Tuesday, April 21, 2009
46,664
For those of you keeping track, that's a total of 17,616 lines of source code and documentation committed thus far this year. That doesn't include a hefty amount of wiki documentation and research writing as well.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Late Night Listening XXIX: Visiting Billalble Therapist Hours Unto the Third and Fourth Generation
The Drunken Housewife has a heckuva post about her blog's impact on her kids and the attention it has drawn. I won't spoil it here, so go read it and follow the link.
As I increase with years, I have come to realize one thing certain of the parent-child relationship. There is not one among the living or dead who has raised offspring in such proper and effective manner that the child is deprived of issues which require subsequent resolution in adulthood.
There is no path so wise that would shelter a child from all forms of trauma. It is part of being human. For inasmuch as I try to avoid repeating the mistakes of my parents and grandparents, the uniqueness of my situation will inevitably bring forth misunderstandings and missteps in my own actions as parent.
I can only hope that my daughters' path might be a short durations of weekly visits and rather than a lifetime of self-destructive behaviors. Sometimes conscientious parents are too hard on themselves, focusing so heavily on the damage, and ignoring how they foster resilience in children.
With that in mind, let's put on a copy of that great modern folk paean to self-discovery, "Closer to Fine" by the Indigo Girls.
Official Sony BMG Video of "Closer to Fine", not embedded because they don't allow it for this clip
Hard to believe it's been 20 years since that track was released, no?
As I increase with years, I have come to realize one thing certain of the parent-child relationship. There is not one among the living or dead who has raised offspring in such proper and effective manner that the child is deprived of issues which require subsequent resolution in adulthood.
There is no path so wise that would shelter a child from all forms of trauma. It is part of being human. For inasmuch as I try to avoid repeating the mistakes of my parents and grandparents, the uniqueness of my situation will inevitably bring forth misunderstandings and missteps in my own actions as parent.
I can only hope that my daughters' path might be a short durations of weekly visits and rather than a lifetime of self-destructive behaviors. Sometimes conscientious parents are too hard on themselves, focusing so heavily on the damage, and ignoring how they foster resilience in children.
With that in mind, let's put on a copy of that great modern folk paean to self-discovery, "Closer to Fine" by the Indigo Girls.
Official Sony BMG Video of "Closer to Fine", not embedded because they don't allow it for this clip
Hard to believe it's been 20 years since that track was released, no?
Sunday, April 05, 2009
The Uncertainty of the Things that are Certain
And I dream of Michelangelo when I’m lying in my bed
I see god upon the ceiling I see angels overhead
And he seems so close as he reaches out his hand
But we are never quite as close as we are led to understand
-- Counting Crows, "When I Dream of Michelangelo", Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings
No, your RSS readers don't deceive you. I have returned to my blog to tap out an update of my life's progress. It is not with a pall resignation that I come to visit. I am not ready to declare an end to 2am. But I would be a liar if I said that I haven't been weary over the six weeks since my last post.
As the title of my post suggests, I'm going to open with some discussion of death and taxes, because both themes have been at the forefront of my consciousness.
I almost lost my father on March 20. Since November 2001, he has been disabled by a stroke. It took a pretty heavy toll on him both physically and psychologically. He lost a lot of functionality on the left side of his body, and he is left-handed. He has been fortunate to have good retirement health coverage, so he has been able to get plenty of physical therapy, but there will be a lot of things that he will never be able to do again.
Since his stroke, he has accumulated a sizable number of prescriptions for things like cholesterol, pain, and depression. Earlier that week, his family doctor had placed him on another medication to help him with his anxiety and spasticity. Over the course of that week, he had several falls, and the one he had on the morning of the 20th while getting out of bed was a doozy. A trip to the Small Town ER led to the discovery that he had bleeding on the brain and a decision to send him via helicopter to the neurocritical care unit at a major hospital in the Circle City.
I received word sometime around 11:30 am that day from STBX, who had been phoned by my stepmom because she had neither my cell phone nor my work phone numbers. I notified my coworkers that I was heading out, and I jumped on the earliest bus that I could get that went to the hospital. I arrived just minutes after they had unloaded him, and it would be another hour before my stepmom and her son arrived. It wasn't until after 2 pm that we were allowed to go see him in the ER.
We learned from the doctor and the paramedic that he had become unresponsive on the flight, so they intubated him and then gave him a pretty powerful sedative. The bleeding was in an area near the location where his stroke occurred. They didn't think that there would be much of a problem with that. A bigger problem was the presence of a slight fracture in one of his vertebrae, but they envisioned that being treatable with a back brace. Their biggest concern was what was making him fall. They suspected it might be an adverse drug interaction.
By Saturday morning, he had regained the ability to breathe on his own while sleeping, so they extubated him. He remained in the hospital up through Tuesday. He was transferred to a rehabilitation hospital for inpatient physical therapy. His stay there was not pleasant. The girls and I paid several visits while he was there, and he was constantly complaining about the care he was getting and was convinced he would do better with outpatient therapy because he would be more comfortable.
They released him yesterday. While he had made progress during his stay there, I suspect his release had more to do with him griping about wanting out than it did with any objective metric of physical capability.
The whole experience brought forth a huge mix of emotions, some of which I am not proud to admit. When I heard he had been sent on the helicopter, I had a flashback to early October 1988, when my grandmother had to be sent via the same route for a bad fall down the stairs to the basement. She survived and continued to live for another 16 years, but she was confined to a bed and the last three or four years were especially difficult because of dementia.
I know that my dad had not been in good spirits the past several months. Out of a fear that he was on the verge of dying, earlier this year, he had sought to reestablish contact with his sister, with whom he has had a hostile relationship over many years, but it had taken a really nasty turn in 2004, after their mother had passed away. Because of that state of mind, I can't help but wonder if his will to live is slipping critically toward the brink.
I've also been thinking a lot about my own death. Granted, I hope I have several years to go, but my tolerance for being disabled has dwindled to almost nil. Having seen my STBX's dad confined to a bed in a nursing home since May 2005 and the slow deterioration of my father after the stroke, I can't see myself wanting to live through something similar. I'm not a fan of the notion of physician assisted suicide, but I believe that I will have a do not resuscitate order. I don't want to be a burden on my children, and I don't want to have to deal with the loss of dignity that sometimes comes with it.
I've also wrestled with lingering resentment toward my parents. As much as it should be the right thing to do, I couldn't see myself wanting to step forward to care for them if they were disabled. I hate feeling that way because that's not what forgiveness is supposed to be about, and for years I have worked to let go of the fact that they essentially dumped the responsibility of raising my brother and my on my paternal grandparents. The strength of these feelings is stark enough to convince me that I have not been able to fully come to terms with it.
On a less severe note, but certainly a grim topic nonetheless, one of the developers in my group was fired just a couple of days before my dad was sent to the hospital. I had seen it coming.
His performance over the year that he had been with us was lackluster. He was not thorough in his work, and it showed with lots of bugs and emergency fixes. He did a poor job of documenting his work, oftentimes leaving flippant remarks in his comments rather than useful information.
In February, there was a week where, in addition to doing my own work, I was finding, and sometimes fixing, one bug per day in his code. His departure was jarring for the other two guys in my group, leaving them with fears that they might be the next to go.
Work consumes a huge amount of my bandwidth these days. We've had two very busy development cycles that saw me writing tons of code and documentation. The total line count since my start date is 41,413, and there will be tons more to come.
One of the things I worked on during the sprint was JavaScript autosave manager that would routinely save draft versions of content every often, provided enough changes had happened to the content since the last save operation. My boss was impressed enough with my work in the waning days of that release that he sent me a personal note and gave me some extra paid time off.
I see myself starting to fall more naturally into the lead developer role, which is something my boss has been encouraging me to do. Indeed the last couple of quarterly reviews have listed as improvement areas the need to stop being so reluctant at assuming leadership.
I'm feeling more confident in my design decisions I'm starting to feel more creative in my work. For the first time in all of my career, I feel like I am in a really good groove and the growth just keeps coming. While I still have much to learn, I definitely feel more comfortable in considering the more challenging development roles that I was shy to interview for some two years ago.
The downside of all that work has been that I have been remiss in housework. While it's true that the kids do quite a number on the household entropy, I make a sizable contribution to the clutter. I am slow about getting dishes washed. I get books out and don't put them away. I let junk mail and bills pile up on the kitchen table to the point I have to bulldoze them off for the kids to have a place to eat or play with Play Doh. I spent this morning and afternoon putting a dent in the housework backlog, and the house looks a lot better now.
Another thing that I have been avoiding is tax returns. I had a suspicion that with the sale of some investments to pay off debt from the separation, we'd wind up owing on taxes. Although they withheld federal taxes on the money, they did not do so with state and county. So I kept putting off doing the returns, probably to the irritation of STBX, but I just couldn't bring myself to work on them.
I finally got around to doing the returns this weekend, and it was a mixed bag. It turned out we had plenty withheld for federal, so we got a couple grand, but the state/county bill was just north of $700, which was a couple hundred more than what I expected. Fortunately, I have replenished my savings so that I can cover that number easily.
My daughters are doing well. My older had her first dance team competition a couple weeks ago, and they did great, getting a very high score. I attended the performance and was amazed at how well they did with a pretty complicated routine. She's also enjoying being a Daisy Girl Scout. We spent one Saturday afternoon helping to sell the last batches of surplus cookies at the entrance of a grocery.
My younger daughter is an aspiring artist, going through the crayons, coloring books, and drawing paper like they're going out of style. I had to restructure my refrigerator front because she had tacked so many pictures to the doors with magnets that I couldn't open the doors without one falling to the floor.
I've taken a couple days off to spend extra time with them. One Friday, I took off to take my younger daughter to preschool and then pick up my older daughter from kindergarten because STBX was buried with commitments for a PTO fundraiser. This past Friday, I kept them for the night because they were on spring break and I took them to see Monsters vs. Aliens at the really big screen movie theater. My older daughter had a blast, but my younger was not a fan of the special 3-D glasses.
Tonight, I'm taking it easy. The indie rock station in town has a great show lineup on Sunday evenings, which includes a syndicated show called eTown, which airs at 9 pm. Tonight it's Bruce Cockburn and Joan Osborne, which should be awesome. And on that news, I'll close out with a clip of Cockburn singing "Wondering Where the Lions Are", the lyrics of which I interpret as a positive coming to terms with one's own mortality, which is something that seems oh so difficult a grasp at the moment.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
A Programmer Looks at 40
(wipes dust from the screen)
(looks at post-it notes left by Have the T-Shirt and Anais)
Yeah, it's been a while since I published something here. It's not that I haven't tried writing something. There have been two or three abortive attempts at writing posts, but I ran out of steam or realized I hadn't hashed out all of the ideas. But now a month has passed, and it's getting to a point where I'm going to forget information or just wind up letting the blog atrophy irreparably. Let the inertia subside...
I turned 40 last weekend. As much as I tell myself that one shouldn't obsess about birthdays at the decades' fringes, I found myself having those feelings of angst and loss that I have struggled to transcend over the past two and a half years.
The birthday proved to be a low key occasion, visiting with family and delivering their Girl Scout Cookie orders. I picked up my daughters from STBX late morning on Saturday the 14th and headed up to the northeast side to eat lunch with my mom at this neighborhood pub that she and her friends like to frequent on Saturday evenings.
After that, the girls and I headed back south, going to The Small Town to visit with my dad and stepmom. En route, I stopped by STBX's to pick up a peanut butter bundt cake with chocolate icing for me to take with me. My dad set up an awkward situation by inviting his sister (my aunt) over without giving me a head's up. From what I gather, he has been making overtures to her about resolving some of their past disagreements. The kids had fun seeing their grandparents and eating cake. STBX had asked my stepmom to make sure that the cake have 40 candles on it.
When I brought the girls back to STBX's, she had the girls bring out their gift to me, a couple of pairs of khakis for work, which I certainly needed, and some hand drawn birthday cards, which were really cute. As I left, she started to break out into tears. I didn't press the question over why she was crying. The next day, I got an IM from her saying that:
11:48:20 AM STBX: fyi my crying last night was not over you. i was just being emotional. i hope you had a good 40th birthday.
I didn't feel very good about my emotional state, which seemed very self-absorbed. I didn't feel much like being sociable. I put it this way in an IM conversation with my brother the day after my birthday...
7:14:34 PM Me: I feel like I should have gotten drunk this weekend, but lacked the ambition.
There is a certain darkness in my prevailing moods that has me worried. Aside from the time I spend with my daughters, I don't seem to have motivation for much anything else than work, and I've put a lot of hours into that.
On a couple weekends, I've gone so far as to pull old to-do items off the shelf and implement them on development branches so that they can be incorporated into releases when they are ready for them. I've also managed to investigate and resolve some bugs that have perplexed others in the development group and have vexed our product support team.
