Funny the things you remember from your childhood that seem perfectly reasonable, until you think about them and realize they're completely insane. I was taking the trash out tonight and noticed my neighbor has a five-pointed star with old-fashioned Christmas bulbs in his window. I had a similar star when I was a kid, which made me think about the circumstances around it.
It must have been December, and I must have been 9 or 10 and starting to question the existence of Santa Claus. I must have been to a friend's bar mitzvah because I'd only been to one bar mitzvah and I can't for the life of me think where else I would have picked up a small, blue, plastic six-pointed star. I really liked that star and carried it everywhere until, probably Christmas Eve, it broke. What I should have done was put it in the trash and forgotten about it. What I did was write a note to Santa asking him, if he was real, to get me another star. And, I added for no reason at all, it should be a big one.
My parents, bless them, should have written back, "get stuffed." Instead -- and although I was completely ignorant at the time, I can now visualize it as if it were a movie -- my dad would have found the note at 9pm after we'd all gone to bed, rushed out into the insanity of last-minute shopping, gone to ten shops before finding a large, five-pointed star that lit up with old-fashioned Christmas bulbs, gotten home at 11pm and, rather than just put it under the tree, he took out his tall, rickety ladder, attached it to the chimney above the basketball hoop, ran an extension cord through the window and then wrote on my note, "Look outside."
I woke up, saw the note, went outside, looked up at the glowing star and...was disappointed it wasn't a six-pointed star. I let my parents know that Santa had failed. (Even at such a tender age, I was a complete shit. Of course, they had no idea how much worse I would get.)
So that's the story. I had that star for another 20 years, long after you could find replacement bulbs. Every Christmas I would hang it up and think of my dad. I think my ex-wife got the star, but maybe it's in my mom's garage; I don't really know. (I think my ex-wife kept all of my baby photos, as well.) Of course, if I'd kept the star I'm not really sure what I would do with it now.
In hindsight, maybe a little goyish boy asking for a Magen David at Christmas was a portent of things to come. Or maybe it really was just insane. The only thing I can say with any certainty is that my parents were saints and that star was a testament to their love.
Tuesday, November 20, 2018
Sunday, October 21, 2018
Finding God
I may have mentioned before, when I told my mother I was converting to Judaism, I was surprised she was so enthusiastic. I asked her why and she said, "I'm just happy you've found God."
Except, I hadn't. In fact, I embraced Judaism - reform Judaism, to be specific - because it challenge me to find my own definition of God. At the Beit Din, the conversion Court, I told the rabbis, "I believe there are a lot of things that we don't understand, and possibly never will understand. If people choose to call that God, I'm okay with that."
At a Limmud event, I heard a debate about which were more important, beliefs or actions. One argued that if you believed in God, then you would want to act according to his (hers?) laws. The other argued that first you had to perform the acts, and only then could you understand enough to believe.
It seemed pretty chicken-and-egg, and irrelevant to me. I even gave a talk at a local Limmud event about converting to Judaism whilst remaining an atheist. Nobody was particularly bothered.
For seven years now, I've been doing the acts: I attend synagogue, I light the candles, I make the prayers. I prefer saying the prayers in Hebrew because, even if I understand the words, I know I'm performing a ritual, not acknowledging an invisible God.
Except, I'm not. I am grateful to an unseeing hand that has brought me to this time and place, given me a loving family, and enriched my world immeasurably. Had I not performed the acts, I don't know where I'd be, but I cannot imagine it could be better than this.
So who do I direct this gratitude towards? The universe? Karma? I lack the words, the subtlety to express myself. If I say I'm grateful to God, people may have a different understanding of God, but they understand exactly what emotion I'm trying to convey. And that's the point of communication, isn't it?
So, I've realised why my mom was so enthusiastic when I told her I was converting to Judaism. Maybe she knew I hadn't found her God, but she knew I was engaging with something bigger than myself, and by converting I was committing myself to a path--that it wasn't just an intellectual exercise--and that if I performed the acts, I would eventually believe.
Last week I watched all three kids on the bima. When I'd first met them, the eldest was preparing for her bat mitzvah; now the youngest was celebrating the first anniversary of his bar mitzvah. I marvelled at how they had all changed in five short years, and I thanked God for letting me be part of their lives.
And as they came off the bima and took their seats, each one hugged me and told me they loved me, and I know that was God answering back.
Wednesday, October 10, 2018
Deedee
Today would have been my friend's 84th birthday. She died three years ago, and I didn't even mention it in my blog. To be fair, I had literally just arrived in New Zealand and was dealing with my pop-up family, but it is high time I made up for it.
So that's the story of my oldest and longest friend, who watched me grow up and helped me pull my head out of my ass. She was around through three failed relationships, and passed away just as I started my next one. She knew me when I was flat broke, when I was flush with cash, and when I was flat broke again. She never made any demands on me; she always accepted me as-is, where-is. If I treated her to something, she was always extremely grateful. She didn't have a mean bone in her body, and if it hadn't been for her sons she would have led a happy and fulfilling life. She taught me what unconditional love looked like, and she taught me that you can't save other people.
I met Deedee when I was 14 and she was 50 Of course, I didn't know how old she was at the time; I only found out later that she had attended the same high school as my father, and then I found out she was one year ahead of him because he was in her yearbook. Actually, to go right back to the beginning, when we first met I didn't even know she was a woman.
Christmas 1982, my parents bought us a brand-new Atari 1200XL computer with all the peripherals. Why they did this is still beyond me: they didn't have any money, none of our friends had a home computer and there was no guarantee we'd actually use it. Sure, we had an Atari 2600 game console, so perhaps they thought it would play better games? (It didn't.)
The peripherals consisted of a floppy disk drive (considered optional even though the system didn't have a hard drive!), a dot-matrix printer and this crazy thing:
My brother and I literally had no idea what it was for, but we discovered that if you connected it to the computer and whistled into one of the rubber cups, random characters would appear on the screen. I'm embarrassed to say, but this kept us entertained for *weeks* before I finally read the manual to discover it was a "300 baud acoustic-coupled modem." "Acoustic coupled" meant you dialed a phone number and then stuck the handset into those rubber cups!
"Baud" meant bits per second, and one character was 8 bits, so 300 baud meant it could download 2,250 characters per minute. A screen held 2000 characters, so it took nearly a minute to update one page (and there were no graphics). Someone actually posted a YouTube video showing how painful this was:
Of course, this only worked if you had someone to call, and it was another 6 months before the movie "War Games" came out to show that you could use one of these to break into highly secured government networks and override the launch codes. (It was also 16 years before Google was invented.) I did dial into Compuserve but it wasn't a local call, and when my parents got the next phone bill they put a stop to that.
Somehow--and I have no memory how--I did find out about some local bulletin board systems ("BBS" as we called them) and dialed in. I discovered people posting messages on all sorts of topics, and I was immediately hooked. If my parents thought I'd use the computer to play better games, they must have been sorely disappointed that I was using it to read text scrolling very slowly across the screen. And I spent every free moment doing it.
One particular bulletin board had a higher level of discourse than others, and I lurked in the background for a month or so before I couldn't contain myself and I just started typing. The messages had a character limit and I ended up writing 27 messages in a row. 35 years later, it's still cringe-worthy, and it immediately got me banned from the BBS.
Of course, I didn't realise that was a thing; I thought it was some sort of technical error, but since I couldn't even log in to tell the operator there was a problem (email as we know it hadn't been invented yet!) I was a bit stuck. However, there was one person on that BBS that I'd seen on another BBS, so I left them a message on the second BBS. They had actually read my 27-message screed and thought there was a hint of intelligence somewhere in there, so they intervened on my behalf and I got reinstated with a warning not to do that again.
