A little Christmas video update for the blog.

  

Per a request from Gma Ohki, here are some videos of Quinn walking. He is now a holy terror.

For starters, Alison asked about the recipe for protein bars, which can be found here.  I don't include the dried fruit, which besides being expensive, also violates a strict rule I have against dried fruit in baked goods of any kind.  Throughout my life, I have spent significant effort carefully examining the surface of oatmeal cookies for signs that dark portions are raisins (bad) as opposed to chocolate chips (good).  On the subject of chocolate chips, I would just dump a bunch (maybe one cup) into the protein bars instead of the fruit.  It just tastes a lot better, and only adds about 30 calories per bar.  Well, now that I think about it, the exclusion of the fruit means that it adds even less than that.  I usually make a double batch, cut them up, and freeze them in individual zip lock bags.  On my way to work I just grab a bag and I'm good for snacks for the day.

These are not pictures of protein bars, but yorkshire pudding - a continuation of the popover Alton Brown show that I watched a few weeks ago.  I made this today for sunday dinner with drippings from a rib roast.  I thought the combo of the meat and bready-eggy stuff tasted great (in a humble, non-top-of-the-BofM-pride-cycle kind of way).  Props again to Alton, who has sent me astray only once - his pizza dough was overly salty.  The above pic is in process yorkshire pudding, and the lower is the finished product.    

First things first - the recipe for popovers you see below is from Alton Brown, and can be seen at foodnetwork.com. If you try to make them, though, do follow the directions religiously since it seems bread leavened by steam (as opposed to yeast, baking powder, etc) is really touchy stuff. I tried another Alton Brown recipe this week - Tres Leche Cake (no to be confused with the altogether different La Leche League Cake). I thought it was great but Jerome turned up his nose at it - his general philosophy is that perfectly good food can be ruined by adding liquid. He eats his cereal dry. Anyway, it was good. After attending the agronomy society meetings to man the deca booth, I looked at the cake and immediately thought of soil-water systems/water potential. I'll post some pictures so you'll know what I mean. No wonder Dad can switch seamlessly between food science and soil physics.

This week Mari and I started watching the newest season of "the Amazing Race". It's one of the 3 or so shows we actually put on the DVR to watch. For such a simplistic concept, it has proven to be a surprisingly durable format. If you haven't seen it, 11 or so teams of 2 people each travel around the world completing different legs of the race. They must follow the directions and complete tasks the show puts together. At the end of each show, the last team to check in gets eliminated, and the team that wins the last leg gets $1M. Anyway, the only reason I mention it is that I was pretty surprised to start watching this year and find that I know 2 people that are on the show. One is an engineer I worked with a little at my last company. The other is an investment banker that was a year ahead of me at school. They aren't on the same team - one I met in Philly, and the other in San Diego. All in all, a very strange coincidence. At least one of them was a casualty of the recent economic crisis, which explains why they have time to go running around the globe for a TV show.

I am enjoying the twitter streak for the Campbell family. I must admit that I didn't know what it was about before I started - I just thought I'd try it and see what happened. After doing it for a while, I still don't know why it works - it just does. Part of the reason I'm blogging this week, though, is to dispel rumors that microblogging is an acceptable substitute for good old fashioned regular blogging. That could never be true.

Popovers

These popovers were fantastic. Taste great with just butter or (as
Tom, Mari and I found out) with pears sautéd in maple syrup topped
with goat cheese.

Heeeeeere's johnny!

Who knows how useful this will be but I'm trying to do some new things
this week on the blog. This is partially because I've been in a
terrible posting drought and also because I've wanted to figure out
how twitter works for some time. Anyone who wants to join me on the
twitter experiment let me know. In the meantime here is a picture of
johnny who is staying with is until mom and dad get back from Scotland.