The efforts have paid off in terms of improvement to the software and the compensation. In late January, my boss recommended and got a 6 % pay raise for my efforts the past year. With the company routinely busting sales goals, they can afford to do it, which is a stark contrast to my former employer, who gave me zero raises over the two years I worked for them.
I think I can pinpoint the sources of the this funk I've been in. The cost of the minivan repair in early January jarred my growing sense of financial security and stability. Adding to that is STBX's unemployment. While her check pipeline from the state has finally started, she has not been motivated to seek jobs. She puts in her token three job searches as part of weekly reporting for continued benefits, but that's about it. Here is an IM transcript from 2/19 that pretty much sums up her attitude:
8:52:50 PM STBX: well i got invited to a employment open house with (Big Postage Meter Company).
8:53:05 PM Me: That's a Good Thing, no?
8:53:53 PM STBX: i guess. it is part time and in (a town west of the Circle City) and part of me doesn't want a job yet just want to have it waiting when i get done with unemployemnt.
8:54:00 PM STBX: is that really too much to ask for
8:54:37 PM Me: It comes down to whether you think the job market will have something you want when the benefits expire.
8:54:57 PM STBX: i guess i need to get offered a job first
8:55:01 PM STBX: True.
There's a part of me that feels weird about filing for divorce while she is unemployed. When I worked out the child support to put into her account by direct deposit in August, it was based on her wages at her old job. I wonder whether the court would accept that figure with her current situation. As a result, I have been procrastinating finishing off the paperwork. She reminded me tonight, as I dropped off the kids, that we needed to get that process started, so maybe she's ready to move on and I shouldn't worry.
I also haven't been that motivated to work on my taxes. There are a couple of items on income that have me worried that we might wind up owing money, and that's not a place I want to be as I get ready to file a legal proceeding.
We had some heavy snowfall not quite a month ago, which made boarding my bus at my normal location an unsafe proposition at best, which threw my routine off. I wound up staying home on Jan. 28th. Here was the view from my front door that morning.
I drove to work several times while the snow remained, and on the morning of Feb. 3, this is what my commute looked like:
The person whom I said a couple months ago might be a potential recurring FWB situation has faded into the background. She's had some recurring drama with her own marital dissolution, and she's decided that she is looking for something more emotionally involved. We still exchange e-mails and texts, but that's about it.
Combine all of this, and there is this general feeling of a lack of control over my destiny. I've noticed that it's hard for me to find pleasure in much of anything. At some moments, I wonder if I suffer from Even going out to lunch at work seems to be excessive. Work is the one place that I still feel like I have a say in my destiny.
The state of disorder in my house reflects the lack of motivation. I skipped doing laundry over the weekend of my birthday and didn't do laundry until later in the week, when I needed clean clothes for work. Today, I am caught up again.
I finally forced myself to do dishes today, when I didn't have anything for the kids or me to eat off of. Normally I'm pretty good about doing dishes because I have a dishwasher, but it has been making intermittent funny noises, and it's performance has been spotty the last few times, I so figure that I'm going to have to shell out some money to have that fixed.
The house is in its post kids weekend tornadic state. That's nothing new. What is new is that the mess is on top of the mess from when they were here two weeks ago, which I never got around to picking up.
OK, that's the bleak stuff. And in all fairness, it hasn't been all doom and gloom. On the 7th, I took my older daughter to her first Girl Scout Father/Daughter dance. They had two dances, broken down according to age groups. The group that included Daisy Girl Scouts ran from 6 - 7:30. We spent about 1/3 of it waiting in line waiting to buy a corsage and get our picture taken, but she had a really good time. This picture of the corsage should give you an idea of how cute her dress was.
The DJ played a mix of 80s and contemporary pop, the stuff that's all the rage on Radio Disney (or as my daughters call it -- "Disney Music"). It was fun afterwards pulling up video clips of songs like "Mickey" and "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" on YouTube and watching them with Bella.
On the 10th, my younger daughter finally followed through on her desire to paint my nails. To my cringe, she picked out a pink polish, but I braved my way through it. The photographic evidence is given below.
Our department has a couple of quirky customs that result in the accumulation of cash for our department. The first is a cover charge that is assessed for arriving late to a daily status meeting. It costs a buck to get in. The second is a friendly wager system for silly outcomes. Over time, the cash has overflown the cup used originally to house the booty, so I suggested we get a bank with an equally quirky personality. My boss bought into the idea and got it. Here is another person's video of the bank.
It has a pretty large repertoire of phrases, and it usually burps after you have fed it money.
I stayed late after work on the 13th to celebrate the passage of 1234567890 on the UNIX epoch clock, which transpired at 6:31:30 pm our time. We played cards, drank beer, and cheered the clock on to mark the occasion.
Finally, on weekend of the 7th and 8th, got an IM from an old friend who no longer lives here. She was passing through the area and asked if I was interested in meeting up the night before she had to leave. It wound up being a fun time, and we wound up with smiles on our faces.
That's about all the stuff I can think of for now. I'll try to do a better job of keeping in touch. A month (plus a few days) is way too long to go with dropping a line.
(looks at post-it notes left by Have the T-Shirt and Anais)
Yeah, it's been a while since I published something here. It's not that I haven't tried writing something. There have been two or three abortive attempts at writing posts, but I ran out of steam or realized I hadn't hashed out all of the ideas. But now a month has passed, and it's getting to a point where I'm going to forget information or just wind up letting the blog atrophy irreparably. Let the inertia subside...
I turned 40 last weekend. As much as I tell myself that one shouldn't obsess about birthdays at the decades' fringes, I found myself having those feelings of angst and loss that I have struggled to transcend over the past two and a half years.
The birthday proved to be a low key occasion, visiting with family and delivering their Girl Scout Cookie orders. I picked up my daughters from STBX late morning on Saturday the 14th and headed up to the northeast side to eat lunch with my mom at this neighborhood pub that she and her friends like to frequent on Saturday evenings.
After that, the girls and I headed back south, going to The Small Town to visit with my dad and stepmom. En route, I stopped by STBX's to pick up a peanut butter bundt cake with chocolate icing for me to take with me. My dad set up an awkward situation by inviting his sister (my aunt) over without giving me a head's up. From what I gather, he has been making overtures to her about resolving some of their past disagreements. The kids had fun seeing their grandparents and eating cake. STBX had asked my stepmom to make sure that the cake have 40 candles on it.
When I brought the girls back to STBX's, she had the girls bring out their gift to me, a couple of pairs of khakis for work, which I certainly needed, and some hand drawn birthday cards, which were really cute. As I left, she started to break out into tears. I didn't press the question over why she was crying. The next day, I got an IM from her saying that:
11:48:20 AM STBX: fyi my crying last night was not over you. i was just being emotional. i hope you had a good 40th birthday.
I didn't feel very good about my emotional state, which seemed very self-absorbed. I didn't feel much like being sociable. I put it this way in an IM conversation with my brother the day after my birthday...
7:14:34 PM Me: I feel like I should have gotten drunk this weekend, but lacked the ambition.
There is a certain darkness in my prevailing moods that has me worried. Aside from the time I spend with my daughters, I don't seem to have motivation for much anything else than work, and I've put a lot of hours into that.
On a couple weekends, I've gone so far as to pull old to-do items off the shelf and implement them on development branches so that they can be incorporated into releases when they are ready for them. I've also managed to investigate and resolve some bugs that have perplexed others in the development group and have vexed our product support team.
The efforts have paid off in terms of improvement to the software and the compensation. In late January, my boss recommended and got a 6 % pay raise for my efforts the past year. With the company routinely busting sales goals, they can afford to do it, which is a stark contrast to my former employer, who gave me zero raises over the two years I worked for them.
I think I can pinpoint the sources of the this funk I've been in. The cost of the minivan repair in early January jarred my growing sense of financial security and stability. Adding to that is STBX's unemployment. While her check pipeline from the state has finally started, she has not been motivated to seek jobs. She puts in her token three job searches as part of weekly reporting for continued benefits, but that's about it. Here is an IM transcript from 2/19 that pretty much sums up her attitude:
8:52:50 PM STBX: well i got invited to a employment open house with (Big Postage Meter Company).
8:53:05 PM Me: That's a Good Thing, no?
8:53:53 PM STBX: i guess. it is part time and in (a town west of the Circle City) and part of me doesn't want a job yet just want to have it waiting when i get done with unemployemnt.
8:54:00 PM STBX: is that really too much to ask for
8:54:37 PM Me: It comes down to whether you think the job market will have something you want when the benefits expire.
8:54:57 PM STBX: i guess i need to get offered a job first
8:55:01 PM STBX: True.
There's a part of me that feels weird about filing for divorce while she is unemployed. When I worked out the child support to put into her account by direct deposit in August, it was based on her wages at her old job. I wonder whether the court would accept that figure with her current situation. As a result, I have been procrastinating finishing off the paperwork. She reminded me tonight, as I dropped off the kids, that we needed to get that process started, so maybe she's ready to move on and I shouldn't worry.
I also haven't been that motivated to work on my taxes. There are a couple of items on income that have me worried that we might wind up owing money, and that's not a place I want to be as I get ready to file a legal proceeding.
We had some heavy snowfall not quite a month ago, which made boarding my bus at my normal location an unsafe proposition at best, which threw my routine off. I wound up staying home on Jan. 28th. Here was the view from my front door that morning.
I drove to work several times while the snow remained, and on the morning of Feb. 3, this is what my commute looked like:
The person whom I said a couple months ago might be a potential recurring FWB situation has faded into the background. She's had some recurring drama with her own marital dissolution, and she's decided that she is looking for something more emotionally involved. We still exchange e-mails and texts, but that's about it.
Combine all of this, and there is this general feeling of a lack of control over my destiny. I've noticed that it's hard for me to find pleasure in much of anything. At some moments, I wonder if I suffer from Even going out to lunch at work seems to be excessive. Work is the one place that I still feel like I have a say in my destiny.
The state of disorder in my house reflects the lack of motivation. I skipped doing laundry over the weekend of my birthday and didn't do laundry until later in the week, when I needed clean clothes for work. Today, I am caught up again.
I finally forced myself to do dishes today, when I didn't have anything for the kids or me to eat off of. Normally I'm pretty good about doing dishes because I have a dishwasher, but it has been making intermittent funny noises, and it's performance has been spotty the last few times, I so figure that I'm going to have to shell out some money to have that fixed.
The house is in its post kids weekend tornadic state. That's nothing new. What is new is that the mess is on top of the mess from when they were here two weeks ago, which I never got around to picking up.
OK, that's the bleak stuff. And in all fairness, it hasn't been all doom and gloom. On the 7th, I took my older daughter to her first Girl Scout Father/Daughter dance. They had two dances, broken down according to age groups. The group that included Daisy Girl Scouts ran from 6 - 7:30. We spent about 1/3 of it waiting in line waiting to buy a corsage and get our picture taken, but she had a really good time. This picture of the corsage should give you an idea of how cute her dress was.
The DJ played a mix of 80s and contemporary pop, the stuff that's all the rage on Radio Disney (or as my daughters call it -- "Disney Music"). It was fun afterwards pulling up video clips of songs like "Mickey" and "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" on YouTube and watching them with Bella.
On the 10th, my younger daughter finally followed through on her desire to paint my nails. To my cringe, she picked out a pink polish, but I braved my way through it. The photographic evidence is given below.
Our department has a couple of quirky customs that result in the accumulation of cash for our department. The first is a cover charge that is assessed for arriving late to a daily status meeting. It costs a buck to get in. The second is a friendly wager system for silly outcomes. Over time, the cash has overflown the cup used originally to house the booty, so I suggested we get a bank with an equally quirky personality. My boss bought into the idea and got it. Here is another person's video of the bank.
It has a pretty large repertoire of phrases, and it usually burps after you have fed it money.
I stayed late after work on the 13th to celebrate the passage of 1234567890 on the UNIX epoch clock, which transpired at 6:31:30 pm our time. We played cards, drank beer, and cheered the clock on to mark the occasion.
Finally, on weekend of the 7th and 8th, got an IM from an old friend who no longer lives here. She was passing through the area and asked if I was interested in meeting up the night before she had to leave. It wound up being a fun time, and we wound up with smiles on our faces.
That's about all the stuff I can think of for now. I'll try to do a better job of keeping in touch. A month (plus a few days) is way too long to go with dropping a line.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Sunday Morning Sing-a-Long: Sentimental Edition
I heard a wonderful cover of Bob Welch's "Sentimental Lady" on the radio this morning. Some Googling makes me think it was recorded by a couple of Wilco members under the alias of The Autumn Defense. I found a video clip that captured a performance, but sound quality leaves a lot to be desired.
Let's get caught up on the continuing storylines:
Minivan Meltdown
The STBX's minivan, which broke down on Christmas Eve, got fixed finally, with work being wrapped up on January 6. The PCM arrived and was installed. After some additional testing, they found out that some wiring needed repair, which would require some additional work. The final total: $1079.97.