Needless to say, that person turned out to be Deedee. BBSes often organised social activities so I eventually met her, and I found out she lived not far from my school so I would occasionally walk over to her house after school. She was a single mom with three kids in their 20s; two still lived at home and were heavily into drugs. She had developed rheumatoid arthritis in her 30s and was badly crippled; she could walk with crutches but sitting was a chore (she had to literally throw herself backwards into a chair) and her fingers were so curled it was hard to believe she could type. (In fact, she'd gotten a computer because she didn't have the strength for a manual typewriter.) She had a gang of misfit friends, and somehow a 14-year-old just fitted in. Perhaps it was just a more innocent time, but nobody seemed to question our unlikely friendship except my mother, who seemed to think it was more Harold and Maude.
In hindsight, I can't really blame my mom; it was weird, but it worked. We both loved computers, 60s rock, Arby's, sci-fi, plus she had a car. We were best friends and completely inseparable for two years, and then she moved in with us.
Now, before you rush to judgment, I mentioned two of her kids were druggies, and the eldest went on a cocaine bender and started destroying her house. I did what any friend would do: I told my dad. My dad had a heart beyond reckoning, and I remember to this day he never hesitated: He drove to her house, picked her up and gave her the pull-out sofa for as long as she needed it. It turned out she needed it for three years before her son took himself off to Northern California to get clean. My parents handled it with such grace that today I find it awe-inspiring. My mother even helped get her a job with her company, and they carpooled every day.
The irony is that Deedee and I had grown apart. I started dating a woman, and when I was 17 I moved in with her while Deedee was still living with my parents! I still kept in touch but I started working and didn't have time for BBSes. I'd go visit Deedee a couple of times a year, and often it was out of guilt. That's because not long after she'd moved back into her home, her youngest son discovered crack cocaine, and he continued for another 25 years. He stole everything he could to fund his habit, leaving her completely destitute. The only time she had any respite was when he was in jail, but at some point he married a similar piece of trash and moved her into Deedee's house, so even when he was in jail his wife was still there. She refused to throw them out, and eventually all of her friends deserted her because it was an impossible situation. I think I was one of two or three friends that continued to visit.
In hindsight, I can appreciate how afraid she was of getting old, and not being able to take care of herself, and she clung to the belief that her son would take care of her despite all evidence to the contrary. When he wasn't high, he was perfectly fine, but those times were few and far between. The house was in a horrific state, but she wouldn't accept help cleaning it up, as she became a bit of a hoarder. I think everyone needs some degree of control in their lives, and she had precious little so she just kept what she had.
Just before I moved to the UK in 2008, I took Deedee on a road trip to the Grand Canyon, because she'd always wanted to go. It was a crazy, impetuous thing to do, especially with a frail 75 year old, but she loved every minute of it. On the way back I took a sidetrip to Vegas, although that turned out to be a mistake: There was a huge boxing match in town and hotel rates were eye-watering. Between the room, dinner and a show, I think I maxed out my credit card in one day, but she was so happy.
I saw her once in 2010 and again in 2013. That last trip was particularly memorable because I was with my friend Lucy, and knowing me I didn't tell Deedee I was coming. (I always did crap like that to her.) I showed up at her door and was shocked when she answered: She'd tripped and fallen face-first onto the floor--her joints were so bad she couldn't even lift her hands to break her fall--and the bruising had just started fading, leaving her in shades of purple and green. Worse, her dentures had been giving her problems and she couldn't afford to replace them, so she had been eating soft food for the past couple of years and had lost about half her body weight. Her skin hung off her like drapes. I may have been taken aback, but Lucy was in complete shock.
I saw her once in 2010 and again in 2013. That last trip was particularly memorable because I was with my friend Lucy, and knowing me I didn't tell Deedee I was coming. (I always did crap like that to her.) I showed up at her door and was shocked when she answered: She'd tripped and fallen face-first onto the floor--her joints were so bad she couldn't even lift her hands to break her fall--and the bruising had just started fading, leaving her in shades of purple and green. Worse, her dentures had been giving her problems and she couldn't afford to replace them, so she had been eating soft food for the past couple of years and had lost about half her body weight. Her skin hung off her like drapes. I may have been taken aback, but Lucy was in complete shock.
I got Deedee in the car and we drove to the nearest Arby's. She didn't want to get out of the car so we drove to the local mission and parked in the shade by the rose garden, and we reminisced about the last 30 years. I knew I'd changed a lot since I was a snot-nosed 14 year old, but at 80 she seemed exactly the same as when I'd met her. She complained about her son, of course (who was now in his 50s) but I let that go. There was no point in arguing with her anymore; I just listened.
Lucy had gotten out of the car and came back with a perfect red rose for Deedee. (I'm sure you're not supposed to pick them!) We took her home and said goodbye, then drove up north to see my family. That was the last time I saw her. In March 2014 she sent me an email which started with, "Tell Lucy that her beautiful rosebud lasted a whole week and bloomed all the way out to a full rose." She complained about her son, who had moved some junkies into her garage, and one of the wild cats was about to have a litter, so she was trying to sort homes for them. Her last words were, "Hope everything is going well for you. Love you much." I sent her a couple of emails but never got a response.
In August 2014, on the day I was flying to New Zealand, I got an email from her son letting me know she'd had an aneurysm and was in a medically-induced coma. She'd just turned 81, which was longer than any of us thought she'd make it (rheumatoid arthritis tends to shorten the lifespan by 10 to 15 years). A few weeks later her son asked me for my address, because Deedee had asked to be cremated and her ashes split between her three best friends. (I didn't honestly expect her son to follow through, and I never received her ashes; I have no idea what happened to them.)
In August 2014, on the day I was flying to New Zealand, I got an email from her son letting me know she'd had an aneurysm and was in a medically-induced coma. She'd just turned 81, which was longer than any of us thought she'd make it (rheumatoid arthritis tends to shorten the lifespan by 10 to 15 years). A few weeks later her son asked me for my address, because Deedee had asked to be cremated and her ashes split between her three best friends. (I didn't honestly expect her son to follow through, and I never received her ashes; I have no idea what happened to them.)
In August we used to watch the Perseid meteor shower, and in March we'd go see the poppies, I have her to thank for introducing me to the Moody Blues, the Limeliters and Arby's Jamocha shakes. I hope Deedee found peace, and I hope she knows that I'll always remember her fondly, and that I wish I'd been a better friend over all those years.
P.S. That Atari computer was the most used gift ever, and I credit it with my entire career. I held onto it long after I'd switched to PCs, but when I was 26 or 27 I had a general clean out, and it went in the trash along with the floppy disk drive and dot matrix printer. I'd long since upgraded the 300 baud acoustic-coupled modem to a 1200 baud direct-connect modem, then 2400 baud, then 9600 baud, then a staggering 14.4 kbps, then 33.6 kbps, and finally a 56kbps modem (even though that was only a theoretical maximum that could never be achieved in the real-world). Today my VDSL modem gets 42Mbps download, which is 140,000 times faster than my original modem. Sadly, there's no way to whistle into it to get random characters to appear.
Monday, October 8, 2018
Camping
It's birthday season -- two of the kids have birthdays in October, right around school holidays -- and the middle child, who is turning 16, wanted to go camping for her birthday. With boys.
Now, frankly, I'm not sure she'd know what to do with a boy. She goes to an all-girls school and all her male friends are "nice Jewish boys." The closest she has ever come to having a boyfriend was when she was 12 she announced on Monday she was dating a boy, and on Wednesday announced they had broken up. She said she couldn't understand why people on TV make such a fuss about it.
So we were ok with the camping and with the boys -- we would still chaperone, of course -- so she went and told all her friends we were going camping on October 6. Two of her friends in Auckland booked flights and all of her friends in Wellington told her they couldn't come that weekend.