As nearly all of you know, about a month ago I asked Decagon to take me back, and they agreed. That means we'll be leaving San Diego and my job at Vandelay Industries. A couple of thoughts immediately occur. The first is that in the years since business school, I've seen lots of stereotypical situations, people, and practices that many folks envision when they think of "Corporate America". The one thing I've never seen: a big 'ol batch of layoffs. Sometimes referred to as downsizing, rationalization, reorgs, etc., our company calls them RIFs (reduction in force, as in "I just got riffed"). This is kind of like going to Yellowstone and missing Old Faithful (the difference is that "downsizing" events these days happen more often than Old Faithful eruptions). It would be more accurate to say I hadn't seen one ... until last Tuesday. Old Faithful started to gurgle and spurt on Monday afternoon. Rumor-mongers buzzed with talk that there would be meaningful layoffs announced the next day. The company wanted to tell everyone that had been laid-off before announcing anything, and this meant everybody knew something was afoot before they released the news officially. I observed the entire episode as a bemused spectator, having already given notice I'd be leaving. On the fateful morning, all employees received two emails explaining what was going on. One was from the vice-chairman and said that layoffs were a painful but necessary step toward improved profitability. The other was from the CEO, who said that layoffs were a painful but necessary step toward improved profitability. A couple of hours later, the president of our business unit held a combined meeting/conference call to answer any questions people had. I learned an important lesson: when holding a conference call with folks that are angry and have nothing to lose, make sure you can mute everyone but the host. At one point, she (the president) gamely tried to answer a question about the rationale for the layoffs, only to be interrupted by a conference call participant saying "BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH" (intone proper sing-song for full effect). As it turns out, nobody in my group, or any group near me, was laid off. Even if I'd stayed, my job wouldn't have been in jeopardy. I personally knew 5 or 6 folks that did lose their jobs, but they were in corporate "shared services" type positions. The only thing I can say is that I feel really bad for people that were let go, and am lucky to have a job (and also lucky to be moving to a job that I'm excited about).

The other thought that occurs to me now that I'm moving to Decagon: In a short amount of time, I will go from incessantly complaining about "the system" to joining the family company as a member of the family (thereby becoming a certified member of "the system"). This week I heard an African American commentator on NPR present his theory on why many old-school African American activists dislike Obama (witness Jesse Jackson's crude comment on Obama this week). The commentator said that activists like Jackson have grown so comfortable in their role as outsiders railings against a hopelessly flawed system that the concept of an African American President frightens them. I guess that's one of the challenges of forfeiting outsider status: I've got to do something about all the stuff I used to just complain about.

Lastly, I won't whine much about moving. Suffice to say that I feel like Tom in the following clip. Like the airborne Tom, every time we move I know it's going to hurt. All I can do is wince and brace for the impact.

I suppose that mild-mannered people like me that occasionally surf have no choice but to accept that mainstream surf brands constantly seek out new ways to be edgy. This is driven by the fact that many surf brands like quicksilver sell way more in t-shirts and board shorts than they will ever sell in surf equipment. Appealing to a certain demographic means that the companies strive to achieve an image that usually involves cuss-words and scantily-clad females. My surfer friend (the one in the video) has a young teenage son in middle school. Said son picked up a DVD at the surf shop and brought it home to watch. In between the gnarly surfing clips, a commercial appeared that featured numerous surf groupies in bikinis. Not to worry - the young impressionable boy's mom was nearby and intervened. She hit "eject", and snapped his freebie DVD in two.

This same dynamic has also gotten me in trouble. For example, on cold winter mornings, I pull on RipCurl "F-BOMB" wetsuit booties, and paddle out. This isn't my fault. I just went to the surf store last year, intent on fixing an annoyance that occurred the previous winter. When I went surfing in 55 degree water, it was so cold that when I got into work, my feet would burn for 2 hours or so until my body figured out I wasn't in the water anymore. The kind store attendant showed me some of the different boots they offer. I eliminated the ones with bright colors, or super cheap ones that were merely loosely stitched neoprene. I found a nice-looking pair with split toes that fit well. I bought them and headed home. When I examined the box, it told me that I had not purchased just any pair of booties, but they were in fact "F-BOMB" booties (f-bomb is a euphemism for the f-word, as in "he launched into a tirade, dropping f-bombs left and right") . Fine, I thought. The booties don't actually say "F-BOMB" on them, it's just the box. I stashed them on the top shelf in the garage, and pulled the booties out once the water got cold. This left an empty box on the top shelf.

A few weeks ago, Marie and I dutifully trudged off with all 4 kids to open-house night at the school. Jerome showed us around his classroom - the artwork, reports, poems, etc. - all very nice. Well, it was all very nice until we got to the dioramas. The kids were studying national parks, and Jerome got Yellowstone. His diorama contained intricate miniature sculptures of bison, deer, and geysers. You can imagine my surprise when I found that this idyllic scene was unapologetically depicted in my "F-BOMB" wetsuit boots box. I asked Marie what happened, and she said that Jerome came home and said he needed a shoe box. They scoured the house but found nothing until the triumphant discovery of the now-famous "F-BOMB" box. Neither of them thought anything of it (why should they). It didn't turn out to be a big deal. His teacher didn't say anything - I'm sure he just thought it was an unavoidable consequence of having mormon kids in his class. Morale is: please dispose of any "F-BOMB" wetsuit booties boxes you have floating around the house.

The kid invented this new game where they jump on one end of an overinflated camping mat, thereby launching something or someone on the other side into the air. These are trained professionals - do not attempt.

Just a couple of videos this week. First, my surfer friend took some video on Friday of both his son and me. The waves were big but nasty - breaking all at once so it was hard to do anything. I opted for my boogie board, and he got a shot of me before getting pounded.

