Dystopian Paradise

I attended Gary Hoover’s presentation on the “History of Retail” last night and there was one thought he expressed that really jumped out at me. He said something to the effect of

“There are no new ideas anymore, only new combinations of existing thoughts.”

His examples were rooted in the retail world for this presentation, looking at how Sears, JC Penneys, and so many others had built on the backs of giants by doing what was in affect a social experiment.

“What would happen if we allowed shoppers to come in and look around, with no recourse if they didn’t purchase anything today?” “Could we sell just a few items, at a low margin, in small one-man stores and be profitable?” “What if we included public restrooms in our stores?”

These are just a few of the types of thoughts some of the titans of 20th century industry had along the way. So, I’ve been mulling that over in my head since last night and it occurred to me that in programming there’s a strong correlation. There are very rarely new ideas for how to create software, only the application of existing principles in new combinations.

So now it’s got me thinking…where else does this theory apply?

I’ve been debating a lot lately how much information I share publicly, vs the things we should be keeping private. Kassy definitely takes a much more cautious approach to online information sharing. Ever since I had an old college buddy track me down via this very blog, I’ve definitely given a lot of thought to how much information I post here. On top of all of this, I’m starting to take a much more public role at church, and so now I’m weighing everything out before we get too far along and I regret some early decisions I’ve made. One of the biggest questions surrounds just how much information I post about the kiddos. I have friends who use pseudonyms for their kids, and it’s something I’ve considered in the past. I’m not even sure what the questions to ask, and what I would change if I could, but it’s something to think about.

Sometimes all this distance between us and family is alright. Although we hate that our kiddos won’t see their grandparents as much, it does buffer us somewhat from all of the daily ins and outs of all our family members’ lives. The drive home can be a real bear of course and we can always sympathize folks making the drive down here, but the distance gives Kassy and I a chance to reconnect that we rarely get.

Tonight is one of those nights where I hate the distance between us and family. We had a family tragedy tonight, but being 11 hours away I feel so powerless. Please lift up a thought for my father’s family tonight as they deal with this. I know I will be.

Just saw Michael Moore’s new film “Capitalism: A Love Story” and he raised an interesting question. Is supporting capitalism a sin?

Should Christians support a different economic system that provides more social support or is that the Church’s responsibility exclusively?

Ultimately the film raised some great points around whether our current system of government is controlled more by the votes of the citizens or the dollars of big business.

I don’t purport to have answers to any of these questions, but I really enjoyed thinking and talking about them with some friends the other night and thought I’d share them.

So I’m about to get a hiring bonus for recruiting some friends to come work for the great company I work for, Bazaarvoice, and I’m trying to decide what to do with the extra funds. We’re still HDTV-less, a feat growing quite rare here in the US, so that’s almost a given, but what I’m really thinking of doing is getting a new laptop.

The big question is whether to get some big iron that can do my photo and video editing, or a simple netbook fr what I do most: web browsing and email. Thoughts?

Flying to Pittsburgh for a short work trip and there’s a lot of time for reflection once I run out of “The Office” and “Scrubs”. I’m wondering how on the earth you balance 40+ hours a week at a job, cooking, exercising, time with the spouse, time with the little man, and the 100 other things that come up in the course of a week.

You know, I’ve been doing this for five years now and it actually seems like it’s getting harder, when my brain tells me it should be the other way around. Sure things are always changing, but it just feels a bit like I’m headed for a dead end eventually. Not that it’s any too soon, but only a crazy person would continue to drive the boat straight onto the rocks once they’ve seen the lighthouse.

The problem eight now is I don’t seem to know the direction to turn. I know and I trust that God is in control, but I haven’t been actively seeking his will lately and it has left me aimless and drifting, just as I knew it would. The trouble is that the only thing I can find that I can cut from my day is sleep and working out. Two things I really need to sustain my body.

But I think I may have found a way to balance by life a little better. I’ll blog about that soon.

Well, the past few weeks since mid-June have just flown by.  With the symbolic passing of another year, I marked the evening with several close friends playing a new board game that I enjoy very much, and wholeheartedly recommend, “Shadows Over Camelot.” More on that another time. Today I want to explain, for those who haven’t heard, just where my last 2 weeks have gone.

In essence they have gone to Dr’s visits.  After my birthay rolled around, I got to thinking it was time for an annual checkup, seeing as how it had been closer to two. So, I made an appointment, and dropped in, know full well that I’d gained my “new baby 10″, and should be eating out less, exercising more, and to have a mole behind my ear measured. Well, all went well, I get a recommendation for a podiatrist to fix up my ingrown toenails a week or so later, and then she measured the mole and it had grown. So, off I go to the dermatologist (getting a doctor’s recommendation skips you ahead of the two month wait), and sure enough we have that nasty little bugger biopsy’d. So there’s the first week.