So somehow the plan got changed that we would go camping with her Auckland friends this weekend and her Wellington friends in two weeks time. In hindsight we should have just let her go with her friends, but instead we told the other two kids they could invite a friend. We ended up with eight kids, four tents, and making half the kids take the train to the campsite while we transported the luggage.
I should also note that on Friday night, when we should have been getting prepared, we hosted a dinner party. To be fair, it had been on the books since before the camping trip, but again in hindsight we should have cancelled it as the house was a disaster area of tents, sleeping bags, pillows, etc. I also got stuck at work finishing a report so I arrived *after* the guests.
I'd like to say when they left, we got busy loading the car, but in reality we just had an argument over something silly, and I went to bed. It didn't really matter much because we couldn't load the car -- we needed to transport five kids to synagogue on Saturday morning. It was the anniversary of the middle child's bat mitzvah, and she not only wanted to read from the Torah, but to also be the cantor that day. (She did it beautifully.) Her mom led the service and I gave the drasha (sermon) so it was a real family affair.
I should note that at her bat mitzvah three years ago, she'd given the drasha and I still had a copy, so I read it -- word for word. Expressing all my hopes and aspirations for starting high school in 2016, the rest of the congregation were a bit confused, especially because the cantor was laughing her head off.
So we didn't even start loading the car until 1pm in the afternoon. Gratefully, the weather couldn't have been nicer, the campsite was only 45 minutes away and all the kids pitched in, so by 4pm we were set up and enjoying a (very) late lunch. A friend who lived nearby came over, and in the evening I dropped him at home and picked up ten pizzas from Domino's, so everyone was happy.
The campsite had strict rules to vacate by 11am but we weren't even out of our tents at 10am. It was overcast and cool and the kids were whining about going home, so I was getting pretty annoyed. However, the sun finally burned off the haze and it turned into a glorious beach day, and the campsite was only 100 yards from the beach. The kids made pancakes and packed up the tents (somewhat grudgingly) and we finally left the campground at about 1pm, parked the car on the street and parked ourselves on a picnic blanket for the next two hours.
The eldest child was supposed to be in Auckland for two back-to-back seminars, one on leadership and the other on her gap-year program in Israel. For some reason she decided not to go to the first one, and so was going to fly on Monday to attend the second one. We pointed out we were working on Monday and she'd have to take the bus to the airport. Now, it's 8 miles from our house to the airport and there's a bus that runs practically the entire way (it's about ten minutes of walking) so this wasn't some fantastic hardship. She contacted the organisers and got them to put her on a Sunday flight instead.
So at 3pm we had to leave the gorgeous beach, drive an hour to the airport, quickly drop the luggage on our front porch, drop off two of the kids, drive 45 minutes back to the campsite to pick up the remaining kids, and come home. I remember my dad doing such crazy things when I was a child and I thought about the circle of life, and how some things never change. I had a lot of time to think over those three hours.
Finally we were home, exhausted, with four children who were badly sunburned because they didn't have the sense to re-apply sunscreen every two hours. (New Zealand has the highest rates of skin cancer in the world so kids are taught from preschool about applying sunscreen, and they still don't listen.) They'd also bought into the myth that apple cider vinegar cures everything, including sunburn, so the middle child took a bottle up to her room to apply it. To her credit, she did have the sense to think pouring apple cider vinegar onto a washcloth in her room might be a bad idea; however, her solution was to open a window and pour apple cider vinegar onto a washcloth outside. She dropped the bottle, which fell two stories and smashed on the front porch where all of the camping gear was still sitting.
So now the gear is still sitting on the front porch, waiting for the smell of apple cider vinegar to dissipate. Hopefully it will be gone by the time we next take the kids camping, in two weeks...
Wednesday, October 3, 2018
Chaos Monkey
This is hilarious, had to share: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Monkey
Every company pays lip service to the idea of "resiliency" - that is, the ability to carry on business-as-usual in spite of technical issues - and vast amounts of time and money are spent setting up "solutions" which are only ever tested when something bad does happen, and then rarely work as expected. Netflix decided to turn this on its head and in 2011 created "Chaos Monkey," a tool that would, at a random time, disable a random server, just to see what would happen. As someone described it, "Imagine a monkey entering a data center and randomly destroying devices. The challenge for IT managers is to design the information system they are responsible for so that it can work despite these monkeys, which no one ever knows when they arrive and what they will do."
Every company pays lip service to the idea of "resiliency" - that is, the ability to carry on business-as-usual in spite of technical issues - and vast amounts of time and money are spent setting up "solutions" which are only ever tested when something bad does happen, and then rarely work as expected. Netflix decided to turn this on its head and in 2011 created "Chaos Monkey," a tool that would, at a random time, disable a random server, just to see what would happen. As someone described it, "Imagine a monkey entering a data center and randomly destroying devices. The challenge for IT managers is to design the information system they are responsible for so that it can work despite these monkeys, which no one ever knows when they arrive and what they will do."
While intentionally shutting down a production server in the middle of the day seems crazy, it's exactly what a resilient system is designed to handle. And of course it's not just a server crashing but network problems, security issues, etc. Netflix eventually built the "Simian army," a collection of chaos monkeys designed to find faults or problems. (My favourite is the "Chaos Gorilla" that shuts down an entire zone!)
That said, most of us don't manage a system like Netflix, don't have a need for constant uptime and don't have the time or resources to "design for failure." But if we don't regularly change our tyres on a sunny day, how can we be expected to change a flat in the middle of the night in the pouring rain? We throw a spare tyre in the boot but then never check it until we need it, and hope it's okay. Having two servers running in two locations doesn't give you "resiliency" as much as it gives you "complexity," "synchronisation issues" and "maintenance headache."
So what are the other options? Today a co-worker proposed a purpose-built emergency system, something I'd never considered before. Rather than complicating and overloading your production system, most of which isn't even required in an emergency, build a parallel system that is just the bare essentials. Since it's a separate system, you can test it easily and control it better. You know exactly what capabilities it supports and it's available at a moment's notice. Think of it as a the nuclear bunker of backup systems.
The only problem is business mindset, because by defining an emergency system the business has to decide, "What is important?" which is one they never like to answer. In addition, the business has to spend money to create a system that they never plan to use, as opposed to hiding the cost of "resiliency" in a new system. And of course not every failure constitutes an emergency, so if one server fails and a system goes down you wouldn't invoke your emergency procedures, but you will lament that particular system was not "resilient."
Of course, there's no one-size-fits-all solution, which is what keeps me employed.
Wednesday, August 15, 2018
The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
Today was one of those days, where you regret getting out of bed and every time you think it can't get any worse, it does. The only thing good about today was reaching the end, and knowing tomorrow has to be better.
It started, of course, looking like a pretty good day. That's how they get you. If you were expecting a bad day, it would just confirm your worries, but by teasing you with a glimmer of hope, it can crush you completely. That glimmer was that I had a fairly light day -- normally I'm in meetings five hours of the day, and then trying to pack eight hours of work into what remains. Today I only had two meetings -- one at 10:30am and one at 1:30pm. I had scheduled a dentist appointment in the morning and was meeting my partner and a friend for lunch at noon. I even thought I might be home on time for once.
My bike was in the shop so I had the car; thankfully my partner didn't need it that day. The dentist appointment ran late, but I didn't have any cavities, so I was happy right until I got back to the car, when I saw three messages on my phone:
1. A meeting with senior leadership had been scheduled for today at 9am. It was now 9:20am.
2. My partner, it turned out, needed the car to get to a school meeting at 2:30pm. (The child in question had sworn it was on Thursday, but thankfully my partner checked and it was today.)