If the cost and waiting for the repair was bad enough, what really left me angry was the location of the wiring issue. It was in the vicinity of the transmission mount. It turns out that in 2006, we had to have the transmission rebuilt at another Dodge dealership, which has since gone out of business, so it wouldn't surprise me if that the wiring issue was a holdover from that repair job.
I made arrangements with STBX to ride up to the north side to pay for and pick up the van. I tried talking with the service manager about my experiences and how a combination of bad past experiences and the delay in getting a part had all but convinced me to never buy a Chrysler product for the rest of my life. Moreover with STBX out of a job and no bailout for her, I asked if he could look over the work order and see if he could find some way to come down on the price. He said he couldn't.
I paid at the cashier desk, having no other recourse but to register my protest in the check's memo line.
... but that wouldn't be the end of my story. I helped STBX load the kids up in the van and then headed out. I turned onto the street that fronts the dealership and then within seconds I got a call from STBX on my cell phone. She said that there was something wrong with the dashboard, with the most noticeable issue being that the gear selector display was a solid orange line, with no way to tell whether it was in drive, reverse, or park.
I doubled back and went into the service area, getting the attention of the service rep, giving him a stern look, and telling him, "IT'S NOT DONE." I then explained the situation, and they quickly got the van back in the garage. After another 20 minutes of waiting, it turned out that the problem was a fuse.
Upon leaving the second time, STBX had a false alarm, complaining that she couldn't get the heat to work, but that was just because the push button that toggles the blower had been switched off, most likely by me back on Christmas Eve, when I was trying to diagnose why the van wouldn't start.
At this point I could care less whether Kokomo, IN, has to close down, Chrysler as a company needs to die so that the valuable parts can be sold off to the highest bidders. I don't want any more of my tax dollars being spent to bail out a bad financial decision by a private equity group.
Health Insurance Bait-and-Switch
I work for a small company which has outsourced its payroll and benefits to a company that specializes in this stuff. As you might recall from my Christmas post, I had been rushed to complete the paperwork for my health plan because they were no longer going to be offering the plan I was on.
On New Year's Eve, I got a memo from our office manager:
The premium listing was attached, and it turned out that my montly premiums were about to increase from $577.10 to $720.00 for the same coverage.
I was not amused, and neither was the President of our company. She got back with the HR services company to figure out what was going on. It turned out that because so few people signed up for the new plan, the new plan backed out, forcing the HR services company to offer the old plan, with its elevated rates.
They gave me the option to either switch to the other plan or stay with the old plan but change deductibles. Because my kids couldn't stay with their pediatrician on the other plan, I bit the bullet and stayed with the old plan but downgraded to a high deductible.
Personal Finances
Between those two things, I was not in a good space for the new year. I have made some adjustments to my spending habits to really cut back so that I can replenish my savings from the hit of the repair work. Being without a car forced me to plan ahead more for groceries, and I've been dining in both for myself and when I have the kids. I've also started cooking dishses that will leave me leftovers to take with me to work.
STBX applied for unemployment benefits after losing her job last month and this week started stressing out because she hasn't received a check yet. Given the horror stories about the state's agency responsible for this stuff, I'm not surprised.
She has been filling out her weekly reports with the agency, which requires her to list three jobs she has applied for. Based on what she's told me, she usually has to scramble toward the end of the weekly deadline to file the applications. Here is what she wrote in an IM to me on January 3.
6:10:03 PM STBX: i really just want people to give me money for taking care of my kids for the next 2 years but i really don't have anyone lining up to do that so i am back to reality
Yesterday, she said she was looking into signing up for WIC.
Work
Work has served as a refuge from the money setbacks. Over the past couple of weeks, I have been taking some initiative on getting some long-standing code issues straightened out. I've been doing these on the weekends mostly, after I've completed my existing coding tasks. Some of the benefits realized:
My boss has been happy with the results along with the cumulative efforts I put in the past year. During my annual compensation review last week, he said that I was being given a raise at the higher end of the scale, which made my day.
Let's get caught up on the continuing storylines:
Minivan Meltdown
The STBX's minivan, which broke down on Christmas Eve, got fixed finally, with work being wrapped up on January 6. The PCM arrived and was installed. After some additional testing, they found out that some wiring needed repair, which would require some additional work. The final total: $1079.97.
If the cost and waiting for the repair was bad enough, what really left me angry was the location of the wiring issue. It was in the vicinity of the transmission mount. It turns out that in 2006, we had to have the transmission rebuilt at another Dodge dealership, which has since gone out of business, so it wouldn't surprise me if that the wiring issue was a holdover from that repair job.
I made arrangements with STBX to ride up to the north side to pay for and pick up the van. I tried talking with the service manager about my experiences and how a combination of bad past experiences and the delay in getting a part had all but convinced me to never buy a Chrysler product for the rest of my life. Moreover with STBX out of a job and no bailout for her, I asked if he could look over the work order and see if he could find some way to come down on the price. He said he couldn't.
I paid at the cashier desk, having no other recourse but to register my protest in the check's memo line.
... but that wouldn't be the end of my story. I helped STBX load the kids up in the van and then headed out. I turned onto the street that fronts the dealership and then within seconds I got a call from STBX on my cell phone. She said that there was something wrong with the dashboard, with the most noticeable issue being that the gear selector display was a solid orange line, with no way to tell whether it was in drive, reverse, or park.
I doubled back and went into the service area, getting the attention of the service rep, giving him a stern look, and telling him, "IT'S NOT DONE." I then explained the situation, and they quickly got the van back in the garage. After another 20 minutes of waiting, it turned out that the problem was a fuse.
Upon leaving the second time, STBX had a false alarm, complaining that she couldn't get the heat to work, but that was just because the push button that toggles the blower had been switched off, most likely by me back on Christmas Eve, when I was trying to diagnose why the van wouldn't start.
At this point I could care less whether Kokomo, IN, has to close down, Chrysler as a company needs to die so that the valuable parts can be sold off to the highest bidders. I don't want any more of my tax dollars being spent to bail out a bad financial decision by a private equity group.
Health Insurance Bait-and-Switch
I work for a small company which has outsourced its payroll and benefits to a company that specializes in this stuff. As you might recall from my Christmas post, I had been rushed to complete the paperwork for my health plan because they were no longer going to be offering the plan I was on.
On New Year's Eve, I got a memo from our office manager:
I just got a call from (the guy at the HR services company). He told me that if you signed up for (new plan) you are going back to (old plan). They met negotiations with (old plan) and are continuing their coverage. If you have any questions, please feel free to give him a call at XXX-XXX-XXXX.
The premium listing was attached, and it turned out that my montly premiums were about to increase from $577.10 to $720.00 for the same coverage.
I was not amused, and neither was the President of our company. She got back with the HR services company to figure out what was going on. It turned out that because so few people signed up for the new plan, the new plan backed out, forcing the HR services company to offer the old plan, with its elevated rates.
They gave me the option to either switch to the other plan or stay with the old plan but change deductibles. Because my kids couldn't stay with their pediatrician on the other plan, I bit the bullet and stayed with the old plan but downgraded to a high deductible.
Personal Finances
Between those two things, I was not in a good space for the new year. I have made some adjustments to my spending habits to really cut back so that I can replenish my savings from the hit of the repair work. Being without a car forced me to plan ahead more for groceries, and I've been dining in both for myself and when I have the kids. I've also started cooking dishses that will leave me leftovers to take with me to work.
STBX applied for unemployment benefits after losing her job last month and this week started stressing out because she hasn't received a check yet. Given the horror stories about the state's agency responsible for this stuff, I'm not surprised.
She has been filling out her weekly reports with the agency, which requires her to list three jobs she has applied for. Based on what she's told me, she usually has to scramble toward the end of the weekly deadline to file the applications. Here is what she wrote in an IM to me on January 3.
6:10:03 PM STBX: i really just want people to give me money for taking care of my kids for the next 2 years but i really don't have anyone lining up to do that so i am back to reality
Yesterday, she said she was looking into signing up for WIC.
Work
Work has served as a refuge from the money setbacks. Over the past couple of weeks, I have been taking some initiative on getting some long-standing code issues straightened out. I've been doing these on the weekends mostly, after I've completed my existing coding tasks. Some of the benefits realized:
- A user statistics reporting job that has better code structure and runs about twice as fast as the older script.
- An improvement to a text processing algorithm that resulted in more accurate analysis and ran about twice as fast.
- A reorganization of our RSS feed generation code that stripped out a major inefficiency and reduced the load on our servers.
My boss has been happy with the results along with the cumulative efforts I put in the past year. During my annual compensation review last week, he said that I was being given a raise at the higher end of the scale, which made my day.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
An Open Letter to Bob Nardelli, CEO of Chrysler LLC
Dear Mr. Nardelli:
The Associated Press is reporting that on Friday, your company received a $4 billion bridge loan from the U.S. Treasury Dept.
This loan was hardly a surprise, given all the press that has been devoted to the worsening situation of the three big domestic car manufacturers. And I know that your company was especially thrilled about the coming bailout because earlier this week, your company spent money on web ads, like the one I saw in my Gmail account earlier this week (click image for full size):
The ad linked to a page at Chrysler's website, which contained a personal message from you thanking us, the American taxpayers, for investing in your company, and supposedly by extension, the U.S. in general.
Despite this expression of gratitude on behalf of your company, I cannot, based on my experiences as a Dodge owner, believe that this money is being well spent. Moreover, I have decided to actively oppose any efforts for your organization to secure additional funding at taxpayers expense.
Allow me to share my story with you...
My Introduction to Dodge
I am a 39 year-old software engineer, currenly separated, with my estranged spouse in possession of a currently non-operational 2003 Dodge Caravan. She is currently unemployed, having lost her job in the middle of December.
Back in early 2005, my wife and I were expecting our second child. At the time, we had a 2000 Saturn L Series 4-door sedan and a 1991 Chevrolet Cavalier, which was on its last legs. She wanted a minivan badly, but we were in no financial situation to buy a new vehicle because we had already taken on a large amount of debt for an adoption two and a half years prior.
Around that time she noticed that someone down the street was selling a Caravan for a little over $7,000. Because the minivan had been a leased vehicle, it had racked up a lot of miles, close to 70,000, if I recall correctly.
I was suspicious that that the seller might be engaging in a curbstoning scam, so I purchased a CARFAX report to do some due diligence. The history of the vehicle matched the seller's account, and it had not incurred any adverse events. We also had a mechanic take a look at, who said the one of the tires questionable, so the seller had them replaced. After that, we bit the bullet but hedged our bet by purchasing an extended warranty from the credit union where we got the loan.
A History of Issues
Over the past four years, the car has racked up around 30,000 miles. Over that time the following adverse events have happened:
Over the past year, we also got new brakes and tires for the vehicle, which was to be expected.
However, the cumulative experience itemized above pales in comparison to the experiences I have been through in the last week and a half.
The Big Breakdown
On Christmas Eve, I took the minivan to have lunch with my mother and my kids. After finishing lunch, about 3 in the afternoon, I attempted to start the minivan, only to find that the dashboard lights would come on and nothing else. A jumpstart did no good.
I had the vehicle towed to a mechanic, who looked at it on the 26th. They said that there was a short in the ignition circuit, but they couldn't be certain where the problem was because their wiring schematics didn't have enough detail. They also noted that the fuse for the circuit was rated for a larger current than what it should have been. They recommended that I take it to the nearest Dodge dealership, which was about 4 miles away.
Taking it to a Dealership: Customer Relationship Mismanagement
On the 28th, I visited the dealership's website to find contact information for service. The dealership is owned by a company which has three such dealerships in the metro area. All three share a common entry webpage, but you select which dealership's website will be displayed from a row of icons on the page. I clicked on the link for the dealership in question, and then used a link on the site's navigation bar to complete a web form that would file a service request.
The next day, Monday, I got a call from one of the other two dealerships, which informed me that they had received my service request, and judging from the location information on the form, I probably wanted to get in touch with one of the other dealerships.
I acknowledged that he was correct, but rather than offering to forward my request to the other dealership or even transfer the call, he instead asked me to take down a number to call and which menu option to select when I got there. Rather than taking ownership of the problem, he simply offloaded it back on me. This is not good customer relationship management, in my opinion.
So I got in touch with the dealer and asked if they could make arrangements to have the vehicle towed from the mechanic to their dealership, assuming they had a towing service they preferred to work with. Instead he off-rolled the issue back to me, giving the phone number of a towing service so that I could make arrangements.
To the best of my knowledge, the vehicle was on the dealership's premises by early afternoon of the 29th. By late next morning, I got a call from the dealership's service representative, indicating that they had taken a look at the van, and they weren't sure what was causing the problem because they couldn't communicate with the Powertrain Control Module (PCM). They said they thought that component was fried and needed replacing. Moreover, it was going to take at least a week to get the part, and they estimated that this would cost $810.57.