This week I had the chance to think back to a guy that used to occupy the cubicle next to mine. He is a nice guy with a good personality and sense of humor. I will now complain about him even though it is in poor taste since he can't defend himself. He is what I will call a "yeasayer". According to him, everything that he touches turns to gold - he is always one step ahead of everyone else. Recently, though, I've run across some persuasive evidence that he's mortal like the rest of us. A few examples - he switched jobs and now works at a company not too far away. A few weeks ago, some of my friends from work met the yeasayer for lunch. As the former manager of a doomed product at our company, one of the first things he said was that he'd already launched 4 new products at his new job. A little digging revealed that the products were in fact small plastic wingnuts. He also used to give us periodic updates on the market-topping returns of his day trading activities. Since I think day trading is pointless at best, I often expressed skepticism. A current check of his hottest pick (Garmin) will show a decline of over 60% in the last 6 months. He also used to talk about his north county home - often saying that "my home earns more in a year than I do". This was well after home values started to plunge - his area was "one of the few exceptions". We had some friends from business school visit last week, and the wife's parents live in the same town as the yeasayer. Turns out that home values are down 35% from the peak. In the end, I can think of lots of cases where I've shown the same kind of bias - it's probably human nature. I guess it just means that being confident and outspoken doesn't increase the probability that a person is right (Dad may actually argue that the two things are inversely related).

This week Kai finally realized some instant consequences from his mischievous tendencies. We are always telling him not to do stuff - don't get into mama's makeup, leave papa's shaving cream alone, stay out of the spice rack - stuff like that. Marie had told him to just leave the listerine pocketpack strips alone. Kai, of course, thought he knew better. Unbeknownst to Marie, Kai had grabbed 3 or 4 strips and rolled them into a ball, which he palmed to conceal as Mari loaded the kids into the car to go somewhere. Once they got going, Kai started to cry. When asked what was wrong, he fessed up - "I put the mint into my nose". One look confirmed that this was indeed the case - the listerine ball was up his left nostril. His eyes were watering. His nose was running, and every breath seemed to introduce a new cloud of menthol gas into his sensitive nasal cavity. Having eaten, but not snorted, listerine strips, I'm imagining this felt like squirting a turkey baster full of vapo-rub up one's nostril. Lacking the skills to solve the problem, Kai begged for help. Marie stopped the car, and plugged Kai's right nostril while Kai tried to blow out the left one. On the tenth try, out shot the snot covered powerball. Marie made a special call to my desk at work to tell me about this, and we both had a really good laugh. It's not often that the circumstances are right to get Kai some instant consequences.

This may seem strange, but I finally thought of a name for a bad habit I have. Sometimes, instead of doing the dishes, I do the wishes - reorganizing the piles of dirty dishes, and shoving some of them into the sink so that it doesn't really look like there are that many dishes to do. If the pile looks small enough when I'm done, I can just leave them for tomorrow.

We had Kai's birthday yesterday. Marie put in a lot of work, and we had a great time. Stu and Adrianne also came over, which was great. Here are some pics.

We also had the fathers and sons campout this weekend. It was a little on the toasty side, but Jerome, Kai (rookie) and I all had a good time.

The below video is not me (of course) but is a guy from work that I sometimes go surfing with. He is very serious about riding the wild sea pony, and owns 4 boards. I took advantage of a rather lame longboarding conditions to pull out my waterproof case-enclosed flip video recorder. I only filmed for about 20 minutes, but it was fun.

And another video - this of Kai trying to make Quinn laugh. This activity alone absorbs almost 80% of Kai's waking hours.

Just a video this week. At the reunion, Gpa Ohki took Jerome to Borders and let him pick out some things he wanted. One of the items Jerome was most excited about was this rocket. The video is kind of long, but it shows how stuff works in our family. Jez is always trying to get stuff to work, Asha is always offering helpful advice, and Kai is actively trying to mess things up. Anyway, the rocket was a big hit, and we had a lot of fun with it.

Now that we have 4 kids, and one of them is close to turning 9, I've started to think in earnest about how I can get my kids to do jobs. The concept of jobs (be they Saturday jobs, KP, or whatever) in the campbell family is as central to our existence as Sunday dinner. Who can forget the strangely satisfying smell of 409 that accompanied a complete wipedown of green/blue island wall on the other side of the kitchen range? Or for that matter, the dread at receiving the worse of the two bathroom jobs (floors and toilets?). I have realized, though, that just as soon as my kids would actually be able to do some of these jobs, they will be rendered nearly useless by the universal rebelliousness and angst of the teenage years. Note that on the handy chart I have provided, the willingness to pitch in asymptotically approaches negative infinity before reaching the age of 12. This leads me to the concept of the sweet spot - a short period of time when the child's real ability is sufficiently positive and they still are willing to do something when asked. The product of the two functions only becomes positive after age 6. This fact was reinforced this week when Asha called me at work: "Guess what Dad? I'm the mom right now. Mama is feeding Quinn, and I just picked up the whole garage, play area, vacuumed everything and made all the beds." If I had been Dad (and been at home), I'd have feigned losing consciousness. As it was, I told her how proud I was of her. I returned home to find that she really had done all those things, and had done a darn fine job to boot. In the interest of full disclosure, I never hit a sweet spot during my childhood. The week that I finally learned to pumice the ring off a toiled bowl was probably the same week I told Mom and Dad that it was fair for them to do more work because they decided to become parents.