3. The bike shop sent a text saying the bike was ready.
At this point, I should have driven straight to work to salvage what was left of the meeting. It turned out the meeting invite was accidentally sent to my co-worker. Yesterday at 4pm he realised it was for me and so forwarded it without telling me I had to be there at 9am, and of course I didn't check my email after 4pm so I had no idea.
However, I made the (unwise) decision to go pick up my bike instead. My logic was this: Parking around the office is a nightmare, so by the time I got in I would have missed most of the meeting, and then I would have still had to sort out the car for the afternoon. Better to cut my losses and cycle in.
I got to the bike shop to find my bike on the rack, being worked on. I said I'd gotten a text saying it was finished and the tech told me he'd lost one of the nuts so he'd jimmied something together, but he just found the nut so he was putting it back on. That was slightly disconcerting, since the nut in question held on the derailleur, and I wondered if he'd planned on telling me about his makeshift repair, but I decided it wasn't worth making a fuss about it and waiting for him to finish. He took ten minutes.
Now it was closing on 10am and I was getting worried I'd be late for my 10:30 meeting as well! I then made the (unwise) decision to drive in after all, and pray to the parking gods to have mercy on me. Except the new car doesn't have a bicycle rack and the bicycle takes up the entire back seat, so I couldn't leave it in. I drove home, left it in the hallway (I could have just as easily put it in the garage) and raced off to work. The parking gods were smiling, but at me rather than on me, In fact, they were practically crying with laughter. After driving around for 10 minutes I ended up parking 15 minutes from work, in a 2-hour zone. (Cycling would have taken less than 20 minutes.) And it started to rain. I was in a suit with no raincoat or umbrella.
I arrived for the 10:30 meeting panting, wet and in agony because Sunday I'd just bought a brand new pair of leather work shoes, and today was my first day wearing them. In the shop they'd been really comfortable, but today they were rubbing me in all the wrong places. Of course, having walked on the pavement for 15 minutes, they are now mine to keep. (Hopefully I'll break them in eventually.)
After getting my knuckles rapped for missing the 9am meeting, the rest of the meeting went fine, but only because my boss had forgotten about the three things he assigned me two weeks ago which I still haven't finished. (See "5 hours of meetings per day," above.) I got out of that meeting and had half an hour to respond to my emails before running off to meet my partner and friend for lunch.
We were meeting at my partner's work, which is only a ten minute walk from my work, but I had to move the car before the 2 hour window expired, and it was in the opposite direction. I texted my friend and partner to start lunch without me. Of course, I tried to move the car closer to my wife's work, but again the parking gods were pissing themselves with laughter, and after 15 minutes of circling I ended up parking even further away than where I started. I walked to our designated rendezvous point, texting my partner and wondering why she wasn't texting me back. It turned out she'd gotten stuck in a meeting, so our friend had just been wandering around for 20 minutes looking for either of us!!
We finally met up, and my partner joined us a few minutes later, but by then our friend had to leave, and I had to get back for my 1pm meeting. We tried to get some food but both cafes had a long queue so I gave my partner the car keys, took her bike and left without eating. As soon as I started cycling, it started raining again.
The 1pm meeting was very frustrating because it was with a user who believed the IT department was only there to make her job easier. If you are still under such illusions, let me tell you: The IT department is there to make your job go away, period. Last week I was in a meeting with a different group who were arguing that spending $30,000 on a new system would be cost-effective because it would save their team 10 hours per month in manually preparing reports. I first pointed out that even by their calculations, it would take 2.5 years to see a return on the investment, and then I pointed out that unless someone was being fired, there was no actual cost savings. They didn't get it.
So this user had the same attitude: I don't want to look in two systems for this information, so copy all the data from one system into the other system, and then keep it in sync. I politely pointed out three times that she had no business case to justify this, but she was firmly of the opinion that I was just there to do whatever she asked. Thankfully, after the meeting I had a good idea: I sent a message to senior management pointing out that they wanted this system right away, but if I did what she asked it would delay implementation by at least three months, so we should put that into "phase 2." They immediately agreed, and I'll be sure to kill any "phase 2."
That high lasted all of 5 minutes, when my boss decided to share his vision of the future. He passed me a sheaf of documents which he'd been quietly running past the CEO, and he felt the seeds were starting to take root. Unfortunately, I looked at the papers and realised it was a stupid idea.
Trying to be as polite as possible, I pointed out he was shutting the barn door after the horse had bolted. His plan to create a "data czar" was fine, but about 15 years too late. Data was already replicated and duplicated across the enterprise, and it was tied directly to the applications, so you couldn't just magically declare the data was "controlled." First, you need to physically put something between the app and the data, then you can start to claw back the data. I'd already started to put plans together to do just that, but it was at least a two year project, and there was no point in brining someone on board before then.
My co-worker also pointed out that he'd had a data architect, whom nobody liked so he got rid of him earlier this year. However, instead of firing him, he'd made him redundant, and under NZ law if you make someone redundant you can't create a similar position for at least a year! (I did not know that.) On top of that, there is already a team in charge of "data services" so this new role would be a direct challenge to them. So this plan was just a disaster waiting to happen. Of course he didn't listen to us.
When confronted with ignorance, I always turn to pictures. The aforementioned data architect had tried to make some system flow diagrams, but he'd managed to make them so overly complex that they were completely useless, and I had to start from scratch. I drew up the "current environment" and the "future state" and just capturing the number of systems and data feeds I was aware of, it took six hours. (It also highlighted how little I still know of all the systems and data feeds.)
It was now 11pm, and I still had to bike home, in the dark, wearing a suit and uncomfortable shoes, without a jacket. (Did I mention it's winter in New Zealand?) I texted my partner hoping she'd take mercy, but she'd already gone to bed, I normally wear a hi-vis vest but of course I didn't have that, either, but someone had left a bright green towel hanging outside, so I wrapped it around my shoulders. I'm very grateful I did that because as soon as I struck out, it started raining. Then it started pouring. Then it got very windy.
I was soaked like a rat. My glasses were covered in raindrops and I couldn't see a thing. The towel miraculously stayed on even in the blowing wind. (I had visions of it flying off and landing in a puddle, but because it was someone else's towel I would have had to stop and get it and carry it home!) Thankfully there were very few cars out, but surprisingly there were several people. I'm sure they will all be telling stories tomorrow about the guy in a suit with a green cape cycling in the rain at 11pm the night before.
I was so grateful when I got home, but it was clear I was the only one who felt that way: The porch light was turned off, the table was cleared except for my dinner dishes, and the remnants of dinner were sitting, ice cold, on the countertop. It was quite depressing. I left my partner's bike in the hallway (it would have been just as easy for me to put in the garage as well) so the kids will have fun maneuvering around two bikes tomorrow. I made myself a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of tea, and then wrote this as a form of catharsis, to let the day go. Of course, it's now 1:30am, I have to be up in six hours, and I get to do it all again tomorrow...
It started, of course, looking like a pretty good day. That's how they get you. If you were expecting a bad day, it would just confirm your worries, but by teasing you with a glimmer of hope, it can crush you completely. That glimmer was that I had a fairly light day -- normally I'm in meetings five hours of the day, and then trying to pack eight hours of work into what remains. Today I only had two meetings -- one at 10:30am and one at 1:30pm. I had scheduled a dentist appointment in the morning and was meeting my partner and a friend for lunch at noon. I even thought I might be home on time for once.
My bike was in the shop so I had the car; thankfully my partner didn't need it that day. The dentist appointment ran late, but I didn't have any cavities, so I was happy right until I got back to the car, when I saw three messages on my phone:
1. A meeting with senior leadership had been scheduled for today at 9am. It was now 9:20am.
2. My partner, it turned out, needed the car to get to a school meeting at 2:30pm. (The child in question had sworn it was on Thursday, but thankfully my partner checked and it was today.)
