Reasons Why Email is Better Than Phone Calls

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  • I don’t have to talk to you.
  • Details and data can be conveyed more easily textually than verbally.
  • I can prioritize responding to emails, but phone calls demand urgency even if it’s unwarranted.
  • It gives me time to organize my thoughts.
  • It saves you from a) having to take notes while we talk, or b) not taking notes and then asking me the same questions again two days from now.
  • I don’t have to talk to you … I mean, it’s nothing personal – usually, but I’m an introvert so if I get to choose between talking on the phone and not doing that, 9 times out of 10 I’ll pick the latter.

Minimum Wage vs Service Industry Mistakes

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Today I picked up a few donuts from Dunkin’ Donuts through the drive-thru, and they messed up my order.

Even after correcting it at the window, there was still a mistake but I had already driven off and it wasn’t worth turning around to go back, yet it reminded me of that classic argument against raising the minimum wage that goes something like – “If you can’t even get my fast food order right, why in the world should you get paid $15/hour?!”

I spent some time pondering this during my drive, and here’s what I came up with…

First and foremost is simply that everyone makes mistakes at their job, with many being a lot more serious than overlooking the occasional chocolate-frosted donut. I work with databases and statistics for my day job and there are plenty of instances where a number gets transposed or a query is missing a clause that produces inaccurate results, yet the immediate reaction isn’t typically that I don’t deserve to be paid a living wage for my work because I’m just so stupid.

Because that’s what the minimum wage is intended to be – a livable standard for what employers are required to pay their workers for an honest day’s work. And while you can argue that frying donuts and the like are minimally valued skills, tell that to the corporations that make billions of dollars each year off of those workers’ efforts.

Along those same lines, though, I got to thinking about what causes people to make mistakes at work and I would bet my missing chocolate donut that understaffing plays a significant factor because anytime that I go to a fast food restaurant, the employees seem to be running around like crazy between all of the various tasks that they need to cover. In fact, never having worked fast food myself, it consistently shocks me to see that the same person taking orders is the same person filling drinks, taking money, and rounding up your order from the various stations, too.

Think about it – most fast food restaurants have a separate window first to pay at, but instead more often than not there’s just a sign posted telling you to move to the next window.

Clearly it was the original intention to have two separate roles, yet at some point in fast food land they decided to consolidate the work onto a single person … but I’ll bet they didn’t also consolidate the pay between those two jobs in turn!

It’s really the same thing we see happening in almost every industry – workers being expected to do more work with less time and resources – and yet service industry workers seem to be given a harder time over slipping up when there’s literally too many things on their plate to get every order exactly right.

So ultimately I think that the two issues here are completely separate – if an employee doesn’t consistently perform, it could be that the person just isn’t paying attention OR it could be that the work is being mismanaged and the workers aren’t being setup to succeed in the first place. In a way, is it really fair to hold the worker responsible for a wrong order when they were also being barked at to get the restroom cleaned and take care of the people at the counter and don’t forget to take their 15-minute break while they’re at it because the boss ain’t paying no overtime?!

The minimum wage angle, on the other hand, to me is really simple – if your employees can’t make ends meet on what you’re paying them, you’re not paying them enough, and if you can’t afford to pay them any more, then your business model is flawed and you shouldn’t be in business.

Separate issues, and as an aside I also tend to think that if we were a bit nicer to fast food workers in general, they might be more likely to get our orders right than shouting for their termination because our iced coffee got made with skim milk instead of 2% like we’d shouted into the unintelligible speaker box 90 seconds ago. 😛

One Week Without Soda

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It’s hard to believe that six years ago I gave up drinking soda entirely, and yet over the last nine or ten months – basically since the twins were born – I’ve let that caffeinated addiction slowly creep back into my life again.

I blame a combination of stress and a lack of willpower.

Soda tastes good. It’s refreshing, and it puts a little spring in your step … to the point where you don’t even realize that you’re drinking a few hundred extra calories a day, which adds up over the course of almost a year.

I had originally started only grabbing the occasional soda when someplace had a Coke Freestyle machine because I think that Cherry Coke made with actual syrup tastes better. In fact, I was actually making them myself at home for a while until Publix stopped carrying the syrup that I liked and I couldn’t find anything to really match the flavor.

So that was bad enough – I wasn’t even drinking Coke Zero or anything, but regular Coke coupled with sugary syrup on top of that!