The last couple of Saturdays have been shockingly unstructured and laid-back. I have been liberally indulging in a variety of Alton Brown recipes (pizza, shrimp ravioli, pan-fried chicken, man-burgers, pancakes) - we even bought a cast-iron skillet for $30 since Alton said we had to. I don't end up wanting to make everything he does on "good eats", but I will be attempting corned beef as soon as my saltpeter from amazon.com arrives. That's all for now.

I squandered all my blogging time making this video.  You will see examples of me wiping out, kids sliding, my brothers in law shredding, my son shoving, my ninja father in law, and other crazy things.  For Ohki family members not pictured, you need to hang around the camcorder a little more next time.  For Campbell family members who fret that I have not yet emotionally returned from Hawaii, I'm afraid you're right.  

This blog starts with a disclaimer: I apologize up front for blogging about the Ohki reunion. I do realize that spending a couple of weeks in Hawaii is riotous living. I also realize that I'm not worthy of having such great inlaws - I have done nothing to deserve them.

First things first - I will now fess up to partaking in an activity which is on the Campbell's "unacceptable" list. That activity is: going to the tanning salon. A couple of weeks before the reunion, I decided to plunk down $100 for 10 or so trips to the fake bake booth. I made this decision for a couple of reasons. First, every time I go to Hawaii or Costa Rica or something, I always get a really bad, painful sunburn on a patch of skin where I forgot to put sunscreen. The other reason, which I do admit, is that compared to Mari, our children, and all of my inlaws, I look shockingly white. It's not just that I'm a white guy - it's that I'm one of the whitest guys ever, and nearly all of my inlaws, their kids (and even my kids) have nice tans. I just wanted to take the albino factor down a few notches. It turned out that a couple of weeks is enough time to get a "base" but not much else. I went to the store and stood in the booth for a few minutes at a time, felt like a rotisserie chicken, and ended up a few shades darker by the time we left but was certainly not tan (if any of my inlaws are reading this, they will find it hard to believe that I fake-baked) . I never got a "burn" from the tanning booths, and although I did feel a little itchiness, it was never painful at all. The real benefit came in Hawaii when we spent a long period of time outdoors at the beach or at golf. There were a couple of times I would have gotten a terrible burn from neglecting to re-apply sunscreen, but because I had gotten a base beforehand, it wasn't a problem at all. I don't know if it was worth $100, but I think it turned out to be good thing. I have no interest in tanning on a regular basis, though, and am convinced it would probably lead to skin cancer. For any nieces or nephews reading, I would also like to say that so much as setting foot in a tanning booth is guaranteed to give you lethal skin diseases.

Coming back from the reunion was difficult on many levels. Here is an actual conversation I had with my stomach on Monday morning:

STOMACH: Yo! It's 9AM. Where's the sour cream pancakes with coconut syrup?

ME: Dude - reunion is over.

(later that same day)

STOMACH: Yo! It's 2PM. Were's the grilled ahi with garlic butter sauce?

ME: Don't start!

We had lots of good food on the reunion, but more importantly, plenty of leisure time with which to devour it. The first half of the reunion was spent at a house with a swimming pool. Most days consisted of 2 pool sessions divided by lunch. We then put on a kids dinner, sent them to bed, and did an adults dinner. I am willing to admit that I gained 8 pounds in 2 weeks. I will now try to work it off.

I went to the reunion resigned to the fact that there may not be any good surf while we were there. It turned out that the waves were mostly small and not rideable. There was one day, however, when my brothers in law took me to Ala Moana, and I had a blast. I have a little video from then that I will try to post.

One of the best parts of the reunion, for me, was seeing our kids get to know their Ohki cousins better. For the most part, the kids got along amazingly well, which is mostly a testament to how great the Ohki cousins are. Kai and his cousin Max did have their share of disagreements over toy ownership, but it was nothing out of the ordinary for 2 year olds. It was fun to see Kai and Max play together, nonetheless.

