Christmas vacation recap

As I write this, we are still making our way up I95 from Florida. I didn't sleep well last night so after about 3 1/2 hours on the road this morning I have relinquished the keys to Chrissy somewhere in North Carolina. We are both working tomorrow but should be home by around 3 or 4pm today so all is good.

This trip has certainly been a busy one with visits to multiple theme parks, an Aquarium, and lots of good food.  On the way down we spent a night in Richmond with one of Chrissy's friends, then a night at dad's before hitting up Disney World for the day.  We mostly went to see the magic kingdom expansion but while there I made a great discovery; I can ride (at least some) roller coasters now.

We rode Splash Mountain twice, Big Thunder Railroad once, and much to my surprise, I even fit on Space Mountain for two runs! I forgot how much I enjoyed roller coasters. We ate dinner at Epcot and headed down to Mom's.

The dogs are just as plentiful (7) and crazy as ever. Somehow Mack manages to still get around despite being as large as a horse and 10 1/2 years old.  Mom & George are doing well also.

We managed to meat up with my stepbrother Sean before he headed off to NC and get in some mini golf too. Once Heather and Stacey were in town, we had dinner with everyone (Mom, George, Heather, Stacey, Pop Pop, Chrissy and I) at Stonewood grill and it was amazing.

Heather, Stacey, Chrissy and I all went to Busch Gardens Tampa on Sunday (with my renewed love and fitting in coasters) for another day of fun. While I did need a little assistance getting the harnesses fully strapped on most of the rides, I was able to ride all of the coasters I had planned on. I'll wait until I have had the plastic surgery to hit any more amusement parks though.

Christmas Eve we had the gift exchange followed by a  nice family dinner at Mom's. Chrissy had a few too many cosmos (followed by wine at dinner) so she didn't even make it to desert that night.

Christmas morning we drove up to dad's for our gift exchange and dinner there before Chrissy and I had to hit the road for Maryland. We made it up to Santee, SC last night and left the hotel early this morning before the weather got worse down there.  So, now we are still somewhere in North Carolina and the rain has picked up. I am going to shut my eyes for a few so I can be ready to take back over behind the wheel.

A Funny Thing Happened at the Office Holiday Party

I attended my office "Holiday party" today and one of my interns ended up sitting at the same table as me.  At one point they started handing out door prizes by drawing names out of a hat. The person to my right won one, I won the next one, and the person to my left won either the next one or the one after that (someone at another table may have won a prize in there).  They guy who won the first door prize said to my intern "Hey, you are next."  I jokingly said "He's an intern, only 'real people' can win prizes" and we all had a good laugh. Right after I said that, the person to the left of my intern won a door prize.  That's right, it literally skipped JUST my intern.  One other person at our table ended up winning a door prize as well.  After the last person at our table won, the intern would have been next again in the trip around the table, and I said "What do you expect, you have two strikes against you.  You are an intern, and you don't have a soul" (he is a ginger).  He wasn't too happy with me for having not won a door prize.  He swears I cursed him.  Granted, the door prizes were only $5.00 gift cards, but the timing of my original comment was just incredible.

Speed doesn't kill, Δv does

People always like to say "Speed Kills" but really, it isn't the speed that kills, it is the acceleration when you hit something.  If speed killed, we would probably all be dead.  The earth's rotational speed at the equator is over 1,000 mph.  Our rotation around the sun is at 67,000 mph.  Our galaxy is moving at a blistering 600 km/s relative to the universe (600 km/s is about 1.3 MILLION miles per hour)[1].  Going 85 mph is not going to suddenly kill me.  Hitting a wall at 85 mph might do it though, but that is caused by acceleration.

This is why crumple zones exist.  The idea of crumple zones is to make a crash last as long as possible.  That may sound counter intuitive, but velocity = acceleration x time.  If you are going from 85 mph -> 0 mph, the idea is to extend the time to reduce the amount of acceleration and thus reduce the amount of force exerted on your body (because force = mass x acceleration). These are the things you learn in physics class.  I could do more math to prove the point, but why bother?

I will say there is some point where speed can kill when that speed is sufficiently different than the surrounding particles (such as air).  For instance, having something travel at 9/10s of the speed of light at ground level is bad!  For comparison, that is 604 MILLION miles per hour.  I don't know where that threshold is where things go from ok, to painful, to deadly, but people aren't reffering to such extreme speeds when they say "Speed Kills".

The point is, next time someone tells you speed kills, let them know they are wrong in the practical sense.  Well, unless it is a police officer who pulled you over, they might not find it amusing.

While having this discussion with a co-worker, she posed an interesting question which I have told her to submit to what-if.xkcd.com, so I won't spoil that by posting it here, but I hope it is picked because I would love to read the response to that one.

