Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

I’m having a heck of a time trying to get over jet-lag here. I’m in Zurich for a week long meeting with my European engineering teams. Originally I was calling it a “Summit”, but that makes it sound much more formal that it is; especially since people started asking if I’d tape the sessions to publish online. :-)

So we decided to call it a “Offsite”, except that we’re still in the home location for half the team. We could call it “meeting”, but that’s boring.

Anyway, I was talking about jet-lag. I’ve been trying to take advantage of being unable to sleep by doing as many of my “chores that require about a quarter of a brain to do” as possible. This way I don’t feel guilty wasting time, but don’t try to do something important.

So, I’ve updated my blog to Wordpress 2.5. You, the reader, won’t notice any difference, but I get to the use the new management UI; which so far is really nice. But, the backlog of 1900+ comments that needs to be moderated? Not that nice (stupid spammers).

I also went back into my Facebook account and fixed all the privacy settings. I’m so glad that Facebook finally fixed their privacy settings interface. It still not great, but it’s a lot better. So now, people on Facebook can probably actually see things in my profile.

The past few nights, I spent some time learning about and thinking about Option ARMs and how to invest based on the big waves of the Option ARM resets coming up. It’s especially interesting considering that the Bank of England, this morning, decided to also trade junk MBS’s for Treasuries. And the Bank of Scotland’s recent announcement. And countless other things that happened recently. Expect a big post on that soon. :-P

And, of course, I’m seeing all sorts of cool things here and have met some really cool people. I’ll start writing about all that soon. :-)

As you may know, I just got back from a business trip to Boulder. And instead of staying at a hotel, I stayed with my parents. It was really nice being home and, since Sri is in Oregon visiting friends, I had my parents all to myself. No sisters or wife to hog the parents. :-)

Yesterday, we realized that this was the first time that it’s just been me and my parents for more than a day. Like the first time ever. In the past 27 years, if I was with my parents, I had to share with one of my sisters.

When you think about it, that’s really crazy. But a nice side-effect was that the house was really quiet and peaceful. :-)

Except we weren’t alone. Sri got a gerbil that lives in a cage in the study room. The gerbil just runs on the hamster wheel all day long. Since Sri is out of town, Amma is feeding the gerbil and taking care of it. Amma really likes the gerbil and you can often find her talking to gerbil in Telugu, [roughly translated] “Hi little dear. I’m sorry I didn’t come visit you yet today. Did you like your dinner?”

It’s really, really funny. Especially so, since the gerbil doesn’t speak Telugu! Amma astutely pointed out that the gerbil doesn’t speak English either, but still.

Sri gave the gerbil some name I can’t remember, but I think a better name is “Sribil” (Sri + gerbil).

And we have one more guest in the house. A woodpecker has burrowed into the house and is building a nest inside the walls by Akka’s room. My parents didn’t notice since no one was using this room. I noticed, though, because bright and early each morning, Mr. Woodpecker start drilling (or pecking) very loudly.

And during the night, he gets bored and starts running around in the wall right by my head. You know, during the day, it would be cute (in an Animal Planet sort of way). But at night, when I’m trying to sleep, it’s rather annoying.

If Mom and Dad don’t do something soon, they are going to have a wall full of baby birds come spring. :-)

… well, except that it was Crissy and me, not trains. And we didn’t pass each other, we stopped and talked for a bit. And it was mid-morning, not night. But you know, the phrase “Like two people talking to each other mid-morning” just isn’t as poetic.

As you know, Crissy was visiting her family last week. And for most of this week, I’m on a business trip to Boulder. I booked our flights so that if everything was on time, we would get to meet at the airport and hang out for 30 minutes or so.

And instead of wasting money on cabs, I drove Crissy’s car to the airport and parked it in short-term parking. And then, Crissy could go to the parking lot and drive her car home. We both had car keys and if we missed each other, I would use her voice mail to tell her where the car was parked.

Despite the simplicity of the plan, there were a lot of things that could go wrong. I could forget to leave Crissy a message with the location of her car. She’d then need to walk around the airport looking for it or wait until my flight landed in Denver. Or Crissy could have lost her keys. Or countless other things.

But it actually worked out nicely. I parked Crissy’s car, went through security and walked to Crissy’s arrival gate as her plane taxied in. I walked with her to the “Exit to Baggage Claim” area and then went to catch my plane.

