest pains and was talking to her sister about how they would support her in her golden years.

What if I showed up in dressed like the Captain and delivered some bone crunching pain?

The gas station wasn’t crowded and a man in his 40s driving a red BMW convertible pulled up behind her. While she was on the phone in the car, the man came over and looked in the driver’s side window and gave her a disapproving look. She got out and pumped her gas and spoke on the phone while Mr. Bimmer gave her more of the looks you’d expect from someone with the job of policing the use of cellular phones in a restricted area.

He finished pumping his gas, got back in his BMW, backed up and as he drove away in the safety and comfort of the Bimmer’s leather cockpit, he yelled, “get off the f***ing phone” and continued driving. If only my wife ran as fast as the Flash and carried a machete.

Now wherever my wife and I drive in the general area where we live, I look for this man. And whenever I see a red 3-series BMW convertible, I ask my wife “Is that the guy?”

And one day she is going to say “yes, that’s the guy” and I’m going to etch, “She’s off the phone, knucklehead,” on the hood of his car.

This story is one of dozens my wife has of angry men who feel compelled to unleash some of that anger on my wife .

There was the aging rock star at the grocery store who used his cart to block her from passing in the aisles and laughed about it as he followed her around the store, and the grocery worker who gave her a hard time about getting past him while he was stocking shelves, and numerous other guys flipping her off while driving when they were the one in the wrong.

And there are the men in cars who expose themselves to her when she runs in the morning, which is an odd but true fact of L.A. that there are naked guys driving around in the wee hours of the morning enjoying the feel of cloth seats on their bare bottoms.

This is my favorite cereal. Oddly, I couldn’t find it on the General Mills web site. Are they not proud of creating and selling the world’s greatest cereal? Or, it is really bad for me, which may explain a lot?

And they’re all on my list. And one day, I’m going to find them and hope it’s in the last hours of my life and I can use the gun I finally broke down and bought to shoot them in the knee caps, an injury they’ll remember every time they take a step for the rest of their lives.

My wife once asked: “why doesn’t this stuff happen when you’re around?”

Hmm, let me guess. It doesn’t because these guys wouldn’t say anything like that with another man around.

One day, I dream I will be with her at the grocery store – though I hate going there – and I’ll be out of sight when some a-hole blocks her way with a shopping cart in the cereal aisle. And I will walk around and witness it.

And you, my dear friends, will get to see the black & white security-camera footage on youtube.com with the title, “Man forced to eat 5 boxes of Captain Crunch in grocery store brawl.”

And to think he ate them box and all without the aid of milk. Amazing.

Dear Blog, not tonight. I have a headache.

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The long week caught up to me tonight. Everything is due yesterday at work and today’s rush project replaced yesterday’s rush project which replaced the day before’s rush project.

Here's a picture of the pup for my friend Just Ramblin' and other dog lovers, but not @onlyz

To fulfill my post-a day duty, here are my two favorite links from the day, each with enough facts to make those who worship the rich cry – or not, if they refuse to believe the numbers.

I’ll be back Saturday.

Oh, and one more thing. My apologies to everyone who wrote comments this week. I’ll reply in the morning. I’m thankful and humbled you left me feedback – even you @seanset.

More Americans than Chinese can’t put food on the table

CHARTS: Here’s What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About… (Make sure you click the link at the bottom to look at the charts. Scary, unless you’re a one-percenter)

Are people in Los Angeles getting angrier? (A non-political post for Margie)

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One of my neighbors “displayed” his gun to another neighbor’s gardener the other day. I was on a conference call and missed the fun that ensued when my two neighbors got into a heated argument about it (my wife’s description, as she caught the last two minutes). It’s a good thing I missed it because I would have called the police. When a gun comes out, that’s process step 1 for me.

If cannons, not guns, were legal, we'd have a fewer killings and more people going to chiropractors instead of prison

Today I saw the good neighbor, who is a friend and the one who didn’t brandish a gun in the light of day, and he filled me in.

Turns out his large tree overhangs Dirty Harry’s property. And as an act of kindness, his gardener went to the front door of Mr. Harry to ask permission to move something on the property to access the tree and to make sure his cars weren’t damaged from falling debris. But no one answered the door.

When the gardener tried again, he was confronted by Mr. Harry who had a shotgun or machine gun – some kind of big gun. Then the argument started about it not being a polite gesture to greet a gardener with a weapon of death instead of a rake or hoe.

Now I know most of my neighbors probably own guns. This is Los Angeles where it’s almost mandatory, though I’ve managed to resist the impulse, thinking that I’d probably use it on myself in those dark moments of blood clots and hemoptysis. But here’s a neighbor who feels like we’re living on the open range and he’s protecting his property from cattle rustlers.