[1]: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/971028e.html

Exclusive Rights - And Why They Tend to Screw Consumers

A recent bit of good news actually came out about Netflix streaming and their new exclusive license with Disney.  Now, that is actually somewhat good for me, since I am a Netflix subscriber.  At the same time, I am reminded how much exclusive licenses piss me off and screw consumers.  Let's rewind.

Not that long ago, there were two different licensed NFL Football Video Games available on XBox.  Madden and NFL2K5.  Madden was $49, NFL2K5 was $19.  I bought NFL2K5 despite the fact that I had been a Madden fan-boy for years.  I was amazed by how good of a product NFL2K5 was and was glad I bought that one.  Shortly after that, Electronics Arts inked an exclusive deal with the NFL and the NFLPA, eliminating their competition in both price and innovation.  EA made tons of money, the NFL made tons of money, gamers got screwed!

2K Sports responded by inking a similar deal with MLB.  Surprise, surprise, same result.  MLB and 2K sports - Happy.  Gamers - Screwed!

As different studios sign exclusive deals with different streaming services, that means people who want to stream all of the movies they may want they have to subscribe to multiple streaming services.  Want to get all of the NFL games every week?  You'll be forking over money to DirectTV, even if you are streaming them ONLINE.

So, as a Netflix subscriber I am happy they inked their deal with Disney, but I feel bad for anyone who uses any other online streaming service.  Exclusive licenses mostly suck for consumers, but since they seem to be good for studios*, don't expect them to change.  *Except for the exclusive contract between MLB and 2K Sports, that apparently didn't work out well for 2K Sports.

Memories as a Car Guy

In case you didn't catch the hint already, I'm a car guy. If you hadn't gotten the hint already....wow....you must be dense.  Read the top banner again!

Being a car guy, cars are very tied to my memories.  Any time I think of a car that has any type of connection to me, I am also flooded with memories of people, events, and funny stories.  I'll run through a few of the cars that bring up the strongest memories really quick so you can see what I mean.

1993 Dodge Ram Conversion Van - This was the first vehicle that was my "daily driver" with it's V8 and 40 Gallon tank.  At the time, gasoline was around $.89-$.99 per gallon, so it was bearable, although I was in high school at the time.  Thinking of this behemoth makes me think of Mike Bounds hitting his head on the upper part of the raised roof (the rest of that story will not be put in writing, but let's just say he wasn't exactly thinking at the time).  You know what...that is the only detail I will go into with the van in this venue, but many of you know stories or have personal experiences in the van.

1994 Ford Explorer XLT - I think of driving to a play rehearsal in high school, again with Mike Bounds, thinking the Explorer was in 4WD.  Well, it wasn't.  I made the right hand turn into the school and the back end broke loose and I rotated an additional 90 degrees clockwise.  I steered in the direction I wanted to go, but ended up over-correcting and rotating the other direction over 180 degrees.  This lined me up perfectly to pull into part of the parking lot, so much so, that Mike's sister and her friend (who were in the lane leaving the school) apparently thought I did it on purpose to show off.  I also think of Physics AP when we had to make water-powered bottle rockets because the hand-powered pump we were using failed.  We had an air compressor in the Explorer so I pulled it around behind the school so we could use the electric pump to pressurize the rockets.

1986 Cutlass Supreme Coupe - That car makes me think of the graduation gift I received from Kirk Petri - 1 gallon of Anti-freeze.  Why?  I regularly picked Kirk & Chad up on my way to school. Shortly after I got the cutlass, the heater coil failed.  It took a week to figure out what the smell was and why the windshield kept fogging up, but we eventually found coolant on the passenger-side carpet under the floor mat.  Whooops! I also think of an ill-fated date to the Riverside in Old Ellicott City.

1983 Caprice - Thinking of that car reminds me of trips up to Westminster with my grandparents at Christmas to visit my Aunts and Cousins.  Why?  On our way home from one of those, due to snow, rear wheel drive, and a hill, we almost ended up in a road-side ditch.   I also remember other times in the back of that car when I would be impressing my grandmother by figuring out what cars were coming up behind us at night by looking at their headlights.

2000 Nissan Frontier - When I think of my old truck, I think of my Uncle Frank, and by extension my Aunt Mill.  Aunt Mill had passed away a few years prior, and when Uncle Frank passed away, the money we inherited plus some money from our grandparents my sister and I were both able to get new cars (Heather's Celebrity and my Olds were both having serious issues).  I got the Frontier, my sister a 2000 Rav 4.  I also think of all the great times Matt & I had driving the unpaved back roads of Fredrick, driving on the beach in Wildwood, NJ with Chrissy, and getting stuck in "the sandbox" with Chrissy freaking out.

