thoughts while watching the nfl draft...

1. architects get their first job by a completely different method.

2. john gruden would benefit from some grammar lessons.

3. this is a list. the draft is a list. compare & contast.

4. 4. nfl draftees choose flashy outfits. is this typical of their generation?

5. on a related note, clothing a linebacker would consume a lot of pinstripe.

6. the investment in this activity is out of proportion to its return.

7. a packer is an odd mascot.

8. ferguson. baltimore. nfl draft. compare & contrast.

9. we don't really reward the character and intelligence we speak so highly of.

10. i wonder how long past the initial moment these boys stay excited about simply having been selected.

just one thought about baltimore (short)

the protesters in baltimore looted first a drugstore and then a liquor store. c'mon, baltimore protesters, you can do better. have a little subtlety. maybe throw a grocery store in there, or, i don't know, a bakery. who doesn't like a little cream cheese icing with their protest?

seriously, though. it's a protest. what are you protesting, locks? entrepreneurs? intact windows? shelved product?

breaking and entering, and looting, has less than nothing to do with protesting an injustice. i mean, those activities ARE injustice. two wrongs don't make a right and whatnot.

that's all i have.

a bit about singing

i was singing along with the radio and got to thinking about singing and my voice and how it's low-ish and how when i'm singing in a group setting like church or whatnot, people will turn around and look, and i seriously don't think it's because i am off-key or anything. i think i have a fairly distinctive singing voice. not to say it's beautiful, not like that. distinctive like authentic and unique.

i can sort of read music, like i can tell if the next note is going to be a step up or a couple or a bunch of steps up. i can guess where it's going and usually hit it on the first try. what i can't always do on the first try is find my place, since i don't sing with the ladies, if there aren't enough men around, i can't find the note i am supposed to be singing. but if there are guys or the song it simply pitched right for me, i can hit it.

so i am an okay singer, and i was driving along thinking about all this and thinking about how my mom was a great singer. she had a talent and had had lessons as a child, and she would sing with community choirs and whatnot. i mean, when she was, you know, on the wagon. i was thinking about my singing and her singing and realised that as great of a singer as she was, she never taught me a single thing about singing. i won't bore you with the details of singing with my mother, but i will say it didn't involve being on the wagon and it didn't involve her teaching me anything.

so, my mind kind of took off down that track a while -- how she didn't teach me a goddamn thing. didn't teach me how to cook or sew, how to sing or play an instrument, didn't teach me how to brush my teeth or my hair. i learned it all by watching people and copying them, making mistakes, enduring ridicule. (there are things a teenage girl should know, in order to avoid ridicule.) okay, it's coming out all dramatic and it wasn't all that dramatic. it was just fucking hard work and sort of lonely.

that being said, i am okay with my voice. in fact, i kind of like it. but, i do wish i knew a bit more about how to use it well.

grishaming

i've been sort of struggling through john grisham's "sycamore row". it's very similar to most of his other stuff - underdog lawyer facing a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make it big. this time, it's not precisely once-in-a-lifetime, as the smalltown lawyer protagonist has had another big case, which was featured in grisham's "a time to kill". 24 years is a long time to wait between sequels, but i guess it works okay. i mean, 24 years haven't passed for the characters - it's more like three for them - and in grisham's novels the character development takes a back seat to plot and setting, so that's all good.

it's not that the book isn't well written or compelling. it's as much of both as anything he's written. it's just that it seems like i've read it before.

i found this list of grisham books. the one's i've read have a (Y).