Given all our recent travel ordeals, I can’t believe it actually worked. :-)

This post is a long time coming. I started it shortly after we got home from Christmas travel and have been slowing adding to it. It’s really long, but there are some valuable travel tips to learn if you’re (very) patient…

For Christmas, Crissy and I had our usual “visit both families” trip. Our flights were all booked on United airlines. First we’d go to Crissy’s house; the plan was to fly from Seattle to Kansas City (with a plane change in Denver). Then fly Kansas City to Denver to see my parents. And then finally fly back to Seattle after the New Year.

It was a fairly straightforward plan. But the travel gods had other plans. Only some luck, knowledge gained by lots of travel experience, and persistence made it work out somewhat smoothly.

Our trip started ominously, as my usually punctual town car service to the airport was 25 minutes late (the service claimed the dispatcher mistakenly canceled our reservation). We rushed to the airport and learned that our flight out was now delayed at least an hour and a half.

As a result it was impossible to make our connection in Denver. The United ticketing system caught this and when we tried to check our luggage, the service agent started the process to book us on a later Frontier flight. Unfortunately, the service agent was having problems getting the re-booking on Frontier.

(Continued)

“Experts” say that when you open your car trunk to load groceries, you should leave your car doors locked. That way, while you’re distracted putting things in the trunk, no one can sneak into your car.

It sounds good in practice, but I find myself doing the exact opposite. Now that I replaced my old Accord, I actually have a key remote that unlocks my doors and opens my trunk. So as I walk up to my car, I unlock the doors and pop the trunk. This way if I accidentally lock my keys in the trunk, I can open the car door and use the trunk release to get the keys.

Not that this ever happened; I’ve never locked the keys in the car or the trunk (knock on wood). But it seems prudent. The chances of my locking my keys in my truck are much, much higher than some guy sneaking into my car as I load groceries (especially now that I have a job, I don’t have to shop at the sketchy grocery store like I did while I was in college).

Even if it’s 100 times more likely that I lock my keys in the trunk than a guy sneaking into my car, I think it’s worth it. Imagine locking your keys in 100 times; now imagine a random guy getting into your car — whom you will likely see or hear anyway, since it’s hard to hide in a sedan.

Seems like a prudent trade-off. What do you think?

I had a pretty weird dinner last night: a samosa, sushi, and Greek yogurt. Thanks to my strange appetite, foods from India, Japan, and Greece got together and interacted — in my stomach. :-P

That’s right, I’m back in bachelor eating mode. Crissy’s visiting her family for mid-winter break, so I’m in charge of my own dinner. My dinner strategy is more like grazing than eating. I look in the fridge and eat whatever sounds good. Real men don’t prepare meals.

The Greek yogurt is Fage Yogurt and I can’t get enough of it; it tastes really, really good. The only problem is the yogurt has tons of saturated fat in it: 45% of the daily recommendation. On the double cheeseburger scale, the yogurt is 83% of a double cheeseburger in terms of saturated fat.

I’m going to switch to the 2% yogurt variety so the damage will be only 8% of my saturated fat. In the meantime, I’ll eat the rest of the regular yogurts I bought and pretend that dairy fat is actually good for you.

Continuing on the Jill post from yesterday… Crissy’s mom was having some routine images taken yesterday, so Crissy’s dad took Jill around the hospital to meet all his colleagues. Apparently, Jill was a hit everywhere. The GI nurses had already put the newspaper clipping of Jill’s article on the wall, so they had Jill autograph it, and then everyone clapped and cheered!

Jill’s autograph complete with her signature star above the “i”. Sheesh, even I don’t have her autograph. Maybe I should get one before they get to be collector’s pieces and I can’t afford it. :-)

If you haven’t met Crissy’s sister Jill, you’re missing out. Everyone loves Jill. Especially the media. For a not famous person, she has her picture in the paper a lot; once at a Special Olympics, she was dancing to music and pretty soon, a huge circle of college student volunteers and fellow athletes started clapping and cheering.

And a nearby reporter took a picture that appeared on the front page of the local newspaper the next day.

Recently, someone met Jill at the swimming pool and next thing we knew Jill is featured in the “Our Town” series of the Columbia Tribune.

