Line Drive in the Time of Cholera

Last night was the final game of the spring 2009 Little League season. Son #2 was at peak performance again. As I gleaned while reading Outliers a while back, 10K is the magic number at becoming an expert in anything. (Example: the Beatles played ten thousand hours at clubs in Germany before taking the world by storm.) Since Son #2 wakes up ready to play baseball and catch pop flies, line drives and grounders all day long, I'm guessing he should be in the Major League by summer's end. As should we.

Another kid on his team heaved his hands, face and body against the fence while whining to his mom, "I want to go home. Nowwwwwwwwww."

She then turned to us and offhandedly said, "He's just starting to feel better after having the swine flu last week."

SWINE FLU.

Maybe I'm being overly cautious but please, keep him home! Seriously.

Oh, gosh, I hope he's okay. We're just getting over the bubonic plague ourselves.

Love is . . .

Love is going to a party filled with friends and spending the bulk of your time hanging with your kids.

Love is letting a soaking wet child get out of the pool on a chilly summer night and climb directly into your lap for snuggles and warmth.

Love is realizing that you wouldn't prefer it any other way.

We've Got Some Work to Do Now

For a year I did the reverse commute to/from 125th Street and White Plains. That daily train ride had its own subculture. A small group of us got to know each other pretty well. The guys from Starwood. A steel trader. Insurance agents. An IT consultant with whom I split a farm-fresh produce share delivered weekly to a church near our apartment. It was fun.

One day, I sat down next to this guy Jerry and asked, "Did you know that Shaggy was a stoner?" (Obvious to many but the not-to-subtle clues such as constant munchies and lack of intelligence were lost on me as a kid. I had simply never thought about it before.)

He responded, "Where are you when I'm on dates and have nothing to talk about with women?"

The other day, my boss was bemoaning having to go to a family reunion this summer. She thinks she bores people with nothing to talk about but work. And, with her limited scope of the external world, she thinks that I charm our clients with randomness. I think they're just being polite.

Her request, "Can you write a list of topics for me to have in my back pocket that others may find of interest?" Her guidelines: it can't be political or drawn from the pages of People magazine. No Obama. No Jon & Kate.

Sure, I'll get right on that. Do I get a Scooby snack?

Mini-weekend: Day 17

First day of summer break. Sunny, high of 86. And WRUR 88.5 just played a Chinchillas tune. Life is good.

Son #1 brought his third grade writing journal home. It's littered throughout with illustrations of Star Wars gun ships and Separatist battles but it's lacking last year's "I'm bored" that was written on page after page of his notebooks. Some of this year's entries are priceless to me.

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From a first day of school letter: "Dear Miss Kokinda, my letter might not be long enough because my brain doesn't think hard enough . . . "

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From a "brain vomit" exercise in September (complete with spelling errors):

Read this! I don't know what to write! I'm stuck, confused, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ?.,#': Whops! This 'tis wierd. Water! Fire! Ahhhh. This is funny, I'm laughing in my mind while writing. Ha ha ha ha hhheeee he ha this reminds me of a song by the Police called de dododo de da da da I'll write the chouras of it. Here it goes: de do do do de dad da da that's all I want to say to you. That's it! Hey! I thought of a chouras for a new song! I'll write it: he ho ho ho he ha ha ha that's the funnyest thing I'll say to you. O.K. I'm done. Now what! (draws some musical notes)

A distant shore can not be ignored
I have to go or else I'll bore

Something's not right; I'm in a ffight,
What's going on with this song, because I can hear a gong

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Lone entry:
I feel grateful for how good I am at drawing.

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My fears:
1. black bears
2. sharks

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Stick figure poem:



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And my favorite:

The Book of Random Nonsense

(A boy after my own heart.)

Dasher Dancer Prancer and Vixen

My BFF, Kim, is having a baby this fall so she and I have been talking about girl names a lot recently. With that comes me looking at all names, boy and girl, with a fresh lens.

The lineup on Son #2's Little League team: Casey, Chase, Dante, Emily, Jack, Leo, Mark, Ryan, Simon, Tanner and Whitman.

If this is a representative sample of today's suburban culture, it would appear that kids today have a 25%-35% chance of receiving a traditional name. (My forte: subjective statistics.) And one of the boys I counted as "traditional," Ryan, is Asian so it may or may not be a customary name for his family.

In Whitman's defense, his dad is a talented, local author. I'm guessing they preferred Whitman over Walt or Walter. I can see why; it's a strong name.

The other boy name that keeps popping up lately: Milo. So sweet.