What do I do? Or don’t do?

This is the kind of photograph that lures people to California. It's all Hollywood magic. The bird is fake and the beach is a painted backdrop.

Move? I don’t know, but it was the first thought that crossed my mind.

It does make me wonder if my unscientific theory that people are growing angrier is true.

I don’t have any facts to back this up.

It’s the feeling I get when I see how people treat each other in public, how they drive, how certain neighbors could give a flying fudge bar if they return a “hello” while I’m walking in the neighborhood – to the point I feel like flipping them the bird when I see them – a pre-emptive strike – which would illicit a response from them or a comment like, “you’re the worst neighbor ever and I wish you’d f’ing move.” Hello to you, too, neighbor, glad you finally acknowledged my presence. 

I experience this hostility in the way men treat my wife when I’m not with her (another post coming soon).

I wonder if this city is suffering from traumatic or post-traumatic stress syndrome. We’re going through our days carrying so much stress and tension that we’re ready to snap at anyone, and are too burned out to be courteous.

It’s a just a hunch, but I feel it in my bones.

Unemployment is high in California; illegal drugs are popular; foreclosures with For Sale signs in the front yard and near-foreclosures with brown lawns, broken picket fences and half-finished additions lace neighborhoods. Do these daily images impact our sub-conscious?

Worry. Overrated and un-fun. (Creative Commons: Photo by Steve Snodgrass)

And then there is the constant worry we’re not working hard enough at our jobs and could be laid off at anytime to save the company money. And we’re working longer hours to make up for the whole “do more with less” mentality of companies during the recession. And there are the bills.

If we lose our jobs, where would we be? Brandishing a gun at a hard-working gardener? Walking into a beauty salon in Seal Beach to kill eight innocent people in an unspeakable, tragic act of violence?

I don’t know anymore. The older I get, the less I know.

Maybe I should have taken the advice of the first bumper sticker I saw when I moved to L.A.: Welcome to California, now go home. 

Occupy Wall Street and the lesson I learned from Stella Liebeck

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Do you remember the case of the woman who spilled hot McDonald’s coffee in her lap and was awarded close to 3 million dollars by a jury?

What do you remember about it?

Do you remember everyone talking about what a scam it was and how this was the shining example of tort reform and legal system abuse?

I thought that to be accurate because everything I saw or heard about it backed up that opinion. Major media even reported on it but with incorrect facts.

This movie is an eye-opener, but also one that shows how the deck is stacked against us. http://hotcoffeethemovie.com/

Then I started watching the documentary Hot Coffee, a must-see, which reviews and analyzes the facts of the case. The key word here being “facts.”

Remember, truth does not equal fact. And in this case there is what people perceive to be the “truth” and there are the facts.

Some of the facts: Stella Liebeck, 79, wasn’t driving the car – she was in the passenger seat, parked, when she opened the lid of her coffee and spilled it in her lap, suffering burns so severe that even I, a long-time guest of hospitals, couldn’t look at them when I replayed the segment on HBO GO. Burns so severe Mrs. Liebeck needed skin grafts.

How could I have been so wrong? How could I have joked that the case represented the evils of large jury awards?

And it made me wonder what else I think I know now to be “true,” but is not “factual.”

And the movie in its entirety reminded me that there is a large group of powerful people, media outlet owners, businesses, organizations, and the government officials they promote and purchase, who will stop at nothing to strip away the rights of the common man and woman in this country while they tap our wallets and fatten theirs.

I know I may sound like a conspiracy nut, but if it feels like it’s harder to get by these days because we’re paying for more of everything and wondering why our taxes don’t cover the expenses of this country. Well, it’s not our imagination. Big business continues to manipulate the system to pay less.

These powerful people have done a masterful job of imposing their will on us while we work our asses off to earn a living because companies won’t hire more people, telling us we have to “do more with less” during these tough times. And we do it because we have no choice. There are fewer jobs, which helps keep productivity high.

And that’s why the Occupy Wall Street movement is so important. It’s not about money, it’s about exposing corrupt power – the powerful who set a direction for the country that favors the rich and big business.

But the power-hungry have pushed people too far, grabbed too much of the pie and imposed their will to the point we finally looked up from our iPads to realize we had fewer rights than we did yesterday and the truth they promised was best for us, was not best for us. It was best for them.

Which brings me back to Liebeck v. McDonalds Restaurants. How is it possible any of us condemned and made fun of a 79-year-old woman with disfiguring burns and backed a large corporation that heated its coffee water to 180 to 190 degrees and could have settled for pennies before going to trial?