It was probably only a matter of time before I started settling for traditional fountain drinks and cans and bottles from the gas station, too. Most recently, I found myself going through a 2-liter bottle in a couple of days, and I knew that I really needed to cut back, but life was stressful and instead I told myself that I’d change when things calmed down a little…

Of course, it didn’t work like that!

Instead, the other day I started having mild chest pains. I actually think it was just a pulled muscle from running around at Disney World the day before, but it was enough to spook me into actual change because I know that my weight is getting out of control and all of those extra calories – as soothing as they are – weren’t helping the bigger picture.

The first couple of nights, I found myself with mild headaches – nothing terrible like the ones I got from caffeine years ago – so I took a Tylenol here and there and pushed forward, each day telling myself that it was my Nth day without a soda, so no sense in breaking the streak now!

Today it’s been a full week without one, and the aches are starting to go away, not to mention the cravings … at least to the point where I can turn soda down in favor of water again instead, which wasn’t exactly happening in the past because it had become the go to whenever I ate Chinese, and then pizza, and then just about anything that I was eating. 🙁

I know that there are still a lot of other changes that I need to make to benefit my health. I don’t like running out of breath carrying my sons around or having so many aches after a single day at a theme park. But this was an important first step and reducing my calorie intake by a few hundred each day should be a good start towards some of the more intensive efforts that eventually need to take place.

Going forward I think I’ll still let myself have the occasional drink as a mixer with alcohol because I tend to limit myself to just one or two and those are infrequent at best anyways, but aside from maybe the great soda fountain over at the Beach Club at Disney that not only makes Cherry Coke with the syrup but also includes real cherries in it, too, I think my soda days need to be over.

Again.

Digital Frustrations

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So I got this message saying that the YouTube app won’t work on the TV in our bedroom after the end of this month, and in a way it’s kind of frustrating and at the same time I kind of get it… 😕

It bugs me that this is supposed to be a Smart TV, and it’s not that old – I bought it in 2013 – and yet a good number of the apps that it used to support have already been discontinued. I didn’t really care about the Twitter app because who uses Twitter from their tv?!, but I use the YouTube app quite a bit, actually!

On the other hand, I know that in this case the specific reason why the YouTube app is being discontinued is because YouTube is finally dropping support for their Flash-based apps and requiring HTML5 only, which is a significant change, and apparently one that Samsung is saying this model of TV simply can’t support. Not a huge surprise considering that the TV only has a single-core processor, whereas my first iPhone (an iPhone 4) came with a dual-core processor and the latest iPhone 7 models are now up to quad-core processors…

…in fact, I’m pretty sure that the curved, 4k tv that I bought the following year for our living room has a quad-core processor…

In a way, it’s the same frustration that I have with the handful of apps on my iPhone that no longer work with the current version of iOS. Knowing how app producers seem to come and go like the wind, it’s not really a huge shocker that these companies knocking out apps for $0.99, or even $4.99 – $9.99, aren’t making much effort to keep them compatible with future versions of iOS and Android. In many cases, I’m sure that some of them have already gone out of business by the time these newer versions come along!

And so just like I can’t very well expect my old NES cartridges to play on my Wii or Wii U, I get that companies want to focus on the latest and greatest. But I think it’s aggravating when the media remains the same across generations – like DVDs for PS2 – PS4 or digital for iOS – because at least when we used cartridges it was obvious that the old carts just wouldn’t fit in the new systems. 😛

It’s just tough because in an increasingly digital world as we purchase more and more digital content, we’re faced with this virtual tug-of-war where we have to keep purchasing either hardware or software over and over again to continue enjoying our original purchases. At least with my old Nintendo, I can still plug my NES into the TV and try blowing into those cartridges until they finally work, but I’m not necessarily going to keep an old iPhone handy just so that I can play the Oregon Trail app that I bought a few years ago and now can’t handle Apple’s latest release.

The same goes for my TV – I wouldn’t go out and buy a whole new TV just because one channel stopped being compatible with it, yet that’s kind of what I’m faced now if I want to watch YouTube videos in bed anymore.

Sure, I could get a Roku box or even dig out my AppleTV … if that supports the app update … but the native app on the TV itself was so much easier.

Gay Pride Isn’t About Straight People. At All.

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I really liked this image I found on Facebook earlier today defining Gay Pride vs. Straight Pride because I’m sad to admit that I’ve had the “straight pride” argument with family members and some of them just really can’t seem to get beyond themselves to understand what the entire movement is actually about.

