The Wisdom of the GD

I wrote recently a post that got Matt Dickerson and I wondering what struggles brought us together as friends. True, we did share a dorm floor together freshman year, and arguably college is a struggle for anyone, but we didn't share many of the struggles. He was an engineer, I was in the school of science. I think a big part of it was that Matt always listened to me, and he engaged me when I had unanswerable questions like, "should I keep seeing this girl?" He asked me his own questions that made me pick apart my own value system and come to my own conclusions after better understanding myself.

So while I was trying to answer the question of what common struggle we shared, I realized that I've gleaned a lot of wisdom from Matt over the years.

1. Brush your teeth. Aside from the health benefits, it's a good way to make friends.


2. "If a woman throws herself at you, make sure you catch her." I assume this policy no longer is applicable directly to him since he's now married, but it certainly got me to open up my eyes and let myself get involved and have experiences I would have otherwise passed up.


3. There's nothing to worry about if you have a hot wife. Matt knows he's got a great spouse in all categories that he loves deeply. He knows she loves him, and their marriage is a promise of that love. So even though Matt knows other guys may want to steal away his wife, he doesn't worry about them, and can just focus on being a great husband to Lauren.


4. Run. Matt is a marathon runner, and I think a certain amount of his identity is wrapped up in running. The real Matt wisdom is probably something more along the lines of "Tie 'who you are' into a healthy activity".


5. Fiscal sensibility is a way of life. Matt loves doing taxes, to the point where I think he looks forward to the day where he also gets to do his kids' taxes. Beyond April, Matt loves understanding his spending habits and making trade-offs and adjustments so that he can afford the things he wants. I wouldn't say "Matt loves money", but he certainly loves making money work for him.

Such is the wisdom I've garnered form him over the years. I'm certain there is more that I've just absorbed, but he's one fo those people that helps me set the bar higher for Will Read.

Appearances

If you're going to be a security guard, you got to at least give me the impression that you might be physically capable of giving chase. I know it probably isn't the "safe" thing to do, and that if you are faced with a real criminal, your training probably just tells you to phone it in. However, if you can't walk down the isle on BART without being out of breath, I'm not sure you can really deter any crime.

Brainstorm: Struggles

Something I believe is that relationships are forged through shared "struggles" - times we step out of our comfort zone and do something out of the ordinary. When I was a kid, things like church lock ins, running props backstage, and going to late night coffee shops qualified. As I got older it was things like spending a week sleeping on a gym floor in the Appalachian mountains repairing homes for people in need. In college fencing supplied all the struggles I could possibly need - leadership, budget concerns, teaching, learning, more teaching, travel, competition. I held on to that brand of struggle after college when I was running my own fencing club which presented the same challenges.

Now, life is easier. I go to work, the bills get paid, I go to sleep knowing that my bed will still be there tomorrow and that I won't be stranded in some other state. My life is safe. I think this is the reason why I haven't found any lasting relationships here in SF. So I need to risk something. I need something that I might fail at. I need something that I might succeed at with the help of others.

I could volunteer again. Maybe Habitat is better out here. Maybe there's something I can do at a local high school, or college. I don't want to fence again. I'm not a fencer. I could go sky diving. Or I could take up a gambling addiction. Race car driving. Stunt double/devil. But this works better when I risk my pride and not necessarily my body. My pride. THis works when I'm scared, or humble, or weak.

Leadership also seems important. I need something to lead. Something to lead... And teach... And humbling... And preferably doesn't cut in to work hours...

I know it doesn't answer the points above, but I think I need to go to school. Night classes. Pottery? Woodworking? Automotive repair? Business Management? Economics? Marketing? Psychology? Pysch lends itself to being a Lifecoach. Getting a MBA would be handy if I do ever form a start-up. At school I would meet people too. School...

More About Her

I recently wrote about the impossible woman, and I wanted to add two things to the list. The first is that she'll be the kind of woman who is a teacher on her way to being a CEO (there's no "career path" for that). The second is that I'll know her as she will feel like "home" to me.

