All I wanted was some breakfast

This morning I went downstairs to get some breakfast.

I saw the high chair sitting in the dining room, and thought, "I should put that away."

I saw some crumbs and stuff in the high chair tray, and thought, "I'll take this into the kitchen and clean it off."

Someone had mounted the tray crooked on the high chair last night. The release mechanism wouldn't engage. I thought, "It's gonna take a screwdriver to pry this loose. But no, I don't wanna distract myself." (Too late!)

So instead I went into the kitchen to get a wet, soapy dishcloth to wipe the tray. The sink was full of dirty dishes from last night's family feast. I thought, "I should put these in the dishwasher first."

The dishwasher was full of clean dishes. I thought, "I should put these away first."

When the dishwasher was half-empty, my sweet wife called out from upstairs, "Now I know why the house smells like ham. I left the crockpot full of ham juice after last night's feast." I thought, "I should get rid of that ham juice for her." I cleared out the kitchen sink, just enough to pour the ham juice down the drain.

That the left the crockpot insert greasy and gooey. I set it in the sink and filled it with hot, soapy water, intending to scrub it out as soon as I took care of the other dirty dishes.

The aluminum foil that had covered the crockpot was covered with ham juice and couldn't be recycled, so I put it in the trash. I noticed that the trash smelled too, and it was pretty full. So I took it out to the garbage can.

Back in the house, I put a new liner in the kitchen trash can. I finished emptying the dishwasher. I refilled the dishwasher with dirty dishes. For good measure, I put the hammy crockpot insert in the dishwasher. I made a mental note to start the dishwasher after breakfast.

Breakfast! I'd forgotten all about breakfast.

But the sink was still dirty, so I scrubbed it out first. Then I got a wet, soapy dishcloth and wiped down the high chair tray. I went out to the garage, got a screwdriver, jimmied the tray loose, and put it on straight. I made a mental note to put the screwdriver away when I leave for work.

I put the high chair in the basement. When I got back upstairs, I looked around at my neat, orderly dining room and kitchen. My stomach growled. I thought, "This is a funny story. I should write it down before I forget it."

So I pulled out my computer and turned it on. Now I'm sitting at the computer, entering this story in my blog.  I still haven't gotten my breakfast. And I'm worried about what will happen when I try to put the screwdriver away.

Note: I know you read these funny stories online or in magazines, and you wonder what kind of creative mind could make up such a story. Well, it's not made up. This is a true story. It happened to me only minutes ago. 

More Toys for your Toys

In January, I wrote about some cable-management and gadget-management solutions I had found on the web. I hesitated to buy the Signum cable tray from IKEA, because it was larger than I really wanted. Our desk is in a rather exposed location, a loft at the top of the stairs, and the cable tray is one of the first things a viewer will see when climbing the stairs. I wanted something more understated or unobtrusive. My goal is to reduce the amount of visual clutter in my house.

So rather than purchase the Signum item, I kept looking. I found an intriguing alternative on Amazon, the Wire Tray, made by Viable Inc, or Doug Mockett & Company. The Wire Tray is made of black ABS instead of white or silver powder-coated metal. It's narrower than the Signum cable tray, by a factor of two, making it much less obvious under the desk. It can be mounted on a vertical surface like a wall, or a horizontal surface like the underside of a desktop or countertop. Installation is a cinch: you install an aluminum track, then you slide the Wire Tray elements onto the track, and finally you put end caps on the track. You can cut it shorter than 35 inches (about 1 metre), or you can make it longer by installing multiple units.

My only beef with it is that it looks like it's made in China.

NOTE: Photos are from the manufacturer's website.

MIscellaneous word peeves

I think I like this writer, Ben Yagoda. I don't have a very high opinion of the quality of writing over at www.yahoo.com (especially their Atlantic Wire articles - gag) but Ben cares about words and language. His most recent article, 7 grammar rules you really should pay attention to, is definitely worth reading. And before you start pointing out all the mistakes in that title, consider for a moment that he probably put them there on purpose.

