Some Blog Site

Soap operas have been replaced by Facebook.

That is all.

I’m trying to remember the last time I went into a store and bought something without being asked if I have or would like their rewards card / loyalty card / credit card / promotional deal.

For once, I would like to walk into a store, buy something, and walk out. The only thing I want the cashier to say is a greeting and then my total. After I pay, a simple valediction is sufficient. I don’t want to have to answer any questions.

I know it’s not the cashier’s fault – she’s doing her job. It’s the management’s fault for making her do that. So, dear corporate store management, please stop making your cashiers ask questions of the customer.

I thought I’d swing by the big box hardware store on the way home from work to grab a couple items. Three things. I could find two of them. I normally avoid asking the workers for directions, but since I had told my wife I’d be home at a certain time for dinner, I didn’t want to leisurely wander around the store looking for the last item.

So I ask a store employee.

Of all the dozens of employees, whom do I happen to ask?

The one guy whose job is to sign up people for the store credit card.

He walks me to the location of the item, all the while explaining the benefits of the card. There are a few varieties of the item I want, so I start perusing. The guy keeps extolling the virtues of the card. He does not go away.

“No problem, take your time. I’ll wait here while you choose.”

I find what I’m looking for. The guy says they’ll give me free money if I sign up today. I don’t care about the money as much as I care about getting out of there.

“I’ll have you signed up in two or three minutes. It’ll be fast, and you’ll save money. How can you pass up free money?”

I agree, since I have been assured I will save money and I can cancel whenever. I don’t think I want to agree, but I do.

He walks over to his desk, and he enters my information into the computer. That takes about 2 minutes. He clicks the Submit button and the computer complains about something. He has to fix a field – make my middle name into just a middle initial. He goes to do that and the computer erases everything and tells him he has to log in again.

He is apologetic and doesn’t know what happened, but he must enter my information again. So we do that.

I didn’t see it before it happened, but as soon as it happened I realized what the problem was. The credit card application is browser-based. He barely missed the middle name and clicked outside the text field. When he pressed the Backspace key, the browser took that to mean Go Back a Page, which ended his secure session and made us lose everything.

I keep that information to myself. At this point, I do not want to distract the man and/or start another conversation thread. I just make sure he clicks in the appropriate areas and a text box has the focus whenever his finger goes near the backspace key.

We get the form successfully submitted and he tries to print. Not only does it not print, but the session was lost again. He can’t print my confirmation because he does not have my number. And we can’t enter it again because it was successful.

He has to call the central processing office. He gets someone there, discusses the situation, and gets a confirmation number. Then he logs back into the system and prints my page. We had spent about 15 minutes on a 2-minute process.

And now, in order to ensure I have a great customer experience, he walks me up to the front of the store and helps me check out. He makes sure the cashier gives me my discount, and makes sure I have his number in case I ever have any questions or problems.

I went into the store planning to buy 3 items. I left with 3 items plus a new credit card and a scowl in my mind.

I was shopping for a book that would be a good introduction to calligraphy for my 6th-grade son. I was shopping in a brick-and-mortar store, not one of them fancy virtual stores, because I wanted to look into the books and flip through the pages. Plus, I like bookstores and if I don’t keep shopping at them they might go out of business. So I make it a point to buy from them.

I made my way back to the Arts & Crafts section and found the shelf with calligraphy books. I looked at all five of them that had to do with learning calligraphy, and here are my reviews:

	Calligraphy: A Complete Guide by Julien Chazal This bills itself as a complete guide, which is more than what I was looking for. It did have introductory stuff, but it also had you carving stones and making your own pens and stuff.
	Calligraphy Bible: A Complete Guide to More Than 100 Essential Projects and Techniques by Maryanne Grebenstein I didn’t actually read any of the words in this book. I started by flipping through a number of the pages, and all I could notice was how pixelated all the photos were. It was very distracting. It might be acceptable if this were a 6th grader making his own webpage on Geocities, but not a book for which I’d be paying money.
	Modern Calligraphy: Everything You Need to Know to Get Started in Script Calligraphy by Molly Suber Thorpe This was half calligraphy and half how to make wedding invitations. Not the best option for a young boy.
	The Calligrapher’s Bible: 100 Complete Alphabets and How to Draw Them by David Harris Too many styles and not enough explanation. If you’re starting something, you don’t want to be thrown one hundred new things. It would be overwhelming. But once you’ve gotten started with an introductory book, this would probably be a good next book.
	Complete Calligraphy Skills by Vivien Lunniss This book did not have many styles (only 20, compared to the 40 or 100 in the other books), but it had a lot of how-to plus interesting explanations of the backgrounds of the writing styles. I thought it was a good balance for a starting book. Not too much to overwhelm, but enough to start and make progress.

