I talked about the appearance remodel that began Monday of last week. We survived nearly a week without a kitchen. As I predicted, there will be a host of changes as a result. The floor is going to get painted as well as the cabinets. Not all of the the cabinets are going back up. And, I will have to build some shelves to replace the corner unit. The ceiling is going to be torn out with new lights and so on and so forth.
I am not upset, there is no point. But I am not totally happy. I think that it is wasteful to get rid of the cabinets and I think that we are adding less functional shelving to replace it. I am not a fan of painting wood for the most part either. The only thing that I can kind of understand is painting the floor. I will be interested to see how that works out.
There are some things that I just cannot care too much about. And this is going to be one of them. I think that it will be nice when it is done, I just don’t think that it is necessary. This is one of my not going to die on hills.
I think the other issue that I had is that this is going to keep the kitchen in disarray for some unknown time. Enough of that though. I have my own projects to worry about. plus we have deck work starting this week and the fence and now driveway soon.
End Your Programming Routine: After the kitchen is done, there will be one room remaining that hasn’t been touched since we moved in. That is what is the master bathroom. I wouldn’t be surprised if that is next on the list as it is 90’s ugly. Just like I like my furniture buy once cry once, I hope that removing the paneling and adding tile is one of those changes.
I was looking back on the years and I wax poetically about graduation at some point every year. This of course is the time that it happens. High school graduation was last Friday and the local university graduation was last Saturday. I love the hope that graduation represents. I love the party atmosphere, people seem to genuinely be in a good mood around town.
High school is really a stage gate. We went to some of the recent end of year awards ceremonies where seniors were recognized. Some of them put in a huge amount of time over the years, 1100 hours dedicated to one discipline. There was real emotion about the tenure ending. However, the exuberance about graduating is really like a caged animals getting released.
College graduation has a quite different feel. I would say it is more of a feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment. Because everyone has taken a different walk to get there, there is a different level for each person. Some have their parents, some have their kids, some are with friends because the family is far away and some are alone because that is the the way they wanted it. Each person knows that they have put in the work to meet the requirements to graduate. And so a new life begins.
Graduation is the transition between the school year and summer. When I was a kid, summer was the time to play baseball. I would say that it is was my favorite sport at that point, even though I really wasn’t good enough to make the ‘A’ team or the high school team. So, my participation in baseball waned as I got into high school. But, it doesn’t mean that I lost my appreciation for the game.
When I was younger and seemingly had all the time in the world. I would follow baseball. Later, I made attempts at some points but I guess I just couldn’t dedicate all the time. For a year or two we went to five or so minor league games before kids. The local team was a San Francisco Giants Single A team that was chocked full of future major leaguers like Buster Posey, Tim Lincecum and Pablo Sandoval. They tore up the Northwest Summer League. Unfortunately, that league was shut down in 2020 and never to return.
College baseball is somewhat big here as well. The Oregon State Beavers have won three national titles since 2006. I was listening to the Beavers play Vanderbilt last week and between the two schools they had five national titles this century. That is nearly a quarter of all the titles in that time frame.
Amazingly, they got in two games over the weekend (best two of three). Other events were not so lucky. There was an absolute deluge of rain Friday night which forced high school graduation inside. I have sat in the seats when it was raining before. It rained off and on all Saturday making college graduation hit an miss. And, baseball managed to miss it all. Last weekend, they played in rain that I thought for sure would postpone things.
This seems to be one of those years that maybe things will turn around July 4th. In the ten day forecast, I don’t see any highs above 73 degrees with more rain predicted. Yesterday, the high temperature was only 58 degrees. It feels more like Alaska than what we have been used to in the last five years. That being said, I remember a year in the 1990s that we didn’t get a temperature in the 80s until mid August.
End Your Programming Routine: In Oregon, you can’t stop for the rain. You just have to work around it. I guess what I can say is 20-30 years down the road you will remember bits and pieces about the graduation ceremony but not necessarily the weather. So, congratulations grads enjoy your moment and go Beavers.