Gay people aren’t trying to flaunt their sexuality or push themselves upon you, but the fact that people are still uncomfortable by something as simple as gay people holding hands or kissing in public or wearing matching rainbow shirts is a great introduction to why this kind of thing is still necessary in the first place.

I’ll be honest – I don’t know a lot of gay people.

I know some, but the overwhelming majority are still straight, and yet LGBT rights are important to me because it sickens me that another couple could get harassed, threatened, or even killed walking down the street just holding hands or showing affection – the same as I do with my wife without a second thought.

And it really grinds my gears when people argue that gay rights isn’t something that affects them or that they don’t have time to worry about it because they’re trying to keep food on the table because as far as I’m concerned, if we’re not willing to stand up for equal rights in our country, none of the rest of it even matters.

Even if you live in a small town like I used to where the population is 99% white and 100% straight (or so you think…), gay rights matter because people are people, and nobody deserves to be treated like a second-class citizen because of who they love. If advocating for their equality bothers you, then you’re part of the problem.

I’m tired of trying to explain racism to people…

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I get that it’s challenging to understand how marginalized a group of people is if you’ve never felt that way yourself, but sometimes I feel like some people among us aren’t even trying.

Today I came across some outrage on Facebook about Harvard offering a black-only graduation ceremony to complement its traditional ceremony, which was of course interpreted as reverse racism because these African American students wished to have an event that specifically excluded white students…

…and mind you, that wasn’t exactly true…

…but nonetheless, the misunderstanding of embracing one’s culture versus intentional segregation continues to leave a scathing mark on a white culture that still doesn’t seem to grasp how its own actions, both historical and up to the present, are what’s led us to this racial divide in the first place.

Actually pay attention to the news and make a tally of how many unarmed white children today are killed by police officers thinking they’re a threat to society. Look across your Facebook feed and see how many people are outraged by Kathy Griffin’s weird beheading photo shoot last week and then ask how many were equally outraged by all of the anti-black rhetoric aimed at President Obama during his presidency.

In my own world of writing and words, take a look at the most offensive word of all – the n-word – and acknowledge how unlike other words like fuck and cunt, we don’t even say the word because that’s how ugly of a history it has…

This is a group of people who haven’t had to deal with slavery and segregation directly, yet still feel its hateful burn a hundred years after the fact, and they have to cope with people who claim that racism isn’t even a problem in America anymore all the while banners of the confederacy still fly in some states, and marginalized glares are felt in neighborhoods across the country, and sometimes people hang nooses from trees … but it’s only a joke, so maybe they should just lighten up?!

Fuck that noise.

The difference between black people and white people celebrating their heritages and cultures is that, until the end of time, there will forever always be a scar on black heritage caused by a point in time where white people deemed them less than human, and it’s a scar that white people must work to mend every single today on behalf of our ancestors.

For some of us, this is less of a big deal than others and we welcome our African American friends with open arms, but others want to fight – everything has to be a fight … to slouch blame or to deny injustices that are still very present in our world because personally they’re not directly at fault.

Like many problems that face our society today, racism is complicated and it’s unpleasant to talk about, but every time a white person wants to fuss about how only minorities can celebrate their pride or how they’re not the ones who had slaves, they only serve to cement the issues deeper in modern times instead of actually acknowledging them and trying to move forward as best we can.

Whoever came up with the term reverse racism is living in denial of the actual origins of racism, and frankly I’m tired to having to explain injustice to smart people who are acting emotionally stupid about this issue that is way bigger than they think it to be.

17 Things I Love About Technology in 2017

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  • My home broadband speed today is 150x faster than the whopping 1 Mbps cable modem that I first got back in 2000.
  • The Internet has allowed me to become friends online with people from all over the world who I’ve never met in person.
  • I honestly don’t feel that guilty about letting my son play games on his iPad because the educational value and everything that he’s learned from them at only three years old is just incredible!
  • Smartphones have gradually evolved to allow a full Internet experience anywhere I go and not just “the mobile Internet” that we first had to deal with.
  • Publishing has become so simplified that pretty much anyone can write a blog or put out an ebook or even a print book with a reasonable amount of time and effort.
  • Access to information – both useful and mundane – is commonplace, whether you want to learn more about the Paris Climate Accord or when the first Wonder Woman comics were created.
  • The radio that I listen to in my car via Pandora now actually makes an effort at being customized to my personal tastes.
  • I can watch movies at home in my living room that rival the experience of going to a movie theater.
  • I don’t even have to take my keys out of my pocket to unlock my car door, or start my car for that matter!
  • I can do my job pretty much anywhere that I have a decent Internet connection.
  • Shopping is something that I can do at 2:30am in my underwear without ever having to leave the house, and the prices are usually cheaper to boot.
  • Writing checks and having stamps are no longer a necessity for paying bills.
  • It’s incredibly easy to learn about other cultures and ways of living that are different from my own.
  • I can book hotel and dining reservations for Disney World without ever picking up the phone.
  • It’s easy to share pictures and videos with family on the other side of the country, and also video chat with them, too.
  • Breaking news is truly breaking via mobile notifications and social media.
  • Being proficient in computers and technology is no longer something that gets you called a dork or a nerd.