I've been watching Battle Star Galactica, which makes me a big nerd, but we're getting to the end and there's a lot of talk about what "home" means to the characters. Four years ago, it was the planet they lived on, but now it's the ships they reside in. And it isn't so much the ships, but the people, the experiences they have had on those ships. The things that bind them together, their common struggles, their memories - all that makes it a home.

What that really says is that I need to find a way to struggle with someone. Not fight, but to go through a hardship or challenge or something and come out on our feet together. Dinner and a movie isn't something one bonds over. It's just food. Getting stuck in the rain is something you can bond over. High school is something you can bond over. Conquering a fear of heights or snakes is something you can bond over. I hate snakes.

Opinionated About Web Usability

I walked out of work forty minutes early today. I was beaten, and shaky, and out of my element.

Just earlier, I had decided that I am not confrontational enough. That I don't know how to argue, stand up for anything, or be passionate. Today was designed to reinforce that realization. The background is that we've built a mostly stand-alone app that will serve up tasks for people to do on Amazon's Mechanical Turk. It was supposed to be a [Ruby on] Rails application, as opposed to the core of Remix, which is really just a Ruby application and only kind of takes advantage of the Rails part.And there's no UI, just XML and JSON is all we expose to the rest of the world.

I love Mechanical Turk. I love the things that Rails supplies. So I love what this app could be. Today, block by block, all that got torn down. With each assault on the app, I was there, defending, but it didn't matter. It isn't that I wasn't heard, it was that it didn't matter. First, it was a dumbing down of the search engine, to the point where it borders on hard to use. That resulted in going from a one-click task to a multiple click-copy-paste task. The last conversation was in the context of removing all JavaScript - further reducing the ease of use.

I think part of it is that I empathize with Turkers somehow. Like they really are my employees, that we need to treat them well. I'm also the only guy on the team who has done more than a few minutes of turking. When Steve decided that last time that we needed to do something else, and Mike backed him up, and Glenn and Colin sat silent, I was alone. I was fighting a fight that may have been totally crazy, and I knew that. I am not yet the guy who fights for the crazy thing. Or rather, I'm no longer the man who fights for crazy things. Arguably, I was that man back in high school. Arguably, it caused me a lot more trouble at work than it was worth.

Now, I'm the guy who runs away with tears in his eyes because he doesn't want to produce crap.

Three Years

It's been three years since I've been in a relationship where we both said we loved each other. That's a long ass time.

Government: Freedom vs. Safety

I think about the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights. These documents spell out exactly what freedoms we, as citizens of the United States of America, are promised. They do not talk about a "right to public transit systems", nor do they mention a "right to affordable health care."So it makes me wonder what is government's role? All I really need from my government is the protection of the promise it made to me: freedom.

But the older I get, the more I feel like government has become a tool for keeping people safe. But safety and freedom are orthogonal goals. You can relate to what I mean if you have ever had a "corporate security policy" in place on your work computer. Your network admin does his best to keep you safe, but the cost is that you are not free to surf all of the web, you cannot download the important attachment from your vendor to move your project forward. For freedom is restricted, and you cannot make much forward progress.

There are services I need, don't get me wrong. Things like fire fighters, and ambulances, and roads so they can get there quickly and reliably that I don't need all the time, but I'm willing to pay a slice for alongside my fellow neighbors so that we all may enjoy the safety of those services when the need arises.

What bothers me is that the government (via the people) seem hell bent, not on protecting their freedom, but protecting a way of life. They want to preserve a thing that is showing itself to be inadequate, needing adjustment. They want regulations, and bail outs. People have become afraid of failure, afraid of death, afraid of the very frailty that makes us take chances.

If we lived forever, there would be mo need to take risks. We could simply wait until we arrived upon the correct way to do everything. But we don't have "all the time in the world", most of us have seventy years at best. So we have to guess, we have to take chances. We have to do things that put us and sometimes others at risk if we are going to move forward.

You see, we have to be free. Free to speak. Free to defend ourselves. Free to vote. And most of all, free to take a chance.

They Don't Make Guys Like Me

As Jenny points out, in a round about way in my last post I said that I do not exist. But I do exist. I'm here, and I persist, despite all the parts of me that may seem at odds with themselves.