It was 1988 when this slogan came out. Athletes like Bo Jackson and Michael Jordan were in their prime and leading the charge. I was in middle school and of course, it was the coolest thing to emulate or wear certain marketing slogans (like this one). We had no idea what it really implied and we were not the target audience, but it did leave an impression didn’t it?
Truthfully, I haven’t given it much thought in years. I did some quick research on current marketing slogans and I don’t see much that I actually recognize. ‘Just Do It’ is credited with turning Nike into a global apparel juggernaut. I am a little biased I suppose because I grew up in Oregon and it always seemed that way to me, but that is what the experts says. I think that there is something to that motivation. Stop thinking about everything and just try.
Well, I did it. I stopped putting excuses like researching the right host for scalability and just created a free account on castbox.fm. There may be some consequences in the future, but I think I will treat it like I did my earlier WordPress transition. I will build a beta library of podcasts that I will probably divert later. But, if I never get started, I will never get it done.
This podcast was inspired by some real stuff going on. I wanted to speak up, but I didn’t feel like it was going to make a change in the outcome. Plus, my thoughts were not truly organized. I had more to say so I did this podcast.
I am not promising that this is the end all or that I will switch formats but I think that I want to start adding at least a podcast a week. Maybe Fridays are the days to do that? Maybe this will change, but it actually took more work to make this podcast. Just writing the outline probably took as much time as actually writing a post. For now, I am going to just try to get familiar with the technical aspects and see how it goes.
There are still things to do to make this fly and I don’t even know what they all are. There is adding the RSS feed to the popular podcast vendors like Apple, iHeartRadio and Spotify. I should find some bumper music, learn more about editing, etc. But, I am not going to worry about problems that I don’t really have either. I would like to have a small catalog of podcasts before I really look into the distribution.
As an avid listener to podcasts, I am aware of some of the gotchas, especially free services. Maximum posts per month, maximum post size and total catalog limits. Then there is bandwidth throttling and random ad placement. So far, I have seen none of this but we will see what kind of problems come up with this arrangement. I am not opposed to paying, but I want to make sure that it is a business expense, not a personal expense.
End Your Programming Routine: It feels real. It is what I started this endeavor to do in the first place. Honestly, I think writing every day has helped me eliminate some of my fears but it also gave me a crutch not to move forward. I am happy that I finally broke that barrier. Looking forward to podcasting again.
My kids are into music. I understand, I was once a high schooler in band. I suppose that it did build some appreciation for classical music as well. I definitely enjoyed playing music rather than listening to it anyway. We had a family outing over Memorial Weekend and it was a night at the Oregon Symphony.
I’m sure when you think of symphony, you think of fancy, expensive, a little bougie. I do, so I wouldn’t blame you. This was something different as a more approachable and quite smart way to draw in a new audience. This was the Oregon Symphony playing the score of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
This event drew in the Harry Potter fans, symphony goers, kids and the like. The audience was encouraged to interact with the movie by cheering or jeering however we saw fit. There were definitely people that had their Harry Potter garb on as well as people that appeared to be on dates. It was quite the mix.
The movie plays on the screen while the symphony plays the soundtrack to go along with it. At $50/ticket, it was the most expensive movie I have ever watched. I do have to say, since I have never seen the movie (I did read 75% of the book), I found myself focusing primarily on the screen and not the sound. I guess I would say, if you prefer the music then this experience may not be for you.
It seems like they have been doing this for some time, I just recently became aware of it. There will be another one in two months that is the music from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. We are already talking about whether we want to buy tickets or not.
Looking at other upcoming performances, it does seem like this is not the symphony of 30 years ago. In addition to what you might expect, the next performance is Beethoven’s 9th Symphony there is also a Beatle’s tribute as well as a Star Wars vs Star Trek concert. So, it does seem like they are trying to reach a broader audience.