3. The bike shop sent a text saying the bike was ready.
At this point, I should have driven straight to work to salvage what was left of the meeting. It turned out the meeting invite was accidentally sent to my co-worker. Yesterday at 4pm he realised it was for me and so forwarded it without telling me I had to be there at 9am, and of course I didn't check my email after 4pm so I had no idea.
However, I made the (unwise) decision to go pick up my bike instead. My logic was this: Parking around the office is a nightmare, so by the time I got in I would have missed most of the meeting, and then I would have still had to sort out the car for the afternoon. Better to cut my losses and cycle in.
I got to the bike shop to find my bike on the rack, being worked on. I said I'd gotten a text saying it was finished and the tech told me he'd lost one of the nuts so he'd jimmied something together, but he just found the nut so he was putting it back on. That was slightly disconcerting, since the nut in question held on the derailleur, and I wondered if he'd planned on telling me about his makeshift repair, but I decided it wasn't worth making a fuss about it and waiting for him to finish. He took ten minutes.
Now it was closing on 10am and I was getting worried I'd be late for my 10:30 meeting as well! I then made the (unwise) decision to drive in after all, and pray to the parking gods to have mercy on me. Except the new car doesn't have a bicycle rack and the bicycle takes up the entire back seat, so I couldn't leave it in. I drove home, left it in the hallway (I could have just as easily put it in the garage) and raced off to work. The parking gods were smiling, but at me rather than on me, In fact, they were practically crying with laughter. After driving around for 10 minutes I ended up parking 15 minutes from work, in a 2-hour zone. (Cycling would have taken less than 20 minutes.) And it started to rain. I was in a suit with no raincoat or umbrella.
I arrived for the 10:30 meeting panting, wet and in agony because Sunday I'd just bought a brand new pair of leather work shoes, and today was my first day wearing them. In the shop they'd been really comfortable, but today they were rubbing me in all the wrong places. Of course, having walked on the pavement for 15 minutes, they are now mine to keep. (Hopefully I'll break them in eventually.)
After getting my knuckles rapped for missing the 9am meeting, the rest of the meeting went fine, but only because my boss had forgotten about the three things he assigned me two weeks ago which I still haven't finished. (See "5 hours of meetings per day," above.) I got out of that meeting and had half an hour to respond to my emails before running off to meet my partner and friend for lunch.
We were meeting at my partner's work, which is only a ten minute walk from my work, but I had to move the car before the 2 hour window expired, and it was in the opposite direction. I texted my friend and partner to start lunch without me. Of course, I tried to move the car closer to my wife's work, but again the parking gods were pissing themselves with laughter, and after 15 minutes of circling I ended up parking even further away than where I started. I walked to our designated rendezvous point, texting my partner and wondering why she wasn't texting me back. It turned out she'd gotten stuck in a meeting, so our friend had just been wandering around for 20 minutes looking for either of us!!
We finally met up, and my partner joined us a few minutes later, but by then our friend had to leave, and I had to get back for my 1pm meeting. We tried to get some food but both cafes had a long queue so I gave my partner the car keys, took her bike and left without eating. As soon as I started cycling, it started raining again.
The 1pm meeting was very frustrating because it was with a user who believed the IT department was only there to make her job easier. If you are still under such illusions, let me tell you: The IT department is there to make your job go away, period. Last week I was in a meeting with a different group who were arguing that spending $30,000 on a new system would be cost-effective because it would save their team 10 hours per month in manually preparing reports. I first pointed out that even by their calculations, it would take 2.5 years to see a return on the investment, and then I pointed out that unless someone was being fired, there was no actual cost savings. They didn't get it.
So this user had the same attitude: I don't want to look in two systems for this information, so copy all the data from one system into the other system, and then keep it in sync. I politely pointed out three times that she had no business case to justify this, but she was firmly of the opinion that I was just there to do whatever she asked. Thankfully, after the meeting I had a good idea: I sent a message to senior management pointing out that they wanted this system right away, but if I did what she asked it would delay implementation by at least three months, so we should put that into "phase 2." They immediately agreed, and I'll be sure to kill any "phase 2."
That high lasted all of 5 minutes, when my boss decided to share his vision of the future. He passed me a sheaf of documents which he'd been quietly running past the CEO, and he felt the seeds were starting to take root. Unfortunately, I looked at the papers and realised it was a stupid idea.
Trying to be as polite as possible, I pointed out he was shutting the barn door after the horse had bolted. His plan to create a "data czar" was fine, but about 15 years too late. Data was already replicated and duplicated across the enterprise, and it was tied directly to the applications, so you couldn't just magically declare the data was "controlled." First, you need to physically put something between the app and the data, then you can start to claw back the data. I'd already started to put plans together to do just that, but it was at least a two year project, and there was no point in brining someone on board before then.
My co-worker also pointed out that he'd had a data architect, whom nobody liked so he got rid of him earlier this year. However, instead of firing him, he'd made him redundant, and under NZ law if you make someone redundant you can't create a similar position for at least a year! (I did not know that.) On top of that, there is already a team in charge of "data services" so this new role would be a direct challenge to them. So this plan was just a disaster waiting to happen. Of course he didn't listen to us.
When confronted with ignorance, I always turn to pictures. The aforementioned data architect had tried to make some system flow diagrams, but he'd managed to make them so overly complex that they were completely useless, and I had to start from scratch. I drew up the "current environment" and the "future state" and just capturing the number of systems and data feeds I was aware of, it took six hours. (It also highlighted how little I still know of all the systems and data feeds.)
It was now 11pm, and I still had to bike home, in the dark, wearing a suit and uncomfortable shoes, without a jacket. (Did I mention it's winter in New Zealand?) I texted my partner hoping she'd take mercy, but she'd already gone to bed, I normally wear a hi-vis vest but of course I didn't have that, either, but someone had left a bright green towel hanging outside, so I wrapped it around my shoulders. I'm very grateful I did that because as soon as I struck out, it started raining. Then it started pouring. Then it got very windy.
I was soaked like a rat. My glasses were covered in raindrops and I couldn't see a thing. The towel miraculously stayed on even in the blowing wind. (I had visions of it flying off and landing in a puddle, but because it was someone else's towel I would have had to stop and get it and carry it home!) Thankfully there were very few cars out, but surprisingly there were several people. I'm sure they will all be telling stories tomorrow about the guy in a suit with a green cape cycling in the rain at 11pm the night before.
I was so grateful when I got home, but it was clear I was the only one who felt that way: The porch light was turned off, the table was cleared except for my dinner dishes, and the remnants of dinner were sitting, ice cold, on the countertop. It was quite depressing. I left my partner's bike in the hallway (it would have been just as easy for me to put in the garage as well) so the kids will have fun maneuvering around two bikes tomorrow. I made myself a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of tea, and then wrote this as a form of catharsis, to let the day go. Of course, it's now 1:30am, I have to be up in six hours, and I get to do it all again tomorrow...
Saturday, August 4, 2018
Parashat Eikev
In today’s portion, Moses continues his speech to the Israelites, reminding them to keep God's commandments when they enter the land of Israel. This year’s triennial begins with Devarim 9.4: “And when the LORD your God has thrust them from your path, say not to yourselves, ‘The LORD has enabled us to possess this land because of our virtues’.” As a rallying cry for battle, it sucks, but as an eternal truth, it’s perfect.
It is human nature to believe that when things go well, it is because of ourselves, and when things go poorly it is because of others. The axiom, “Success has many fathers but failure is an orphan” actually goes back to the 1st century CE, when the Roman Tacitus wrote: “This is an unfair thing about war: victory is claimed by all, failure to one alone.”