Was it by accident that the facts of the case got twisted and communicated to portray an elderly woman as the villain and a corporation as the victim? Or was there a greater force at work dropping incorrect facts in the wind?

It makes me wonder what other truths are getting distorted in this country by those in power and those who control the media.

I’ll remember the lesson I learned from the case of Stella Liebeck when I hear and read the truth the rich and powerful feed us as to why they are the victims, and how unions and the poor, the tired, the hungry and the sick are really at fault.

Should we occupy Wall St. or Washington? Or does it matter?

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I’m fighting a cold tonight, which followed the usual course of starting with my daughter, then my wife, then me. So, just a short post and a link.

I read this excellent piece on how the rich get rich and take advantage of our government’s generosity.

When Being Rich Makes Us Poor, People Should Occupy Wall Street

I don’t fault anyone for making money. Hell, I wish I knew the secret and have only myself to blame for failure. Unfortunately, this country doesn’t function as well when wealth is disproportionately distributed and the top one percent horde the majority of the cash. And until the situation is fixed, expect more “American against American” occupations and battles.

“Class Wars 2011” will be the title of chapter in a history book one day.

The view from the Reagan Library. (I can't find the photos I took of the plane.) Check out the web site: http://www.reaganfoundation.org/

All of this relates to my epiphany that one cannot hate the government and love capitalism. They are lovers entwined, and one without the other wouldn’t provide the great opportunities to make cash these days. (Think Iraq War, the moneymaker of all moneymakers for movers and shakers.)

I’ll leave you with this final thought before I go flush my sinuses.

A couple of years ago, we went to the Reagan Library in Simi Valley. Regardless of politics, Ronald Reagan lived an impressive life. And the library matched the man’s incredible journey with its own impressiveness. Heck, Air Force One is inside the building if that gives you a sense of its scope and size.

But one of the most telling moments I’ll never forget was coming to the end of the tour, walking out of the gift shop and seeing the list of those who donated and made the library possible.

It wasn’t the poor.

My good deed – or the bad deed I didn’t do

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My wife and I went to a charity event tonight, which included a silent auction. I don’t buy very much, but I like pumping up the prices on undervalued items, and sometimes winning one.

As the clock ticked down on the auction and people stood guard, protecting potential purchases like vultures guarding their meal, I noticed a neighbor hovering over a bid sheet for two tickets to an upcoming concert.

Bid on this and I'll tear the flesh from your bones. Creative Commons: Photo by Kevin Walsh

Now she and her husband and I had a difference of opinion a few years ago involving money and their not wanting to do the neighborly thing and pay for half of a repair. And though we speak to each other, no one is going to the other’s house for dinner, dessert and a game of strip Uno.

Here was my chance for mischief and mayhem and a little neighborly payback.

The concert tickets she wanted were at $150 and I could tell she was excited about her chances of winning them.

I spent 10 minutes thinking about what to do, fighting back my inner desire to walk over and bid up the tickets by at least $100. Or, bid it up by $200 and make her outbid me or walk away angry, leaving me with the tickets to use or sell, and a $350 tax deduction.

How high would I go just to mess with them?

But I didn’t. I did a good deed (my definition), and gave her a pass by not bumping up the tickets.

She and her husband will never know I tossed them a bone of kindness and let them go to the concert for the low, low price of $150, which is a better experience than going when the tickets cost you $255 or $355, or more, because your asshole neighbor bid up the price.

It was a hard decision not to start a bidding game of chicken, with the winner being me and the charity. But I’m getting soft and doughy in the head as I get older.

I haven’t even felt like arguing with people online these days. Very odd. Have I lost my edge?

I try to do the right thing each day – say the right thing – and be a good person. But it’s not easy. Sometimes I’d just like to let it rip – unleash the conflict hounds – feel fearless, and not be satisfied with the taste of shit.

Monday’s Confession: Hopeless and powerless in the USA

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I have a confession: I feel hopeless and powerless when it comes to what’s going on in this country.

I probably read too much, or read too many stories of Americans who have fallen on hard times while the rich enjoy their lowest tax rates in 50 years. There’s a whole lot of wealth resting in the richest Americans’ hands. Well, not in their hands, actually, more like their brokerage accounts where it does little to grow this country.

Fox panicked when he read this post and rounded up all his cash, lest it be taken away by the government. Then he started screaming "FU, you socialist bastard." Now he's locked up in his cage and I'm cleaning the wounds on my arms. Never keep a fox as a pet. It will come back to bite you one day.