End Your Programming Routine: We did get dressed up. We had to go to Portland and pay for parking. With that came a midnight stop at a 24 hour diner as well as a friend a piece for each of my boys. So, this was not an inexpensive outing. I couldn’t think of a more unique scenario to enjoy a holiday weekend.
I probably should do more research on this character. He seems like someone that we share a lot of views in common. I have to say that I ran across this quote when I was scrolling through one of the groups I watch on MeWe. When I tried to find the source, I found a lot of quotes that were interesting.
“No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot”, “I was educated once – it took me years to get over it” and “Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.” These are a handful of quotes that makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time.
Mark Twain, was the pen name of Samuel Clemmons. Every time you read about him, he is described as a ‘humorist‘. As far as I am concerned, I see him as a man that was intelligent and had a platform to deliver his views in a way that was palatable to many, like Shakespeare or Benjamin Franklin. In some ways, I think this is what Rush Limbaugh did. You may not have liked his views or even thought he was funny, but there were many times he was attempting to use humor as a way to make a point.
Of course, I have read Tom Sawyer and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. And, you should know by now, I am not convinced of the innuendo between Twain and his writings in terms of a social platform. I will not deny that his views outside of his writing were pretty clear and direct. All that being said, you cannot necessarily separate Twain’s opinion and the subject matter of his writings. At the very least, his writing built his speaking platform.
I ran across this over the weekend…
I think irony is an important aspect of humor. Isn’t it ironic that someone would want to organize some sort of anti-violence demonstration while simultaneously promoting violence at the same time.
I am going to speculate about what I think Bob is saying. No country should invade another country and kill it’s citizens and try to take it’s territory, therefore I side with Ukraine. After thinking about this, I have to say that even self defense is violence. I have to imagine that if Ukraine was not resisting, there would be significantly less death and destruction. That is not a conviction of right and wrong, but educated conjecture.
I skimmed through most of the replies and I am confused about the intent of this. This is organized as a response to the Uvalde shooting last week. I think orange was a bridge between hunter orange i.e. gun owners and people wanting to protest bun violence (?). I have no doubt that a large contingent of people do not fully understand the second amendment but there is no connection between that and hunting other that guns are mostly used to participate.
I think Twain would do his research on the subject before commenting. Which side is really the good/bad guys here? Is it the Ukrainians who denied regional succession to become Russians after an overwhelming vote to do so or is it Russians seizing foreign territory? And, how can you be against violence yet support it at the same time?
We have got some issues here. Unfortunately, people are not looking deep enough into something before adding a no thought given emoji to their signature. I am giving Bob the benefit of the doubt here, I am assuming he is ignorant and really means well. I sure hope that it is not the other way.
End Your Programming Routine: “Just because you’re taught that something’s right and everyone believes it’s right, it don’t make it right.” I don’t know the exact context of this quote, but Twain was an unapologetic abolitionist. Think about the context of the day versus today’s view of slavery. Now, use that same discipline for everything else in life.
Fortunately for me, I don’t know of anyone that has died in combat. I do know someone that took their own life as a result of PTSD which, while extremely sad is not quite the same (I will get to this later). If you remember my stance I took in 2020 this is not Veterans Day or First Responders appreciation. This is the day to remember those that gave all.
I will have the barbeque going and I will enjoy some family time as well as a day off. I will be thankful that I don’t know anyone that has died in combat. I will also be slightly pissed off that our soldiers died in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, UAE, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Bosnia, Serbia and Kuwait to name the ones that we know about. I will be sad that kids were brainwashed into believing in the mission so strongly that they didn’t realize they were the pawns and casualties in a power struggle beyond their wildest imagination. I will be boggled and disgusted by a culture that can’t tell the difference between a veteran and a combat death.