However, so much of our success is the result of circumstance, timing, our families, our schools and teachers, the people we know and those who went before us, and a large dose of luck. Thomas Edison said, “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” His first commercial success was in 1870, when he made a stock ticker based on the telegraph. Forty years earlier, Samuel Morse had patented the telegraph, but adoption was hampered by the cost of land rights to run the cables. In 1851, railroads allowed the cables to be run alongside the tracks, so telegraph operators were located at the stations. In 1860, a 13-year-old Edison got a job selling newspapers at the local station. The station agent befriended him and taught him how to operate the telegraph, and he was an operator for 7 years before creating the stock ticker, which earned him $40,000 (about $750,000 US in today’s money) and allowed him to become a full-time inventor. If any one of those hadn’t occurred, we wouldn’t be discussing Edison right now. He should have said genius is one percent inspiration, five percent perspiration and 94 percent happy circumstance, although admittedly that’s not as catchy.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with taking pride in our efforts, accomplishments, children, etc. The problem comes when we believe our success is solely due to our own actions, because we then must also believe other people’s failures are solely due to their actions. If we are successful because of our hard work, then less successful people must be lazy. If we are wealthy because we are careful with money, then poor people shouldn’t be trusted with money. When our children do well at school because we are good parents, then children who don’t do as well must have bad parents.
Rabbi Shira Milgrom writes, “We forget that in the web of the universe, we are all connected. We forget that our successes depend on the successes and sacrifices of countless others, we forget how dependent we are on a larger society, on the planet and its health. We forget our obligations to others—and, we forget that with all this material wealth, we will not be happy or even satisfied without gratitude.”1
Moses was warning us that when we take our success for granted, and assume it is because of our virtues, we cut ourselves off from G-d, our community and the rest of the world. Rabbi Paula Feldstein wrote: “The family into which we are born, the schools we attend, and the communities in which we are raised all play a major role in who we become and how we succeed… We should respond to our prosperity with recognition of the factors that lead to our success and with humility before God.”2
The term ‘humility’ has gotten a bad rap; after all, it has the same root as ‘humiliation,’ from the Latin humus (“soil”). Dictionaries define humility as a low self-regard and sense of unworthiness. When someone said Clement Attlee was a humble man, Winston Churchill said “he has plenty to be humble about.”
However, that is not the original definition. Rabbi Louis Jacobs, founder of the Masorti movement in the UK, wrote, “In the Jewish tradition, humility is among the greatest of the virtues, as its opposite, pride, is among the worst of the vices. Moses, the greatest of men, is described as the most humble: In Numbers 12:3, ‘Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men that were on the face of the earth.’ In Genesis 18:27, the patriarch Abraham protests to God: ‘Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, who am but dust and ashes.’ Greatness and humility, in the Jewish tradition, are not incompatible.”3
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes, “Humility — true humility — is one of the most expansive and life-enhancing of all virtues. It does not mean undervaluing yourself. It means valuing other people. It signals a certain openness to life's grandeur and the willingness to be surprised, uplifted, by goodness wherever one finds it."4
C.S Lewis wrote, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.”
So being humble does not mean feeling bad about yourself, or debasing your own efforts and contributions; it only means acknowledging all of the contributors to your success. Isaac Newton wrote, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” Every week, as we recount the stories of our ancestors, we remind ourselves we stand on the shoulders of giants. Humility frees us from judgment and allows us to connect with one another, to lift up others and to recognise our place in the world.
The Talmud states, “The word of God can only be heard in a humble heart.”5
We all know Aesop’s fable, “The Ants & the Grasshopper.” The ants are busy all summer storing grain, while the grasshopper plays his fiddle. Come winter, the grasshopper is begging for food and the ants mock him and turn him away. However, worker ants generally live only a few months, so the grain they were eating in winter was collected and stored by a previous generation.
Every spring, Monarch butterflies migrate 3,000 miles from Mexico to Canada, but they only live 6-8 weeks and it takes 4-5 generations to cross that distance. The ones who left Mexico will never see their destination, but they start the journey anyway. I’m not sure the Pirkei Avot had butterflies in mind when it said, “It is not your responsibility to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it,” but it certainly applies.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been collecting photos for the Temple’s 59th birthday, which is next Sunday. Seeing people I’ve known for a couple of years engaged in Temple life twenty or thirty years ago has been delightful. These are not people who took the Temple for granted, nor believed they alone could support it. They recognised the Temple as an inheritance, and that their hard work was needed to continue it for the next generation. They did not do it for glory or recognition, but out of a sense of responsibility. These are humble people in the truest sense and I, for one, am very grateful that I can be here today because of them.
Of course, I don’t want this to go to their head. As writer E.D. Hulse said, “Humility is a strange thing. The minute you think you've got it, you've lost it.”
The last verse of the triennial is Devarim 10:11: And the LORD said to me, “Up, resume the march at the head of the people, that they may go in and possess the land that I swore to their fathers to give them.”
Shabbat shalom.
4 https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/83807/jewish/On-Humility.htm
5 Taanit 7a
It is human nature to believe that when things go well, it is because of ourselves, and when things go poorly it is because of others. The axiom, “Success has many fathers but failure is an orphan” actually goes back to the 1st century CE, when the Roman Tacitus wrote: “This is an unfair thing about war: victory is claimed by all, failure to one alone.”
However, so much of our success is the result of circumstance, timing, our families, our schools and teachers, the people we know and those who went before us, and a large dose of luck. Thomas Edison said, “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” His first commercial success was in 1870, when he made a stock ticker based on the telegraph. Forty years earlier, Samuel Morse had patented the telegraph, but adoption was hampered by the cost of land rights to run the cables. In 1851, railroads allowed the cables to be run alongside the tracks, so telegraph operators were located at the stations. In 1860, a 13-year-old Edison got a job selling newspapers at the local station. The station agent befriended him and taught him how to operate the telegraph, and he was an operator for 7 years before creating the stock ticker, which earned him $40,000 (about $750,000 US in today’s money) and allowed him to become a full-time inventor. If any one of those hadn’t occurred, we wouldn’t be discussing Edison right now. He should have said genius is one percent inspiration, five percent perspiration and 94 percent happy circumstance, although admittedly that’s not as catchy.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with taking pride in our efforts, accomplishments, children, etc. The problem comes when we believe our success is solely due to our own actions, because we then must also believe other people’s failures are solely due to their actions. If we are successful because of our hard work, then less successful people must be lazy. If we are wealthy because we are careful with money, then poor people shouldn’t be trusted with money. When our children do well at school because we are good parents, then children who don’t do as well must have bad parents.
Rabbi Shira Milgrom writes, “We forget that in the web of the universe, we are all connected. We forget that our successes depend on the successes and sacrifices of countless others, we forget how dependent we are on a larger society, on the planet and its health. We forget our obligations to others—and, we forget that with all this material wealth, we will not be happy or even satisfied without gratitude.”1
Moses was warning us that when we take our success for granted, and assume it is because of our virtues, we cut ourselves off from G-d, our community and the rest of the world. Rabbi Paula Feldstein wrote: “The family into which we are born, the schools we attend, and the communities in which we are raised all play a major role in who we become and how we succeed… We should respond to our prosperity with recognition of the factors that lead to our success and with humility before God.”2
The term ‘humility’ has gotten a bad rap; after all, it has the same root as ‘humiliation,’ from the Latin humus (“soil”). Dictionaries define humility as a low self-regard and sense of unworthiness. When someone said Clement Attlee was a humble man, Winston Churchill said “he has plenty to be humble about.”
