THE PEOPLE MUST HAVE THEIR DAN MILLER

So, one of the things that we’ve been doing off and on is cleaning our basement. Mostly, just de-cluttering all the JUNK that has accumulated there over the past 5 years or so. So one of the things that I found was a package of 24 “aerogrammes”. I had these from my mission - the idea was that I could use them to send air mail letters home. But when I got down to the DR, I found that the church had a “pouch” system. How the pouch worked is that all the missionaries would send their letters into the mission office, and the mission office would ship them to Salt Lake. Once they got to SLC, they would just get dumped into the regular US mail. So, you just needed regular stamps, which is what I used.

So I’ve had these aerogrammes in my “stuff” for 10 years or so, just carting them around from place to place. So while cleaning, I decided to see if they could just be used as regular mail. They have 45 cent stamps embedded as part of the letter, so I figured with stamps going up to 41 cents, I could just use them in place of regular first class mail. I was going to send out a test one, but errands took me to the post office so I brought them in. Turns out, along with the recent uppage of first class stamps from 39 to 41 cents, Aerogrammes were eliminated. So I was just kind of figuring I was out of luck, when the lady told me that they could be exchanged for regular 41 cent stamps. Who knew we had $11 just sitting around….

I know, you are probably amazed. I mean, the Post Office actually NOT sucking for once?!?! It just boggles the mind! I mean when I think of the Post Office, I usually think of the insanely late times I get my mail delivered (5:30 p.m. yesterday), or maybe it’s the times when they give me my mail back all crumpled and deformed with a “Ooh suerie about that” note (cough, cough the $18 cashier’s check for my daughter’s birth certificate) Okay maybe that’s a little harsh - the Post Office does have some good qualities. I mean if I gave you 41 cents, would you take a letter across country?

In other news, we have been listening to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on audio book for awhile now. So Carolyn got an email saying that it was due, and when she went to renew it, she couldn’t because there were “holds” on it. Which makes sense. Except for I then went online to the catalog and found that there were 17 available copies (and only 8 holds). So I called the local branch but there was nothing they could do. So I had to go in to the library, give them back the copy we had checked out, and CHECK OUT A DIFFERENT COPY OF THE EXACT SAME AUDIOBOOK!!! Madness….

Okay, a little late, but I thought it worthwhile to take a bit of time to report on the kickball tournament that I mentioned in my last post.

There was some talk going back and forth in the morning about whether or not we were going to play. It had rained the last 2 nights, and we weren’t sure about how muddy it was going to be. We decided to play anyways and the field was not wet or muddy at all - it was perfect conditions with the sun behind clouds and a temperature in the 60s. I guess originally 22 teams signed up but 5 cancelled leaving 17. We had a few of our players nancy up, so I had to scramble in the morning to find a few subs, but eventually we got a team of 9 together and headed down to the field.

The rules were 4 innings, and each inning was either 3 outs or going through your entire batting order, whichever came first. Games were played to 10 runs. We won our first game without too much difficulty. We had 3 girls on our team (you were required to play 2) and ours played pretty well. I was playing deep right-center field and played pretty well I think. I made a few good catches though I did bobble and drop one.

Then it was time for Game 2. While we were waiting for an open field, one of the players on our team was campaigning to play this other team (Team 7) that he knew. The tournament director set that up for us and off we went. If you will remember from my last post, I mentioned one particular guy that was very competitive among other things. Well this fellow was on this “Team 7″ and all the things I worried about happening in the basketball game happened in kickball. They kicked first and in the very first inning there were fair/foul problems. There were cones down the left/right field lines but it wasn’t very obvious and there weren’t umpires. So they had a few guys on and one of their guys kicked it down there. They called it fair, we called it foul, and while we were “discussing” it, they continued to run. We eventually gave in and let them have it as fair, but in the meantime all their runners scored while we were talking about it. Not that big of a deal since it WAS fair after all. But then in the bottom of the first, the exact same thing happened and then they had the gall to complain about our runners doing the exact same thing! And the one we kicked was DEFINITELY fair as I was watching it down the line from behind home plate.