This is all to say that we need to be very careful in our moral superiority complex. We must not confuse advancing Liberty and Freedom with the actions of a bully. This is not a benevolent bully either. This is a bend to our submission so that we can remain at the top of the heap. Our dollar is worth more, our gas tanks are filled first, we eat first, we piss upstream of everyone else.
When I hear the phrase “fighting for your freedom” I want to throw up a little bit. In a small way, that is true. It is not freedom per se, but my ability to leverage my superior economic status over yours, or my manifest destiny, or protecting my business interests in a location that is not governed by my country. There have only been three occasions where this has truly been the case, the war of Independence, the war of 1812 and the Civil War.
I could be persuaded to give Korea and Vietnam a pass to a point. But one, we should now know that proxy wars are not protecting our freedom and two after we have seen those failures we keep doing the same thing (Afghanistan). Or, how about the ‘We fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here’ stance? Here’s an idea, if we stopped pushing people around all together maybe we wouldn’t have to deal with this nonsense constantly.
Remember the accusations that Russia would dare to mettle in our elections? How many elections do you suppose we have manipulated? How about the invasion of Haiti to restore a dictator that was disposed by a military coup? The same guy that was assassinated last year, how did that work out for him or us for that matter? There is nothing like a constant power display to build contempt so that they get to the point that they would rather blow themselves up than keep on keeping on.
I would like to think that my people are the god fearing, flag waving, not apologizing for shit, Toby Keith types. I used be one of those for sure. But, part of being god fearing is looking at the situation from a different points of view. At this point, I can’t endorse any sort of non-defensive military aggression.
I do not blame the soldier. In theory, they were used to advance agenda of economic superiority using propaganda masked as patriotism. This is the real tragedy of Memorial Day. To put a final point to this, the ultimate sacrifice was not self sacrifice exclusively but a willing sacrifice for someone else’s prosperity without the full knowledge of the situation. It is no small coincidence that combat veterans suffer from a high degree of PTSD. No only did they do things they regret, they intimately understand the whole cabal after it is too late.
End Your Programming Routine: My heart goes to you if you had a loved one die in the line of duty. About ten years ago, we met a husband and wife that were up in the woods. We were looking for a specific grove of old growth timber called ‘Valley of the Giants’ but they were up there because their son was killed in Vietnam and buried in a town called Valsetz that no longer exists. They were near the old townsite to get a connection on Memorial Day. Fortunately, they were more than willing to lead us to our destination which we would not likely found simply wandering in the woods.
As we head toward Memorial weekend, I was thinking about what I was going to try accomplish over the weekend. I also had a juxtaposing thought that I talk some about things that I am going to do but never any update on where I am at or what ever happened.
I talked about transparency with leadership so you know that I think it is important. Being transparent, most of those things never got started. Here is a list of things that I have introduced but have made no progress
Wine Cellar
Front Yard Garden
Sofa Table for my stereo system
Shop siding replacement
(Now) Adirondack chairs
Build a Kitchen Table
AltF4 business plan
podcasting testing
You know this subconsciously because if I had done what I said, I would be writing about it more than likely. I have a couple of other things that I have started, but never completed. And like all humans, I pick an choose things I would rather do or are motivated to do. Seems like lately, I just don’t have the energy or the drive to do things after work with so many family activities happening.
To be fair, the siding is going to be done this summer. I had to go to the dump last weekend to clear out my trailer so I had room to do the demo. So, that is progress; that I didn’t report on. In this current week, I have been making trips to Goodwill so I can clean out the garage to get my son’s car in so that we can have some paver work done. Not on my want list, but my need list.
All of that garbage and donation stuff has clogged my garage and shop all winter and spring. This is not an excuse, but a very real obstacle to me working on my projects. That logjam is unclogging finally.