This was communicated to me very matter-of-factly, with no apologies with regards to the expense, the delay in getting the part, or the uncertainty over what was needed to fix the problem. What's worse, the service representative tried to apply pressure on me to make an immediate decision because they needed to get the order for the part in by 3 pm.
Recalling that we had earlier problems about a year ago with the broken wire in the ignition, and that repair work was done at another Dodge dealer within the past year, I brought up the possibility that area they needed to work on may still be under warranty.
I gave him the name and the number of the other Dodge dealership. He expressed an unwillingness to talk to them, so I said I call them and try to put them in touch with him. He then told me that if I was going to try to invoke the warranty, it was a better idea for me to have the car towed to the other dealership, which didn't make much sense since it would be the third time I would be towing the vehicle, and it would have been a 31.6-mile haul.
Talking to Another Dealership: a Pattern Emerges
I called the other dealership to see if they could dig up the service record of what had been done and whether there was any warranty coverage relevant to my present situation. The representative was uncooperative, and only on my repeated insistence did he retrieve the records.
He said that provided that no more than a certain number of miles had been accumulated on the car since the work was done, the warranty should still be in effect. I asked him what the record showed for work performed. Only a vague reference to a fix of a wire, he said.
I explained to him the current situation with the ignition and asked if that might be any chance that it would pertain to the work they did. He said he doubted it, because if it were, it would have surely failed by now.
I asked him whether that meant that the dealership's warranties weren't really for the full duration that they said on paper. He hemmed and hawed, but I eventually got him to call the other dealership. About an hour later, I got a voice mail from the dealership which had the minivan, saying that the work they did had nothing to do with the problem I was currently having.
I called my mom, who had worked a decade and a half with the service departments of many dealerships and knew how things worked. She said to try to make them cover some of the costs if the diagnosis proved to be wrong, and if all else failed, escalate the case with the car manufacturer itself because dealerships were very conscientious about remaining in good standing with the brands they represent. She also said to make sure they ran a check on any service bulletins issued for my vehicle to find out whether this was a known issue. I did some searching on the net myself and found that there are plenty of others who have run into this issue.
Biting the Bullet
I called the dealer who had the minivan and told them that I was dissatisfied with the situation. The delay in getting a part and the expense of replacing it required a substantial commitment in time, money, and hardship on my end. Yet, they were up to this point unwilling to make any commitments on their end. I enumerated all the things that had needed repair over the past few years and that the failure of a computer component with so many of these models over a period of five or six years reflected badly on the workmanship of their products.
I asked him why I should do business with them at all. He kept telling me that there was nothing else they could do but say that this "was a start" toward getting the van fixed. Realizing that we needed to do something about the van, I gave him the authorization to order the part and get the work done, but in addition I was going to file a complaint with Chrysler regarding the way that both his dealership and the other had treated me.
What Chrysler Thinks of Its Customers
Later that afternoon, I visited your website to find a number to call so that I could lodge a complaint. Using the number listed on the U.S. contact information page, I placed a call. After listening to the options provided by the auto attendant, none of which applied to my situation, I hit zero and was put on hold.
The line was answered by someone with an accent which sounded Indian. I told the agent that I wanted to file a complaint about my interactions with a Dodge dealership. I gave him a brief synopsis of the problem, to which he could provide only the following solutions:
At the end of my conversation, I verified that the agent's call center was indeed located in India.
In your thank-you note, you mention how the U.S. is home to 74 % of its employees. What you don't mention is that some of the 26 % who aren't are tasked with giving customers unsatisfactory service.
Where I Stand
I am extremely dissatisfied with the quality of Chrysler and Dodge as a brand for two main reasons:
Regarding each of these points:
In your thank you note, you say that Chrysler is committed to "Providing cars and trucks you want to buy, enjoy driving, and will want to buy again." Implicit in that statement is that in the past, your company fell short of this goal, and that getting a taxpayer financed lifeline will help you mend your ways.
Personally, I don't think that simply saying, "OK, we'll promise to do better from now on is enough." I think it's also important for Chrysler as a company to own up to its past history of making inferior products and lessen the burden of the true costs of ownership of its products.
Think about it this way... there are a lot of people out there who, like myself, have been burned by purchasing your products, and will never consider Chrysler in the future automobile purchases. They paid once at the dealership, twice at the service department, and now a third time by backing loans to you. By reaching out to correct past mistakes, you are dealing with the well your company poisoned in the past.
Now onto the issue of customer/dealer relations. The dealership that currently is working on my car boasts on its website a "Five Star Dealership" status. On that page, I read:
At no point in my interaction with the either Dodge dealership have I felt that they take the the credo of "putting the customer first" seriously. And the fact that you entrusted an offshore call center to handle customer complaints reinforces the idea that Chrysler really doesn't care.
Unlike your employees, who will keep their jobs because of tax dollars, my estranged spouse lost her job with no taxpayer financed bailout. Also given that most of your stock is held by a wealthy private equity firm looking to avoid losses, it's really hard for me to be sympathetic to your plight.
Why this Letter Appears in a Blog
The rise of the net has changed the way businesses relate to the public. At one time, a slick ad campaign and a resourceful public relations firm were all that a large corporation needed to help protect its brand. Word of mouth could hurt, but an individual's complaints were limited to just friends and neighbors. A company could stand to ignore its disgruntled customers.
Now there are websites that aggregate customer complaints so that one can get a glimpse of the frequency of product defects. Bloggers, like me, can detail their experiences in posts. Those posts get picked up by search engines, which tend to be fonder of blogs than corporate press releases. The net gives a platform for others to file a rebuttal against the public relations narratives.
Given that I have all but exhausted my options for dealing with Chrysler, I have decided to make my case with this open letter, so that others may know my story. To those who have encountered similar problems, they will know that they are not alone. And I will encourage the readers of this post to write their legislators to let them know that they don't want one more dime spent bailing out your company.
Sincerely,
2amsomewhere
The Associated Press is reporting that on Friday, your company received a $4 billion bridge loan from the U.S. Treasury Dept.
This loan was hardly a surprise, given all the press that has been devoted to the worsening situation of the three big domestic car manufacturers. And I know that your company was especially thrilled about the coming bailout because earlier this week, your company spent money on web ads, like the one I saw in my Gmail account earlier this week (click image for full size):
The ad linked to a page at Chrysler's website, which contained a personal message from you thanking us, the American taxpayers, for investing in your company, and supposedly by extension, the U.S. in general.
Despite this expression of gratitude on behalf of your company, I cannot, based on my experiences as a Dodge owner, believe that this money is being well spent. Moreover, I have decided to actively oppose any efforts for your organization to secure additional funding at taxpayers expense.
Allow me to share my story with you...
My Introduction to Dodge
I am a 39 year-old software engineer, currenly separated, with my estranged spouse in possession of a currently non-operational 2003 Dodge Caravan. She is currently unemployed, having lost her job in the middle of December.
Back in early 2005, my wife and I were expecting our second child. At the time, we had a 2000 Saturn L Series 4-door sedan and a 1991 Chevrolet Cavalier, which was on its last legs. She wanted a minivan badly, but we were in no financial situation to buy a new vehicle because we had already taken on a large amount of debt for an adoption two and a half years prior.
Around that time she noticed that someone down the street was selling a Caravan for a little over $7,000. Because the minivan had been a leased vehicle, it had racked up a lot of miles, close to 70,000, if I recall correctly.
I was suspicious that that the seller might be engaging in a curbstoning scam, so I purchased a CARFAX report to do some due diligence. The history of the vehicle matched the seller's account, and it had not incurred any adverse events. We also had a mechanic take a look at, who said the one of the tires questionable, so the seller had them replaced. After that, we bit the bullet but hedged our bet by purchasing an extended warranty from the credit union where we got the loan.
A History of Issues
Over the past four years, the car has racked up around 30,000 miles. Over that time the following adverse events have happened:
- The blower for the heating and air conditioning failed at an expense of $400.
- The transmission failed, requiring a rebuild. Fortunately it was covered by the warranty, but the dealership took over two weeks to get it fixed.
- The hood release lever broke, twice, over the last two years. The plastic latch failed in the same location each time.
- A resistor for the blower failed, at an another expense of $400.
- Repair of a broken wire in the ignition.
- A power steering pump failed, costing about $400 to fix.
Over the past year, we also got new brakes and tires for the vehicle, which was to be expected.
However, the cumulative experience itemized above pales in comparison to the experiences I have been through in the last week and a half.
The Big Breakdown
On Christmas Eve, I took the minivan to have lunch with my mother and my kids. After finishing lunch, about 3 in the afternoon, I attempted to start the minivan, only to find that the dashboard lights would come on and nothing else. A jumpstart did no good.
I had the vehicle towed to a mechanic, who looked at it on the 26th. They said that there was a short in the ignition circuit, but they couldn't be certain where the problem was because their wiring schematics didn't have enough detail. They also noted that the fuse for the circuit was rated for a larger current than what it should have been. They recommended that I take it to the nearest Dodge dealership, which was about 4 miles away.
Taking it to a Dealership: Customer Relationship Mismanagement
On the 28th, I visited the dealership's website to find contact information for service. The dealership is owned by a company which has three such dealerships in the metro area. All three share a common entry webpage, but you select which dealership's website will be displayed from a row of icons on the page. I clicked on the link for the dealership in question, and then used a link on the site's navigation bar to complete a web form that would file a service request.
The next day, Monday, I got a call from one of the other two dealerships, which informed me that they had received my service request, and judging from the location information on the form, I probably wanted to get in touch with one of the other dealerships.
I acknowledged that he was correct, but rather than offering to forward my request to the other dealership or even transfer the call, he instead asked me to take down a number to call and which menu option to select when I got there. Rather than taking ownership of the problem, he simply offloaded it back on me. This is not good customer relationship management, in my opinion.
So I got in touch with the dealer and asked if they could make arrangements to have the vehicle towed from the mechanic to their dealership, assuming they had a towing service they preferred to work with. Instead he off-rolled the issue back to me, giving the phone number of a towing service so that I could make arrangements.
To the best of my knowledge, the vehicle was on the dealership's premises by early afternoon of the 29th. By late next morning, I got a call from the dealership's service representative, indicating that they had taken a look at the van, and they weren't sure what was causing the problem because they couldn't communicate with the Powertrain Control Module (PCM). They said they thought that component was fried and needed replacing. Moreover, it was going to take at least a week to get the part, and they estimated that this would cost $810.57.
This was communicated to me very matter-of-factly, with no apologies with regards to the expense, the delay in getting the part, or the uncertainty over what was needed to fix the problem. What's worse, the service representative tried to apply pressure on me to make an immediate decision because they needed to get the order for the part in by 3 pm.
Recalling that we had earlier problems about a year ago with the broken wire in the ignition, and that repair work was done at another Dodge dealer within the past year, I brought up the possibility that area they needed to work on may still be under warranty.
I gave him the name and the number of the other Dodge dealership. He expressed an unwillingness to talk to them, so I said I call them and try to put them in touch with him. He then told me that if I was going to try to invoke the warranty, it was a better idea for me to have the car towed to the other dealership, which didn't make much sense since it would be the third time I would be towing the vehicle, and it would have been a 31.6-mile haul.
Talking to Another Dealership: a Pattern Emerges
I called the other dealership to see if they could dig up the service record of what had been done and whether there was any warranty coverage relevant to my present situation. The representative was uncooperative, and only on my repeated insistence did he retrieve the records.
He said that provided that no more than a certain number of miles had been accumulated on the car since the work was done, the warranty should still be in effect. I asked him what the record showed for work performed. Only a vague reference to a fix of a wire, he said.
I explained to him the current situation with the ignition and asked if that might be any chance that it would pertain to the work they did. He said he doubted it, because if it were, it would have surely failed by now.
I asked him whether that meant that the dealership's warranties weren't really for the full duration that they said on paper. He hemmed and hawed, but I eventually got him to call the other dealership. About an hour later, I got a voice mail from the dealership which had the minivan, saying that the work they did had nothing to do with the problem I was currently having.
I called my mom, who had worked a decade and a half with the service departments of many dealerships and knew how things worked. She said to try to make them cover some of the costs if the diagnosis proved to be wrong, and if all else failed, escalate the case with the car manufacturer itself because dealerships were very conscientious about remaining in good standing with the brands they represent. She also said to make sure they ran a check on any service bulletins issued for my vehicle to find out whether this was a known issue. I did some searching on the net myself and found that there are plenty of others who have run into this issue.
Biting the Bullet
I called the dealer who had the minivan and told them that I was dissatisfied with the situation. The delay in getting a part and the expense of replacing it required a substantial commitment in time, money, and hardship on my end. Yet, they were up to this point unwilling to make any commitments on their end. I enumerated all the things that had needed repair over the past few years and that the failure of a computer component with so many of these models over a period of five or six years reflected badly on the workmanship of their products.