We did spend some time on the flowrider, a machine that spits out water at an extremely high rate so that you can kind of surf on it. Jerome came with us on the last night we went, and learned how to ride it on a boogie board. I had a great time, but also incurred numerous injuries, most of little consequence. That's all for now, although I reserve the right to blog more about the reunion later.

My brother in law took this video this morning at Barber's Point - a surf spot on southwest Oahu. The waves were rather small and lame, but the water was warm, and we had a good time anyway.

I sat down last week to blog and soon got sucked into an internet vortex. This happens sometimes when, although I have good intentions, I allow myself to cycle through a group of websites that I frequent. This includes gmail, kayak (if we've got a trip coming up and I want to know whether I got ripped off on the tickets we bought), digg, espn, craigslist (can be extremely addictive if you live in a big city), costco.com (you never know), and google news (cnn.com has become less and less useful over the years). By carefully following a 12 step program, I was able to remove cougfan.com from my website cycle, but we'll see if my resolve can stand up to football season in the fall.

For some reason (I'm not quite sure why) I have recently become something of a germaphobe. I guess it started back when I was working at my company's previous location. One day I realized that since every person who worked in that building had to enter the same door, the 5 square inches of steel that comprise that door handle is perhaps the dirtiest space in the county. Anyway, I started bringing large bottles of hand sanitizer to work (my current one is in the half-gallon range). I think life-long germaphobes have mostly mapped our their worlds, but as I go about life now, I discover new ways to worry about germs in my personal space. Two weeks ago I went on a business trip to Kansas City. The purpose of the trip was to see some customers who have recently decided to leave us for our competitors. When I sat down in the airplane, I thought about whether a seriously diseased person had occupied that area on a previous flight. Just then a rather large fellow sat down next to me, and launched into a fit of coughs. In less time than it took for his sub-microscopic viral particles to fly through the air and land on me, I had removed my travel-sized hand-sanitizer bottle from my bag, and was slathering it all over myself as if it were a key step in some ancient pagan ritual. I didn't mind that my actions veritably shouted "I hate sitting next to sick dudes!" or that the alcohol fumes wafting away from my vicinity could have started a cabin fire if one of those airline "blankets" had produced a static charge at an inopportune moment. Luckily, all blankets were removed from planes after 9/11 and sent to coastal regions of 3rd world countries where they are now used as fishing nets. Anyway, the rest of my trip involved trips to hospitals, where hand sanitizer is just as common as medicare fraud, so life was good. By the way, this has nothing to do with toilet seat covers.

This is the week before the much anticipated in-law reunion. Regardless of whether we're talking about my family or Mari's, we always look forward to them. However, we probably look forward to them too much. Pretty soon, we get to the family reunion, figure out what's going on, wash a few dishes, and realize that the reunion is half over, at which point we know we will soon return to our mundane lives. Soon after that, we really do have to go home, and we start thinking about when the next reunion or vacation will be. This has led me to conclude that the funnest time at a family reunion is really the week BEFORE the reunion, when I can think about all the fun stuff we'll do while we're there. So believe me when I say that work this week will be a blast.

Another random thought: I've gotten hooked on costco soymilk. I would have never believed it, but Mari got some because she's off dairy for Quinn, and I started drinking it too. It's plain (not "vanilla") and it tastes great on honey nut cheerios.

This week, as the credit crisis has deepened (today JP Morgan bought Bear Stearns for $2 a share - Bear stock traded at $150 last summer), I am again reminded of how much I dislike Realtors. Lawrence Yun, head economist for the national association of realtors, embodies the characteristics I hate about these guys. They were happy to rake in the dough when times were good, and now they are frantically trying to prop up the market by making statements that have no credibility. This blog is kind of sloppy, but the guy is dedicated to monitoring Lawrence Yun and the dumb things he says. We recently received a local rag - the real estate section was headlined by a helpful article (written by a local realtor) entitled "The Sky is Not Falling" - a clear sign that the sky is falling. Another thing I think is silly: homeowners who got into mortgages they couldn't afford who are now begging the government to bail them out. It funny that during the real estate heyday, I never heard these same folks volunteer to give a slice of their cash-out-refinancing windfalls to Uncle Sam. It wasn't as if they said "this 20%/year home price growth is so crazy - I've gotta send some of this cash to the IRS so that they can bail people out when this bubble pops".

A little preview to a future blog. For many years, certain products and activities have been shunned and hated by the Campbell family: captain crunch, first person shooter games, the spraying of PAM indoors, attempting to wipe off a table in a single pass, cable tv, fast food, video game consoles, car payments, seinfeld, sleeping in, most soft drinks, and terry gross. It's worth noting that some items that used to be on the list (frozen pizza is a good example) but became kosher sometime during the late 80's-early 90's. Although I happen to agree with some of these campbell aversions, in my next blog I will confess to something that is definitely still on the list. That's it for now.