Last year, I replaced the derailleur on my son’s bike but I never did the final gear adjustment, I was getting five of the seven rear gears. He was complaining that the handle grips were sliding off. I bought some new ones and when I went to slide all the mechanicals down the handle bar, the cables came loose. I went to try and fix it by taking the bike to a park and using the stand, but then I found that the derailleur bracket was bent, I didn’t have the tools and I wasn’t sure of the right correction. In my heart, I could have fiddled with it more and gotten it licked. But, not having a stand at home just led me to finally take the bike in.
The truth is my own bike has been only partially functional for years. I have always hated the pedal clips, the rider geometry has me too bent over to be comfortable and the worst part is that the shifters have been partially seized. I decided to take both bikes in. Like I was saying a couple of weeks ago, it’s not that I couldn’t do these things but at this point, I would rather ride the bike than work on it. This is especially true because my precious time is going to be focused on my siding project over the summer. Having the ability to just jump on my bike and go makes me much more likely to do so than spend the same time fooling over new parts.
I have no good reason why I haven’t done my business plan or podcast testing. When I have talked about this before, I have talked about my intent by announcing something and accountability. Since no one is really communicating with me over this channel, there is no real accountability. What keeps me writing everyday is my drive to want to do it. Since no one is asking and I am happy with where I am at, I haven’t been motivated to do anything different.
Transparency to me is admitting that I am not perfect. Not everything I write about turns out to be a dream. I have a pile of video on things that I was planning to create video on, but didn’t work out. I am not sure if I should go ahead and edit and publish to be real or just delete them as stuff that didn’t work. For now, I am just holding on to it.
To be sure, I am going to keep being me. I am going to write about things that I intend to do when I write them because maybe they inspire someone to do something similar on their own. I am going to maintain a list of things that someday I want to get to. I am going to keep pushing myself to try things I have no experience doing to learn and try to teach or coach.
I am not going to apologize for follow through until I get some sort of dialog where I find out that I am disappointing people. As far as I know, nobody is routinely reading this anyway. If that day comes, then I will have true accountability and I promise that I will do a more careful job of follow through with my announcements and projects. There is no doubt in my mind that I will have the proper motivation when I know people are waiting for me.
Like everyone, I get tired. I want to check out sometimes. I find things I would rather do. I have obligations that I didn’t realize before I thought I was going to do something. It is cold in my shop without the heat on. I don’t want to start something to get interrupted by something else. I have a myriad of excuses and reasons I haven’t done the things that I probably should have. I also have on my list a bunch of things I don’t want to do but need to, so this problem is not exclusive to just my personal goals.
I feel like I am the true master of none. I am a very amateur woodworker, mechanic, shooter, woodsman, scientist, gardener, brewer, etc. I think I am a decent cook and carpenter but I don’t always have a project or feel like sharing dinner. My interests are in learning, teaching and following my desires are what drive me. I hope that my courage to try is inspiring to others.
End Your Programming Routine: My original title for this site was going to be Polymath Daily, not AltF4 because of the wide variety of topics. I am glad that I went with the latter rather than the former because it allows for more emphasis on opinion and less on hard skills. At this point in my life, I am going to prioritize family and relationship over hardcore projects and skills but that doesn’t mean I am going to quit trying. I hope you have something planned for this holiday weekend that fulfills you.
This is a rewrite. I already had this entire week written by Tuesday but unfortunately something came up and this was the best day to interrupt the flow. You all know what that something is… a school shooting in Texas where 19 children and two adults were killed. This is the biggest tragedy and eerily similar to Sandy Hook (2012).
I am going to spare the hard lines of party talking points today. I see all kinds of people talking out of their asses about the situation. I see a lot of people that have their own contingency of personal security using this event to push their personal agenda. I am talking about NBA coaches, TV hosts and US politicians.
With all things, what do you do with this? I want to say, I cant blame all people for being angry. Someone very close to me said yesterday that they wanted to get some training and start carrying. I think that is actually the proper response not because I want a militarization of our culture but because we are our own first responders.
I have said this before, if I knew that there was going to be a fight somewhere then I would not go to that place. It is just smart. That leaves us with being caught unaware anytime something like this happens. If you are unaware, then how prepared are you really going to be? And if you are not prepared, it is only luck that keeps you alive.