Now, before I can continue with this post, you will need to take this small quiz (don’t worry you won’t leave the page):

As you might have imagined, late in the game, the bunting started. We entered the 4th and final inning up 8-2, and then on came the bunting. So here’s my major problem with bunting. The way the games were set up we had no catcher, nor did we have a pitcher (since you pitched to your own team). So yes, you COULD just tap the ball down the 3rd base line, and since the bases were so short (and the kickball itself was not very easily throwable), it was impossible to throw the person out at 1st. For awhile, we did move one of our players close in, but then they risk getting a hard fast one without enough time to react and catch it.

The bunting continued (accompanied by lame comments like “All day long baby”) all inning long. It seems like it would be pretty easy to throw the person out at 3rd and/or home plate when the force was on, but I forget why that wasn’t so. Maybe they kicked away at that point. In any case, we got no outs and they ended up tied 8-8 with a runner on 3rd and their last person up to bat. (Remember that you only got to go through your order once). As you may imagine, when you play like this, the last person pretty much has to just keep running until they get out. It does no good for him to get a double since there is nobody left to drive him in. There’s no downside to continuing to run and hoping they miss you with the ball or something. Anyway, the guy kicked it deep and I caught it. The runner on 3rd tagged and went to home plate. We disputed that this run should not count, since once I caught the batter’s ball, the inning should be over. We were saying that it was the 3rd out, which while not technically true (since it wasn’t the fact that there were 3 outs that ended this particular inning but the end of the batting order), still seems like a valid comparison. They made the claim that there was only one out. I could see their reasoning but I think an impartial arbiter would side with us.

Anyways, we let them have it and then went up for our bats. We promptly scored the tying and winning runs on 3 hits and a sacrifice fly and the game was over. It was extra-satisfying to beat a bunch of bunters.

Game 3 was again vs. a bunch of bunters. Even though we talked loudly about how we hated bunting, they kept their 3rd baseman (a girl) in really close. One of our kickers nailed one right down the 3rd base line right at her (not intentionally AFAIK), and to her immense credit she caught it right in the stomach and held on for the out. We won this game too and proceeded to the finals. I led off the game with a long kick over everyone’s head but they managed to get it in quickly and due to my not paying attention, I was thrown out between 3rd and home. We proceeded to lose 8-1. At least it wasn’t to a bunch of bunters. They did have one girl kind of tap the ball but after all the crap she was given, she kicked away in her other times at bat.

It was a lot of fun. After the game, I did some Google searching and was pleased to find that just about every site I saw was anti-bunting. Including the aptly-named NoBunting.com, which even had cool T-shirts

So this week at work we are celebrating National Employee Health and Fitness week. Every day this week there are various events that the company is putting on, generally over lunch. Monday, there was a wiffleball tournament. Yesterday there was a 3-on-3 basketball tournament, cornhole, punt pass and kick, and a dunk tank. Today, a 5K race, tomorrow a kickball tournament, and Friday there is badmitton. It is weeks like these when Carolyn gives me some crap about the “difficult” job I have.

I didn’t do wiffleball, but yesterday I did take part in the 3-on-3 tournament. There were 4 teams signed up, and annoyingly they didn’t do any type of double elimination or round-robin tournament - just a single elimination. More annoyingly, the 2 best teams (including my team) got matched up in the first round (rather than in the finals). An interesting note - when trying to scout out our opponents, these were the adjectives used to describe one of the players (coming from 3 separate people)

• Aggressive
• Competitive
• Hyper
• Egotistical
• An A**hole

Sounds like a real great guy, huh? I was worried that he was going to start a fight or throw a punch or something. Happily though, the game went fine. They were aggressive and competitive, but not annoyingly so. It was a hard-fought game but we lost 10-8. They had this big guy that was quite good. We had a pretty tall guy on our team, and he held his own, but that big guy was hard to stop. I played well, and besides the annoyingness of the tournament structure, I was happy.

