The Hazards of Knowing Not Enough

BobbieLeave a comment

Every year, I go through this work frenzy as the holidays arrive, and every year, I unreasonably think that things will be magically calm and collected come 1 January. It’s a pipe dream, and it’s been a consistent one of mine for the last 8 years. It never, ever works out that way. If insanity is doing the same things over again and expecting a different result, then I’m clearly insane. This year the frenzy is exacerbated by bold new initiatives and moves within the company, a couple of reorganizational moves, a shift in focus, and the realization that I will never, every clear out my email queue. It was not helped by 3 days of snow, one of which without internet. This is all by way of explanation to the extremely weird mood I was in today, and what it resulted in, which has left me most thoughtful, if not slightly irritated at the time I wasted.

As the snow is melting I’m back in the office, with a quick trip to run errands, and one of those was the post office. At said post office there were two warmly-dressed folks, mid-30’s, with posters of our President, with a Hitler moustache. Now, I’ve seen these before, when I went down to Olympia for Focus Day last year (and will be there again this year!), and at a couple of grocery stores. I get that they are exercising their Free Speech* rights and that’s cool — democracy is the celebration of all of the freedoms, not just the ones you like.

As I went in to the Post Office I realized I had left my phone in the car, so I went back to the car to retrieve it. Upon opening the door the man said, “We’re over here!” to me, and I looked up and said, “Yes, I know”, and proceeded to rummage through my car for my phone (it wasn’t there, I had left it at home, which is a frustrating thing). “They’re trying to kill us,” he said, and I made a very big mistake here. I asked, “Who?”

Man: “Obama and the Republicans. They got together with the banks and are trying to kill us!”

Me: “So, a Democrat president and a Republican congress got together with the banks to… kill us?”

Man: “Yeah!”

Me: “The government can’t even deliver the mail properly.”

Man: “That doesn’t matter. They’re trying to kill us!”

Me: “…”

Man: “The Russians are putting up a colony on the moon. They’ve announced it.”

Me: “Okay, how is *that* a bad thing?”

Man: “It isn’t!”

Me: “I don’t understand where you’re going with this? Kennedy said in ’62 we’d get to the Moon and did, now the Russians are going to build a colony — wouldn’t that drive innovation? Isn’t that a good thing?”

Man: “It’s not about that!”

Me: “Did you vote?”

Man: “It’s not about that!”

Me: “Yes it is. There are two ways to change things in this country. You vote, or you vote with your feet.”

Man: “Politics is not about personalities.”

Me: (Internally: WTF?)

Me: “You just said politics is not about personalities…”

Man: “Yeah!”

Me: “You’ve pasted a Hitler moustache on the President… aren’t you evoking a personality for that?”

Man: “No, it’s because he’s trying to kill us!”

Me: “I think you need to work on your message.”

Man: (sarcastically) “Oh you win!”

From here I walked into the post office thinking that aside from opening my mouth (mistake one) was that I thought this person wanted to actually engage in any sort of discussion or debate. He’s mad, he’s pissed, and he’s probably got just enough information to be dangerous but not effective (like most of the rest of us).  Spending any amount of time discussing it with him was leaving me lost, and clearly leaving him frustrated.  A waste of time for both of us, and that’s a shame.

I got my stamps, exited, and his female companion (compatriot? Colleague?) smiled at me. She asked if I wanted a flyer and I said No, indicating I think she probably already knew that. She said she didn’t.

I’m not sure if there’s training around this sort of communication technique but it can’t be one of persuasion — only confusion. Which is quite ironic, as that appears to be part of their chief complaint.

*ME: big fan of Free Speech, and *all* that it entails. But there’s a certain amount of explanation that goes with Free Speech — it means people can say all kinds of things that you don’t like. Now, if they say stuff about YOU and it isn’t true then it’s slander and you can prosecute (Obscenity and Libel make the cut, too). But Free Speech means they can scream at the top of their lungs about something you don’t like or agree with, and you have to deal, and vice-versa. If someone wants to paste the facial hair of a bloody mass murderer on a photo of the President — and this is not the first President to get that treatment — then I can’t do anything to stop them. It’s their right. There is no compulsion on my part, however, to agree with them, and I should’ve simply ignored them. That’ll learn me.