(Y) A Time to Kill (1989)
(Y) The Firm (1991)
(Y) The Pelican Brief (1992)
(Y) The Client (1993)
(Y) The Chamber (1994)
(Y) The Rainmaker (1995)
(Y) The Runaway Jury (1996)
(Y) The Partner (1997)
(Y) The Street Lawyer (1998)
(Y) The Testament (1999)
(Y) The Brethren (2000)
(Y) A Painted House (2001)
(not sure) Skipping Christmas (2001)
(Y) The Summons (2002)
(Y) The King of Torts (2003)
(Y) Bleachers (2003)
(not sure) The Last Juror (2004)
(Y) The Broker (2005)
(Y) The Innocent Man (2006)
(Y) Playing for Pizza (2007)
The Appeal (2008)
The Associate (2009)
(Y) Ford County (2009)
The Confession (2010)
The Litigators (2011)
Calico Joe (2012)
(audio) The Racketeer (2012)
(current) Sycamore Row (2013)
Gray Mountain (2014)

now i am motivated to go back and read the ones i haven't read. guess i better get started on the one that i have... i feel gri-shamed into it.

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

math problem of the day

in an effort to stave off complete brain decay, i decided yesterday that it would be beneficial to work some basic math problems every day. i figured google could spit me out some algebra worksheets or somesuch - something of the type traded around online by grade school teachers who for whatever reason can't come up with their own damn stuff. thanks, lazy teachers, for facilitating the preservation of my brain.

so i googled "math problem of the day", and what to my wondering eyes should appear but "math problem of the day"! right there at the head of the results list.

here - you can go there yourself:

math problem of the day

so. at "math problem of the day", there is a math problem for each grade 1-8. hey, now. i can COUNT. there are EIGHT problems per day! bo-nuuuus!

i was thinking maybe the levels 7 and 8 might be challenging but 1 through 6 would be a piece of pi. (1) HAHA. piece of pi! get it?? (2) HAHA. easy! i thought they would be easy!! hahaha...

here are the problems from today:

1. Mini's house number has three digits. The middle digit is more than 6, but less than 9. Which of the following could be the middle digit?

2. Jesmine has three number cards with numbers 1, 3 and 9 and she wants to arrange them to make the greatest number. Which of these is the greatest number she can make with these cards?

3. In a certain code language, BLUE is written as CLUE and RAT is written as SAT. How will the word BUT be written in this language?

4. Robert has invited two of his friends to his house. He wants to buy a Pizza, three packets of chips, and three cartons of juices for the occasion. One carton of juice costs $10. The pizza costs 6 times as much as one carton of juice and the cost of 3 packets of chips is $36. If Robert has $100 with him, how much more money does he need?

5. A man bought 5 kg of rice at $100 and sold it at $160. How much profit did he make per kg of rice?

6. he sum of the ages of Peter and his sister is 23, and the product of their ages is 130. What is the difference between their ages?

7. Kiran walked 6 km in 50 minutes and then took a bus to travel the next 14 km in 20 minutes. If his journey continued in the same pattern alternating between walk and bus, how much time will he take to cover a total of 80 km?

8. In a hostel, there was enough food to feed 120 students for 6 days. If 30 students left the hostel to go home for vacation, how many days will the supplies last for the remaining students?

grade 1. right away i'm all confused by the verbiage, but i took a breath and read it again verrry slowly and perused the choices, and located the correct answer. okay. passed the first grade.

grade 2. easy peasy. 931.

grade 3. again, easy peasy -- although their solution described a code which replaced the first letter of a word with the next letter of the alphabet, and i had just assumed "replace b with c" and would have been screwed if they'd given me FISH.

grade 4. omg, how much does a damn pizza cost?! but then i saw it's not pizza, it's Pizza, and i know name brands always cost more. anyway, save your money, bob. your friends are NOT worth it. i got through this one fine - just tallying up the charges - and determined ol' bob needed to take out a second mortgage to have a few friends over.

grade 5. simple. $60 profit divided by 5 = $12 per kg.

grade 6. this one had me stumped. i tried P+S=23 and P*S=130, then (23-P)*P=130 and pretty soon i was on the road to a quadratic equation. what the hell? i ended up just plugging in some damn numbers until i got to the answer. that is obvs not the recommended method. the recommended method involves finding factors of 130 that add up to 23. OH, RIGHT. anyway, i got it correct and i did even more work than required, so obvs that's bonus points for moi.

