Sitting Out a Few
June 25, 2008
For the next couple of weeks, I'm going to be on the DL list recovering from some minor foot surgery. Fortunately, I can work from home, so I will monitor e-mail, phone, IMs, etc. Just another leg of the journey of life, so to speak.
British Group Bans Buzzwords
June 22, 2008
Three cheers for Great Britain's Local Government Association, which sent round a memo to officials and officious bureaucrats to ditch their doublespeak and eschew buzzwords.
Seeing as how we at Hammock are in the business of trying to improve communication between our clients and the rest of the world, I can only shake my head in wonder at this example of "impenetrable jargon": "Why do we have to have 'coterminous, stakeholder engagement' when we could just 'talk to people' instead?" he said.
The list includes some real headscratchers - one wonders how much productive time was lost coming up with some of them.
Several words and phrases that set my teeth a-grind made the list (where present, words in parentheses were suggested as more sensible phrasings):
Best practices (best way)
Bottom-up (listening to people)
Customer (people or person)
Engagement/Engaging (working with people/getting people involved)
Level playing field
Transparency (clear)
Others that didn't make the list - perhaps they aren't used in England? - that I would have included are "corporate/organizational DNA; green, which may have set a record for the speed at which it has become meaningless; conversational media, which too often resembles a shouting match in a late-night bar; and COB - with today's technology, when does a business ever close?
I'm sure you have your own list of buzzwords and clichés and hackneyed phrases. Send 'em along and I will keep a list in which we can all be community stakeholders.
Marines Fight Illinois Flooding
June 20, 2008
While most people think of the U.S. Marines as America's premier fighting force, the Corps also provides humanitarian assistance around the world in the wake of disasters. That includes right here at home, as historic flooding devastates large swaths of the MidWest.
(The same is true about our client, the Marine Corps League, who aid other Marines and their families, as well as communities and children engaged in their own battles against crippling illnesses.)
Here's part of the story; click on the headline to read the rest and see the photos of your United States Marine Corps in action.
Marines, Ind. Nat'l Guard fight back storm waters, help save local town
6/11/2008 By Cpl. Jason D. Mills , 26th MEU
ELNORA, Ind. — Approximately 140 Marines and sailors from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit were called into action here after state and local agencies requested their assistance to fortify a levee in imminent danger of being overrun by the floodwaters which have devastated the area.
The Marines, who were later joined by soldiers from the Indiana National Guard, prisoners incarcerated at the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility in Carlisle Ind., townspeople, Mennonites, Amish farmers and local volunteers reinforced nearly a mile of levee in Elnora, Ind.
After receiving the word to mobilize, the Marines rushed out to Elnora via CH-53E Super Stallion and CH-46E Sea Knight helicopters and began filling sandbags and building and reinforcing levees shortly after arriving at 3 a.m. and continued their efforts until 5 p.m. when they were called off due to more thunderstorms in the area.
The Marines worked with a feverish determination throughout the night and into the morning, most of the time with smiles on their faces, because they had the knowledge they were doing something of real good for those they are sworn to serve.
“It’s good to know that we can go out there and help these people, and I think it’s going to be a real rewarding experience, just being able to help and know that we’re doing something good for this town,” said Lance Cpl. Alex Nelson, Evansville, Ind., native and Marine with the 26th MEU.
A Major Voice in Sports Is Gone
June 7, 2008
The marvelous voice of sportscaster Jim McKay is stilled. The longtime announcer for Wide World of Sports whose coverage of the Munich Olympics itself made history, died today at his home in Maryland.
McKay voiced one of the most memorable lines in sports - "The Thrill of Victory and the Agony of Defeat" - that opened ABC's Wide World of Sports. The job gave him a national reputation and recognition, and helped define sports coverage as we know it today.
It was his presence in the booth at the Munich Summer Games when terrorists took Israeli athletes hostage that vaulted him into international fame.
Oddly enough my first recollection of McKay was not on WWOS, but on a cheesy, low-budget show called "Divorce Court." A forerunner of "Judge Judy" and similar shows, and the successor to a contemporary show of the same name, "Divorce Court" re-enacted marital splits. McKay covered, or maybe narrated, the trials which, he memorably intoned, were presented in hopes of stemming the ever-rising tide of divorce in this country.
It was always McKay's voice that riveted the attention - cool, crisp, resonant, reflective and emotional at times, such as his coverage of The Miracle on Ice, when the US Olympic hockey team beat the Soviet Union. Thanks to YouTube and other resources, we can hear that voice whenever we want. But the man who owned it is gone.