My kids had a band concert a couple nights ago. Oregon SB554 was passed in 2021 in direct response to 2011 appeals court dismissal of college’s ability to prohibit firearms. The reason for this is Oregon has a preemption clause in the constitution which means that only the legislature can make laws that contradict the Bill of Rights. Or in other words, administrative bodies cannot arbitrarily create rules that are in contradiction to the constitution. This is a long way of saying firearms are banned at all schools in our district.
Had that circumstance in Texas occurred in my town, the results would have likely been the same or worse. 1) This is not Texas with the same sense of individualism 2) we don’t have a bunch of border protection officers just hanging around town. The sheriff has two – six deputies on duty, municipal police have two on duty and the adjacent town has two on duty. State police are fifteen miles away at best.
If the ‘good guys’ are following the laws and the ‘bad guys’ are not, then what is the result? The result is a defenseless shooting gallery. Did you also know that Great Britain is implementing knife restrictions as a result of a huge rise in knife crime? On one hand, the firearm is a better tool for killing but you see from the data that the problem is not the tool. Nor is the problem a lack of laws. The problem is sick and deranged people.
The story is still being written on this. 2020 followed by 2021 were the biggest firearms sales years for a reason. The largest segment of that population were first time gun owners. People know when something is wrong, defund the police being one example. This country is literally disintegrating before our eyes and people don’t realize what is wrong, only that it doesn’t feel right.
Since this is a complicated problem and I don’t want to disrespect the situation with simple solutions, I can only offer my opinion. It is a shame that we should abdicate our children’s safety and quite frankly their minds to a system that is counter-intuitive and unnatural. Instead of learning critical thinking and problem solving, we are training safety by bureaucracy and administration.
The question is not “how is this prevented” but “how do I survive”. You see, that flips the script on me imposing my will on you to you taking responsibility for yourself. I don’t think it will ever be prevented, but I do believe that there are steps I can take to potentially mitigate the damage. In a hypothetical situation, whether I am killed because I am disarmed or I am killed because my opponent was a better/quicker shot the result is still the same. But which one provides better odds?
I am not going to say whether I obey the no guns in school policy. What I will say is that this is not my first day after a school shooting. And, I will also say that my human right to self preservation exceeds any kind of policy. That is the basis of civil disobedience. If I did have a weapon and I was in the situation, my first priority is to get out of harm, not stop the threat or even engage.
End Your Programming Routine: If Whoopi Goldberg wants to come here and try to punch me, then I would like to see her try. Quite frankly, assault is acceptable grounds for self defense. Mind you, I think it would be more lucrative to let her hit me and then I can take this to civil court for a nice, fat judgement. Despite all of that, I stand for her right to be an idiot and say whatever she wants on TV. That goes for everyone, I stand with your rights to think and speak. Don’t mess with mine.
I have been thinking about this quite a bit lately. I won’t bore with all the details but my current project is not going well. Despite all of the technical problems, the issue is not a lack of capable doers, but a failure of leadership. Before I go too far, I will expose my bias. I am a firm believer that accountability for success/failure always goes uphill.
If there are capable doer’s then why does leadership matter? I would say that it certainly makes the job easier, but leaders are responsible for delivering bad news as well as good. Leaders are the voice of skepticism as well as support. They are encouraging and coaching, admonishing and pushing, representing and cooperating. All of those opposing forces are difficult to juxtapose well.
Just so you don’t think I am just a finger pointer, leaders are at all levels. In my own case, I can visibly see areas where my own work is suffering from my personal leadership failures. My particular group has a manager and a good leader in her own right. However, the trend of matrix organizations has led to an ambiguous level of decision making and accountability which has given rise (and a pass) to poor leadership on a project level.