I went to a tradeshow this week. No matter how many tradeshows I go to, they are all the same. The first constant is the Freeman family of companies. I have now attended tradeshows in the following industries: food, pharma, lab instruments, military weapons, irrigation, medical devices, health system pharmacists, and healthcare information technology. In every instance, the Freeman family of companies has somehow been around performing a confusing array of services for which it is paid wads of cash. Not only that, but they have a never-ending supply of exhibit hall carpet which is infused with proprietary energy-sucking ingredients. Even seasoned exhibit hall wanderers are not immune to the carpet's powers. After wandering between booths for a mere two hours, my body feels as if I am on an episode of Man vs. Wild and my only source of water on the African Savannah is elephant dung. (at last week's conference I succeeded in suppressing the urge to wrap my head in a urine-soaked shirt).

While wandering by the booths, my reactions to seeing each exhibitor also fall into predictable categories:

1. Awe - There are a few companies at these shows that just have their acts together. They have an impressive array of products and services, and seemingly move from strength to strength as potential customers and partners clamor to do business with them. At this show I went to last week, that company was Google. In spite of Microsoft's gargantuan booth, Google chose to go with a tiny 1x2, and were hounded by throngs of conference-goers from dawn until dusk.

2. Confusion - I am constantly amazed that certain companies can survive year after year. Even after lengthy discussions with them about what they do, I sometimes still don't understand how they stay in business, or why someone would pay them to do what they say they do. I realize that some of these companies exhibit for the sole purpose of getting acquired by a bigger company, but I wouldn't want to buy company that can't explain what it does.

3. Red-faced shame - There's always that one company which insists on using scantily clad "representatives" to push its products. I recall at the military convention a few years ago, one exhibitor paid some Washington Redskins cheerleaders to show up and mingle with potential customers. To me, this conjured up unsavory stereotypes about sleazy back-room government deals for contracts and the like. The cheerleader's shock value was relatively high, too. In the context of a tradeshow, it seemed especially scandalous to see someone who is essentially wearing a bikini. There must not be enough important women in the military to put an end to this sort of thing.

4. Contempt - As I wander by the competitor's booths, it is easy to imagine how the competitor's employees must be in real life. Most likely, they breeze into the express checkout line at the grocery store with 18 items, file fraudulent tax returns, download pirated media over the internet, buy non-energy star-rated appliances, and tell lies. Unlike me, they do not mind deceiving customers, and look like skilled practitioners of the shell game, pyramid schemes, the bait and switch, the Nigerian letter, the Spanish Prisoner, the pump and dump, and various Ponzi schemes. I see attendees standing there talking to them, and assume that they are slowly being led away to customer purgatory.

That's quite enough for now. I will call the attached video "Asha pwns chin-up bar". After cajoling us into buying a chin up bar for her on ebay, Asha has certainly gotten value from it.

I don't have a lot to write this week, but I did have another run-in with "the man". My company is in the midst of a large-scale overhaul of our quality system. These types of initiatives are always interesting studies in corporate culture. I mean, let's be serious: if a company needs to install a new quality program, that's a sure sign that quality was never really important before that. At my last company, the executives made everyone start wearing "Q" buttons at all times to show how committed they were to the new quality program. Shortly after that policy went into effect, a low level employee happened to be sharing the up elevator with the CEO one day. After a cordial greeting, the CEO examined the employee's attire, and asked "where's your "Q" pin?". With a quick glance to his lapel, the employee replied "Damn - I left it on my pajamas AGAIN".

In my company, the quality program mostly consists of an online training tool which requires me to study pointless minutiae like standard agenda items on the monthly quality audit. Then, the quality folks confirm that I have actually read through the tedious documents by giving me a "quiz". Until recently, there were ways to game the quiz, but the quality department stopped sending emails with the list of questions you missed after you failed the quiz. This change in policy led my boss to despair that he would never finish the dozen or so training modules that he had just been assigned. I decided to tackle my unfinished modules on Friday afternoon, and soon was stuck on an 8 question quiz that included a lot of "check all that apply" questions. After scouring the relevant documents for the answers and taking the quiz 15 or 16 times, I still couldn't get a passing score (80%). However, I accidentally discovered that you can "submit" your quiz answers without giving an answer for each question. Needless to say, the quizzes went much faster then, as I just answered the questions one at a time, submitted the quiz, and wrote down the answer to each question if in fact it was right. Not only did I dispatch 4 quizzes in 45 minutes, but I ended up with a crib sheet with all the answers on it. I gave the sheet to my boss, who appeared to have flashbacks to our corporation's ethics video, but took the sheet all the same and said he was grateful. He also mentioned something about plastic spoons. Last year when we moved to our new building, "the man" stopped stocking the coffee room with plastic utensils. I was frustrated by this, so I went to our cafeteria, and commandeered a large case of soup spoons, which I put into the cupboard of our coffee room. Anyway, my boss (who saw me make off with the box) has ribbed me about it for some time, especially after the cafeteria started stocking the plastic utensils next to the cash registers and charging $.25 per spoon. After I gave him the answers to the quality quizzes, he admitted that he had 2 choices: spend 6 hours completing quality training modules, or throw his lot in with the spoon thieves.