grade 7. easy peasy. write "6, 50 -- 14, 20" in columns down the page until you get to 80 on the 6 & 14 side, then add up all the 50s and 20s. i am certain there's a formal method (i.e., formula), but i have fingers and toes to count on -- i don't need no stinking formula!

grade 8. easy! i just subtracted 30 from 120 to get 90 and did a proportion. 120/6=90/x. 120x=540. x=4.5 days, right? right. except for the little detail that the closest available multiple choice answer is 8 days. fucking hell. i guessed 8 and got it right.

100% overall!

so, my brain isn't dead, but damn it's rusty. i was using all the tricks i could come up with plus some really lame tallying and guessing.

oh, by the way... their solution to grade 8: "The supplies could feed 120 students for 6 days. If there was only one student, the food will last 6 x 120 = 720 days. After 30 students leave, there are 120 - 30 = 90 students remaining. For 90 students, the food will last for 720/90 = 8 days."

ugh. there are a couple months' worth of "math problems of the day" between me and that solution.

samsung!

i got a new samsung s5 smartphone the other day. it's taking all my creative powers to set the damn thing up... we weren't early-early adopters, but we had iphone 3's and then we had 4's. we didn't need 5's and we didn't want 6's, but iphone is a bit of a machine and it just marches on and on and on. i could barely keep up with the updates because they were so hungry for space.

so, i am not new to smartphones, but having had only had the one sort, i am quite used to only the one sort. it's a challenge to learn something new, find all the new stuff and put it in all the new places. at first, it's all fun and games, but then reality settles in - you have to communicate using this thing. huh. maybe not so fun now, eh?

i wanted a clean break, a phone without all the baggage. i was tired of the iphone universe. i wanted expandable memory and file management. i wanted a new otterbox... although admittedly, the new power cords and car charger are a bit of a pain.

anyway. that's what i am up to.

you?

a time to build up and a time to tear down

in a couple weeks, my company's offices are moving to a new building. well, not new-new. new to us. it's a remodeled shopping mall. i think it will be better than it sounds -- the pictures i've seen and the floorplans are both positive. (also, not technically "my" company, but you know what i mean.)

today we had a ceremony to say goodbye to our current building. the company has been in it since the 1920s with an addition built in the late 50s, so there's a bit of history in those walls.

we're a 200+ year old company and i'd say the average employee tenure is something along the lines of 15-18 years, with a good portion being in the 25+ years range. so, there's a bit of history there, too. history in the way we do things, like we've always done things.

our current building is a hot mess of structural issues - leaks, mold, darkness. it's like a cave, but not a good cave like the batcave. just a regular cave, with bats.

it's got too much central space and not enough windows. where the 1920s building is cobbled onto the late 50s addition, there are jinky hallways and small but odd gaps in the walls. a good bit of our parking is on the roof of the 1920s building. not sure if it was "always" there, but at least my whole 25 year tenure. the weight of the cars combined with the simple fact of a flat rooftop contributes to leakage every time it rains and sometimes when it's not.

feelings about the move vary widely. some are thrilled and eager, ready to leave the history-steeped walls, hoping the "way we've always done things" stays behind, too. some are concerned and anxious, unsure how they'll find power in a new location where office geography is flattened to sameness. some don't seem to care either. i am more in the eager camp, but still, it's bittersweet.

this building is like detroit's tiger stadium or north carolina's rockingham speedway... a venerable structure in its day, but way past it's prime and specifically lacking any concerted effort to save it. it's time to throw the used building away like used coffee grounds. sure. that's understandable.

but still, see... so many of us have been in there together for so long, it'll just be sort of sad to leave it behind, to be dismantled by liquidators then demolished by developers then replaced with an anonymous glass tower.