Today we had a 5K. The route was a little bit long (measured here at 3.24 miles, as compared to 3.10 for an actual 5K). When I found out this morning that it was long, I IMd several suggestions to the organizers of how the course could be shortened to an actual 5K distance, but they weren’t very interested. I’m not sure why - it wouldn’t have been that hard to do. Keeping the turnaround where it was made sense because it was a good spot to turnaround, but it wouldn’t have been difficult IMHO to just move the start or finish lines. Anyways… the race itself went well. I started up at the front, and while I was quickly passed by all the really fast people, I did manage to keep somewhat of a pace with them. Well, behind them. I did slow down and walk one section at about the 2.7 mile mark, but not for very long. One annoying part of this was the fact that this was a run/walk. Now that, in and of itself, is not very annoying. But because it was an out and back course, and on sidewalks rather than streets, we ran into a particular problem, pardon the pun. As I (and I’m sure many of the other runners) were running back to the start/end point, MANY of the walkers were walking 2-abreast outbound, taking up the whole sidewalk. And while some (a small percentage) made some attempt to go single file or share the sidewalk, most just continued walking and taking the whole sidewalk, forcing us to run in the grass to get around them. One of my co-workers mentioned that a heavier woman waylaid him (i.e. actually collided with him). I managed to avoid hitting anyone but did have to get on to the grass about 5 times or so. This was also kind of an unofficial race, so there was no traffic control. Luckily I avoided getting stopped by any traffic lights, though at one point the light turned green against me while I was in the crosswalk. I waved to the lady as I continued running in front of her :-).

When I crossed the finish line, I was given a time of 26:01, though the stopwatch I was wearing said 26:27. Doing some pace calculations, that is a 5K time of 25:18, which matches up about with what I saw when I crossed the 3.1 mile marker (in my head). That would be a new (unofficial) personal record, beating the old record of 25:39. Of course, that time was on a long course too - I just can’t win! My goal for this race was 25 minutes, so I ended up being just short of that. Still have the goal of the sub-20 minute 5K by the end of the year.

So, I was deciding that next year, I may just have to take over this fitness week thing. These events are just not being run up to my standards. Now, I appreciate the work that these folks are doing (I really do!) and I realize how difficult it is to organize these things and get volunteers and such. But in addition to the annoyances of the 5K route being long and the basketball tournament being too short, the cornhole tournament bracket got all messed up. There were like 78 teams enrolled. But due to various problems, the bracket just got all screwed up. Some teams got like 5 byes, only having to play 2 or 3 games to get to the finals, while others were playing 5 or 6. Now I understand that I am somewhat of a loser in this regard. After all, it should surprise nobody that knows me that I used to create giant double elimination brackets for myself, and play nerf basketball games on my bedroom door with every country in the world being a participant and going through the tournament (Goooo Central African Republic!) But it really would not be that hard to get it right. Heck, 20 seconds of googling got me a PDF of not only a 64 team bracket, but a 64 team bracket that was even designed for cornhole!!

Anyways…. I will (if you’re lucky) update you on how the kickball tournament goes tomorrow…

A few things. I am classifying this as a “rant” but it’s not quite a rant. Think of it as a rant-lite. So, first of all, check out this clip from our corporate intranet.

So, when I first saw this last week, I was figuring the headline was going to be something like

“Mason, OH (AP): Tragedy struck the recycling center today. 3 are dead with 25 injured as a fire broke out in the recycle center at Luxottica Retail. As of now, the details are not clear, but it appears that the sun’s rays broke through the window and were concentrated by the prisms in the lenses to be recycled, starting this deadly fire.

I was relieved to see that it was nothing so dramatic…

The other thing to mention was my belief that the place I work at is excessive on its door-holding. Let me explain… Actually, before I do that, let me back up. I have no problem with in-place door holding. What I mean by that is if I’m in the front of a line of people, when I open the door, I will hold it behind me as I go through the door. I think this is pretty standard behavior.