Is THIS How Conservatives Felt Through the 8 Years of Obama’s Presidency???

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Politics is so exhausting lately.

It seems like every. single. week. something new is being set ablaze – this week was the Paris Agreement and claiming that the U.N. owes us money for defense, last week was bragging about firing FBI director James Comey as a result of the Russian investigation, and before that we had a budget worthy to be aligned with the mega rich, questioning why the civil war happened, inviting the national treasure that is Sarah Palin and Ted Nugent – a guy who threatened to kill President Obama – into the White House for a photo op…

*sigh*

Seriously, is this how conservatives felt from 2009 – 2016 when President Obama was advocating for the Affordable Care Act, supporting same-sex marriage rights, and turning around the recession?

I feel like whereas most Republican issues circle around money and where we should and shouldn’t spend it, Democrats focus on more wholistic goals like protecting the environment and civil rights and keeping our economy afloat, and so now with this extreme conservative voice dominating the federal landscape, every action feels like a stab at something vital to who we are – whether it’s making it easier for Christians to discriminate against people they don’t like or cutting benefits that help the poor or trying to ban entrance to our country to people who did nothing wrong but be born in a country that bad people also happen to be from.

Those on the other side of the aisle will make it sound as if we’re taking it too personally, as if it’s completely normal to hack and dice the work of the previous party once the government changes sides, but that’s not how this should work.

The things that the GOP is so quick to dismantle are essential parts of the larger pie:

  • The American economy will flounder worse than it does today if we had over public education to the greedy hands of privatization.
  • Healthcare in the greatest country on Earth will be even more of a joke to the rest of the industrialized world than it is today if provisions aren’t protected for even the most basic of services and conditions.
  • Our position in the world community relies on America being an ally, not a bully for hire.
  • And of course, none of it will matter if we allow our industries to pollute and ravish our environment in the name of short term financial gains.

Following such numerous issues is a constant struggle and it seems like the previous isn’t even brought to close before a new problem comes over the horizon, yet at the same time despise extraordinary fatigue it feels almost un-American to turn a blind eye and ignore this reality as our country is transformed by the business man that some insisted upon instead of the patriotic leader that we really needed.

movie thoughts … Logan

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I’ll admit that honestly this movie wasn’t even really on my radar, but I finally got around to watching it and ultimately I was kind of disappointed by it.

Which is really weird for a Wolverine movie, actually!

Ultimately I think my distaste for this final Wolverine movie starring Hugh Jackman stems from the same reasons that I didn’t care for Iron Man 3 in that simply put – I don’t want to watch weak and feeble superheroes, I want to see them kicking ass…

Right off the bat, my heart kind of sunk during the introductory scenes as we pieced together the current state of affairs and realized that … Wolverine is now an Uber driver??? And it honestly didn’t entirely click with me until I read the Wikipedia plot summary after watching the movie that the reason his mutant healing wasn’t working anymore was simply because he was getting old.

Wait a minute – so the superhero who managed to live for 137 years is just now starting to feel the effects of aging?

Also, while we’re at it – apparently now he lives on an abandoned farm, and Professor X is also getting really old. And there’s an albino mutant who’s basically Professor X’s understudy, except that they hate each other.

How did the studio not take one look at this script and say, “Good grief – that’s a really depressing way for everyone’s favorite superhero to go out?!”

I mean, the general plot makes for a fine story and all, but it’s just not really something that I’d get excited about watching unfold on screen – seeing this incredible super-human who we’ve watched kick amazing quantities of ass now only kicking ass when he goes all berserker, and afterwards he’s really tired, and he’s kind of given up hope on life and just wants to go retire and live on a boat with his live-in father who’s often times more of a hassle than he’s really worth, even though he’s also still got incredible superhero powers though he’s too frail to use them and gets really tired after using them, too.