And then there’s our Congress who protects the rich like they’re endangered baby seals and heaven forbid someone club their bank account to shake loose a few dollars. The rich and large businesses own the congress and fund their careers so it shouldn’t be a surprise who they answer to. And to top it off, they serve up a load of crap about “Job Creators” being taxed creating fewer jobs. Here’s a nice op-ed on that:

\”Tax Rich More, Patriotic Millionaires Urge\”

I wish I had a new spin on all of this other than to say I once believed in Gordon Gekko‘s mantra: Greed Is Good. But I don’t anymore.

Greed is good for the few, but not the many. We need Captain Kirk to beam down and put a little hurt on the people in our government who protect Paris Hilton’s savings account over the welfare and well-being of middle class families hit hard by the recession (the one that never went away for a large portion of the population).

Years ago, I gave up watching the local news because I couldn’t take the bad news it served up each night. I may have to give up reading on the Internet. The “machine” built to convince people to vote against their own interests and protect the interests on the “machine” is just too great to fight. I don’t have the energy to argue anymore.

I know some people will disagree with me. That’s fine. I do have one question: If the rich, aka job creators, are enjoying historically low tax rates, why aren’t we overwhelmed with jobs in this country and why isn’t the economy booming?

I know it also has to do with companies outsourcing jobs and it’s a complicated issue, but that’s what I wonder everyday when I read a story of a middle-class couple with two kids, who lost their jobs, then their house, then their car and who now live in a homeless shelter. Why aren’t the job creators creating jobs with the money they’re saving in taxes?

Could the rich be lying to us about taxing the rich?

What not to do when someone tries to break into your car at 2:30 in the morning

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[As if readers of this blog needed more proof of my stupidity, here’s more evidence. Clearly, I could place “what not to do” on most of my posts, but this is more glaring than the rest.]

I was having a bad dream, which is not to be confused with the parts of my life involving cystic fibrosis. This one happened while I was sleeping and woke me up at 2:30 a.m. I’d also been fighting a virus all week and my body temperature was screwed up, which made me feel more discombobulated at that hour (building the excuse for my idiot behavior right now).

What's a leek?

As I am the most paranoid guy in the world, I looked out the window of the front door on my way to the bathroom, as I always do, and noticed a white SUV in front of our house. Double take, it’s really there and the door is open.

Unfortunately, I’d been too lazy to replace the bulbs in the fixtures near our garage because I would need to find the step-stool, and because the light fixtures are a pain in the arse to unscrew and there are spiders in them and I didn’t have bulbs and hadn’t gone to Home Depot to buy any because even though I’ve passed the store 50 times in the last two weeks, I was too lazy pull into their parking lot, get out of my car, lock my car, walk into the store, find the bulbs, pay for them, get in my car, drive home and find the step-stool.

So, the driveway was darker than it should have been thanks to me, creating the perfect environment for thieving scumbags to go to work. Oh, and I didn’t have my eyeglasses on either.

So, I moved to the bathroom window to get a different view and I saw someone standing next to my wife’s car with an object in their hand – a tire iron? I don’t know what it was. All I know is after all the years of people stealing shit off of my car at night, I was pissed. A spark ignited in my brain, or what there is of one, and any chance of rational thought fled it as I walked with pace to the front door.

I didn’t disable the house alarm when I opened the door because I wanted the high-pitched squeal of the 30-second countdown to start in case one of them came running at me and I had to shut the door in a hurry. I can’t hear the sound anyway thanks to years of IV tobramycin, but I figured they would hear it loud and clear in the dead quiet of night.

Geek does Rhyme with leek

I opened the door and in what my daughter would call my “big voice,” I yelled “Hey you guys, get away from that stuff.”

I had to confirm this is what I said with my wife at least a dozen times because I couldn’t remember and I thought I must have yelled something like “get away from that car, low-life scum, before I come out there and rip your bowels out of your throat” or something cool like that.

But no, I didn’t say that. I said “you guys.” Not “you scum sucking criminals’ or “demon-spawn from hell car thieves.” No, instead I said, “you guys.”

Oh, and by the way, while I was using my big voice, my wife disabled the alarm because I’m always activating it by accident, which she thought I did again, unaware I was having a conversation with criminals.

At about the time I opened it door and yelled, it occurred to me at the very second the words left my mouth that I was yelling at exactly the kind of people in Los Angeles who worship and carry guns. The kind who probably don’t like being told what to do in a loud voice.

And there I was standing in my t-shirt and J. Crew boxer shorts covered in a charming “carrots and leeks” pattern (picture included) in the glowing light of the porch.

Could there be a more perfect and easy-to-shoot idiot in the history of targets?