However, that is not the original definition. Rabbi Louis Jacobs, founder of the Masorti movement in the UK, wrote, “In the Jewish tradition, humility is among the greatest of the virtues, as its opposite, pride, is among the worst of the vices. Moses, the greatest of men, is described as the most humble: In Numbers 12:3, ‘Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men that were on the face of the earth.’ In Genesis 18:27, the patriarch Abraham protests to God: ‘Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, who am but dust and ashes.’ Greatness and humility, in the Jewish tradition, are not incompatible.”3
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes, “Humility — true humility — is one of the most expansive and life-enhancing of all virtues. It does not mean undervaluing yourself. It means valuing other people. It signals a certain openness to life's grandeur and the willingness to be surprised, uplifted, by goodness wherever one finds it."4
C.S Lewis wrote, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.”
So being humble does not mean feeling bad about yourself, or debasing your own efforts and contributions; it only means acknowledging all of the contributors to your success. Isaac Newton wrote, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” Every week, as we recount the stories of our ancestors, we remind ourselves we stand on the shoulders of giants. Humility frees us from judgment and allows us to connect with one another, to lift up others and to recognise our place in the world.
The Talmud states, “The word of God can only be heard in a humble heart.”5
We all know Aesop’s fable, “The Ants & the Grasshopper.” The ants are busy all summer storing grain, while the grasshopper plays his fiddle. Come winter, the grasshopper is begging for food and the ants mock him and turn him away. However, worker ants generally live only a few months, so the grain they were eating in winter was collected and stored by a previous generation.
Every spring, Monarch butterflies migrate 3,000 miles from Mexico to Canada, but they only live 6-8 weeks and it takes 4-5 generations to cross that distance. The ones who left Mexico will never see their destination, but they start the journey anyway. I’m not sure the Pirkei Avot had butterflies in mind when it said, “It is not your responsibility to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it,” but it certainly applies.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been collecting photos for the Temple’s 59th birthday, which is next Sunday. Seeing people I’ve known for a couple of years engaged in Temple life twenty or thirty years ago has been delightful. These are not people who took the Temple for granted, nor believed they alone could support it. They recognised the Temple as an inheritance, and that their hard work was needed to continue it for the next generation. They did not do it for glory or recognition, but out of a sense of responsibility. These are humble people in the truest sense and I, for one, am very grateful that I can be here today because of them.
Of course, I don’t want this to go to their head. As writer E.D. Hulse said, “Humility is a strange thing. The minute you think you've got it, you've lost it.”
The last verse of the triennial is Devarim 10:11: And the LORD said to me, “Up, resume the march at the head of the people, that they may go in and possess the land that I swore to their fathers to give them.”
Shabbat shalom.
1 https://reformjudaism.org/learning/torah-study/eikev/all-you-need-love
2 https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-challenges-of-humility/
3 https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/humility-in-judaism/2 https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-challenges-of-humility/
4 https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/83807/jewish/On-Humility.htm
5 Taanit 7a
Wednesday, May 16, 2018
Postcodes
In the UK, postcodes were introduced in 1857, but not standardised until the 1970s. Each postcode has four parts: area, district, sector and unit. (For example, RG4 8BW.)
Today there are 1.8 million postcodes and each postcode covers an average of 15 properties. However, a single large building can be split into multiple post codes, and some high-volume organisations are allocated their own postcode.
Today there are 1.8 million postcodes and each postcode covers an average of 15 properties. However, a single large building can be split into multiple post codes, and some high-volume organisations are allocated their own postcode.
In the US, zip codes (short for Zone Improvement Plan) were introduced in 1963, and zip+4 was introduced in 1983 (and still not used today). There are 41,682 active zip codes, although about a third of those are used for PO boxes, military or individual organisations. It's remarkable that the USA is 40 times bigger than the UK, but the UK has 60 times as many post codes!
Each zip code covers an average of 7800 people, but that varies dramatically with population density. (Texas and California have about the same number of zip codes, but California has 12 million more people.)
In New Zealand, postcodes were introduced in 2006. They are 4 digits, with 1,856 postcodes currently assigned. On average each postcode covers 2,500 people.
Fun fact: The New Zealand post recognises both English and Māori placenames, so the following are equivalent:
Māori Language Commission
PO Box 411
Wellington 6140
PO Box 411
Wellington 6140
Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori
Pouaka Poutāpeta 411
Te Whanganui a Tara 6140
Pouaka Poutāpeta 411
Te Whanganui a Tara 6140
Sunday, January 21, 2018
Kiwis need to realise 100 per cent pure is 100 per cent propaganda
I just read this great editorial and wanted to share it. It's no surprise that the New Zealand government wants to advertise its natural and cultural heritage as big draws for tourist dollars, but doesn't want to spend money protecting those very things. That's just human nature: eating your cake and having it too; the tragedy of the commons, etc.
What is interesting is that grey area when the advertisement becomes propaganda. The government has done all the research, they know the sad state of New Zealand rivers thanks to contamination from cattle ranching. They know the sad shape of native birds because the "wild" ones still have to live in little, protected "predator-free" zones. (We live near one of the largest sanctuaries, and you can still hike around the perimeter in half a day.) They know the sad shape of the Maori communities, the amount of overseas land ownership, and a host of other factors that will have an execrable impact on the very things they are highlighting in these adverts.
I guess the grey line comes down to the audience: If you're talking to people overseas who want to see some of that magic but have no vested interest in preserving it, then it's just good tourism. If you're talking to locals who need to do something to preserve it, then convincing them otherwise is worse than propaganda. It's sealing their own doom.
I hope you'll take the time to read the article, as it's applicable 100 per cent to the rest of the world. It also reminded me of another campaign, "Pure Michigan," which John Kerfoot brilliantly parodied.
P. S. It looks like "the man" finally got to John Kerfoot, as all but 3 of his videos have been made private with no explanation. Those 3 videos -- on road construction, Midwest winters and the Q-line -- are still hilarious, but nothing compared to his takedown of Mackinac Island or the Renaissance Festival.
R. I. P. John
I mentioned that just after my trip to California last year, my long-time neighbour and friend, John Lynch, had passed away.* I didn't mention why he was so special to me.
[Uh, I just realised I never finished that post! It's been sitting in the draft folder for a year and a half! Well anyway, pretend I mentioned it and someday I'll straighten it out.]
[Uh, I just realised I never finished that post! It's been sitting in the draft folder for a year and a half! Well anyway, pretend I mentioned it and someday I'll straighten it out.]
I met John in 1996, two years after my father had passed away. He was in his mid-50s, about 30 years older than me, and while I never really thought of him as a father figure, he probably thought of me as a son. He never had kids of his own.
I was looking at buying the house next door, and thought it a good idea to meet the neighbours first. I did not expect the neighbour to tell me that he built the house! He even took me on a tour of the house, told me why he had sold it, and told me stories about miserable the previous owners were. However, what I'll always remember from that first meeting was him folding his 6-foot frame through a 2-foot window -- he was always remarkably lithe and flexible.
We got on like a house on fire, which is coincidentally what happened to his original house, and why he ended up building the new one. He'd just finished building a wooden bathtub (which was popular in the 70s) and his niece gave him a candle, so he decided to burn it in a little cage from the ceiling. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what happened next, but when he discovered his bathroom was on fire, rather than a try to put it out, he ran to the backyard to destroy his marijuana plants before the fire department arrived! Needless to say, he lost everything. (He also later learned the plants were all males, and useless for smoking.)
When the new house was built, two things happened: he quit his job in mental health services and became a full-time builder, and one weekend he was not it of town he lent the the keys to a gay friend who threw a party on the back deck. The neighbours, who were deeply religious, were so appalled by what they saw that they put their house up for sale! John decided he wanted to determine who his neighbours were, so he bought their house and rented it out.
A few years later, John's family moved to Oregon. Being Irish, family was everything to him so he sold his main house, left the little house rented, and moved to Oregon. However, he couldn't find enough work and eventually ran out of money. He moved back to LA, kicked out his renter, and lived in the tiny 1000-square foot house next to the beautiful 2600-square foot house he'd built.