Not too worried about ye ole mole, as I have several, and one mole looks about the same as the next, until I get a call on Saturday morning from my dermatologist, letting me know that I have an “in situ melanoma“, and that I’ll need to make an appointment on the following Monday with a surgeon for a consulation. In this consultation I learn that in situ melanoma is an early stage skin cancer, and if not caught early can be very deadly.  Thankfully, we had caught this as early as is possible, however, they needed to remove 1/2 cm margins around the mole to be sure to remove any sattelite cancerous cells that might still be lingering. So, we schedule that for last Friday (the 27th), a short two days after having my toenails operated on. In retrospect this might have been a bit much to handle, however, we are switching health plans as of today, and it made some financial sense.

Finally, the day after the surgery (Saturday) for those keeping score. Kassy, Kaden, and I attended a 1st birthday party for a friend’s daughter, and I was enjoying a delicious popcorn ball made with jello for flavoring & extra stickiness. However, during one of these bites of popcorn ball, I accidentally chipped a large chunk of enamel off of one of my two front teeth.  Thankfully, my two front teeth have very large fillings from an accident as a child, and they were likely going to have to be replaced sometime soon, but still, “when it rains it pours.”

After a long weekend, a few Vicodin, and a bit of limping things are looking up. Kaden is sleeping through the night again (hooray!), I’m not limping nearly as much, and my bandages on my neck are almost ready to come off.  All in all it looks like July should be a much better month than June was.

So a week or so ago, we decided to take the family out for an evening walk. We thought it’d definitely put Kaden to sleep, and be good for us to get some exercise. Now, mind you this was around 9pm, so it was getting dark, but our neighborhood is a nice one, well lit, all that jazz, so we were comfortable taking a quick stroll around the block by the school and park, and then back to our house. Things were going just fine until we turned the corner and headed through the edge of the park, when we noticed that our quiet suburban neighborhood had been invaded by a snake.

Now, I’m not going to say that I have an irrational fear of snakes, but I have a significant disdain for them existing within my sight, and would much prefer to never see one again. But as it turns out, we saw this snake (thankfully 10-15 feet before we got to it), crossing the path just ahead of us. Now, this is not the simple little garter snake I’m used to from Missouri. I’ve only seen maybe three real snakes since we moved to Texas, and in order I’m about to tell you their stories.

1. Snake the First: Leaving work very late one evening, as I was driving across the parking lot there was a large (read: greater than three feet) snake making his way home from work as well, or perhaps he worked 3rd shift and was just heading in, all the same, our paths crossed, although simultaneously too close and not close enough, as you’ll see with the next encounter.
2. The second snake Kassy & I saw whilst driving home one evening, in the middle of an intersection near our house. This intelligent beast was slithering his way across four plus lanes of traffic, diagonally through the intersection we were turning left at. I simultaneously lost my breath, swerved around the snake, and for reasons still unbeknownswt to me, used the power locks to lock all the doors in our car. Now granted this snake was quite possibly the largest, non-captive, snake I’ve ever seen, but he still probably wouldn’t have been capable of operating the door of our car, let alone as we passed at 15mph.
3. The most recent snake was probably similar in size to the first, somewhere between three and maybe four feet long, but seeing as how we were out-of-doors, as the kids say, it scared the living daylights out of me. Not to mention it was dark, and who knows how many others were there just waiting for us to cross their paths. Anyway, now anytime I have to go out into the yard after dark I’m get anxious worrying about whether or not there is a snake in our backyard.

So without saying “I have an irrational fear of snakes,” I believe I have proved my point. And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Two quick notes tonight, before I head off to bed. First, my first trip to Las Vegas was last month. Wow. What a crazy city. Afterwards, while still decompressing I ran into a friend who said that Las Vegas was a look at all of the American vices, and while I agree with him in principle, I found it very interesting that there were two things that were verboten in Las Vegas. First, prostitution. Sure, there are plenty of erotic dancers, and girlfriends for an evening, whatever you want to call it, but the fact is that the county Las Vegas sits in has made prostitution illegal, unlike most of the rest of the state of Nevada. Secondly, it turns out that while you can do just about anything else while gambling, saying the “F word” is not OK. Granted it was well past 2am, and we’d all had enough to drink to loosen up the tongues, but I was still very shocked at the response of the pit boss to two slips of the “F bomb.” Oh well, I guess they have to draw the line somewhere, right?

As for rediscovery, I have recently been introduced to two old friends by way of their blogs, and I can’t tell you how excited I am to continue to catch up on what they’ve been up to these last five years plus.  I cannot believe that Kassy & I have been here in Austin nearly five years already.  Time flies, and speaking of that, I have got to get to bed.

Although I match several of these descriptions from time to time, I thought I’d share the love with this great poster of “The 56 Geeks”.  Not much been going on.  Seems like all our time goes to work and Kaden, but we squeeze in a home project, Christmas decorating, and other important stuff as well.

Wouldn’t change a thing.