But here at work, EVERYONE is all about holding the door open for everyone. Like if you see someone 100 feet away, people will stop and wait and hold the door for them. Or people will stop and hold the door for an entire group of people. It makes it hard to know how to approach the door. Do you take it normally, figuring that you’ll have to wait for the person in front of you to go through the door? Or do you speed up, figuring the person in front of you will hold it open for you. And plus then you have to deal with the annoying pause as 2 people try to decide who is going to actually go through the door first. Shuggleftulation, anyone?

So I can’t decide if I’m just insensitive and hate serving my fellow man, or if others also feel this way but are just oppressed by the obsessive culture of door-holding. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with holding the door for someone (i.e. if you’re on a date or something), but this bothers the efficient part of me.

So, having said that, this reminded me of a similar web page I read awhile back about parking in parking garages. The author’s premise is that it is actually significantly faster if, when parking in a garage, and finding an open space, you first check to see if anybody is behind you. If nobody is behind you, then pull into it, but if someone is behind you then you should leave that space and continue onward. It seems counter-intuitive, and is actually a loser for the front car, but it appears to be SIGNIFICANTLY faster for all the cars. Obviously it wouldn’t work in practice because you have to get EVERYONE to do it. See a few paragraphs down for the link to the site for more info.

Anyways, so while thinking about the door-holding, I am reminded of this site, but then I can’t figure out where I read it. I try searching various terms in Google, but I was having no luck. All I could remember was the basic concept (as descibed above) and the fact that it was not the main section of this person’s website, but rather more of an off-shoot. I found it interesting when I tried the search terms theory parking garage “road geek” (which was probably my 10th or 15th try), one of the 6 sites returned was this very blog, to a post I wrote a few weeks ago. It had parking garage and theory in the text, though not road geek, so I don’t know if Google just returned it because it had 3 of the 5 terms, or if it just figured out I was a road geek.

Anyway, a few hours later (and in the middle of this post), I found the site. As I remembered, it was an offshoot of the actual site, being a site dedicated to visiting all 241 stations of the London Underground in record times.

PS - big deal at Meijer this week - more details to follow. But if you live in Cincinnati and want to know more, let me know. Or, just, you know, pick up the Meijer ad and turn to page 6.

So, as previously mentioned, we got a piano a bit ago. The kids have been playing on it and enjoying it, and Carolyn has commented that there’s just something “cooler” about a piano rather than an organ. Though I suppose it could be just the novelty of something new.

So I’ve been spending some time there too. I took piano lessons as a kid for a few years, to limited success. And I’ve also played the violin, baritone horn and trombone at various times in my life. So I have a decent grasp of reading music. When people ask me if I play the piano, I tell them “Sort of” I taught myself to play “Called to Serve” before going on my mission, leading to a humorous incident while in the MTC. We were in a large-group fireside (maybe 200-300 people), and the instructor needed someone to play the opening song, which (unsurprisingly enough) was “Called to Serve”. Nobody volunteered to play, so I raised my hand. I said that it was the only song I knew how to play, so I could play it but if there was a closing song they were out of luck. There wasn’t, so I made my way up to the front and sat down behind the piano.

Now, I won’t say it was awful, but it certainly wasn’t great. Apparently when playing the piano, you’re supposed to use pedals and stuff, which I don’t really know anything about. I did manage to play the whole song without having to stop due to extensive messing up of notes (which was good), but I’m sure it probably sounded like someone who didn’t really know how to play the piano playing. Which, of course, it was. To top things off, this was a Spanish-language fireside, in the Spanish hymbook “Llamados a Servir” has 4 verses instead of only 2 in English, so I had to play twice as long :-). I remember after the fireside, going back to class and the Elders in my district were giving me crap about it. I remember one Elder in particular talking about the pedals and such and the choppiness of my playing and such, and me responding “Well if you know so much about playing the piano, where was YOUR hand, bub?!?” Actually, besides from this guy, the other guys were more along the lines of good-natured teasing. And thus began (and probably ended) my piano-performing days.