I asked him why I should do business with them at all. He kept telling me that there was nothing else they could do but say that this "was a start" toward getting the van fixed. Realizing that we needed to do something about the van, I gave him the authorization to order the part and get the work done, but in addition I was going to file a complaint with Chrysler regarding the way that both his dealership and the other had treated me.
What Chrysler Thinks of Its Customers
Later that afternoon, I visited your website to find a number to call so that I could lodge a complaint. Using the number listed on the U.S. contact information page, I placed a call. After listening to the options provided by the auto attendant, none of which applied to my situation, I hit zero and was put on hold.
The line was answered by someone with an accent which sounded Indian. I told the agent that I wanted to file a complaint about my interactions with a Dodge dealership. I gave him a brief synopsis of the problem, to which he could provide only the following solutions:
- A list of other "Five Star" Dodge dealerships in the metro area.
- A mailing address to which I could file a report for possible reimbursement from Chrysler, should this component be the subject of a manufacturer recall.
At the end of my conversation, I verified that the agent's call center was indeed located in India.
In your thank-you note, you mention how the U.S. is home to 74 % of its employees. What you don't mention is that some of the 26 % who aren't are tasked with giving customers unsatisfactory service.
Where I Stand
I am extremely dissatisfied with the quality of Chrysler and Dodge as a brand for two main reasons:
- Several critical components of the Dodge Caravan have shown to have poor durability, at much expense to us.
- Your dealerships have been at times indifferent and downright unhelpful in dealing with our problems.
Regarding each of these points:
In your thank you note, you say that Chrysler is committed to "Providing cars and trucks you want to buy, enjoy driving, and will want to buy again." Implicit in that statement is that in the past, your company fell short of this goal, and that getting a taxpayer financed lifeline will help you mend your ways.
Personally, I don't think that simply saying, "OK, we'll promise to do better from now on is enough." I think it's also important for Chrysler as a company to own up to its past history of making inferior products and lessen the burden of the true costs of ownership of its products.
Think about it this way... there are a lot of people out there who, like myself, have been burned by purchasing your products, and will never consider Chrysler in the future automobile purchases. They paid once at the dealership, twice at the service department, and now a third time by backing loans to you. By reaching out to correct past mistakes, you are dealing with the well your company poisoned in the past.
Now onto the issue of customer/dealer relations. The dealership that currently is working on my car boasts on its website a "Five Star Dealership" status. On that page, I read:
Five Star dealerships are required to follow a strict set of training, facility and process requirements - all designed to put you, the customer, first. In fact, Chrysler LLC only grants this status to dealerships that consistently meet Five Star score standards on Customer Surveys. And these standards are rigorously monitored and maintained. Chrysler LLC personnel validate dealership compliance annually. Maintaining Five Star status is a continual process that requires self-evaluation and ongoing reviews by Chrysler LLC. If a dealership is not compliant, the de-certification process begins and status is revoked.
At no point in my interaction with the either Dodge dealership have I felt that they take the the credo of "putting the customer first" seriously. And the fact that you entrusted an offshore call center to handle customer complaints reinforces the idea that Chrysler really doesn't care.
Unlike your employees, who will keep their jobs because of tax dollars, my estranged spouse lost her job with no taxpayer financed bailout. Also given that most of your stock is held by a wealthy private equity firm looking to avoid losses, it's really hard for me to be sympathetic to your plight.
Why this Letter Appears in a Blog
The rise of the net has changed the way businesses relate to the public. At one time, a slick ad campaign and a resourceful public relations firm were all that a large corporation needed to help protect its brand. Word of mouth could hurt, but an individual's complaints were limited to just friends and neighbors. A company could stand to ignore its disgruntled customers.
Now there are websites that aggregate customer complaints so that one can get a glimpse of the frequency of product defects. Bloggers, like me, can detail their experiences in posts. Those posts get picked up by search engines, which tend to be fonder of blogs than corporate press releases. The net gives a platform for others to file a rebuttal against the public relations narratives.
Given that I have all but exhausted my options for dealing with Chrysler, I have decided to make my case with this open letter, so that others may know my story. To those who have encountered similar problems, they will know that they are not alone. And I will encourage the readers of this post to write their legislators to let them know that they don't want one more dime spent bailing out your company.
Sincerely,
2amsomewhere
Friday, January 02, 2009
29,048
Number of lines of code I have committed in a year's worth of work. That doesn't include a few commits made in November that were accidentally committed under the administrative alias of
readonly, which should add a few hundred more lines of code.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Cell Phone Silliness I: Down on the Corner
One of the things I had hoped to accomplished by getting a cell phone with a camera was to start doing some photoblogging. I haven't been very diligent with that.
A couple weeks ago, we had freezing rain that was bad enough to cause several accidents, including one that wound up wiping out a good sized fiberglass light pole at the entrance to the neighborhood where I live. The debris got cleaned up about a week ago. There was an attempt to reconstruct the lower portion of the pole, but as you can see in the photo below, the results were wanting (click for full size image).
I love the do-it-yourself page at despair.com.
Happy New Year, everyone!
A couple weeks ago, we had freezing rain that was bad enough to cause several accidents, including one that wound up wiping out a good sized fiberglass light pole at the entrance to the neighborhood where I live. The debris got cleaned up about a week ago. There was an attempt to reconstruct the lower portion of the pole, but as you can see in the photo below, the results were wanting (click for full size image).
I love the do-it-yourself page at despair.com.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Monday, December 29, 2008
xkcd... Painfully too Funny Sometimes
Although I know that my own marriage was on the decline long before I started blogging here, I could see where casual readers of relationship blogs might be tempted to think this way about blogging.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Should I Out the Troll?
I received a nasty comment from a reader yesterday afternoon. I don't know who the person is, but I think it might do the person some good for them to realize that anonymity is not absolute. I'm tempted to post the Sitemeter log entry corresponding to the visitor, which was the only hit at the time that the comment was posted, but that might be too retaliatory. I've opened up a poll in the sidebar that will remain open until the 3rd. Let me know what you think.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
I'm Pretty Sure I Didn't Sign Up for This...
Today was the day I was supposed to do lunch with my mom, and I did, but at a steep price.
In addition to lunch, I had made plans to run some errands, which included dropping the spiral slice ham off at STBX's apartment, getting a power strip and extension cord for the kids' new electronic gaming hardware and a gift bag for the kids' gift to the STBX.
STBX asked me if I wanted to take the kids with me to see my mom. I thought it was a good idea, checked with my mom to see if she was OK with it, and then proceeded according to plan. This seemed like the Right Thing to Do at the time because it allowed me to have some time with the kids so that they could help decorate the gift bag to give it their personal touch and then fill the bag.
At the STBX's request, I took her minivan because she thinks my car is too clunky to haul the kids across town, and she does have a point because I do need to get some new tires.
We stopped by my mom's apartment, and then we followed her to a casual dining establishment not too far away. Service was slow, so we were there for about two hours even though we had been seated right away.
After lunch, I loaded up the kids in the van and tried starting the engine. No dice. Dashboard lights came on fine, but the fuel gauge did not budge when I turned the key. Moreover, the engine doesn't try to turn over. On the way up, I noticed that the gauge registered at half a tank, so unless the gauge was lying earlier, I still had plenty of fuel.
I call my mom and she comes back to help. Several years ago, she had worked the service desk for an auto dealership, so she knew about basic troubleshooting. She drew a blank.
I finally had to call STBX to come up with my car to pick us up. I contacted a nearby towing service to haul the van to a car repair shop not two blocks from the site. One of my mom's friends had been a customer of theirs for a long time and had good things to say about them.
STBX drove me home and dropped me off a little over an hour ago. She has my car now, and is eating dinner with her best friend's family. After that they will head over to the friend's church for a Christmas Eve service.
The working plan is for her to pick up the dog and me after they are done socializing, which should be around 10 pm. I'll be staying the night over at her apartment, sleeping on the floor, so I can be there when the kids wake up and open presents.
The repair shop is open on Friday, so with some luck maybe they can diagnose and fix it in time for STBX to have her van back by the weekend so that we can use it to travel down to The Small Town together for my family gathering on Saturday.
The self soothing skills are stretched a bit thin right now.
In addition to lunch, I had made plans to run some errands, which included dropping the spiral slice ham off at STBX's apartment, getting a power strip and extension cord for the kids' new electronic gaming hardware and a gift bag for the kids' gift to the STBX.
STBX asked me if I wanted to take the kids with me to see my mom. I thought it was a good idea, checked with my mom to see if she was OK with it, and then proceeded according to plan. This seemed like the Right Thing to Do at the time because it allowed me to have some time with the kids so that they could help decorate the gift bag to give it their personal touch and then fill the bag.
At the STBX's request, I took her minivan because she thinks my car is too clunky to haul the kids across town, and she does have a point because I do need to get some new tires.
We stopped by my mom's apartment, and then we followed her to a casual dining establishment not too far away. Service was slow, so we were there for about two hours even though we had been seated right away.
After lunch, I loaded up the kids in the van and tried starting the engine. No dice. Dashboard lights came on fine, but the fuel gauge did not budge when I turned the key. Moreover, the engine doesn't try to turn over. On the way up, I noticed that the gauge registered at half a tank, so unless the gauge was lying earlier, I still had plenty of fuel.
I call my mom and she comes back to help. Several years ago, she had worked the service desk for an auto dealership, so she knew about basic troubleshooting. She drew a blank.
I finally had to call STBX to come up with my car to pick us up. I contacted a nearby towing service to haul the van to a car repair shop not two blocks from the site. One of my mom's friends had been a customer of theirs for a long time and had good things to say about them.
STBX drove me home and dropped me off a little over an hour ago. She has my car now, and is eating dinner with her best friend's family. After that they will head over to the friend's church for a Christmas Eve service.
The working plan is for her to pick up the dog and me after they are done socializing, which should be around 10 pm. I'll be staying the night over at her apartment, sleeping on the floor, so I can be there when the kids wake up and open presents.
The repair shop is open on Friday, so with some luck maybe they can diagnose and fix it in time for STBX to have her van back by the weekend so that we can use it to travel down to The Small Town together for my family gathering on Saturday.
The self soothing skills are stretched a bit thin right now.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Catching up to Christmas
rezult said...
Anais wrote...
the Drunken Housewife said...
anais-pf said...
Sixdegrees said...
I have no idea what you're talking about... so here's a reindeer with some antlers on its head.
I photographed the reindeer on display on the Circle during lunch hour today.
But seriously... I get the message... Sorry about the lack of updates.
I started writing a post on the 13th, but it was taking way too much time to get everything written out, and it got hard to organize all of the parallel story lines, so I took a break. That was a big mistake because I had trouble mustering the energy to return to it. Now that things have hit a bit of a lull, I'll try to flush out the backlog of information.
Work
The job continues to go well. I survived the big Not-Safe-For-Work mess that I wrote about on Nov. 16. We wound up delaying the release until the following week so that I could get a rudimentary content filter working.
The code went live on the following Tuesday, and it has been doing its job pretty well. I have noticed that our own employees have been writing posts using some of the links the content suggestion system has been recommending, so people must find it useful.
The filtering code is set up to log every time it blocks an RSS item based on a filter match, and some of the entries have been very amusing.
I had mixed feelings about the inclusion of the word "gay" on the list, given that it can be used as a term of self-identification in addition to an epithet. What would happend if we landed a client that caters to the GLBT market for something like travel and tourism? Wouldn't most of their content recommendations get blocked? If that happens, I'll probably have a stronger case to make for removing the word from the list.
Some other quirks for the filter... hits involving the names Dick and Mick are omitted because they appear in the list as potential racial epithets. References to "ho" both in the Christmas and name contexts get blocked.
Then last week, there was a side-splitter. For one of our own keyword searches, the following article turned up in the content suggestion -- "It's A Wonderful Orgasm: Violet Blue's list of hot holiday gifts we can all afford". It was an article on the San Francisco Chronicle, and it included a survey of gift ideas for adult toys. So the word orgasm has been added to the filter list.
Although things have been quiet on this blog, I have been in a good streak of writing posts for my work blog. I had gotten somewhat lazy over the summer, putting up only a few posts each month at best.
At the beginning of November, the marketing team sponsored a contest to encourage content creation, offering a catered lunch to whichever department created the greatest number of posts. Our department lost by a few, which was a disappointment, but I continued to blog, putting up 30 posts in November without any fanfare about NaBloPoMo.
The effort paid off, and at the monthly company meeting in mid-December, I was awarded the "nifty gift" for individual blogger output, which was a $50 gift card with the big online book seller in the Emerald City.
The company Christmas party was held on Dec. 5, and it was quite a deal. The CEO hosted it out at his house in the east rural suburbs. A Tapas style meal was prepared by a chef, with each mini-course paired with a beer and wine selection, which helped moderate the alcohol consumption.