London in “Two Hours”

BobbieLeave a comment

As I was in London for work recently and had a couple of hours to spare, I took a very quick tour (it was supposed to be two hours, but just like Gilligan’s Island it took longer. I think it had something to do with the exchange rate or something, but the two hour tour was 3 hours and 45 minutes), and absolutely worth it.

Highlights included riding at the top of a double-decker bus (note: bus drivers in London are usually aggressive, and so half the time you would absolutely swear they were going to a. run someone over or b. crash into a car. The fact that this didn’t happen while I was there does not mean it doesn’t happen), walking across two bridges (one which had fantastic views to one side of “Old” London, including Big Ben, and one which had fantastic views of “New” London, including, well, the new stuff), and stopping at Buckingham palace to watch the front door guard sleep whilst standing, and the front gate guard ponder at the two women pointing and waving at him. (Yes. One was me.)

I went to a real live pub (well, a couple…), discovered that if you order wine you must order it in “large” or “small” (my kind of country), had a tasting of beer (warm beer?), ordered fish and chips (plaice), and was introduced to a butty. This would be a sandwich of butter and French fries. Yes, I know what you’re thinking, but it’s in the country and you should absolutely try it.

Oh, and then there was the lunch run to Marks and Spencer’s, where apparently nice girls buy underwear and/or sandwiches to go; the walk past Harrods and Fortnum and Masons, where one gets a hamper at disgustingly large prices, the attempt to get into the Ritz for a drink to be told that jeans, even fancy ones, are not allowed.

I had a translator for most of this, whom I shall herein dub The Honourable Lynne, and I am doing so because it allows me to bestow a title I don’t get in a spelling I don’t normally use. While they theoretically speak English in North America (note: in England, you have to distinguish between “North America” and “South America” – because they (accurately) recognize there are more than one), they do not speak the same English in England. You don’t walk on the sidewalk, you walk on the pavement. The road is not made with asphalt, it’s made with tarmac. You ride a lift, you take out the dustbin, you use a brollie if it’s raining and when walking on the pavement next to the road be sure to look both ways lest you get hit by a passing lorry. If you nearly do you may visit the loo (or washroom, but no one rests there), and you may need to wait in the queue for it.  Mashed potatoes are called “mash”, French fries are “chips”, chips are “crisps”, cookies are “biscuits”. There is something called a “digestive biscuit” which purportedly aids in ones digestion and can be eaten plain or with butter and cheese. You have to love a civilization where they acknowledge the improvement of things with butter and cheese.

It was fascinating to be the person with the accent. Me. I had the accent. In an office building of hundreds of people (or in the M&S, where it felt like there were hundreds of people), I was the odd (wo)man out. Let the record state that I did not pull a Madonna and start affecting an accent.

Everyone I talked to was sweet, polite, and assured me that if I loved London (did/do), I would love Devon/Bath/Cornwall/etc.; that will have to wait for another trip.

For this trip, I was working. And despite my four or five hours off-sides, I spent 90% of it working to two time zones (at least the jet lag helped), meeting a double dozen people, and marveling at how, though I live in the land of Starbucks, the coffee makers in London were ever so much better than those back home. In the space of four days I eradicated six years’ worth of decaf-only coffee drinking, much to the dismay (I’m sure) of those I work with. There’s a metric ton of exciting things about at work this next year – naturally, can’t talk about it, except to say that you the consumer will undoubtedly benefit – and the last thing anyone needs is an over-revved Bobbie engineering things. To those who work with me I apologize in advance for the emails, meetings, and over-engineering. The good news is I’m back to only working 1.5 time zones, and it may help if you switch up my coffee.

Winning, Losing, and Persuasion: Getting Spock and your Proto Human in Line

Bobbie1 Comment

No one likes to lose. This is one of those things that someone actually did a scientific study on, and the rest of us are sitting here wondering who got a grant funded for that. But it’s true: no one likes to lose; and our fear of losing is GREATER than our joy in winning.

To wit: Let’s say I have you pick a coin out of your pocket; a quarter or a euro or a shilling. It’s your coin, so it’s your choice. Now let’s say I propose the following bet: every time that coin flips to “heads”, I pay you $10. Every time it flips to “tails”, you pay me $1. You will take that bet (statistically speaking, that is, most people will).

Now let’s say I keep your potential win still at $10, but your loss at $2. You’ll like it less, but you’ll still take the bet. Most people drop off when the potential loss is $4. Their rationale is this: $4 is a significant percentage of their potential win. This makes sense.