17 years later, I arrived. We put in a new fence, two skylights, a hot tub, restored the back deck (although my wildest parties involved carving pumpkins) and a koi pond--indoors. It was a wild ride.
The door was always open for John, and he was part of the furniture, as they say. He also helped me make a couple of pieces of furniture; although I was never particularly deft at woodworking, he showed me the basics and gave me the tools. The most important advice he gave to me was this: "Never put your fingers anyplace you wouldn't put your d---." 20 years later, every time I touch a power tool, I think about those sage words.
In 1998, I wanted to go on a cruise around the Canary Islands to see the Leonid meteor shower, and I jokingly asked John if he wanted to go with us. When he said yes, my the-girlfriend and I exchanged glances of horror! We'd never travelled with someone else before, but we couldn't rescind an invitation, could we? In the end, he went with us and we had an amazing time. My girlfriend got seasick and would go to sleep straight after dinner, but John and I stayed up to the early hours listening to a fantastic jazz band. (I particularly remember him requesting "Little Brown Jug" and me asking for "Paper Moon" and on subsequent nights they would play those as soon as we arrived.)
There were many memorable events from that trip: One day we decided to hire a car but all they had were manual, which I never learned how to drive, so John took over. Towards the end of the evening he was getting nervous about getting back (the ship disembarked at sunset) but I wanted to see the black sand beaches. He was driving but I had the map, so we returned to the ship via a circuitous and completely unnecessary route, but I got to see the beach and he never knew any better.
Five years later, my ex-girlfriend and I were toying with the idea of restoring her grandparents' house and turning it into a bed and breakfast, and John gave me the second most-important advice: "Do it while you're young." He was referring to his failure in Oregon, of course, but I knew he was right; it was a risky venture and nobody knew if it would be successful, and if we waited for retirement we would be stuck. Fortunately some serendipitous events at work meant we could afford to start when I was 35. Two years later, the place opened for business (and was wildly successful) but my girlfriend and I ended up splitting and I was left with nothing at all.
I moved back to LA, but sold the house and moved to downtown, which was an adventure in its own right. John's eyesight had deteriorated and he wasn't driving very much, so he didn't visit me and I only saw him about every other month. Around the same time, another set of neighbours that he was close to moved (ironically) to Oregan and he was left alone in Lomita.
A year later, I got my UK visa and headed off on another adventure, not sure where that would end. John was not "technologically sophisticated" -- he didn't have a computer or even a cell phone -- and I was terrible about keeping in touch, but I'd see him every time I visited LA. Unfortunately as his eyesight deteriorated, so did the rest of him. He no longer had his zeal for life, and once he officially retired it was only a matter of time.
He actually lasted longer than I thought he might, no doubt buoyed by the stream of rescue dogs he always had. But I knew from friends that he wasn't taking care of himself, wasn't engaged with anything, and of course that's the real killer.
When he died he was 78 or so -- still 30 years older than me -- and I still think of him often and fondly. My stepson and I are currently constructing a hut in the yard, and although I'd be ashamed to show it to John (there isn't a square angle on it!) I still know that without John I wouldn't have even attempted it. And my stepson is having a blast playing with power tools. Pretty soon I'll have to share with him John's greatest advice.
(As my girlfriend had to point out, that old man is me.)
Saturday, January 20, 2018
A mystery wrapped in a nightmare
A week ago, we drove to Auckland to visit the kids at camp. Along the way we took the "Forgotten World" highway and stopped at the Waitomo caves, which were both spectacular. I've been in New Zealand over three years now and have explored so little of its natural beauty, it's a real shame.
On Friday I developed a small headache; I took some paracetamol but it didn't help. On Saturday it got a bit worse, and I was quite grumpy all day, but on Sunday - when we were visiting the kids - it became a debilitating, stabbing headache that made me grimace in pain every few seconds.
After we left the kids, we went to the Auckland A&E, but the triage nurse there suggested we go around the corner to the "Urgent Care Service" as we would be seen a little quicker. In retrospect, this might have been a mistake, as the urgent care did not have the specialists or support to figure out the problem. However, I don't think this was the case; I'll explain why later.
The GP checked my neural signs to make sure it wasn't an issue with my head and did some basic checks on my eye, but couldn't find any cause. She suggested I take codeine and see a specialist eye clinic in the morning. I'd never taken codeine and was worried about the side effects so I declined. I very much regretted this later, as the headache just kept getting worse.
We found a motel and stayed the night, but I don't think I got much sleep. At 8am we were at the eye clinic, but the only thing they could find was viral conjunctivitis ('pink-eye') and although they said that clearly had nothing to do with the headache, they gave me codeine and told me to follow up in a week. This time I took the codeine, and while it didn't do much for my headache, it at least allowed me to sleep a little while my girlfriend drove ten hours straight from Auckland to Wellington. In retrospect, they should have referred me to the hospital, not given me a bullshit diagnosis that they knew did not explain the main symptoms, but again I don't think it would have made any difference and I was happier to be close to home.
I spent the next 24 hours in bed, taking codeine and trying to sleep, but it wasn't getting any better so Monday night we went to Wellington A&E. They, too, were at a loss but they kept me overnight and started me on morphine, so the pain was much less but I was so nauseous I wasn't sure which was worse. On Tuesday they gave me another full eye test and a CT scan, and Wednesday they gave me an MRI. Neither revealed anything.
However, on Wednesday I started developing a patch on my forehead with distinct lines on it, and by Thursday it was clear what was causing the problem: Shingles. This had been considered but rejected earlier for two good reasons:
- Shingles normally occur in older people whose immune system is compromised. However, I've been on immunosuppressants for my eczema since March, so in reality I'd "pre-compromised" myself.
- The optic nerve encompasses more than just sight; it controls the area around the eye, the ear, the forehead and part of the nose. When shingles are in the optic nerve, it usually compromises vision in that eye. Mine had been fine.
So that's why I don't think anyone would have made the diagnosis until the blisters developed on Thursday. With the mystery solved, they sent me home with a goody bag of anti-virals, morphine, anti-nausea drugs, and gabapentin, which focuses on nerve pain. So while I'll still be sick as a dog for the next week or so - with complete bedrest - I should make a full recovery.
And hopefully we can get back to see the Rotarua hot springs soon!
P.S. In Judaism, there is a prayer for the first time something happens (or the first time it happens in a season). It's called the "shehecheyanu" and basically translates to: "Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has granted us life, sustained us and enabled us to reach this occasion."
I had a number of "shehecheyanu" moments, such as staying overnight in a hospital (as a patient), getting a line put in my arm (and later another in the opposite arm), getting a CT scan, getting an MRI, not eating for 5 days, not going to the bathroom for 6 days, not drinking tea for a week!! I can't say they were all enjoyable, but it's remarkable that I got to this age without having any of those experiences before.
P.P.S. This whole week cost $99, and that was for the motel in Auckland. Even the prescriptions were free. Thank goodness for socialised medicine!
P.S. In Judaism, there is a prayer for the first time something happens (or the first time it happens in a season). It's called the "shehecheyanu" and basically translates to: "Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has granted us life, sustained us and enabled us to reach this occasion."
I had a number of "shehecheyanu" moments, such as staying overnight in a hospital (as a patient), getting a line put in my arm (and later another in the opposite arm), getting a CT scan, getting an MRI, not eating for 5 days, not going to the bathroom for 6 days, not drinking tea for a week!! I can't say they were all enjoyable, but it's remarkable that I got to this age without having any of those experiences before.
P.P.S. This whole week cost $99, and that was for the motel in Auckland. Even the prescriptions were free. Thank goodness for socialised medicine!
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