I had my quarterly review on Dec. 9, and I got pretty good marks. My boss said that he has noticed that I still have a "reluctant leader" streak, and he wants me to assume more a more prominent leadership role within the group. So the action items from my review are designed to force me into that role and take on some new things to build my confidence. I found his assessment to be pretty accurate, and I'm glad he's continuing to push me in a direction of growth.
On the 15th, a coworker of mine and I walked to the State House to see our state's electors meet and cast their ballots for president. Given that it had been 44 years since our state's electoral votes swayed this way, and that it was the election of the first African American president, I wanted to be a witness to this little piece of history. We were not disappointed.
The meeting took place inside the House Chamber, with access granted to those holding tickets. We weren't sure about the basis for handing out tickets, but our guess was that they were handed out to party loyalists. We were told that if not all the tickets were taken, we'd be allowed to sit in unfilled seats.
As we were waiting in the hall, we saw this tall guy in glasses and a dreamsicle orange sweater walking around. My coworker told me he thought the guy was Mo Rocca. I thought he was BSing me because he is so good at the deadpan humor. We debated back and forth why in the world would this guy be at the Indiana electors' meeting. It just didn't make sense.
It was a good thing that the coworker asked me to get some photos with my cell phone because it turned out that not only was it Mo, but he also wrote about the experience on his blog over at AOL's website. The picture I hasd snapped was when he was talking to the alternate elector identified as John Bonecutter on his blog.
As the meeting was called to order, we were asked by an elderly woman whether we wanted tickets to get in. We didn't have to have our arms twisted too much. We took the tickets, offered up our thanks and rushed to find our seats.
The meeting took about an hour and a half, with some parts of it being way less formal than others. As the ballots for president were distributed, one of the electors belted out a question to the state Secretary of State who was officiating, "Do we need to show photo ID?" The question was a barb making light of a law that has been on the books for a few years, which requires proof of identity at the polling place.
Our department had some holiday festivities of its own on the 18th. Back when I hired on with the company, I wrote in my introductory e-mail that I made a great pot of chili. Throughout the year, my boss ribbed me, saying I needed to make some of it and share with the department. I decided to finally follow through by making a batch of it that morning and bringing it into the office so that we could eat it after the daily status meeting at 11 am. Other coworkers joined in, making sides and desserts. It was well received.
Our boss planned an afternoon outing at the same multistory bar/theme park establishment that the big blogger get together group went to exactly two months prior. We played some pool and enjoyed some appetizers.
Then we had a White Elephant gift exchange with a twist. An attempt to steal someone's gift could be challenged by the person from whom the gift was being taken. All the person had to do was agree to perform an "Act of Shame".
Some of the acts included proclaiming the love for the defended gift to a total stranger on the premises. I had to portray a dancer getting mauled by a bear. There was a competitive challenge that involved a crab walk race.
The gift I put into the exchange was a set of humorous food containers that I figured would be a hit because there are a number of people who bring their lunches in to work. The gift got stolen three times.
I wound up with a nice ensemble that included one of those drinking birds and two hand made items -- a rubberband powered airplane that used a styrofoam egg carton parts for wings,
and an insect made of pipe cleaners for legs, a watch battery for the body, and some LEDs for eyes.
When the bug is jiggled, the antennae make contact with some wires that complete the circuit to which the LEDs and battery are attached, so the LEDs flicker. The kids loved it!
I barely missed getting my enrollment paperwork for health insurance done. The deadline set by our benefits administrator was Dec. 19th. I had to overcome a lot of inertia to puzzle my way through the maze of two network plans and the four variations of each. Further complicating things was that the network that I had chosen the prior year was no longer being offered.
I wound up going with the new plan because it allowed my kids to continue seeing their pediatrician. The downside is that the monthly premium for comparable coverage for my old plan is $72 more per month. I spent the night of Dec. 17th filling out the paper work and then exchanged e-mails with the benefits rep to verify that I could run the paperwork over to their offices up on the northeast side of town on Friday. But then the STBX IMed me at work asking to use my car on Friday because she wanted to take her minivan into the shop to have a noise checked out.
I agreed to let her do that and wound up faxing the paperwork in because the instructions listed that as an option. I got an e-mail from the benefits rep on Friday morning acknowledging receipt of the fax but then said that she needed originals of two of the forms, so I had to mail those out. Fortunately I was still able to get enrolled in the plan.
As for the holidays, I have the rest of this week off. Next week, we have New Year's Day off.
Personal
Moving to the personal front, on the day before Thanksgiving, the STBX and I took the kids to see The Lion King musical, which was making a tour stop in town. I spent Thanksgiving day with my brother's up in the northeast burbs, while STBX and the kids had their own celebration.
I picked up the girls on Thanksgiving night so that they could spend Friday with me. Originally, STBX had planned on working a concession stand for the girls' dance school at the big football stadium for the high school football championships, but they didn't have enough volunteers, so she got the day to herself.
I took the girls downtown on the night of Black Friday to see the ceremonial powering on of the lights at the monument. Rather than deal with the massive crowds and chilly air, I took them up to my office, part of which overlooks the area, so we had a prime view. We passed the time leading up to the lighting by watching DVDs on my laptop. They were amazed by the size of the light strands, but they were disappointed that they couldn't see the fireworks being shot off at the end of the show.
Although this picture was taken about a week ago, it gives you an idea of what the lights on the monument look like. Those of you who came to the get together in October may remember me leading you for a walk around the circle that chilly Saturday evening.
Over that weekend after Thanksgiving, I developed a pretty awful cold that wiped me out so badly I took Monday off and stayed home. The STBX played co-dependent sent me a text on my cell phone in the afternoon, asking me where I was because she didn't see me signed onto work IM. I replied informing her that I had taken the day off due to a bad cold. She wrote back sarcastically saying, "Wow that must be some cold. I hope that are able to manage without you for the day."
Later that evening, I got an e-mail from her.
I have no idea when or how she found my profile.
I wound up taking the profile private rather than have to deal with that drama. I also wrote back to apologize for the way my remarks made her feel. The last thing I needed to do was have this process turn hostile. The next few times that I saw STBX in person, she didn't say anything further about it.
Our kids weekends changed up a bit in December. Because STBX's mom was coming up for the weekend of Dec. 6 - 7, STBX asked if she could keep the girls that weekend, which I agreed to. I still met up with them on Saturday last weekend so that we could go to my older daughter's school's "Snack with Santa", which involved pictures with Santa, lots of mini crafts, and a pizza.
Late that evening, I got a call from my stepmom letting me know that they had driven from The Small Town, about an hour south, to the hospital in my town, the one with the large lighthouse beacon on the roof. My dad had not been feeling well for the evening, and complained that part of his face felt droopy. A blood pressure check showed high numbers, so they were afraid he was having another stroke.
They opted for the hospital in town because they didn't trust the local hospital to take the situation seriously. After all, this was the same place that had sent STBX's dad home back in May 2005 when he was having a stroke, claiming they couldn't find anything that would indicate this.
The hospital's ER was very responsive, getting a CAT scan and X-Ray done within a couple hours of their arrival. They got him on pain medication and he got some rest, admitting him early Sunday morning. He stayed at the hospital until Tuesday afternoon while they did some additional tests. A doppler test showed that his arteries were fine.
They weren't sure what caused his problems on Saturday night, but they were certain that whatever it was, it wasn't a stroke. The high blood pressure might have been due to his stress level contributed to the high blood pressure. Thankfully, he has been doing fine since his release from the hospital.
I didn't get a chance to come up and visit while he was up here. The Sunday while this was all happening, my older daughter developed a nasty flu bug that had her getting sick and feeling puny, so I came over to STBX's apartment to watch her while she took her mom and our younger daughter back to The Small Town. Before she left, STBX made mention that although she had been angry about the ad, she thought I was till being a good dad to the girls.
On the 9th was my daughter's Daisy Girl Scout Christmas party, which included a pitch in dinner. Ironically enough, on the same day that STBX sent the nastygram about the dating profile, she had sent me an e-vite to this event. I volunteered to make some chili, which seemed to be well received because there was not a bit of it, nor the cornbread with which it was served, left.
My daughter's Christmas dance show was on 19th. The older daughter did a tap number to "Here Comes Santa Clause", and my younger daughter did "Jingle Bells". Both had a blast.
The STBX's job ran out on the 13th, as I mentioned in a prior post. I believe she has filed for unemployment, but she didn't start applying for jobs until the 21st, and even then I'm not sure if she was filing those applications in good faith.
She asked me for help with writing her resume over that weekend that she filed the applications. I had given her a copy of mine to use as a template, but she had not gotten far with it. I went through old pay stub records to deduce when she worked at which roles at her old employer so that she had the time line accurate, and I wound up helping with a cover letter.
My dad had high blood pressure over the weekend as well, so he went to the ER in The Small Town. They couldn't find anything wrong otherwise, so they gave him some nitro and pain meds. He saw his doctor on Monday and seems to be doing better. It bugs me that they haven't been able to pinpoint the cause for this yet.
As far as Christmas plans go, I am having lunch with my mom today. I am spending a good chunk of Christmas day at STBX's apartment with her and the kids. On Saturday, STBX, the kids, and I will be traveling down to The Small Town to spend it with my dad and stepmom. I have been invited to go down to The Small Town to celebrate Christmas with her family on New Year's Day, but I haven't committed to that yet.
Dating
Have-the-T-Shirt joked in a comment that I had way too much time on my hands and needed to start dating. STBX's protestations aside, I haven't really been out there shopping around. I have made a few friends from the dating services.
One works in the software biz, and we've met for dinner a few times, but that is strictly platonic. She has been looking to strike up a relationship with a coworker who is leaving the company at the end of the year. We kvetch about travails of spouses estranged and talk shop, but that's about it. It's kind of nice to have someone from around this area who works in the software biz, but she will be moving up to the north side soon to shorten her grueling commute, so there is a good chance that this friendship may wane with distance or the kindling of her desired relationship with the other guy.
There is someone with whom I've chatted pretty regularly over the past couple of months. She works at a small private college about 40 miles from here, and there may be a chance we might meet up for drinks, but we are at different phases of our lives, and the age gap is a bit too far for comfort. She is the person I can count on for the overanalytical conversations.
Finally, there someone up in the north burbs who is in the limbo stages of divorce herself. She works downtown, a few blocks away from my office. We've met a few times after hours. Her estranged spouse has already fallen in love with someone else and is itching to get married to her. Neither of us are looking for anything serious, so that could wind up being a recurring FWB situation.
Once the divorce is final, I will probably start dating more actively.
That's about all the news with me. Did I leave anything out?
Yes. 2am, what is up with you? working too hard? seasonal blues?
Anais wrote...
If you would update more often, it wouldn't take you as long to write and polish!
Expectantly yours,
Anais
the Drunken Housewife said...
Saturday??? You mean the one over a week ago?
anais-pf said...
Ahem.
Sixdegrees said...
Tick, tock, tick, tock...
I have no idea what you're talking about... so here's a reindeer with some antlers on its head.
I photographed the reindeer on display on the Circle during lunch hour today.
But seriously... I get the message... Sorry about the lack of updates.
I started writing a post on the 13th, but it was taking way too much time to get everything written out, and it got hard to organize all of the parallel story lines, so I took a break. That was a big mistake because I had trouble mustering the energy to return to it. Now that things have hit a bit of a lull, I'll try to flush out the backlog of information.
Work
The job continues to go well. I survived the big Not-Safe-For-Work mess that I wrote about on Nov. 16. We wound up delaying the release until the following week so that I could get a rudimentary content filter working.
The code went live on the following Tuesday, and it has been doing its job pretty well. I have noticed that our own employees have been writing posts using some of the links the content suggestion system has been recommending, so people must find it useful.
The filtering code is set up to log every time it blocks an RSS item based on a filter match, and some of the entries have been very amusing.
- A review for the DVD The Gay Bed and Breakfast of Terror
- A review of beers titled "Stuck in hell and the theme is Christmas, Part 1"
- An article about a bar-sponsored celebration in Huntley, IL, called the Turkey Testicle Festival
- A gift guide for gay parents and their children
- An opinion piece by a gay playwright blasting Pres. Elect Obama's decision to have Rick Warren speak at his inauguration (was turned up by keyword searching "Christian Teaching Jobs")
I had mixed feelings about the inclusion of the word "gay" on the list, given that it can be used as a term of self-identification in addition to an epithet. What would happend if we landed a client that caters to the GLBT market for something like travel and tourism? Wouldn't most of their content recommendations get blocked? If that happens, I'll probably have a stronger case to make for removing the word from the list.
Some other quirks for the filter... hits involving the names Dick and Mick are omitted because they appear in the list as potential racial epithets. References to "ho" both in the Christmas and name contexts get blocked.