Until you realize a coin toss is a 50-50 chance, each time.

For example, let’s say you take the $4 version of the bet (you’re brave like that). We flip the coin 10 times, each time with a 50% chance of hitting “heads”. Over a large enough data set that means chances are pretty decent that you will have 5 wins and 5 losses; so you’d “win” $50 and “lose” $20. In short, you’d net positive just for playing, by $30.

In theory, it’s a good bet up to values of $10 on win and $9 on lose (you’d still be ahead $5). However, people do not behave this way. The urge to *avoid losing* will actually lead people to make unwise economic decisions. (Actually, this goes far beyond economy – some people will make unwise OTHER decisions just to avoid their notion of what “losing” is).

Evolutionarily speaking this makes sense: say you’re a proto-human and you’re ambling about in the jungles/desert/savannah/etc. You see a flock of birds take off in the distance with no audible warning. You either : 1. Bet they got a wild hair and just decided to up and fly, or 2. Bet there’s a predator nearby and amble your way to the nearest tree, just in case.

The person who bet #1 would likely DIE each time they bet wrongly. The person betting #2 would still live if they bet right or wrong. And so we learn that “losing” – betting wrong, making poor decisions, whatever tag you want to give it – has a cost. And over the millennia, this is drilled into our little proto-human bit of our brain.

The logic-driven, numbers-based sides of our brain can argue all we want with the proto human side of our brain, but proto human will not give in (or not give in easily). This is especially true if we’re not paying attention. The same gut instinct to avoid losing is why people fall for the “sale” that’s on the end caps in a store (try checking those prices against those in-line some time), why they rush to sell (or buy) a house without doing enough of their homework (guilty!), and why, despite all logical evidence, they will race ahead of you on the freeway at 80mph only in order to be sitting at the traffic light ahead that much longer than you, when your car ambles up.

A lot of the job of a change manager – one managing change for themselves or others – is to manage this proto-human angst over losing. People don’t like to “lose” what they are good at/familiar with over the unknown new stuff, they don’t like to “lose” control over where a project or team is going, they don’t like to “lose” the path they’ve envisioned for themselves.

In the book ‘Switch’ by Chip Heath, the idea presented is that when instituting change you have to convince the Rider (the logical part of the human brain you’re working with, let’s call it “Spock”), convince the Elephant (the proto-human), and give them a path to go down (here’s what I want you to do). This sort of change-management can work internally too.

Say you want to lose weight. You need to convince your Rider (this is the part of your brain that goes to purchase nonfat yogurt and lean cuisines and makes you order the salad at dinner), your Elephant (this is the part of your brain that sees someone brought in doughnuts so you’ll be “good” and only have half – well, a whole one, but you skipped breakfast – maybe one and a half because you’re going to the gym – oh what the hell your diet’s busted may as well eat two), and show them the path (I will be able to wear these jeans/this bikini/see my cholesterol go down).

The great part of the above example is you already know what appeals to your proto human and your Spock human (forgive the oxymoron). (Just because your proto human wins out more often than not doesn’t mean you don’t know how to do it, it just means your Spock human is not paying attention).

Management gets tricky when you have to convince other people’s proto humans and Spocks.

(By the way, by “management” we’re not necessarily talking people who work for you. “Management” means managing other people – by design or by proxy – and can extend to family/friends/acquaintances/etc.  You just don’t notice it, because you will tend to hang around people who require very little “management” – their Spock and proto-human already align with yours, pretty much).

The best way, then, to appeal to a Spock is lots of shiny charts and graphs, statistics, quoted sources, approved, sound, logic (theirs). The traditional best way to appeal to the proto-human is to turn the loss into a gain: what is in it for THEM, why is this worth their time, how will life be better/easier once it’s done. Alternatively, though, it is better to demonstrate how their life/work stream/issue will be worse if it is NOT done (again, losing is more important than winning, in a sense).

Rome in a Day (and a half)

BobbieLeave a comment

This post is unfairly titled, because most of my time was spent in a (rather nice) office building. The perks of said office building include the Best! Espresso! Machine! Ever! And the fact that everyone is bilingual – at least – and kind.  I’m here to meet my team, and other teams that I/they work with; hopefully next time I can stay longer than two nights.