Anyways… so with the arrival of our new piano, I have gotten out the hymnbook again and started picking out a few songs. In addition to the aforementioned “Called to Serve”, at various stages of my life, I’ve figured out “God Speed the Right” and because everyone needs a Sacrament song, “Jesus, Once of Humble Birth”. So while looking through the hymnbook for songs that might be easy to play, I stumbled upon “Sweet Hour of Prayer”, which I am nominating as the easiest LDS hymn to play. It’s in C Major (i.e. no sharps or flats) and nearly the entire song is 3rds or 5ths of either C-E-G or F-A-C. Also, “God be with you till we meet again” is quite easy. The first part of the song consists of 3 stanzas where you essentially repeat the same 2 chords. Then there is one part that’s a bit difficult (the final “God be with you till we meet again” right before the chorus), and the chorus, even though it has a separate men’s part (”Till we meeeeeeet”), it’s not that difficult either.

So, following Dan’s first law of the Internet, there is clearly a page somewhere already out there that talks about easy LDS hymns. I found it. It’s actually on the church’s website, which naturally makes sense. The 2 easy ones I mentioned are on there, along with 11 others. I’ll have to check those out.

• Come, Follow Me
• Do What Is Right
• God Be with You Till We Meet Again
• How Gentle God’s Commands
• I Stand All Amazed
• Keep the Commandments
• Let the Holy Spirit Guide
• Now Let Us Rejoice
• Redeemer of Israel
• Sweet Is the Work
• Sweet Hour of Prayer
• Teach Me to Walk in the Light
• We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet.

So have you missed me lately? Probably not. I don’t post all that often, so you probably just figured I was taking some time off. But no. Sometime on May 4th, my Google account was disabled. My GMail account was disabled. My Google Calendar account was disabled. I would try to log in and it would tell me “Sorry, your account has been disabled. Please go to some website if you think this is in error”. Of course it did give the actual website; I just don’t remember what it was.

I wanted to blog about how annoying this all was. But of course my Blogger account is tied into Google, so it too was disabled.

So naturally I went there and filled out the form. Nothing. I filled it out several times, and each time, got not even an auto-responder saying that they had gotten my message.

And then I waited….

And waited…

And waited…

Now granted there is an annoyingness to being cut off from all your mail and calendar and blogging and everything. But what made this even MORE annoying was the fact that I had just gotten things started with the Getting Things Done. For more info, click on the link, but basically it’s a way to organize your life to make sure you get done all the things that you want. I had combined that with GTD Inbox which uses GMail to keep track of all the “Next Actions” you need to do.

So here I am, feeling all productive, when every thing in my inbox is now unavailable. So I didn’t know all the things I needed to do. Very frustrating. So instead I just sat on the couch, watched TV and ate bonbons. Or rather, stared at the hole where our TV used to be.

To recap, My Google account was disabled. My GMail account was disabled. My Google account was locked. My GMail account was locked. I repeat that in case this happens to anyone else, so they can find my blog while searching and know that they are not alone.

So what did I do to fix it? Nothing. I filled out their form on a daily basis (probably 4-5 times). I filled out a few other forms like GMail security or abuse, but I don’t think they did anything. 5 days later (on May 9th) I get an email in my alternate email saying

“Hello,

Thank you for your report.

We apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced. The issue
you
described should now be resolved. If you continue to experience
difficulties, please respond to this message, and we’ll investigate
further.

Sincerely,

The Google Team”

That’s it. No explanation or anything. I did get all my old email and contacts and such, but all my mail from the 5 day period was gone. In talking to friends, they said that messages sent to me during that time bounced back as undeliverable, so I am not holding out any hope for them showing up any time soon.

I haven’t decided if I’m going to give Google another chance, but if I do, I’ll definitely try to be more diligent about backing things up and exporting my contacts / OPML Google Reader lists / Calendar / email somewhere else, so if this happens again, I won’t be caught so dead in the water.Gmail account disabled