As you may be able to tell, Complete Calligraphy Skills was my favorite book for the situation. I give it 4 stars. If it wants 5 stars, it needs to have a spiral binding so that it stays open by itself.

Note: In case you think this sounds familiar, this is a variation of a post I did a while back on communication between husbands and wives.

A mom’s questions can have very different meanings to her son than they do to her. Here are some examples:

Mom’s Words: “Would you like to set the table?“

Mom’s Words: “Where are you?“

Mom’s Words: “Are you wearing that?“

Those were, of course, random examples from anonymous people.

Here’s my tip for moms: Don’t ask your son a question if you want him to do (or stop doing) something. Direct commands are best.

Here’s my tip for kids: Chances are good that your mom will ask a question that requires an action, not an answer. But you still need to answer her so that she knows you got the message. But don’t answer the question as it was phrased, answer by saying what you’re going to do.

One of the recurring events in a child’s life is the family photo. Sometimes it’s immediate family, sometimes it’s extended family, and sometimes it’s just the child by himself.

I had opportunities to be involved in various family photos this year, and I observed something:

Family photos are like a race.

No, not to see who can get done first. It’s like a race in that the finish line must be set – a fixed destination.

You know the drill –

“Okay, we’ll do this group.”
“Now put the grandparents in.”
“Okay, now everybody together.”

By this point, some nerves are getting frazzled.

Invariably, someone now says “You kids are doing such a good job, let’s get pictures with you and [insert family grouping here]”

But the longer the photo shoot goes on, the worse the kids get. Why?

Because you’ve moved the finish line.

The kids thought they were going to be done after the everybody-together shot. But then they weren’t done, they had a couple more poses to do.

Think about a race. You enter a race knowing the finish line is a certain distance away. You pace yourself accordingly and have just enough energy to kick it into high gear near the finish line.

How would you feel if someone saw you running at that point and said, “You are doing so well, and you look so fast right now, we are going to move the finish line another mile down the road!”? And they said it in a cheery voice to encourage you.

You would feel annoyed, betrayed, dismayed, or something along those lines. And you would not do very well for that last mile, since your racing energy was used up for the expected course.

That’s how kids feel when you just keep adding groupings to the family photo and extending the whole session.

My two recommendations for family photos:

1. Get the most important photos first. The more photos you take, the worse the kids behave. Unless you like pictures of crying and frowny kids, plan your photo priorities.

There are some cultures that believe photographs steal your soul. I don’t believe that, but I would be open to the theory that each photograph steals part of your smile. After a long photo shoot, you might not be able to smile for a time until your smile can recover.

2. Tell the kids the plan, and establish the finish line. They can pace themselves if they know where the finish line is. “We’ll take just you kids, then you kids with your cousins, then everybody together, and then we’ll be done.”

And then don’t move the finish line.

P.S. If you are worried that it was you who inspired this post – it wasn’t you, it was the other side of the family.

Summer is here, which means it is time for me to review the books I have read and let you know what I thought of them.

Here they are, approximately in the order that I read them.

• Darkmouth by Shane Hegarty
  I read this only because Alpha checked it out of the library. I previewed it at the library. I think Alpha actually handed it to me and asked if it was okay, probably because the cover art was a monster chasing an armor-clad boy. The way it was drawn was more campy than scary, but you never know these days.

  I previewed it in the library, and previewed it some more. It was good enough that I probably read about a quarter of it in the library. So we got it and I finished it at home and then let Alpha read it.

  It does have monsters – mostly the standard mythological creatures. And it has some violence in that the people are fighting the monsters. And there are some bad guys who do unkind things. Someone does die. There’s slight descriptions of gore, but mostly the fighting is done with – simplified here so as not to give away the plot – a sort of shrink ray that puts the monsters into small glass jars.

  My main problem with the book was that it is written as book one of a series, so the ending is a segue instead of an actual ending. But if you’re going to read the whole series together, that should not be a problem

  Maybe 4th or 5th grade on up.

