Archive for June, 2020

Follow Directions

Jun

25

2020

My wife bought a bag of gluten.

Side note: if you ever wonder what they do with all the gluten they take out of things to make them gluten-free, apparently they put all the gluten in containers and sell it separately. I bet they get to charge more for the gluten-free stuff, plus they charge people to buy bags of gluten. It’s a win-win for the company, I suppose.

But that was not the point of this post. The point was the marketing stuff they put on the bag. maybe not so much marketing, but the character or personality they’re trying to portray for the company.

Here’s a photo of the back of the bag:

image of a bag of gluten saying not to look under the bag

The part that I noticed was at the top, in prominent letters, almost like they wanted you to notice it most. So I suppose it worked.

I, knowing they wanted me to wonder was was so forbidden about the underside of the bag, did not give in and went about my normal business, ignoring the bag.

But my younger son was not so good at self-control and has not learned to insulate himself so much from marketing. He picked up the bag and said “Look, dad!” So I looked, and that prompted a dad lesson from me, which I’m going to start after I show you the bottom of the bag.

image of a bag of gluten saying they like people who don't follow directions

As you might be able to guess, my complaint is their furthering of disobedience. They are saying they like people who don’t follow directions? Then they say to store in a cool dry place. Does that mean they’ll like it if I store their product in a hot tub?

If they ever send me recipes, I know those’ll be worthless.

And the person who decided to put that stuff on the bag – what if his boss told him to do something? Is the culture at that company such that he would get promoted if he went against some simple clear instructions from his boss?

At least these people ended up somewhere where it doesn’t matter too much. Can you imagine if they worked somewhere else, like at a tax-preparation place or a hospital or airplane maintenance? I get that sometimes you have to disobey orders or instructions, but you should at least have a good reason and it should not be your default attitude.

Or maybe they’re saying they like incompetent people. I suppose that’s slightly better, as it’s not willful disobedience. But I doubt that’s what they were trying to convey.

Against whom do you jest?
Against whom do you open wide your mouth
And stick out your tongue?
Are you not children of rebellion,
Offspring of deceit,

Isaiah 57:4

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Red-Winged Blackbird

Jun

17

2020

Around here, there are a lot of red-winged blackbirds. They usually look like this:

image of a perched red-winged blackbird

Fun fact: all the red-winged blackbirds you see are males. The females are a dappled sort of brown and white. I saw one once. I keep looking for more, but the males are all around the pond by the road and the females are nowhere to be seen. Maybe because they blend in better or maybe because they don’t go out and about as much – I don’t know.

And I don’t normally get a good view of them flying, so that side profile is the one I usually imagine if I’m picturing a red-winged blackbird.

For good measure, here is a view of a red-winged blackbird with his wings out.

image of a flying red-winged blackbird

I do like red-winged blackbirds, and I also like SR-71 blackbirds. So I thought I’d combine the two.

Behold, the red-winged SR-71 blackbird:

image of a flying red-winged SR-71 blackbird

image of a flying red-winged SR-71 blackbird

I think it never caught on because normally if military planes have any particular colors, they are the colors of their country. In that case, these planes might have been mistaken for being from Spain or Catalonia, or from Liechtenstein 200 years prior.

These are the birds you are to regard as unclean and not eat because they are unclean: the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture, the red kite, any kind of black kite

Leviticus 11:13-14

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Silver Linings

Jun

10

2020

There are plenty of downsides to the Covid-19 pandemic, but there are also some benefits to how things are going. Here are some of the silver linings I’ve seen.

1. Teens get enough sleep. Enough studies were showing that schools have their start times backwards that some schools around here were looking at changing things so the elementary schools start earlier and high schools start later. It’s better for teenagers to be able to sleep in. But the district that was seriously considering it decided it didn’t want to mess with the status quo so it dropped the matter.

Then the coronavirus arrived.

Now, my teenagers get up whenever they want to. Although if the oldest one isn’t up by lunch we remind him to wake up. Their developing bodies get all the sleep they need. They do their schoolwork in the afternoon, and still have time for whatever in the evenings.

2. The open office plan is dead. Before this, the company where I work was just about to convert our office from standard cubicles to the open floor plan for “increased collaboration”. We’re an engineering department, we need decreased distractions. No one in our building wanted the open office, but headquarters decreed it so it was going to happen.

Then the coronavirus arrived.

Now, an open floor plan means “increased contamination” and CDC guidelines make it a bad idea. When I do go back to the office (see point #3) it will remain old-school cubicles for a while longer until management decides what the new CDC-friendly trendy office plan will be.

3. Work from home is required. Working from home was always an option, but it was frowned upon if one took too much advantage of it. It always helped to have an excuse of why you needed to be home that day, such as a sick child or an appliance being delivered. I suppose a sick appliance or a child being delivered would also have been valid. Officially, no excuse was needed – the excuse was just to avoid being seen as a slacker.

Then the coronavirus arrived.

Now, those of us who can work from home are discouraged from going to the office. In fact, we must get approval beforehand if we want to go into one of the buildings. I’m saving hundreds of dollars on gas each month, I’m getting to enjoy hours of my life each week not commuting, I eat lunch with my family, I don’t have to think about packing a lunch – I just open the fridge, I get to sleep in, I get to be outside while it’s sunny, I go days without combing my hair, etc. Work-from-home is a major part of social distancing, but it’s good for many things besides that.

I might be able to come up with some more benefits, but those are the main things to me.

Not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am.

Philippians 4:11

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Magic Spreadsheet

Jun

3

2020

For those of you who enjoyed the heyday of the Magic Eye posters, whereby focusing your eyes at a depth that’s not the surface of the paper you could see a hidden image, I have used my considerable knowledge of spreadsheets to produce a 3D image.

Behold, the Magic Spreadsheet:

image of a spreadsheet setup to produce a magic eye type 3D effect

Uncross your eyes until the letters align; unfocus your eyes until the double image matches up with the image next to it.

What I did here was put the bottom row with the same indentation of 0, the middle row gets an extra space each cell to the right, and the top row gets two extra spaces each cell to the right.

The shading was just for fun.

For your next presentation, try hiding some cheap stereograms. If you’re presenting your screen from a work-at-home situation, no one can see you cross your eyes.

Let your eyes look directly ahead And let your gaze be fixed straight in front of you.

Proverbs 4:25

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