How Men Fail

In the course of our daily lives, or at least that part of our daily life that passes as our livelihood, we are called upon to make many decisions. Granted, the majority of us are not in those occupations where our decisions could cause someone to loose their life, and this entry does not apply to them anyway.

But the rest of us make many decisions, some small, some not so, during the course of our livelihood. When faced with such a decision, logic would dictate that the more information that was obtained, the better the decision would be. Albeit some decisions must meet a time constraint, a lot of decisions, sometimes affecting millions of dollars, are not time-constrained, and the more information the better. Alas, this does not happen. We listen to a plethora of information, but not from a plethora of sources. It would seem that if we take the time to contact and solicit a plethora of sources, then we would be perceived as weak, or unable to make a decision on our own. So what happens (sometimes) is we listen (a lot) to sales people who tell us all the wonderful attributes of the product we are looking at and either do not mention (or do not know) those wonderful idiosyncratic things that will make the product practically useless to us.

After the product is purchased and the monies expended, the first thing that pops up are, yep, you guessed it, the idiosyncrasies. Now we have the choice of spending even more money (which will make us look bad), or saying, "We messed up" which will make us look worse. So we attempt to push the blame onto the ineptitude of others by saying things like, "you didn't implement this correctly", or, "it wasn't installed correctly", when all the while, we just didn't have the information we needed to make the decision before us in a purely logical manner.

So somewhere down the road, we are left with, "Houston, we have a problem"...

Live large!

A Short Test

Seems there is this new tool where you can post to your blog from your iGoogle homepage, so I thought I would give it a shot. Later...

Description

There is no way I can describe the grandeur of driving up the valley either now or during warm weather. The mountains are so close to the roadway that they have a presence all their own. I could take a million pictures with the world's best camera, and you could still not feel the presence of the mountains. And now, with the temps hovering just below zero, the snow and roadways are covered with a constant frost that can only be likened to diamond dust. It is as if God has sprinkled the earth with diamond dust.

This morning, driving in, it was breath-taking to see the effect of the freezing fog of yesterday. Every tree and every branch is alive with light that is bouncing off of whatever light is present. It transforms what we jokingly call the "stick forest" into a flocked fairyland of frost. Again, it is too beautiful for words!

The Post Modern Conundrum

For a long time we have gone along satisfied that our definition of being was derived from the description of our employment. "I am a computer programmer" was a sufficient statement to describe what I did, what my pursuits were, and indeed, who I was as a person. While this may seem like a shallow assessment, albeit an accurate one, it provided a sense of security and a sense of personal well-being to many. Our descriptions of ourselves defined our passions as well. I started working with computers because the fascinated me, and the more I learned, the more fascinated I became. It was easy for me to trace my computated inclinations to an early age when I studied music and came to the somber realization that while I enjoyed playing the piano, I had no natural "feel" for it. I summarized therefore, that I was a technician instead of a musician. This led to other such summarizations which I feel we all make from time to time. I am a cook, not a chef; and I am a "shade-tree" as opposed to a "certified" mechanic.

Along comes the post modern era and things change. After a rather lengthy (to me) stint of unemployment, I had to search for what I was exactly. Since I was not inclined to describe myself as an "unemployed" whatever, it behooved myself to define myself in some other terms. Who was I exactly as a man, as a human being, as a member of society? And what did I bring to the table if not the skills of my job? This type of soul searching went on for some time until I came to the realization that I was a child of the King and did not need any other moniker to tell the world who I was. Here presents the conundrum: If I am not defined by my job - it my job does not dictate my passions, how do I maintain the enthusiasm necessary to be successful in my job - to excel and advance, which is the natural proclivity of all mankind? When my passions are not in my employment, then I find my mind easily sidetracked to other passions. Of late I have become infatuated with medieval times and having developed a desire to work with metals. This would require a forge and some raw material, but would be easy enough to do. Given this fascination, I find more and more of my otherwise "free" time devoted to these pursuits instead of to increasing my technical competence.

So how do we live in post modern times, and how do we balance the passions of our hearts against the needs of our jobs - when they no longer coincide?

Oh, the picture was taken yesterday at 5:00 p.m. outside my office. It was about 11 degrees at the time and breathtakingly beautiful!

A Hankering

I have a hankering to build a forge and pound some iron. Not really sure where this is coming from, but have been fascinated with medieval times, here of late, and would like to learn the trade of a swordsmith. Have studied some of the medieval martial arts, and realize I am too old to partake of those pleasures any longer, but to be able to make the best swords around - now that would be something.

Lots of wishful thinking, I guess...

Now That's More Like It!

We got our first significant snowfall of the season and it is about time! We have had snow in the mountains since the first day of fall (see "Termination Dust"), but it took from then until now to get some snow in the lowlands! So far we have only gotten about three to four inches, but we are supposed to pick up another three or four today, and that will be just fine by us. Christy is taking some kids sledding tomorrow, so the more snow the better!

Now the holidays can begin!