Towards the end of his article, he lists several word peeves which I'm going to quote directly. Here they are. Enjoy! - z.

• Don't use begs the question. Instead use raises the question.
• Don't use phenomena or criteria as singular. Instead use phenomenon or criterion.
• Don't use cliché as an adjective. Instead use clichéd.
• Don't use comprised of. Instead use composed of/made up of.
• Don't use less for count nouns such people or miles. Instead use fewer.
• Don't use penultimate (unless you mean second to last). Instead use ultimate.
• Don't use lead as past tense of to lead. Instead use led.

I hesitate to state what should be obvious, but sometimes the obvious must be stated. So here goes: Do not use it's, you're or who's when you mean its, your or whose. Or vice versa!

American Royalty

The United States of America has always prided itself on not having a king or queen. In the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, we are all equal, so they say, and there are no class distinctions.

Then what are the velvet ropes for, the ones that line the red carpets leading into the theatres and auditoriums hosting the Emmys, the Grammys, the Oscars, and all these other awards shows? The velvet ropes are to keep the common people away from the American version of nobility, the stars and starlets who we honor and worship and fawn over as if they were a cut above the rest of us.

And who are the owners of all of those fancy yachts tied to the piers in Myrtle Beach, San Diego, and hundreds of other exclusive, high-priced communities along the sunny coasts? Who are the owners of the mansions in the Hamptons, Brentwood, Beverly Hills, Bloomfield Hills, Sausalito, Aspen, West Chester, and other high-priced enclaves from sea to shining sea? Who are these people that never have to ask how much something costs, and who carry black American Express cards? They are the American aristocracy. Not all of them live lives as public as the Kennedys, but they life lives of opulence that the rest of us cannot even imagine.

And do you know what happens to the people that we elect and send to Washington, D.C., or to those who are invited to accompany those elected ones to Washington, and never leave? They become the American royalty. Over time, they acquire all the trappings of royalty. They never leave Washington without their retinues, and they are always preceded by the 21st Century equivalent of the forerunners, crying "Make way for the king!" They gather power to themselves, becoming increasingly out of touch with the common people and eventually forgetting who sent them to Washington.

In many ways, the class distinctions of the old royalty and nobility still exist in the U.S.A., but we blindly refuse to acknowledge these distinctions. We cling to the myth of equality and equal opportunity, as voiced in our Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights ..." In truth, we are not even created equal, and that inequality grows larger as time passes. We may all be endowed with the same rights, but not with the same opportunities. In this country, as in every other country, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

I don't advocate class warfare, or a French revolution to bring down the upper classes. Honestly, I wouldn't mind living their lifestyle myself. And as an upper middle-class American, I don't have much to complain about. But I choose not to join in the obsession with these people, the obsession that fuels the popular media and gives us a constant flow of photos and stories about them. I would like to think that, if I were to encounter a member of the upper class, I wouldn't treat them any differently from anyone else.

Circles

In his book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven R. Covey speaks about circles. Specifically, he talks about Circles of Concern, which include all the things that we worry about, and Circles of Influence, which include all the things that we can affect.

In my mind, there is a third kind of circle. This is the Circle of Things That Matter. This is a much smaller circle than the other two. Part of acquiring wisdom is learning to shrink the other two circles so they approach this one in size.

Actually, my life is full of a fourth kind of circle, multiple instances of it. These are Circles of People That Matter. In my life, most of these are BIG circles. The smallest and tightest of these circles includes used to include just my wife and our natural children. What's funny about this circle, called "family," is that we keep widening it and adding other people to it — not just children-in-law and grandchildren, but others whom we come to love so much that they become part of our family.

It's fun at Christmas time, to host an open house for the people in all of these different circles, then to sit back and observe the collisions and the intersections between the circles. Some sparkling gems are found in those intersections.

For example, my circle of former mathematics students consists of roughly 200 people. My circle of LDS young single adults currently living in our town or nearby is of about the same size. I was delighted to find three of my former math students in this YSA circle. I'm sure it doesn't mean as much to them as it does to me, and I try desperately not to make an outward show of things, but I get all, um, gleeful inside every time I see one of them.