This list just includes SOME of the cars that either I have owned or have been in my family.  There are many more memories tied to each of these vehicles, plus many other vehicles that aren't on this list.  Sometimes I don't even know why I make a connection.  What prompted this post?  This morning I passed a 70's Chevy Camaro headed in the other direction.  That was what my mom said she had for her first car.  It is also very similar to the car her cousin, my late Uncle Bud, had as his first car. A Firebird.   So, whenever I see one of those generation Camaro/Firebirds, I think of my mother and Uncle Bud who coached me in little league one season.

So, if you mention a car to me, and I drift off into some nostalgic trip down memory lane, it's because I am a car guy.

Privilege and Success

@awindbynight shared an interesting article called Geeks and Privilege by Tom Morris.  I shared my thoughts on the article quoted below, but I wanted to expand on those thoughts more.

I was fortunate that I had access computers from a young age as well. Commodore 64/128, IBM XT, and so on. I also had internet access to help teach myself programming and access to programming classes in school to. I also knew a lot of people with the same benefits who tried CS and just couldn't cut it, so it is part both.

I want to delve into this a bit more.  Not only did I have access to computers at home, I lived in an affluent county with a strong school system.  My high school offered Pascal and C++ classes while I was there (I took both).  I also took Computer Science AP after hours at another high school (the last year it was offered in Pascal).  Had I not been playing with computers since such a young age, I might not have had the interest to take those classes though.  It is like a geek butterfly effect.

It someone didn't have the privileges I had, it is possible for them to overcome at least a percentage of that with motivation and hard work, but if you grow up in a town where the major source of employment is a steel mill, and most people don't attain college degrees, there is probably a good chance that is where you will end up with out a lot of hard work.  If I had those hills to climb, I don't think I would have ended up where I am today.

If someone does have the privileges I had, that doesn't mean they will automatically succeed either.  I know several people who had similar backgrounds to me that attempted to enter the Computer Science field and ended up dropping out of the major in college.  Others made it through college with a CS degree but then found that they absolutely hated it.  They have the know-how, they have the degree, but not the desire.

All things being completely equal in training, background and access to supplies, there still is an aspect of privilege.  In a world where it is hard to differentiate you from others in your field, it is often more of who you know, than what you know.  If you take two identical people in every way (not possible, but work with me) except one, connections, the more "connected" person will probably end up much better off.  Even if the connected person isn't as good, they are still likely to end up better off.

The last level of privilege is that I was born a white male.  This will usually work to my benefit just be default because of the makeup of the tech workforce, but enough has been written about this subject and I won't delve into that.

I'm not going to feel guilty for any of this, though. I acknowledge that things shouldn't be like this, but they are.  There are many that have been much more privileged than I as well.  The humanitarian in me says we should do something to grant access at least to the basic tools and training to those that want it (although I think forcing everyone to take those classes is bad).  But at the same time, I don't want excessive gov't regulation and spending to accomplish this.  Companies such as Intel, Microsoft, and Apple already donate computers to schools.  There are also discounted or in some cases free software for students wanting to learn the tools.  But if a kid has to work a job every day after school to help support the family (to differentiate from a prat time job to learn responsibility and spending case) they may not be able to make use of those advantages.

Not sure why I felt compelled to write this, but I did, so here it is.

Maybe it is Just Me

I seem to have a cycle.  Find new office, love my job, management change happens, hate my job, start search for new office.  The question I am faced with is, it it just me?  Am I just that unable to adapt to a management change, or have I had the absolute worst luck when it comes to managers? I have tried several approaches.  I have attempted to express the reasons I am unsatisfied to change the course of events.  I have expressed these feelings to both my direct supervisor and their supervisor at times.  This occasionally leads to a temporary resolution of issues, but usually doesn't last long.  I have tried to find ways to just adapt to the changes that have occurred, which usually results in me resenting my job even more, and trying to hasten my departure.  I can't seem to keep myself in the state of mind to stay in the office after whatever change occurs.

So, am I the one who is the "problem" through my inability to adapt?  I hope not.  My desire to depart from my current office has existed for 5-6 months now, but I was trying to hold out until my project was completed.  Things continued to spiral downwards until about 2 months ago when I finally made the decision it was time to leave my office.  Several people had been trying to recruit me for one office, so I finally explored that option and decided it would be a good place for me to move to, but in the last two months, no progress has been made.  During this time, I have been wearing down more, growing weary of my current office and losing the drive that has allowed me to be so successful* the last 20 months or so.  *Successful as judged by my customers, not by my management, as was reflected in my performance review.

So, am I the problem?  Is there something about my personality, some failing, that doesn't allow me to adapt?  Maybe I am just drawn to offices that no one tends to understand and there are just few managers that are proper for the task.  I don't know, but I am burning out and need to move soon, or somehow rediscover my passion for my job until I can finally depart.  If I can't recapture that passion, and I am stuck where I am for a while still, I won't be able to produce the kind of work that I feel I should nor that my customers have come to expect, which would be the hardest change for me to adapt to.