Outside of the office building is Rome, Italy.

Several things I suspected and now know:

  1. Roman food is good. Like really, really good. I had gnocchi twice one day. Pasta. Cheese. Saltimbocca. Chicoria. Baba. So glad I lost a pound before I left…
  2. House wine is good. For 4 Euro you get half a liter of something drinkable and amongst two of us we couldn’t finish it, because you ALSO get a big huge bottle of sparkling water.
  3. Bidets do exist here and they are a wacky piece of swank.
  4. My phone doesn’t work here without adding on international services, which the procurement area of my work completely failed to do, and so I ITCH without the ability to get email or make calls on my phone.
  5. The gym at my hotel is serviceable but not stellar. Having had gnocchi twice, though, I used the hell out of it.
  6. It’s completely safe to walk alone, at night, by myself, on the side of the road (Sunday night = everything dead in Rome (at least where I’m at, on the ‘way north end), so I had to walk a couple of miles to get dinner).
  7. Everybody likes the new government, and no one thinks it will last, because it’s too “reasonable”.

Things I did not suspect and now know:

  1. Coffee is WAY stronger than the strongest stuff Starbucks puts out. Two teeny coffees and I was literally zinging around.
  2. Italians have AMAZING depth perception. I will never again fear sitting in the male person’s Awesomely Huge Truck, because I have seen an Italian park 0.2cms away from the nearest car, back and front.
  3. There are no traffic rules here, particularly for pedestrians. Crossing the street means you make eye contact with oncoming traffic, and once you do, you walk into the street.
  4. Dinner is at 9 because no one leaves the office until 7 and no one gets in before 9. Commutes range from ½ to 2 hours to/from home, and people go to bed at midnight.
  5. Italian women can run, in stiletto-heeled boots, down an icy, cobblestone street, after the bus, and not kill themselves.
  6. There is a high percentage of home ownership here, which drives home prices UP as real estate is more often handed down than sold. An 80sqm apartment with no parking (call it 725 square feet) in the area I’m in goes for about half of a million Euro at lowest. Hence the commutes. People have to move out to own a home.
  7. I am a total princess and cannot handle staying in a hotel where the internet is dodgy at best. They handed me an Ethernet cable. It works some of the time. This plus my brick-of-a-phone makes me sad.

This trip I didn’t get much time to go out and about but I did manage to eat everything in sight and meet with people I needed (and wanted) to see. Later today I head via 3-hour flight to London, where I will have a completely new hotel and social experience. I am definitely coming back to Rome!

Correlation & Causality: Why Money Won’t Drive an Economist, Exactly

BobbieLeave a comment

In 1992, the beautiful notion that a bunch of disparate countries could get together and form an Economic Union came to pass: the Maastricht Treaty. Like a giddy young couple (well, this would be technically a plural marriage, but anyways…), the countries went to the altar, ’til death do they part.

Because, as is widely touted now, there was no exit clause.

This on its own is enough to give me pause: how, in this litigious, finance-driven society, can ANYONE go to the altar and not have a pre-nup? (No, I didn’t last time — there was nothing to ‘nup, to quote Kirstie Alley — but I will next time).  I get that it’s extremely unattractive to go into a marriage acknowledging the prospect of divorce, but the odds are not in your favor for success. (Nor are they in your favor for combined economies — see “Austria-Hungarian Empire”.)

Lack of forethought aside, someone has come up with a way to arrive at the solution: Simon Wolfson has created a $400k ($250 pounds sterling, 300 Euro) prize to the first person (likely Economist) to come up with a successful, practical way to exit the Euro. (He has a nifty title in addition to the money: Baron Wolfson of Aspley Guise). It’s the second largest economics prize in the world, behind the Nobel.

And here’s where things get interesting: if you read Drive by Dan Pink (or check out the RSA Animate if you’re averse to reading too much), you’ll know that heuristic tasks/jobs cannot, beyond a sustainable living salary, be rewarded via income.  That is to say, if you take someone and you give them an algorithmic task — follow process “A”, exactly — then you can monetarily incentivize them. If their task requires innovation, or creative thinking, though, a monetary incentive will backfire: their solution will be less creative and delivered under greater duress (and likely late).

So why offer a large monetary reward for what is absolutely certain to be an incredibly heuristic task? Clearly they will not be incentivized by the cash.