Then last week, there was a side-splitter. For one of our own keyword searches, the following article turned up in the content suggestion -- "It's A Wonderful Orgasm: Violet Blue's list of hot holiday gifts we can all afford". It was an article on the San Francisco Chronicle, and it included a survey of gift ideas for adult toys. So the word orgasm has been added to the filter list.
Although things have been quiet on this blog, I have been in a good streak of writing posts for my work blog. I had gotten somewhat lazy over the summer, putting up only a few posts each month at best.
At the beginning of November, the marketing team sponsored a contest to encourage content creation, offering a catered lunch to whichever department created the greatest number of posts. Our department lost by a few, which was a disappointment, but I continued to blog, putting up 30 posts in November without any fanfare about NaBloPoMo.
The effort paid off, and at the monthly company meeting in mid-December, I was awarded the "nifty gift" for individual blogger output, which was a $50 gift card with the big online book seller in the Emerald City.
The company Christmas party was held on Dec. 5, and it was quite a deal. The CEO hosted it out at his house in the east rural suburbs. A Tapas style meal was prepared by a chef, with each mini-course paired with a beer and wine selection, which helped moderate the alcohol consumption.
I had my quarterly review on Dec. 9, and I got pretty good marks. My boss said that he has noticed that I still have a "reluctant leader" streak, and he wants me to assume more a more prominent leadership role within the group. So the action items from my review are designed to force me into that role and take on some new things to build my confidence. I found his assessment to be pretty accurate, and I'm glad he's continuing to push me in a direction of growth.
On the 15th, a coworker of mine and I walked to the State House to see our state's electors meet and cast their ballots for president. Given that it had been 44 years since our state's electoral votes swayed this way, and that it was the election of the first African American president, I wanted to be a witness to this little piece of history. We were not disappointed.The meeting took place inside the House Chamber, with access granted to those holding tickets. We weren't sure about the basis for handing out tickets, but our guess was that they were handed out to party loyalists. We were told that if not all the tickets were taken, we'd be allowed to sit in unfilled seats.
As we were waiting in the hall, we saw this tall guy in glasses and a dreamsicle orange sweater walking around. My coworker told me he thought the guy was Mo Rocca. I thought he was BSing me because he is so good at the deadpan humor. We debated back and forth why in the world would this guy be at the Indiana electors' meeting. It just didn't make sense.It was a good thing that the coworker asked me to get some photos with my cell phone because it turned out that not only was it Mo, but he also wrote about the experience on his blog over at AOL's website. The picture I hasd snapped was when he was talking to the alternate elector identified as John Bonecutter on his blog.
As the meeting was called to order, we were asked by an elderly woman whether we wanted tickets to get in. We didn't have to have our arms twisted too much. We took the tickets, offered up our thanks and rushed to find our seats.
The meeting took about an hour and a half, with some parts of it being way less formal than others. As the ballots for president were distributed, one of the electors belted out a question to the state Secretary of State who was officiating, "Do we need to show photo ID?" The question was a barb making light of a law that has been on the books for a few years, which requires proof of identity at the polling place.
Our department had some holiday festivities of its own on the 18th. Back when I hired on with the company, I wrote in my introductory e-mail that I made a great pot of chili. Throughout the year, my boss ribbed me, saying I needed to make some of it and share with the department. I decided to finally follow through by making a batch of it that morning and bringing it into the office so that we could eat it after the daily status meeting at 11 am. Other coworkers joined in, making sides and desserts. It was well received.
Our boss planned an afternoon outing at the same multistory bar/theme park establishment that the big blogger get together group went to exactly two months prior. We played some pool and enjoyed some appetizers.
Then we had a White Elephant gift exchange with a twist. An attempt to steal someone's gift could be challenged by the person from whom the gift was being taken. All the person had to do was agree to perform an "Act of Shame".
Some of the acts included proclaiming the love for the defended gift to a total stranger on the premises. I had to portray a dancer getting mauled by a bear. There was a competitive challenge that involved a crab walk race.
The gift I put into the exchange was a set of humorous food containers that I figured would be a hit because there are a number of people who bring their lunches in to work. The gift got stolen three times.
I wound up with a nice ensemble that included one of those drinking birds and two hand made items -- a rubberband powered airplane that used a styrofoam egg carton parts for wings,
and an insect made of pipe cleaners for legs, a watch battery for the body, and some LEDs for eyes.
When the bug is jiggled, the antennae make contact with some wires that complete the circuit to which the LEDs and battery are attached, so the LEDs flicker. The kids loved it!
I barely missed getting my enrollment paperwork for health insurance done. The deadline set by our benefits administrator was Dec. 19th. I had to overcome a lot of inertia to puzzle my way through the maze of two network plans and the four variations of each. Further complicating things was that the network that I had chosen the prior year was no longer being offered.
I wound up going with the new plan because it allowed my kids to continue seeing their pediatrician. The downside is that the monthly premium for comparable coverage for my old plan is $72 more per month. I spent the night of Dec. 17th filling out the paper work and then exchanged e-mails with the benefits rep to verify that I could run the paperwork over to their offices up on the northeast side of town on Friday. But then the STBX IMed me at work asking to use my car on Friday because she wanted to take her minivan into the shop to have a noise checked out.
I agreed to let her do that and wound up faxing the paperwork in because the instructions listed that as an option. I got an e-mail from the benefits rep on Friday morning acknowledging receipt of the fax but then said that she needed originals of two of the forms, so I had to mail those out. Fortunately I was still able to get enrolled in the plan.
As for the holidays, I have the rest of this week off. Next week, we have New Year's Day off.
Personal
Moving to the personal front, on the day before Thanksgiving, the STBX and I took the kids to see The Lion King musical, which was making a tour stop in town. I spent Thanksgiving day with my brother's up in the northeast burbs, while STBX and the kids had their own celebration.
I picked up the girls on Thanksgiving night so that they could spend Friday with me. Originally, STBX had planned on working a concession stand for the girls' dance school at the big football stadium for the high school football championships, but they didn't have enough volunteers, so she got the day to herself.
I took the girls downtown on the night of Black Friday to see the ceremonial powering on of the lights at the monument. Rather than deal with the massive crowds and chilly air, I took them up to my office, part of which overlooks the area, so we had a prime view. We passed the time leading up to the lighting by watching DVDs on my laptop. They were amazed by the size of the light strands, but they were disappointed that they couldn't see the fireworks being shot off at the end of the show.
Although this picture was taken about a week ago, it gives you an idea of what the lights on the monument look like. Those of you who came to the get together in October may remember me leading you for a walk around the circle that chilly Saturday evening.
Over that weekend after Thanksgiving, I developed a pretty awful cold that wiped me out so badly I took Monday off and stayed home. The STBX played co-dependent sent me a text on my cell phone in the afternoon, asking me where I was because she didn't see me signed onto work IM. I replied informing her that I had taken the day off due to a bad cold. She wrote back sarcastically saying, "Wow that must be some cold. I hope that are able to manage without you for the day."
Later that evening, I got an e-mail from her.
Ok,
I suspect you are dating and I know you are on a dating site. Some items on your dating site felt hurtful to me, regarding that I had you on a tight leash and I forced my friends on you. I am fairly sure you won't have to worry about my friends wanting to be friends with you any further. Hopefully you can find someone who caters to all your sexual wants. However I do think we need to get a divorce because I definitely don't feel ok dating or looking for someone else until I am divorced. I know you had said you were compiling paperwork. Is that something you are still doing? If not I can look into getting a lawyer if that is what is the next step.
I really just need to get the divorce started so that I can move forward, like you obviously have.
I have no idea when or how she found my profile.
I wound up taking the profile private rather than have to deal with that drama. I also wrote back to apologize for the way my remarks made her feel. The last thing I needed to do was have this process turn hostile. The next few times that I saw STBX in person, she didn't say anything further about it.
Our kids weekends changed up a bit in December. Because STBX's mom was coming up for the weekend of Dec. 6 - 7, STBX asked if she could keep the girls that weekend, which I agreed to. I still met up with them on Saturday last weekend so that we could go to my older daughter's school's "Snack with Santa", which involved pictures with Santa, lots of mini crafts, and a pizza.
Late that evening, I got a call from my stepmom letting me know that they had driven from The Small Town, about an hour south, to the hospital in my town, the one with the large lighthouse beacon on the roof. My dad had not been feeling well for the evening, and complained that part of his face felt droopy. A blood pressure check showed high numbers, so they were afraid he was having another stroke.
They opted for the hospital in town because they didn't trust the local hospital to take the situation seriously. After all, this was the same place that had sent STBX's dad home back in May 2005 when he was having a stroke, claiming they couldn't find anything that would indicate this.
The hospital's ER was very responsive, getting a CAT scan and X-Ray done within a couple hours of their arrival. They got him on pain medication and he got some rest, admitting him early Sunday morning. He stayed at the hospital until Tuesday afternoon while they did some additional tests. A doppler test showed that his arteries were fine.
They weren't sure what caused his problems on Saturday night, but they were certain that whatever it was, it wasn't a stroke. The high blood pressure might have been due to his stress level contributed to the high blood pressure. Thankfully, he has been doing fine since his release from the hospital.
I didn't get a chance to come up and visit while he was up here. The Sunday while this was all happening, my older daughter developed a nasty flu bug that had her getting sick and feeling puny, so I came over to STBX's apartment to watch her while she took her mom and our younger daughter back to The Small Town. Before she left, STBX made mention that although she had been angry about the ad, she thought I was till being a good dad to the girls.
On the 9th was my daughter's Daisy Girl Scout Christmas party, which included a pitch in dinner. Ironically enough, on the same day that STBX sent the nastygram about the dating profile, she had sent me an e-vite to this event. I volunteered to make some chili, which seemed to be well received because there was not a bit of it, nor the cornbread with which it was served, left.
My daughter's Christmas dance show was on 19th. The older daughter did a tap number to "Here Comes Santa Clause", and my younger daughter did "Jingle Bells". Both had a blast.
The STBX's job ran out on the 13th, as I mentioned in a prior post. I believe she has filed for unemployment, but she didn't start applying for jobs until the 21st, and even then I'm not sure if she was filing those applications in good faith.
She asked me for help with writing her resume over that weekend that she filed the applications. I had given her a copy of mine to use as a template, but she had not gotten far with it. I went through old pay stub records to deduce when she worked at which roles at her old employer so that she had the time line accurate, and I wound up helping with a cover letter.
My dad had high blood pressure over the weekend as well, so he went to the ER in The Small Town. They couldn't find anything wrong otherwise, so they gave him some nitro and pain meds. He saw his doctor on Monday and seems to be doing better. It bugs me that they haven't been able to pinpoint the cause for this yet.
As far as Christmas plans go, I am having lunch with my mom today. I am spending a good chunk of Christmas day at STBX's apartment with her and the kids. On Saturday, STBX, the kids, and I will be traveling down to The Small Town to spend it with my dad and stepmom. I have been invited to go down to The Small Town to celebrate Christmas with her family on New Year's Day, but I haven't committed to that yet.
Dating
Have-the-T-Shirt joked in a comment that I had way too much time on my hands and needed to start dating. STBX's protestations aside, I haven't really been out there shopping around. I have made a few friends from the dating services.
One works in the software biz, and we've met for dinner a few times, but that is strictly platonic. She has been looking to strike up a relationship with a coworker who is leaving the company at the end of the year. We kvetch about travails of spouses estranged and talk shop, but that's about it. It's kind of nice to have someone from around this area who works in the software biz, but she will be moving up to the north side soon to shorten her grueling commute, so there is a good chance that this friendship may wane with distance or the kindling of her desired relationship with the other guy.
There is someone with whom I've chatted pretty regularly over the past couple of months. She works at a small private college about 40 miles from here, and there may be a chance we might meet up for drinks, but we are at different phases of our lives, and the age gap is a bit too far for comfort. She is the person I can count on for the overanalytical conversations.
Finally, there someone up in the north burbs who is in the limbo stages of divorce herself. She works downtown, a few blocks away from my office. We've met a few times after hours. Her estranged spouse has already fallen in love with someone else and is itching to get married to her. Neither of us are looking for anything serious, so that could wind up being a recurring FWB situation.
Once the divorce is final, I will probably start dating more actively.
That's about all the news with me. Did I leave anything out?
Friday, December 12, 2008
Can We Get a Moratorium on 2.0 Things?
Perhaps there is just a wee bit of latent bitterness within my core, but I just had to roll my eyes at a website that was promoting today as Spouse 2.0 Day. Go on over there now and take a look at it yourself. I'll wait.
(sits patiently humming Jeopardy theme)
Ah, you're back. What did you think? (nods) Yeah, I thought so. I'm sure there are some people out there lucky enough to have significant others who are actually supportive of their spouses' efforts to develop a career and provide for their families. That seems like such an alien idea to me.
For those of you who were unimpressed with the keyword analysis of my blog, you'll be pleased to know that I am working on a post contains a lot more substance about things going on in my life over the past month. I am too tired to polish it off tonight, so it will probably go up sometime Saturday. Keep an eye on your RSS feeds until then.