Was the guy who wrote this script an aging baby boomer who was really into X-Men in his youth and still likes them in theory, but also falls asleep in his lounger a lot with Fox News blathering on in the background?

It’s too bad, really, because it was interesting to see them dabble in the X-23 plot line and they could’ve explored that way further, but instead they just put the kids perpetually on the run … which that point didn’t entirely make sense, either … because ok, your crazy mercenaries followed these mutant kids across the border from Mexico and through the United States – guns a’blazing – but somehow the Canadian border is this magical finish line that will keep the bad people out, if only they can get there?

*sigh*

Frankly, I’ve always been a little disappointed that Fox pounded so hard on Wolverine instead of doing a better job of exploring any of the hundreds of other mutants that they have to choose from. And I get that Wolverine has always been a fan favorite, and Hugh Jackman does a great job of playing him, but why haven’t we seen single hero origin movies for other major players like Professor X, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm … or even Magneto?!

Was it only because Marvel had Avengers queued up and they thought they needed X-Men: First Class (a good movie, mind you) to come to the mat? Or was it because the Wolverine standalone movie kind of flopped and they wanted to try a different direction … despite later circling back to do two more Wolverine standalone movies before all was said and done?

It was a sad way to see (SPOILERS) both Wolverine and Professor X go out after all that they’ve been in the previous films over the years – you’d think that if you lived your life being an incredible badass, you’d want to be remembered as such and not the geriatric pill-poppers who are just done with it all and ready for a new class to take the reins, even if there’s no clear path for them to do so and teaching kids how to live with their mutant powers was kind of your thing for a really long time. 🙁

Are us Democrats just “sore losers who want to see Trump get taken down”???

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So I read a guest column in the Orlando Sentinel – a newspaper that I normally respect – that pitched this tired allegation once again that at the end of the day, Democrats are just sore losers who will stop at nothing to avoid admitting that we lost the election…

…even if it means taking down the president as a result…

And I can’t help but just laugh and laugh and laugh at that hypocritical perspective after all that we’ve endured from the Republican line during President Obama’s time in office:

  • Three years of demands to see Obama’s birth certificate, then his long form birth certificate, under allegations that he was born in Kenya and not Hawaii.
  • Three years and seven investigations into the attacks on the US consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012.
  • Over 50 attempts by the House to repeal, dismantle, or otherwise defund the Affordable Care Act since it was signed into law in 2010.

Just for the record, Donald Trump got elected 187 days ago and has now been in office for 113 days.

I won’t even argue with the merits of each of those efforts … except for the birther movement because that was just ridiculous … but for Benghazi and critiques over the ACA – fine. Republican representatives had concerns and were obligated by their constituents to see them through, albeit excessively, but still…

Three years to investigate an attack 8,000 miles away in which four Americans lost their lives.

Five years to fight a healthcare bill that has affected the lives of tens of millions of Americans, both for better and for worse.

But now it’s suddenly excessive to spend barely than six months looking into whether there was influence from another nation that compromised the election of the President of the United States?!

Now that the shoe is on the other foot, it’s time for us to put this pettiness behind us and come together to support our President … who may have been installed by a foreign government, but probably wasn’t … we’ll just have to trust him despite not having given any reason to date why we actually should!

No. Just no.

You don’t get to dig in your heels for every passionate argument that your side had during the last eight years and then call the other side a bunch of crybabies when they raise question asking for a similar level of scrutiny. Especially after Donald Trump has done more to act suspicious – like firing the guy leading the investigation against him – than all of the “We need to pass the bill to know what’s in the bill!” and “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor!” you can throw at the Obama administration.

Just like you wanted to know whether those four lives in Benghazi were lost due to negligence, we want to know if Donald Trump is a legitimate president because for all of the talk the Republican party makes about concerns over voter fraud, they sure haven’t seemed too concerned with this notion that a foreign entity may have dipped its hands in our election.

Maybe they’re not so concerned because it resulted in their guy beating Hillary, but the integrity of our election should be worth more than either candidate.

So come back to me in 3 – 5 years if we’re still beating this drum and are just unwilling to accept the numerous facts laid out around us, but for now stop acting like a bunch of babies and let your president stand up to the level of scrutiny that ANYONE in the highest office in our nation should be able to handle.