Best answer? Because they are incentivized by recognition — and this prize is, as stated, second only to the Nobel (one could argue you may win BOTH if you figure out how to do it elegantly). The money itself buys the recognition from people who would otherwise not ordinarily care *who* solved the problem. Think about it: if, some six months from now, someone in a government building figured out how to make this process work, you won’t care — if there’s no prize. The very existence of the prize, by virtue of its sum, is what drives the recognition, and in turn drives the Economist, or Economists, that figure this out.

Here’s hoping it works.

Oh, Wait

BobbieLeave a comment

Totally forgot why I’m home and have time to blog in the first place.  Yesterday I got my second viscosupplementation shot.

It was exactly like the first time, only more painful and the Male Person was there with me.

You can read about viscosupplementation here. There are five or six options of what kind you get — in my case, I vote for the 6cc-once-every-six-months version, instead of the 3-shots-every-3-months version. It means that a very large needle is inserted behind my left patella and, in about thirty excruciating seconds, a liquid mass is inserted there.

To address the pain and discomfiture I get to ice my knee for 15 minutes. Then there is a spray-on anesthetic. (Note: topical anesthetic? does zip for the actual needle in the leg thing.) Then there is a vibrator — apparently applying a vibrator to your left femur “confuses” your nerves because they’d like to pay attention to that more than the needle in your kneecap. The Male Person was on hand to hold my leg down, because a bizarre side effect of putting 6cc’s of unexpected liquid behind your kneecap is that your leg wants to stretch out, closing off the entry for the needle; ergo, Male Person. And then there is my favorite method of avoiding pain: making ridiculous conversation.

Last time I was in for this, I mangled reading all of her diplomas (she’s Canadian French, so all of her diplomas are dual-language, and my french is le crap). This time, I carefully studied her anatomical maps, starting from the skull and making it to about the elbow before it was done. I mangled those just as nicely; she laughed at me just as much.

I spent most of yesterday not able to walk properly, and today I hobbled about this and that. By tomorrow I’ll be normal again.

For me.

Not an It Getter

Bobbie1 Comment

One of the reasons I’ve been writing so infrequently is that there isn’t much I *can* write right now — some stuff I have to keep silent on for work, other stuff I have to keep silent on for, well, me.

About a year ago I was working on a Big Project for work that I had to keep quiet on for many, many months. Part of working on this project involved working with a person whose reactions and actions made no sense at any time given any of the data we were privy to, or indeed any of the conversations we had with this person. My then-boss and I declared a new term within our working relationship: Not an “It Getter”. As in, this person did Not Get It.

That person is no longer with the company and the project was indeed delivered, so my working theory is, eventually, after a long period of winding pain (perhaps like getting over the flu), Not It Getters go away.

Right now I’m dealing with another sort of Not It Getter (not at work this time). Despite whatever sort of data presented this person does not Get It. The latest demonstration runs roughly thus (nouns and verbs have been changed to protect the dubiously innocent):

Me: You can have your Lemurs on day 3, 5, 7 or 9.
Them: Hm, I think we want to pick up our Lemurs on day 1.
Me: As discussed, your Lemurs are not available on day 1, however you can pick up (or have delivered) your Lemurs on day 3, 5, 7, or 9.
Them: How about day 2? Day 2 is only one day away from 1. That’s good, right?
Me: No, it’s not. Day 2 is day 2, and Day 1 is day 1, so you can pick up your Lemurs on day 3, 5, 7, or 9.
Them: How about this: you give us backrubs each day for two months, and we pick up our Lemurs sometime after Day 3?
Me: Are you for real?

This is naturally all paraphrased and will of course meter out in the end (based on previous data). Some of us are It-Getters.

This is Why Physicists Are So Chill

Bobbie1 Comment

If you are like me, and have a BS in Zoology you don’t use but cherish because for two years you got to cram your head with facts that come up in truly inappropriate moments at cocktail parties, you’ll know about monkeys.

Specifically, about monkey studies. Psychologists and animal behavioralists LOVE to do studies on monkeys, specifically chimps but also other species, because it’s a close enough derivative to humans that we feel we can draw conclusions but not so close that it will put people in uproar. (The fact that it isn’t technically humans gives some people the license to treat these studies like their horoscope: fully acknowledging those that conform to their ideas of appropriate and discarding the rest like a Tootsie Roll out of one’s Halloween stash).