Sticking with the theme of matrix organizations and my own role, I recognize that my peers operate largely in a vacuum. We all tend to do what we think is best and it doesn’t seem to have any level of coordination or follow through, once again responsibilities of leadership. Knowing this, it is a perfect opportunity for someone to take the responsibilities (without a title). This is exactly what natural leaders do: recognize a problem and take action without requiring more pay or recognition.
There is one additional component to successful leadership and that is trust or willingness to follow. In order to actually build that, it takes one of two things. It is either time for natural trust to build or an organizational appointment of a person to a role. Both have their advantages and disadvantages and the best case is when you have both; an appointment of someone that the group trusts.
We can all think of our view of good and poor leaders. I would say that our list of desirable qualities might be all over the place. Unfortunately, our bias often blinds us to the actual facts of situation and once we take a position it is very difficult to un-entrench ourselves from our position. Despite the fact that this is a business conversation, politics are an easy comparison.
By now, you can probably guess that I lean right. You also probably should know that I am a strict constitutionalist. That means that I have accepted the current definition of the Bill of Rights and apply that to all aspects of my opinion. So, lets take a look at some recent Presidents and apply my filter to get a judgement.
Bill Clinton – I found him to be a deplorable person. That being said, in a rank of recent presidents relatively little damage was done. Only minor conflicts like the Balkan intervention, no major fiscal expansion, the 1992 Assault Weapons Ban (that actually sunset) were notable occurrences in his tenure. Grade B
George W. Bush – I want to like the guy, conservative Christian with high marks as a governor. On the surface, a good choice. Let me count the ways that he screwed this country: Medicare Part D, creating a new department of the government, a multi-front boondoggle of a war, Patriot Act, and Too Big to Fail bank bailouts from their own reckless fiscal policy. Grade F
Barack Obama – He seemed likable enough, certainly a change from the previous president. The damage that was done was not on the traditional aspects and size of government but to the culture of country. That being said from the Healthcare tax to race baiting and sexual ambiguity I find the fabric of the country irreparably changed. Grade D
Donald Trump – This is a guy that is a dichotomy. On one hand, he spoke the truth and on the other he couldn’t stop talking and it was often intertwined with as many lies. All in all, policy was largely acceptable including initiating the withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan and tax reform (heavily in favor of business). I think he could be good if he wanted to, but more often chose to behave childish and solidified the damage done during the Obama administration. Grade C
I wrote all of that to say my bias clearly reflects my opinion. You might want to live in a socialist utopia and would definitely flip my grades. However, when I look objectively the person that should have been my highest choice actually got my lowest grade by a mile. And, the president that I wanted to hate actually got my highest grade. There are a couple key characteristics that I want to talk about below.
Leadership requires vision. That being said, what we interpret as clear may not be the same to everyone else. Only time will tell if leaders make the right decision, especially if it is extremely contrary to the popular or accepted direction.
The second property requires leaders to take a position on any and every relevant issue. This can be a tricky situation when you are uneducated on the subject or even unaware of the topic. But, it can be done tactfully and most of the time you can change that stance if provided clear reasons for doing so. The reason this is important is that it sets the tone for the group to follow.
I think the third and most important property is transparency. This supports trust, builds vision and explains positioning. I think it is worth noting that transparency is not truthfulness. There is a time to protect the group and there is time to provide the facts. But, transparency explains the situation when the time is right. Generally speaking, I am also being truthful, but there are are good reasons not to be at times.
Applying our properties to the presidents and adding my layer of speculation I put together this analysis.
President
Vision
Nominal Position
Transparency
Clinton
What can I get
Populist
No
Bush
Finish What Daddy Started
Egalitarian
No
Obama
Social Justice
Socialist
Somewhat
Trump
Tell Me I’m the Best
Populist
No
Generally speaking, most of the poor leaders I have observed lack number one and number three. Truthfully, the worst leaders are strong in opinions yet don’t have vision or transparency and they fail to build trust. That being said, transparency without vision or position leaves the group listless.