It’s a cute little article; but it could have been more in depth and had more stuff about her (or at least about me!). And the picture was a little weird. I prefer this one. :-)

I think Jill must have been a little nervous; she doesn’t usually give one word answers. And, if you’re wondering, Jill does indeed test her glucose all by herself. Everything from the prick to calibrating her glucose meter.

And you can really trust her to do everything; except one small thing: read the number display correctly. For whatever reason, Jill will often transpose numbers when reading them to you. So a reading of 185 can become 815, which can cause a panic. Personally, I think Jill can read it fine, but likes to have the whole room say, “Jill!” when reads the number incorrectly.

Oh well, knowing Jill, she’ll be in the paper many, many more times. Maybe we could get her an afternoon talk show. If not, we may just have to sit down and finally write that book about Jill.

I finally got new glasses. My laziness made me pass up nearly two years worth of eye ware credit from my medical benefits. Google has really good benefits through VSP, but since it’s VSP they have a large collection of smaller providers. So places like Lens Crafters aren’t eligible.

I didn’t think it would be that hard to find nice glasses, but it was surprisingly hard. Crissy and I went to a bunch of stores and everyone tried to sell me the same stupid black plastic frames that everyone wears. Most places didn’t even carry men’s glasses that weren’t variants of the black plastic look. And most of the stores closed at 5 pm and weren’t open on Sundays. That meant we had to use precious Saturday time for shopping!

Yuck. We finally found some nice frames. They weren’t perfect as the frames tilt in towards the middle slightly. Apparently this is the new style or something. The saleswoman claimed that she couldn’t see the tilt, but I think she’s delusional.

I’m pretty happy with the glasses, except that they get smudged all the time. If you just look at them they get smudged!

On the plus side, I discovered that Kleenex with lotion does indeed have lotion in it. If you wipe your glasses with these Kleenex, you leave behind a thin film of lotion on the lenses.

Hmm… they say knowledge is power, but I think the fact that “Kleenex with lotion does indeed have lotion in it” isn’t very powerful. It’s probably just taking up precious space in my brain. :-)

I had the opportunity to take a public speaking skills workshop recently and decided it would be a useful exercise. I’m a decent speaker with lots of experience from high school and college, but not that much recently. The main thing I knew would be useful is getting a video recording of myself speaking. It’s really painful to watch yourself speak, but it’s very informative.

The main things I wanted to work on projecting more likability. I don’t want to change my speaking personality or anything, but ever since Bill Clinton’s “I feel your pain” speaking style went to the national level, the art of public speaking changed drastically. It is less about ideas or logic, and more about making the audience think, “I’d like to be buddies with that guy”.

I’ve seen a lot of people that go to speaking workshops and come up as almost robotic where they do every little thing they have been taught and it’s almost too perfect. The end result is that it is almost disingenuous. So I wanted to keep my current style and personality in my delivery and make some minor tweaks.

Based on my analysis of my recording and some feedback from the coach, here are the things I need to work on:

• What I do when I’m thinking - I’m used to speaking from a brief outline, so even when I don’t have notes I glance down as I organize my thoughts for my next point. This can be a liability, because looking down sends an unconscious message of submission. The instructor recommended looking slightly to the side for this. I’m not sure if I like that as it looks a little unnatural.
• Longer eye contact - Normally when speaking I look around the room at different people in the audience. The main thing I’m looking for is interested expressions and nodding heads. If I don’t see this, I know I need to make some adjustments. The instructor mentioned that the new style of speaking requires the speaker to make eye contact for 3 to 5 seconds per person before moving on. This is a more intimate, personal eye contact; one that, presumably, would help improve likability.
• Voicing - I noticed that towards the end of my sentences, I tend to eat my words a bit. This is partly because I’m already thinking about the next sentence. To fix this, I need to (1) speak more from the gut, which will project my voice more, (2) move my lips more to increase crispness (and increase facial expression) and (3) try to restructure my sentence so some of the “money” is closer to the end. This will force me to enunciate through the sentence.
• Stand straight - I noticed that I was leaning to the side a bit while talking. Though no one else noticed it; maybe the camera tripod wasn’t level. :-)

The instructor told me that these things would help me go from “good” to “great”. It was nice to know that I wasn’t a total failure. :-)