I’m a lucky idiot because the perps ran to their SUV like the vermin they are and pulled a U-Turn in front of our house as my wife and stood in the doorway watching like dopes – defiant dopes – providing yet another possible double-homicide, target-shooting opportunity for the crooks, and headlines for tomorrow’s newspaper, with our daughter growing up parent-less.

And though I was calm during the incident, after I shut the door I was wound about my stupidity and it took me two hours of replaying my missteps before I could go to sleep.

Now the hindsight part of the story.

Though everything turned out okay, I’ve been flogging myself daily for not calling the police as the criminals did whatever they were going to do, which is a mystery still stuck in my mind and a question I can’t answer for friends who hear the story. What did I really see in the street-light dim of night?

I would have loved for the police to catch these guys. I love stories like that. But I blew it. I blew it. I let my anger overcome my rational thoughts and even endangered my family by opening the door, a key defense (the sound you hear right now is the whip hitting my back).

Though I may have saved the $500 deductible for my car insurance, it cost me almost a grand to have an electrician, locksmith and our alarm company come to the house on Friday. We now have new motion detector lights around the house, stronger locks in the doors, and a soon to be upgraded alarm with a panic button for my wife when I’m not home – and a different tone control panel I can hear when I am home.

Oh, and I did drive to Home Depot to buy five bucks worth of light bulbs. And I did take out the step-stool and climb up to unscrew the tops of the light fixtures to reach in past the spiders and cobwebs to unscrew the bulbs and replace them, which had they been replaced may have stopped all of this from happening by causing the criminals to go to a different house with a different idiot lording over it.

The silver lining: when I’ve away, I’ll feel a better with my wife daughter at home with improved security. But I’m not done yet. Soon to be installed: a fence or wall. A good fence may make for good neighbors, Mr. Frost, but an electrical one with barbed wire makes for a big FU to criminals when they’re flat on their backs unconscious waiting for the police to scrape their electrocuted, bloody bodies from the sidewalk.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. This is a lesson is what not to do when criminals pick your house to rob. Call the police. They like to catch bad guys. Unless you own complete body Kevlar®, of course, which means you can walk right up to them and beat them with your flail, which would feel pretty satisfying.

Stay safe.

The simple bumper sticker that stuck in my craw

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A bumper sticker from a week ago is still irritating me. I saw it on a Prius in the McDonald’s drive thru while ordering my breakfast of real champions, a McGriddle, which I’ll defend to my grave is the best breakfast sandwich in the world after eating over a 1,000 of them in recent years.

I'm eating one of these right now

Back to the bumper sticker, which read: “All you have is now.”

Harmless, you say. What’s the big deal? Exactly, I agree.

But then I started mulling it over in line, getting bothered by it, which may have been because I still hadn’t received my tasty goodness. Or, could it have been the bombardment of McDonald’s signs working me over to eat myself to an inner tube of jelly around my midsection?

Beef and bacon covered ice-cream sundaes, coffee desserts, quadruple burgers covered in chocolate, 50 oz. sugary smoothies, 10-pound bags of french fries covered in candy sprinkles and cheddar cheese.

The reason the bumper sticker bothered me was because the “all I have is now” attitude got me in a lot of trouble years ago. And because I have a daughter now, which made want to change the bumper sticker to the following: “All you have is now, but your children have tomorrow, Jackass.”

Clearly, when I see anything talking to me, it calls me Jackass, which is appropriate after a 1,000 McGriddles.

Here’s the rub.

We have a lot of conversations at our dinner table about the future of the planet: Oil production is peaking, global ice is melting, a very large pool of plastic is floating north of Hawaii, our natural food supply contains harmful chemicals, we’re getting bigger and have more ailments, and Earth can’t support its predicted population growth.

All of this adds up to a potentially bleak future, which is a post for the future, if I had one, which apparently I don’t according to the Prius driver.

So, when I see a bumper sticker “All you have is now” on a Prius, which is ironic as that car is better for the environment than most, I feel that’s the attitude that got us stuck in this mess in the first place and that if more people made harder choices and put the future higher on their priority list we’d be in a better place.

By the way, I’m doing my part by not taking as many showers and wearing the same clothes for a week, which saves water and keeps more detergent from flowing into the water supply or ocean. My wife clearly has mixed feeling about my strategy.

Back to the bumper sticker. Maybe I misread it. Maybe it meant “all you have is now to make a difference and that’s why I’m driving a Prius and not an oversized SUV, Jackass who eats McGriddles every day.”

It didn’t say that. But for my own sanity, I’m going to pretend it did and let it go.

There, done. It’s off my mind. I feel better now. Go about your day. There’s nothing to see here. Insane man back to enjoying the weekend. You do the same.