Especially when it comes to dating, and trying to justify in my head why an amazing woman would want to hang out with me, I've always thought, "They don't make guys like me." They really don't. Guys who don't have substance abuse problems, guys who are responsible, guys who are gainfully employed. Apparently just those seemingly bare bones qualifiers limits the datable population quite a lot.

I realize this post is reading as rather self-indulgent. You're reading my blog, about me. Deal.

Then you add on the "normal" good stuff. For instance, I'm pretty funny. I also look pretty hansom, not gorgeous, but hansom enough. I can carry on a conversation and I listen to what people say instead of drifting off in my own thoughts. I'm the kind of guy your mom would like for you to date, and that your dad wouldn't need to brandish a gun at to get his daughter home on time. They don't make guys like that anymore.

Then there's the quirky parts; most of which stem from my lack of social inhibitions or lack of shame.The only way you can get me to turn red is to call me up in front of a group and tell me I'm doing a good job. But I can't be cut down by jokes about the things I like, or the people I hang out with. I'm bullet proof in this way. I even mis-match my shoes so that you know how much your cuts don't hurt me. Peer pressure was a non-issue growing up; I've always been my own person.

I have only one big fear - of dying and having people say that my life was cut short before I could really enjoy it, or take advantage of it, or be happy. So I constantly battle that fear by saying "yes" when an opportunity presents itself, by spending time with friends, by riding the cable car instead of the bus to work. I love my life.

The thing I want most in life, is to have someone to protect. Someone to love fully, without the boundaries. Someone who will protect me and love me without limits. But people freak out when you tell them things like that. They don't make guys like me.

If You're Reading This, This isn't About You

This is about some mythical girl, the impossible woman, the one who doesn't exist. I like to tease the women I know who are looking for datable guys. "I want a fireman", but then he has to be tall. "OK, this one is tall and firemany, but he doesn't do X", or Y, or Z. You could put a dozen good looking millionaires who are down to earth and friends with your friends, but they'd never fit the bill.

That's one kind of problem. My kind of problem is that I want something that doesn't exist. A person who, if she existed, would instantly implode upon herself.

I want the girl who has blond hair, but wants to let her brown hair grow out. The kind of woman who looks great in an evening gown, but likes to wear jeans with holes in them. She wants to enjoy the life in the city, but wants a small house in the suburbs. She's athletic and competitive, but needs to feel protected just as much as I do. She's the kind of girl who loves to cook and loves to go out. The kind of woman who always wants to snuggle and is just as happy on her side of the bed. She has the alpha persona that drives her forward, but she spends more of her time outside of work than in it. Nor is she religious, but she knows she needs some sort of spiritual component to her life. She is happy and sad, proud and humble, courageous and weak all at once and not at all. Most importantly, she loves me for being all of those things too.

Visionary, or Facist?

1847-1931: Thomas Edison
1901-1966: Walt Disney
1955-Present: Steve Jobs

These men in my mind were all the same. Men who had a great idea, which they implemented on their own steam. That idea then gave them the financial resources to hire nameless practitioners to implement every far-reaching idea they had.

Edison makes the light bulb, a tedious process of trail and error. He then created a research lab, where thousands of patents were filed in his name. Disney brought sound to cartoons, and soon found himself with Imagineers, people who would help him later build Disney Land and Disney World, creating animated masterpieces previously thought to be unprofitable. Then we have Steve Jobs, visionary of Apple, who brought us crazy things like a home computer and a mouse in the face of "the public has no use for computers and who needs anything besides a keyboard anyway?" I hear talk of the "wrath" of Jobs and how easily one can find himself fired at Apple.

I am not agreeing, or disagreeing with the methods of these men. What is interesting to me is the pattern. I also submit that the world only has room for one of these such men at a time. Men who braved a gamble because they knew in their gut the world wanted what they could pluck from dreams and turn into reality. Men who then took that reality, and made a factory out of ideas. Men who created an industry that wasn't there before.

At times, I want to be one of those men. A man who knows what it is that the world lacks so desperately. But I do not think I have the constitution it takes to know in my gut that I should press on with a thing that sounds ridiculous until it becomes common place.