The one name I abhor is Colter. It just reeks of pretentiousness to me. There was a little boy who briefly lived in the house behind us with that name. His family was vegan and his mom had to inspect the box on our popsicles before he was allowed to have one with the other kids. Unfortunately for him, he wasn't given permission. Oh what fun.

Colter's dad, on the other hand, used to sneak out of their house at night and join us at the fire pit. We would hear rustling in the dark and he would magically appear to have a beer or two. I don't blame him -- pretty sure I would sneak out of that house, too. I, however, would forgo the Budweiser and instead shovel cheeseburgers and hotdogs into my mouth.

I just hope that Colter is having fun somewhere reviewing his junior investment portfolio and enjoying the summer with a frosty cold tofudgsicle. Lucky lad.

Lock it Up

After spending much of the weekend distilling a 290 page research report on food trends, just when I thought I was almost finished, my PowerPoint crashed. Since it happens all the time (and I've learned my lesson), I had been saving every few minutes. In this case, I only lost 5-6 slides. Other times, I haven't been so lucky.

Coincidentally, in the office mail I just received the June/July 2009 Dell business catalog with the following headline (in screaming all caps).

IT'S YOUR BUSINESS. LOCK IT UP.

Sheesh. What marketing genius thought of that?! When I think of PCs and locking up, it's never a good thing.

Worse yet, prior to my long-standing issues with Home Depot, I had Dell-related problems and solutions. By problems, I mean a laptop that crashed 6X/day. By solutions, I mean purchasing a new Dell (seriously, what was I thinking?) and, thankfully, Dell not processing the order.

Following is a portion of the letter I wrote to Dell and sent to myriad muckety mucks without a single response. Ever.

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On August 13, 2004, a co-worker ordered a Dell notebook computer on my behalf. It never arrived. In fact, seven weeks later, it still hasn’t arrived. To this date, we have never received any contact from anyone at Dell.

Please take a moment to review the following event log of my co-worker’s actions on my behalf:

• August 13: Notebook ordered online through the Dell.com small business site.
• August 13: Immediately received an “Order Acknowledgement” email.
• August 23: No computer. Called customer service. After much discussion, was told that we needed to deal with our account representative. (As e-commerce “customers,” we did not know that we had a designated account representative.)
• August 23: Was told that our account representative was not in at the moment but would respond within the day.
• August 24: Sent e-mail to the Dell Online Communications Center describing the problem (see attached).
• August 25: Received a short, but prompt, “customer care does not have access to Sales data” response (again, see attached).
• September 24: Still waiting by the phone for our account rep—but not anxiously as I have been using my new IBM ThinkPad since August 27.
  

Is it the customer’s responsibility to know that a SKU presented on your site is not valid? If your e-commerce system rejects an order that has already been acknowledged to the customer, is no one notified either internally or externally? Was no one empowered and/or incented to take action? Is it possible that no one at Dell wanted or needed our order? At the very least, would it have been difficult for someone to acknowledge that a problem had occurred? Conversely, would it be ludicrous to hope that someone might take the initiative to cross functional barriers (from customer care to sales) and proactively meet our needs? Quite simply, is there anything that could have been done to facilitate our transaction?

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So much for my non-complaining. I bring this years-old issue up because earlier this year, after five years of peace and tranquility with my IBM ThinkPad, I got a new Dell laptop that our IT vendor purchased on my behalf (against my better judgment). Well, what do you know? It keeps crashing. I've had our vendor's help desk people looking into the problems, running diagnostics, etc.

IT'S YOUR BUSINESS. LOCK IT UP.

Finally, it's a refreshing change of pace to see a tagline that is brutally honest!

Cracker Soul

Every once in a while you score one of the best nights ever. Last night: Cracker. They played heaps o' hits including Eurotrash Girl, Low, Movie Star, Sweet Thistle Pie, Get Off This, Teen Angst, etc., and a fabulous new tune, "Turn on Tune in Drop out with Me," from their latest CD. If I had the chance, I would have run away with David Lowery right there and then. Shockingly enough, he didn't ask me to.

I, of course, picked up my girlfriend Ellen straight from work so I was wearing a black suit and heels. (Way to rock out.) Yet, at the end of the night, this guy that Priddy Mary thought was hot but looked more like a cuter version of Joey from Z Rock came up to me and said, "I'm not hitting on you but wanted you to know that you're the cutest thing -- dancing in the rain."

Seriously. For someone suffering from chronic low self-esteem, it was such an amazing compliment. Who ever you are and where ever you may be: thanks.