Another video this week - Quinn is starting to smile. For some reason the sound isn't lined up with the video, and it's playing in slow motion - don't know why that's happening but you can still kind of tell what's going on.

See below for a video of Kai. He is being entertained by my buddy from b-school, who was in San Diego for business, and dropped by for dinner with his sister and nephew (who happen to live here).

Part II of the career-limiting email I sent last week: I actually got no response on Monday, and felt fine about it. On Tuesday, I happened to be in a meeting with the SVP dude who I sent the letter to. He pulled me aside and said "I got your email on (insert name of hated competitor here), and I loved it - we just need to figure out what to do next". So a positive reaction. One bit I kind of glossed over last week. Our flagship product is the responsibility of a VP that reports to that SVP. I don't report to said VP (whom I will call "Floyd"), but both he and my boss report to the SVP. I sent the email to both the SVP and Floyd, since it would have been poor form to go over Floyd's head when most of the content related to his product line (which just happens to be the lifeblood of the company). The interesting thing about Floyd's reaction was ... nothing - he didn't mention it to me at all. To be clear, the email made one extremely helpful point (more funding for his product line is critical) and also an unflattering one (as things stand, we are enduring death by a thousand cuts). You'd assume that either way, he'd have an opinion and want to discuss it. The fact that he's said nothing makes it clear he's ticked off about the email. When I first joined the company, Floyd seemed like a affable, quick-witted leader who was equally comfortable talking with salespeople or corporate executives. Over time, it's slowly become apparent that his true skills lie in putting out fires and navigating the byzantine network of political connections that sit underneath our corporate structure. While valuable for self-preservation, this approach isn't useful in the long run. I know he will understand the best way to "deal" with my email, but the problems I listed would still remain unresolved.

Ok, that's it - we'll see what happens this week.

I had some free time on my hands yesterday after dropping Asha off at a birthday party held at Nickel City (an arcade-type place in a nearby mall). There were a couple of accessories that our family needed in the electronics area, so I made a rare stop at Circuit City. The items we needed were a mini-usb cable for an MP3 player we own, and one of those DVD lens cleaner thingys. These are extras that make the stuff we own work. They are also items that a person is likely to only purchase once or twice in his/her lifetime. I would assume most people are like me, and have no frame of reference for what these things would cost. Marie's guess on the DVD cleaning thingy was $4 - after all, it's just a disk with some wispy brushes shoved into its underside at strategic places. I walked into the store, and found my way to the USB cable. Price = $30. Wha--? I walked away and found the DVD lens cleaner. Price = $15. Double wha--? I can't bring myself to pay that for 2 items that were probably made for under 20 cents. It got me thinking - when a retailer prices an item, they have a few choices. First, they can give you a fantastic price and make you genuinely glad you hauled yourself into their wonderful establishment. Next, they can go for not good, not bad pricing. Also, they can go higher than that, and make sure people buy the item even if they're not crazy about the price. Lastly, they can try to sell a stupid USB cable for $30, causing them to end up in my blog where I will make snide remarks like "it's no wonder Circuit City's stock is down over 90% since the year 2000". I came home and bought a mini-USB cable on ebay from a nice fellow in Longview, WA for $6.89 (including shipping).

The Japanese have a phrase that I've always liked - "gatsu pouzu" - (literally "guts pose") it describes the feeling or appearance that accompanies the moment when a person knows he or she has won. This week, I had a rather lengthy road to a gatsu pose which I will now bore you with. My company moved locations in the fall of last year. Our new building is fine, but is roughly the size of Mall of America, and has only one "employee entrance". Every day I waste about 10 minutes (roundtrip) getting from my car to my desk. Over the space of a year, this represents roughly a total of 284 man-months of wasted time for the 1500 employees at the building. I began riding the kid's razor scooter between the car and building in protest, but soon found a better way in. On the ground floor of the building, there is a trash compactor the workers are always using, which leaves an open door. It's open in the morning, but closed at night, so I started going out an adjacent exit that you can't get in via key-card. This route takes only about a minute, so it saves a lot of time. A couple of weeks ago, all employees received an email saying that starting that day, all exits except the employee entrance would be "alarmed" to keep us safe because tiles were falling off the side of the building. All doors (including the one I used) had signs on them - "THIS DOOR IS NOW ALARMED". I was mad.