(sits patiently humming Jeopardy theme)
Ah, you're back. What did you think? (nods) Yeah, I thought so. I'm sure there are some people out there lucky enough to have significant others who are actually supportive of their spouses' efforts to develop a career and provide for their families. That seems like such an alien idea to me.
For those of you who were unimpressed with the keyword analysis of my blog, you'll be pleased to know that I am working on a post contains a lot more substance about things going on in my life over the past month. I am too tired to polish it off tonight, so it will probably go up sometime Saturday. Keep an eye on your RSS feeds until then.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
My Blog, As Yahoo Sees it
I created some scripts to parse the Atom XML document that I exported from Blogger recently and then feed the individual posts to the Yahoo Term Extraction Service. After aggregating the keywords, I wound up with 4,166 distinct keywords. I pared back that list to include those keywords which were found in five or more posts on the blog and then sorted the list in descending order. Here is the final result.
| marriage | 50 |
| e mail | 30 |
| recruiter | 28 |
| anxiety | 23 |
| blog | 21 |
| housewife | 20 |
| passionate marriage | 19 |
| job | 18 |
| best friend | 18 |
| cto | 17 |
| job search | 17 |
| couple weeks | 16 |
| phone interview | 15 |
| feelings | 15 |
| desire | 15 |
| love | 14 |
| divorce | 13 |
| differentiation | 13 |
| relationship | 13 |
| silicon valley | 12 |
| coworker | 12 |
| 12 | |
| counseling | 11 |
| schnarch | 11 |
| subsidiary | 11 |
| sleep | 11 |
| marriage counseling | 10 |
| dad | 10 |
| blogger | 10 |
| interviewer | 10 |
| nice guy | 10 |
| joint session | 9 |
| t shirt | 9 |
| validation | 9 |
| appointment | 9 |
| pacific northwest | 9 |
| therese | 9 |
| crucible | 8 |
| job offer | 8 |
| phone call | 8 |
| boss | 7 |
| blogging | 7 |
| dilemma | 7 |
| mom | 7 |
| auction company | 7 |
| jobs | 7 |
| 80s | 7 |
| ceo | 7 |
| commitments | 7 |
| ups | 7 |
| few days | 7 |
| resentment | 7 |
| younger daughter | 7 |
| phone interviews | 7 |
| anger | 7 |
| experiences | 7 |
| bloggers | 7 |
| amazon | 6 |
| bedtime | 6 |
| paragraph | 6 |
| coworkers | 6 |
| therapy session | 6 |
| cell phone | 6 |
| viewpoint | 6 |
| couple of days | 6 |
| sense of self | 6 |
| integrity | 6 |
| laptop | 6 |
| founders | 6 |
| online auction | 6 |
| dance class | 6 |
| stepmom | 6 |
| hiring manager | 6 |
| new york times | 6 |
| money | 6 |
| david schnarch | 6 |
| digger | 6 |
| refrain | 6 |
| intimacy | 6 |
| east coast | 6 |
| music | 6 |
| long time | 5 |
| good question | 5 |
| kindergarten | 5 |
| loneliness | 5 |
| conrail | 5 |
| sidebar | 5 |
| hour and a half | 5 |
| cuddling | 5 |
| friday morning | 5 |
| friday afternoon | 5 |
| excerpt | 5 |
| mid day | 5 |
| brother | 5 |
| voice mail | 5 |
| phone conversation | 5 |
| loan co | 5 |
| personal integrity | 5 |
| sessions | 5 |
| friendships | 5 |
| several times | 5 |
| rejection | 5 |
| contract position | 5 |
| girls | 5 |
| christmas | 5 |
| hr person | 5 |
| susie | 5 |
| attempts | 5 |
| comfort zone | 5 |
| realization | 5 |
| couples | 5 |
| five love languages | 5 |
| sixdegrees | 5 |
| moniker | 5 |
| sexual relationship | 5 |
| existence | 5 |
| skepticism | 5 |
| unhappiness | 5 |
| acts | 5 |
| surprise | 5 |
| software company | 5 |
| fusion | 5 |
| postings | 5 |
| relatives | 5 |
| signs | 5 |
| little bit | 5 |
| groove | 5 |
| marriage counselor | 5 |
| couch | 5 |
| frame of mind | 5 |
| disappointment | 5 |
| couple hours | 5 |
| sexuality | 5 |
| disagreement | 5 |
Friday, November 28, 2008
Thanksgiving "Tell Me More" was Pretty Powerful Show
On Thursday, I drove up to the northern reaches of the greater metro area to visit with my brother's family and have Thanksgiving dinner with them. As I made my way up, I listened to the NPR program "Tell Me More", which was devoted to the subject of Gratitude. I only got to hear the first two segments -- those of Iyania Vanzant and Leon Bass -- but both of them had powerful messages to share... messages I needed to hear when I become a little too self-absorbed.
This One is for All the Blogger Get-Together Folks...
The Zero Punctuation video game reviews by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw are as wickedly irreverent as they are fast paced. Usually he trains his acerbic wit upon first person shoot-em-up games, but this week, Yahtzee takes aim at Guitar Hero World Tour. If you're a Guitar Hero fan, I highly recommend watching the clip. Be forewarned, his reviews tend to be laced with vulgarities and sexually themed line drawings. Watching this clip at work is strongly discouraged.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
2am now over 2 Megs
I was playing around the with Blogger API to see whether I could extract and back up my posts. It took some tweaking, but I was able to do it. When converted to an Atom XML file, the blog posts alone make up 2.1 MB of data. I'm thinking about running the content through Yahoo's Term Extraction service to retroactively compute tags for each post so that I can obtain some sort of tag cloud.
White Castles, White Wine, Another Saturday Night -- I'm Such a Douchebag!
I don't know where it came from, but my loneliness anxiety was acting up this evening. Sometime around 7 pm, I headed out to get a bite to eat, but there was nothing that sounded good. I wound up burning an hour or two at two bookstores, perusing the computer and philosophy books and leaving empty handed. I settled for dinner at the White Castle next to the second bookstore I visited.
I came home, sifted through aging e-mails, and caught up on IM with a recently made friend who had a harrowing week. I met her via one of the online dating services, and we have yet to meet in person. Our situations are similar in that we live in that space between marriage and divorce, and we both work in the software field, but so far this has proved to be a good friendship, and I'm OK with that.
I'm currently sipping the remains of a bottle of 2006 Australian Riesling that doesn't have the same character that the bottle I polished off a couple months ago has, but the buzz is nice nonetheless.
This was a week that blew by and put my nerves to the test both on the personal and professional fronts.
First, on Thursday, the STBX IMed me to let me know that it was official, her employer would be terminating her position on the 13th of December. She said she had talked with one of her friends back over in the Land of Lincoln, who was a onetime employee of the same company and keeps in touch with several coworkers.
One employee, who had been there even longer than STBX by a couple years, had her annual salary chopped by $6K. Another longtime stalwart up and left. There are a couple of others whose status is still unknown. It sounds like they are really trying to purge some of the long time employees who are at the top of their payscale.
Her plans after the termination are undecided. She talked about drawing unemployment for a few months so that our younger daughter can continue to attend the preschool co-op.
She is eyeing a certification program for physician medical coding. It's a once-weekly evening class that meets for a few months at the beginning of the year with a certification test offered in late April. It would cost her on the order of $2,700 for tuition and testing fees. She said she might ask my dad and stepmom to loan her the money, which seems a bit weird given the circumstances.
As for me, the big news was that we delayed pushing the new release of our application to production not once, but twice. What should have gone out Wednesday this past week will go out instead early this coming Tuesday. The reasons for the delay were based on some observations made while I was testing a new content recommendation system for our application.
To help bloggers overcome writer's block, we thought it would be nice to fetch search results based on their focus keywords and display links to the results on the page where they write their posts. Well, it turns out that one of the search engine services we used turned up inappropriate results for a seemingly innocent combination of keywords. In case you were curious, the link title contained the word douchebag.
This required a rework of the user interface, complete with legal disclaimer warning the user that the results did not reflect the views of the company. Moreover, I got the job of writing a simple filter that would scan search results for bad words and cull them from the list returned to the user. Compiling a good list of naughty words is a bit more challenging than you think.
I spent Thursday night and Friday morning implementing the new filter. The list of bad words got generated on Friday afternoon and wired into the filter. I spent the afternoon and evening reviewing the results for 25 customers that we consider very important. In addition to the filter, we decided to omit one of the two data sources we had planned on using because the results were just too unreliable.
The end product should be nice, and I've learned a thing or two about the wiley ways of RSS feeds and distributed caching systems, so that is the bright side. Yet the downside is that this past week looked like a blur.
But as Arlo Guthrie would say, that's not what I came to talk about. I wanted to talk a bit on the notion of unity among Christians. Writing on his Unsolicited Advice (Wordpress) blog, Digger Jones offers up a video clip of a fight between Armenian and Greek Christians in Jerusalem as a reason he believes that unity is a fool's errand.
(2:41 am takes a break to jam out to "Tainted Love" on WTTS-FM)
Digger's case-in-point is what I was referring to in my comment on Therese's blog almost two years ago, asking what sort of unity should one pray for. It is the inherent paradox of unshared truths.
Faith is the unwavering belief that there exists a set of truths that are as non-negotiable as they are beyond proof, and that you have knowledge of them. What happens when someone claims a similar affiliation but has a similar level of confidence in a set of beliefs that are not fully compatible.
To abstract further, let there be two people who have belief systems which we call C and P. Both lay claim that they are members of a superset of E. The member of C believes that the set of propositions {BC,1, BC,2, ...} are indisputably, but unprovably, true. The member of P believes in his own set of propositions {BP,1, BP,2, ...}.
Now let's assume, without loss of generality, that both sets of propositions are identical save for the first propositions, BC,1 and BP,1. Moreover, let us assume that BC,1 and BP,1 are mutually exclusive. In other words, if BC,1 is true, then BP,1 cannot be true and vice versa. What does unity mean here?
The naive approach, which takes the union of the two sets of propositions, results in a system of propositions that have a contradiction. In order to maintain consistency, one of three things must happen:
- Remove BC,1 from the set.
- Remove BP,1 from the set.
- Remove both propositions from the set.
While the third item may be the most symmetric in terms of sacrifice, both sides are going to prefer that their belief makes the cut. To agree to do away with one's own belief sets up the fear of further disillusionment because that raises doubts over just how unshakable those beliefs are.
At this point, it is east to see why fights break out. Members of C and P are called to stand unwaveringly for their beliefs. In the presence of the other's doubt, what is to be done? When a believer concludes that the defense of Truth is a military calling, the probability of violence grows because the believer sees him or herself the agent of the Almighty's wrath.
The anxiety that animates the conflict can be mitigated with self soothing, an understanding that we are in essence separate beings with differences in thought processes and assumptions. The ability to accept separateness in the pursuit of togetherness is a larger form of the process of differentiation that takes place in the microverse of monogamous relationships.
A couple years ago, when I read Schnarch, I could see how this dynamic played itself in the ideological and cultural wars. At this point, I found myself decoupling from the political assumptions I had held for the past 25 years and moving into a space where those I might have once considered enemies were now friends.
Coming to terms with this paradox is an offshoot of the question of existential loneliness -- our separateness as individuals makes it impossible for each of us to be in universal agreement with one another. Like loving, to believe is to be lonely.
Schnarch touches on these themes in the closing chapter of Passionate Marriage. He speaks of a spiritual axis orthogonal to the relationship axis, where one must balance self-transcendence and self dissolution.
I was reminded of this as I read a post by Andrew Revkin on the New York Times blog Dot Earth that cited the writings of Charles Darwin and Vaclav Havel on the idea of self-transcendence. The passage the blogger quotes from Havel's 1994 speech seems remarkably farsighted.
[I]n today’s multicultural world, the truly reliable path to coexistence, to peaceful coexistence and creative cooperation, must start from what is at the root of all cultures and what lies infinitely deeper in human hearts and minds than political opinion, convictions, antipathies, or sympathies - it must be rooted in self-transcendence:
Transcendence as a hand reached out to those close to us, to foreigners, to the human community, to all living creatures, to nature, to the universe.
Transcendence as a deeply and joyously experienced need to be in harmony even with what we ourselves are not, what we do not understand, what seems distant from us in time and space, but with which we are nevertheless mysteriously linked because, together with us, all this constitutes a single world.
Transcendence as the only real alternative to extinction.
The whole post is worth reading.
It's 3:42 am, and I need to get some rest. As if with some sense of dramatic coincidence, I just heard WTTS-FM play Semisonic's song "closing time", which brings us back to that theme of loneliness anxiety.
So gather up your jackets,
and move it to the exits -
I hope you have found a friend.
Closing time -
every new beginning comes from
some other beginning's end.
Tonight I will sleep alone, but I will live through this.
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