I accidentally enrolled in an animal behavior class once and had such a good time I enrolled in a few more, this is why despite a declared major in Zoology with what was supposed to be an emphasis in Marine Biology I actually took things like Cellular Mollecular Botany and Evolutionary Genetics: the last two years of college are a smorgasbord and I was an ideal candidate for Overeaters Anonymous. I digress…

One study I’m reminded of constantly was done with (surprise!) monkeys: the effect of a routine, a schedule, on their daily lives. That is to say, your Control group (the group you aren’t fucking with, as it were) gets awoke at a certain time. They get to play at a certain time. They get fed at a certain time. They go to sleep at a certain time. Day in and day out, this schedule does not vary. The Test group (that would be the group you’re fucking with) has a supremely erratic schedule: they never awake at the same time, the time and distance from one activity to another (and, indeed, the order) changes around a lot, etc. Both groups get adequate sleep time and proper diet…. the only thing different is the time at which these things are allowed to happen.

The Test Group will go insane (in a self-or-others injuring way). Every. Time.

One of my mottos is to Encourage Entropy. This is with tongue placed firmly in cheek to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that Entropy Always Increases. (The first is the Law of the Conservation of Energy: Energy can neither be created nor destroyed). But basically the second law states that disorder/chaos, or Entropy, in a system will always increase. Chaoticians love this because that is the sort of butterfly flapping its wings in China that brings the stock market down theory they love to tout (see Jeff Goldblum, Jurassic Park). I like it on the ‘If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them’ method: left to my own devices I will create an environment so rigid for myself that any disruption therein will send me into a fit of OCD cleaning or some other expression of discomfiture. If I remind myself that there’s a LAW that says it’s supposed to happen, well, then, I’m just obeying the law. And as the Male Person says, I’m a total goody two shoes and will obey the law. In this case, I’ll encourage it along. While cleaning.

Lately the entropy in my life has been increasing at a rate I’m a little less comfortable with. The schedule was set, was changed, was messed with, was righted, was slightly shifted, was slightly shifted back, and is now in some form of stasis for a couple of months until the next round of shift negotiations occurs. The good news is any potential upcoming shifts are likely to be suitably telegraphed, the bad news is I have no idea what they are as of yet (there are, of course, reasonable assumptions and contingency plans).

The Entropy Erratic is furthered by an upcoming change in profession, for which I am very excited, proud, and honored, and totally will talk about it once it’s final. Trust me when I say it’s a move up, and over, and I’m full of technical squee, but we’re not there yet. I think, however, we can all agree that shifting jobs within a company means for a very weird transition period, one I am in currently, where I am leaving job A (and having to download all of my stuff to someone(s) else(s)), and arriving at job B (where I am no longer hot shit, I am not even a lukewarm fart, and I need to learn everything anew). Entropy, in effect, is getting a dopamine rush.

While I do have a reasonable confidence level (about 95%, plus minus 3%) that this will all calm down around mid-December, I am in turn reminded of the Third Law of Thermodynamics: basically, you can’t freeze anything to a total stop. You can slow it down a lot (a total lot!) but the Entropy will always be there, even if you get all Kelvin on its ass. There’s a certain peace in that.

For those of you wondering: there are actually FOUR laws of Thermodynamics. The Zeroth one — yes, it goes 0,1,2,3; like I said, physicists — basically states if you have 2 systems in thermal equilibrium with a third, they are in equilibrium with one another. The practical application of this in terms of my life is that if things are cool at work and things are cool at home then things are cool with me; I continue reminding myself that this law comes *before* the one about entropy increasing.

Show Your Work

BobbieLeave a comment

I’m sitting at the dining room table with my son, answering work emails and working on a power point, while he does the 3rd grade equivalent: Math homework. Right now they’re making change (e.g.,” Jose walks into a store with $5 and buys a yo-yo for $2.58, how much change should he get? What’s the fewest coins he could receive?”) (My personal take is Jose shouldn’t be ripped off $2.58 for a yo-yo, that he could probably get a tall latte for that, but that’s another matter).

The problem we are currently facing is the predisposition to guess and/or intuit the answer. Whilst this works about 75% of the time — well, more like 83% of the time — the remaining 25-or-17% of the time it doesn’t. And he marks a wrong answer, and it gets caught in the check (read, Mom review).