Around that same time, I became frustrated by the inability of my company to make new products. The problem is now so bad that our competitors are making us feel the pain on a routine basis. In spite of this, we continue to devolve into the gang that couldn't shoot straight. I resolved to write a letter to my superiors telling them this, and making a few dire predictions about what would happen if we get to the end of 2009 and still have a losing product. This last Friday, I ran the letter by my boss, who was supportive, and then sent it to the SVP dude who runs our business. I really didn't pull any punches - the letter was accurate but gory - the kind of thing that I may look back on in a few months and say "there are few exceptions to the "honesty is the best policy" song, but that letter was one of them". Having sent the letter late Friday afternoon, I decided to make a hasty exit, and a thought popped into my mind. Those signs on the exits are probably lying - there are really no alarms. If there was any time to test this little theory, it was then. I mean, if the man fires me for my too-honest letter, a little incident with the emergency exit really won't be that important. So I jogged down the stairs, pushed the bar to open the door, and left the building. No alarm - GATSU POUZU!

This week I was labeled a gross polluter. I had taken my car into the test-only smog center because in California, you have to get your car smogged every 2 years. The name of the establishment was "15 minute smog test". After 50 minutes and no sign of any results, I asked why I was still waiting. After all, it seems that if I have gone to an establishment named "15 minutes smog test", this outfit should have only 1 purpose in life - to get my car tested in 15 minutes. So anyway, the guy came back with the bad news about 5 minutes later - there was something wrong and I was probably responsible for many of the pollution-related instances of respiratory failure in the greater San Diego area. The test results spelled out this conclusion in no uncertain terms: "gross polluter". I somehow find this hard to believe. Every day I spend my commute jockeying for position with scores of Escalades, Suburbans, and Hummers that have brontosaurus-sized carbon footprints, and I'm the gross polluter? I also find the label interesting. Whenever I hear of some company that's been sued for negligence, I assume they probably made some ill-advised decisions. If they are sued for gross negligence, however, I'm forced to conclude that the company in question is staffed entirely by irredeemable mouth-breathers. My car apparently had a bad O2 sensor, which my honest mechanic Ivan replaced, getting my ride back on the right side of the law for $250. I'm not joking about my mechanic being honest, though. He really is good, and has never upsold me on anything.

That's about all for this week.

This week I had the misfortune of being summoned to a training meeting in Houston for my company. By training, I mean that I had to give some training on our competitors to a group of salespeople whose roles are shifting to higher-level sales. I almost didn't make it. I was confused by the emails about the training, since it said it would be held in Houston, but I later was told Dallas. Turns out that there are 2 different training sessions, both attended by the same folks. By sheer coincidence, I happen to be the the only person giving training at both sessions. Anyway, I hurried and made reservations. My training module was only 2 hours long - seems a waste to fly for over 1000 miles for 2 hours. The schedule was complicated by the fact that I needed to attend a late-day meeting on Thursday before getting to Houston where my section started at 10am the next morning. I ended up flying out at 7:30, arriving in the lone star state at 2:30am. I rented my car, got lost, and found my hotel by 3:30am. Everything went smoothly with the session the next morning, except that my opinion of our Sales staff took a hit. About 1/3 of the way through, the group of about 20 started to trickle out - "gotta catch a flight" they said. In the end, there were 5 left. Salespeople are great - if nothing else, they have sold the heck out of our dated product line, and for that I'm grateful. However, the experience reminded me that 1 - you never want to be last on the schedule for an off-site meeting, and 2 - salespeople often behave like inconsiderate middle-schoolers. This last point was reinforced when I boarded the flight home at 3pm and ran into a sales guy who had excused himself and 2 buddies at 11:20am (gotta catch a flight).

The trip also reminded me how much I hate the Texas freeway frontage road set-up. This is one reasons why Texans are so religious - they must pray fervently that all their destinations lie to the right of them as they tool down the freeway. If they need to go somewhere that happens to be on the left side of the road, they must find a way to flip a u-turn and back-track, which invariably requires driving to Amarillo. The trip also reminded me how much I love Jimmy Johns. It is a chain/franchise sandwich joint. For the 16 months I worked at my last company, I conservatively estimate I ate 178 Jimmy Johns sandwiches. 175 of those were the "turkey tom, no mayo", which I was gleefully reunited with when I happened upon a Jimmy Johns on my way to the Airport in Houston. The bread is maybe 50 times better than subway, and the sandwiches are made in 15 seconds. It's really amazing. Anyway, some videos to upload. The first is of Kai "reading" his favorite book - of course he's not really reading, but it's kind of funny. The second is Asha doing tricks, but she's interrupted by Kai who has other ideas.