Phineas and Ferb - why we do stuff

This Phineas and Ferb screen grab floated through the ether yesterday, and I grabbed it quickly.

In the movie "You've Got Mail," Tom Hanks' character says: "The Godfather is the I Ching. The Godfather is the sum of all wisdom. The Godfather is the answer to any question." I think you could say the same thing about Phineas and Ferb, at least for my life.

For example, why do engineers and scientists do the things they do? Here's why:

POSTSCRIPT: If not Phineas and Ferb, then maybe Calvin and Hobbes.

Undoing Wrongful Convictions: Texas Attempts to Make Things Right

For years, I have harbored a silent, but firm, dislike for Texas-style justice. I do not know anyone personally who has been convicted of a crime and sent to prison in Texas, but over the years I have read two different kinds of news reports about the Texas justice system. One kind tells about the enthusiastic and dedicated prosecution and conviction of murderers and other heinous criminals. The underlying theme of these reports is "you do something wrong in Texas, and we will hunt you down and make you pay." The second kind of report tells about someone who gets released from prison after serving years — sometimes decades — for a crime he didn't commit. The underlying theme of these articles is "Texas is too quick to convict, and their prosecutors will do anything to get a conviction." You can interpret the word "anything" as broadly as you wish.

Usually a person's wrongful conviction is overturned because of new DNA evidence. Sometimes it's overturned because the real culprit speaks up. It used to be that the Texas justice system stubbornly refused to give up these wrongly convicted people, even when their innocence was beyond dispute. In one sad case, they executed Cameron Todd Willingham, a man wrongly convicted of arson and murder, long after his innocence was established and while his defenders were still hacking through the red tape to save him.

So, in my mind, Texas has earned, and deserves, its reputation as a "hang 'em high, and justice be damned" state. Every time an innocent man is released, I cheer deep inside and hurl silent curses in the general direction of the Lone Star State.

But my opinion of Texas-style justice has been softened. Sweetened, even. Today, a 58-year-old man, Randolph Arledge, is being set free after serving 30 years of a 99-year sentence for a crime he didn't commit. Arledge became the 118th person in the Texas legal system to have his conviction overturned. When Arledge went to prison, his children were 4 and 7 years old. They believed in his innocence and kept the faith all these years, and they were with him when he was released. Arledge had been convicted because two eyewitnesses had lied. He was released based on DNA studies of critical evidence saved for this many years.

Here comes the really cool part.

Texas cannot restore the 30 years they stole from his life. They cannot restore the 30 years they stole from his children's lives. However, in recent years the state of Texas has passed several laws aimed at: (1) preventing wrongful convictions; (2) making it easier for inmates convicted of a crime to have access to new DNA testing; and (3) paying restitution to those who have been wrongly convicted and then released.

You can't really put a cash value on a wrongful conviction, or on the 30 years the state stole from Arledge and his family. But you can try. And the state of Texas has tried. According to one article, the state "has the nation's most generous law for ex-inmates who have proven their innocence, providing a lump-sum payment of $80,000 for each year someone wrongly spent behind bars, as well as an annuity and other benefits."

Money talks. This is the way Texas says "I'm sorry." While I'm still inclined to lump Texas for their overeager prosecutors and their hanging judges, I am equally inclined to applaud Texas for this truly generous attempt to put things right.

SIDE NOTE:


By the way, much, if not all, of the credit for Arledge's release goes to the hard-working people at the Innocence Project. This posting is about Texas, not about the Innocence Project, but I invite you to visit their website and see what they're about. Even Republicans will find it enlightening.

Other entities around the country working on the problem of wrongful convictions include the Michigan Innocence Clinic. 

ANOTHER SIDE NOTE:

The great English jurist Sir William Blackstone said in 1765: "Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." In 1785, Benjamin Franklin upped the ante, writing: "It is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer." In modern times, Ben's words have been misquoted and misattributed, but the principle remains the same, and forms the basis for many of the clauses in the Bill of Rights. (Source: "Blackstone's Formulation," Wikipedia.)