Then begins the inexplicable cascade of numbers, Rainman-style, that come from my son: “42! 13! 79! No mom it’s really 12!”. And then I utter the dreaded phrase: “Show your work.”

My brother and I were raised by engineers — Gandalf help us — and thusly hated this phrase ourselves. We *knew* the answers, to sully the page with scribblings that were really academic — literally — to the proceedings seemed poorly required. Oftentimes we’d get grades come back with a B — A for accuracy, but alas we hadn’t shown our work. A deep and abiding distaste for the phrase “Show your work” started. To us, the ANSWER was the beautiful thing. Why show the bones of your effort?

As I progressed up the math chain — I can’t speak for my brother, as I wasn’t around much in his advanced schooling and he would have found me unbearable had I been — I discovered the grade value of “Show your work”. In calculus, and especially differential equations, showing your work can show how you were totally on the right track until step 34, when you saw a deer. Or something. All of a sudden your “C” becomes a “B” and when your GPA is riding on it, this becomes a Big Thing.

When you’re in grad school and you’re funding your GPA it becomes a Really Big Thing. The only class where “Show your work” was a detractant was the Legal Environment of Business, in which I kept confusing what was Right with what was Legal, and I got ding’d for “irrelevant ancillary notes” (true story). On the flip side, I’ve noted that the mark of a really, truly excellent lawyer is one who has the “Brief”, briefly, but with a million annotated facts and appendices, clearly marked, at the ready.

I sit here with my son, nagging him to show his work. He will totally thank me some day when he’s a lawyer.

I Just Run Here

BobbieLeave a comment

I went for a run this morning which, due to a missing mile marker, ended up with me running an extra mile (this is a good thing, as I was singing and having fun). The lake is gorgeous on a crisp morning like today, and the trail is full of joggers, runners (there’s a difference), walkers, dog-runners, dog-walkers, cyclists, etc.

For the Cyclist: I know what it’s like. Yes, I do. Not just in general — I’ve done some biking in my time — but specifically on the Lake Sammamish Trail, because I went biking on it with my friend Kevin when we decided that biking on the East Lake Sammamish road was a bit like playing frogger with two wheels. I know riding on gravel requires a little more concentration (just a little). This does not, however, excuse you from omitting “On Your Left”, “Left”, or a simple bell warning. I *am* rocking out to the Foo Fighters, but not so loudly that I couldn’t hear you if you said or did these things, so when you whipped up past me you scared the [deleted expletive] out of me.

[Editor’s note: rant aside, this particular cyclist pulled over to take a pic of the lake — which is gorgeous, by the way — and when he did, and I ran past, I said, “On Your Left”.  When he eventually got back on his bike and passed me again, he did say “Left”. And so that lesson went well, I think.]

Lining the trail, sometimes on one side only, sometimes on both sides, are very large houses. Living on the lake is as much a status symbol as living in Medina or Clyde Hill or Mercer Island; the real estate prices reflect this status symbol (I do not live on the lake). And, as with any area you are likely to have a lot of people wanting in on the exclusivity, the houses are jammed together. You will actually see a 4- or 5-thousand square foot mansion with a four car garage about five feet from the neighboring mansion. To preserve individuality, however, these fine folks all differ wildly in their home construction and style. You thusly see the Craftsman, the Spanish-style, the Modern, and the Traditional all a-jumbled… and then maybe someone’s plot of land where they’re in fresh construction, and no discernible style is evident yet.

The original trail was actually a railroad, and when the railroad was decommissioned it became a trail, much to the angst of a lot of the homeowners. They didn’t WANT a bunch of strangers trolling through their front or back yards, so many put up fences. In many cases, they had to put up two: because of the lay of the land, you often see large mansion on the lake side, and then the garage for said mansion on the street side (across the trail), and fences “protecting” each. Ergo, you’ve just arrived home with a large grocery haul, you must park your car, open a fence, close it, cross the trail, open that fence, close it, all to get to your mansion.

And if a runner stops and asks you if you want help with said groceries, apparently the proper mode is to look at them in askance, reply with a puzzled “no”, and continue trudging along to your mansion. Clearly, the runner is part of the problem.

For any runners coming up my hill when I’m navigating from car to kitchen with loads of groceries — if you volunteer to help, I’ll totally take you up on it. Even though I don’t have a mansion.