• Masterminds by Gordon Korman
  The main problem with this book was that it is only part of a book. It is only about one-third of a book, not a whole book.

  This is the first book of the planned Masterminds Trilogy. The other books aren’t out yet, so I don’t know how the story ends. It might be one complete physical book, but it has only part of the story. The book ends as if it were a commercial break in a television program – a bit of the story has been finished, but you are left wanting the rest of it, to come to a conclusion.

  I’m not a fan of books that don’t have a solid ending.

  The other problem is that a major premise of the book is that all the kids are being lied to by all the adults. In other words, it is the kids’ job to work around the adults in order to figure out the truth. Adults are not to be trusted.

  Maybe that will get better (i.e. some non-villain adults will figure into the story) in the other books. But if you are concerned that your child is tending towards problems with authority figures, you might want to steer clear of this book.

  Apart from that, the book is well written in that it was hard to put down. I put it on the Captivating side of the scale.

• Savvy by Ingrid Law
  This was an engaging book. Borders on the feel of the old-time tall-tales genre, which adds to its charm.

  This would be fine for 2nd or 3rd grade on up, but I would suggest 5th grade on up because of the themes that are presented. Nothing objectionable, quite the opposite in fact, but why bother a 2nd grader’s mind with the first crushes and the appropriateness of tattoos and other such topics?

  The best part of the book was its small-town feel and values. Church is part of people’s lives. Bibles are common. The girl says she doesn’t want to be kissed and the boy says that he can wait. A variety of little things that aren’t the main plot but are part of the story. They all add up to make a positive book.

• As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust by Alan Bradley
  If you like all the other Flavia de Luce books, you’ll like this one. It’s a Flavia de Luce book, but it’s not really part of the series. It stands on its own fairly well in introduction, setting, characters, and ending. As far as murder mysteries go, it’s tame. High school on up.
• The Supernaturalist: The Graphic Novel by Eoin Colfer
  We were at the library and the boys were gathering books. I glanced through the titles, as I usually try to, and this one stood out as one I should investigate.

  I ended up reading the whole thing before we checked out. Not because it was that engaging or interesting, but because it was quick.

  It was a little darker and more violent than I liked, so I took it out of the pile, told the child the reasons I didn’t like it for him, and put the book back.

  I think he found this only because he had read some other things by this author, and because he probably figured that a comic-like book couldn’t be bad.

  I’m not outright condemning this book, but there are so many better options for your child to put into his mind – don’t waste it on this.

• The Real Boy by Anne Ursu
  Has references to magic and potions and wizards. Most of it is just which herbs to use for what – there’s probably more about traditional herbal medicine than magic. I don’t know that the herbs they mentioned are effective for the treatments described, or even if the herbs are real.

  Anyway, on to my conclusion. It’s a good book. Some bullying and mild violence, plus some worse violence that happens offscreen. Or, uh, off-page since this is a book. But there’s not a lot of that.

  Overall, I found the book to be interesting. 3rd grade on up.

  P.S. – if this book is ever made into a movie, I wouldn’t trust it. It would probably end up very creepy due to the plot of spoiler prevention activated that some directors might emphasize.

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for this would be unprofitable for you.

Hebrews 13:17

Whether I’m waiting for someone or just arrived somewhere early because I like to be early and hate to be late, sometimes I find myself with some extra time. It used to be that I would stand back and people-watch. Or things-watch. Or daydream. Or whatever – I have no problems having nothing to do.

But it does bother some people – they can’t understand that someone can just stand there and not need something to do. In the past, these people would come up to me and ask if I was okay, or if I was lost, or if I needed help.

No thanks, I’m just waiting.

They would take that as their cue to start a conversation. Something along the lines of ‘since this person has nothing to do, I will provide him with something, in the form of talking. Everyone must be bored if they are not in a conversation.’

But I was enjoying the silence and not having to talk.

But technology has furnished us with a solution – the smartphone. Or phone as it is being called these days, since just about no one has anything but a smartphone.

You can stand about anywhere, conspicuously or not, and people will leave you alone as long as you look like you are texting or scrolling through something on your phone.

I can continue doing things as I used to, now I just hold my phone in front of me and people leave me alone. ‘He must not need me to start a conversation with him since he is already in a texting conversation with someone else.’