I suppose to round out my work here, I think that there are some characteristics that are not required to be a good leader, for instance a good communicator. I rank this as helpful and certainly can accelerate trust. It also can more easily turn from a leader to a despot and you don’t even know it until it is too late.
How about having a winning record? I suppose that depends on the context. A platoon leader better have a winning record or their leadership is over. But even in that case, winning doesn’t necessarily translate into a good leader. Leadership is not about the objective and the result, it is about motivating others to work toward the same goal and to be content that it is an acceptable way of doing it.
In many ways, the parallels between leadership and sales go hand in hand. In one way, the salesperson is convincing you that this is the best item for the circumstances. Once you are convinced for whatever reason, you are likely to be brand loyal or even salesperson loyal. Leadership is the same way, you are convincing the others in the group of the best approach, best way to organize data, the best technical path forward, etc.
End Your Programming Routine: Coming full circle here, my experience within the matrix organization, the ‘leaders’ lack all three of these properties. Without leaders to front the effort, it turns into a mess like I referenced in the first paragraph. In their defense, they are way out of their league. For the most part the organization is trying to do something that is really not within the realm of experience or competency and I am not in a position to change this despite my counsel to the contrary. All that being said, good leaders will overcome these circumstances because they have the properties that make a successful leader.
Despite the fact that I have aspirations to do some serious Alt-F4 pertinent reviewing, I am taking the opportunity to read fiction as it comes up. My wife has been a reader of James Patterson and he is a prolific writer. His books are also very quick to read. When I was traveling heavy, I would take a book and finish it before I got back fro my trip. I kind of lost track of where I was in order of the various series that he has.
That tradition still follows me though. Most of my reading happens when I am away from the home. Mostly because when my head hits the pillow at home, I am out. Last weekend, we were at the library looking at the local garden club’s plant sale. But, the friends of the library were also having a book sale. There are some books that I am looking to read like Fahrenheit 454, Animal Farm, Atlas Shrugged, etc. I didn’t find any of those but some fiction that I was interested in. And, they were in the free box.
In not too many weeks, we are on our way to Spain. That is going to be a long plane ride. So, ideally I can bring a long book. I found the perfect one ”The Lost Symbol” by Dan Brown. It is almost 700 pages and light enough that I don’t have to concentrate on every paragraph. Plus it is entertaining and thought provoking.
When I first left my job, I started checking out books at the library and Dan Brown was one of the authors I read. ”Angels and Demons” and ”The Davinci Code” were two that I enjoyed. I also read some of the books that I want to review as well. So, in a roundabout way the two are related.
I also got another John Grisham book. I am not as excited about it but my son was. I made him a deal that if he would read it as well, I would take it. It was free after all and it will be worth the time, meaning I will get more enjoyment then other things I could do with the time, particularly on an airplane.
The third book, ”The Song of Solomon” I am finishing up. My son bought it for my birthday and it is a little meatier than I was anticipating. I suspect that this was someone’s college literature assignment with a bunch of notes in the margins. By their assessment, this has some religious correlations. I am not sure that I buy that assessment. Maybe I will review it some day, I finished it on my flight home.
Speaking of which, I took an informal poll when I was on the plane and I observed that almost every person was watching the on board entertainment system if not sleeping or playing games on personal electronics. I saw many people with a book in hand or nearby, but not a single one of them actually reading. I guess what I take of that is given the choice, people would rather watch a screen then read their own selected book. I myself usually flip through the selections and decide that there is nothing that catches my eye and then open my book.
End Your Programming Routine: I realize that I have always been a little more of an odd duck. My preference to books over movies go all the way back to childhood when our TV time was restricted but reading time really wasn’t. I did enjoy spending time with my boys browsing over all of the used books and they picked out some so I feel like there is a little bit of my oddness in them too. I guess in some small way, I feel like it bonds me to them even if we don’t share the same degree of passion.
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