Memorial Day Weekend
May 21, 2008
The offices of Hammock Inc. will be closed Memorial Day Weekend and Memorial Day itself, although I will periodically yield to the lure of the email app and see if my attention is needed for anything. I won't be traveling anywhere, but in case you do, here are a couple things to keep in mind.
First, remember the purpose of the weekend. Most communities will have Memorial Day observances; C-Span will televise some, including on Sunday the Rolling Thunder ride through Washington to remember the POWs and MIAs who have not yet come home. My wife and I, with our friend Mike Perry, did this event 10 years ago this weekend. It was a life-changing event for us, and we have found that those who have been there share a bond of understanding that others cannot feel. Wish I were on a hog, heading up this weekend!
Second, drive safely and wisely. My friends at the Truckload Carriers Association have prepared these tips for motorists venturing out on the first big trip of the summer (and with the price of gasoline, maybe the only big trip).
The Truckload Carriers Association (TCA), a national trade organization representing longhaul motor carriers, has received many fuel saving tips from its member companies and their drivers. For example, John Gill, who is TCA’s 2007 Owner Operator of the Year and leased to Dart Transit Company of Eagan, Minnesota, reminds people not to leave their cars idling too long this summer. “When you’ve got the kids all loaded in the car and you’re on your way to the beach, it can be tempting to pull up to a convenience store and leave the engine and air conditioning running while you run in for cold sodas, but don’t do it,” he warns. “The gas you’ll burn will probably cost you more than the cost of the drinks, not to mention the harm the extra emissions will do to the environment.”
Doug Ladds, who is TCA’s 2007 Company Equipment Driver of the Year and is employed by MacKinnon Transport, Inc., of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, encourages people to carpool even while on vacation. “When I took a vacation with my sister and her family, instead of using our individual cars, we rented one newer-model minivan to transport both families,” he says. “Obviously filling up one fuel tank costs less than filling up two. But even if you’re not vacationing with a group, you can still consider renting a smaller vehicle, a hybrid, or a diesel-powered car for your trip.”
Here are some more suggestions, compiled from TCA’s 500+ trucking company members and their professional truck drivers:
• Maintain your tires. Air pressure is so critical to fuel efficiency that many trucking companies invest in automatic tire inflation (ATI) systems to monitor and continually adjust tire air pressure. Unfortunately for car owners, this feature is only offered on a handful of luxury models, so the majority of the population monitors air pressure the old-fashioned way: with a tire gauge. Just be sure to check frequently. Adjusting air pressure regularly can increase gas mileage up to 3%.
• Drive the speed limit. Not only is it safer for you and your family, but lower speeds reduce engine and break wear, which cuts down on the cost and frequency of your vehicle’s maintenance. It also saves money on fuel. As road speed increases, so does air resistance and rolling resistance, which in turn requires more power to move your car.
• Use cruise control. Generally, using cruise control on the highway can make every driver’s fuel economy better than average. The key is anticipating changes that may occur while on the road. Try to maintain a high field of vision, establish a proper following distance from the vehicle in front of you, and minimize using the brakes by planning ahead.
• Watch how you stop and go. If possible, let up on the gas and try to coast to a stop.
This saves the gasoline you would otherwise burn maintaining your speed longer. Or, slow down until the light is green so you don’t have to stop at all. Speeding up from 5 or 10 miles per hour requires less gas than starting from a complete stop. Conversely, don’t peel off from a dead stop to 60 mph in a few seconds... your car will literally guzzle gas trying to get up to speed.
• Think aerodynamically. If you’re on vacation and have extra luggage stowed on top of or behind the car, tie it securely and keep it as low, taut and smooth as possible. Otherwise, you’ll burn up more gas trying to overcome the wind resistance. Also, try to remove any bicycle/ski racks that you won’t be using and take out heavy, unnecessary objects before you take a trip – a lighter car requires less fuel.
• Plan routes. Consider buying a Global Positioning System (GPS). This device can help you plan the fastest and most direct route to your destination, thus saving you time and fuel costs. Also try to combine errands, because several short trips taken from a cold start can use twice as much fuel as one trip covering the same distance when the engine is warm. If possible, drive when traffic is lightest (road congestion will only slow you down and waste more gas) and plan to drive through major cities at off-peak hours.
• Keep records. Keep a small notebook in the car and log how many miles you’re driving and how much you’re spending on gas. This can help you spot changes in vehicle performance and help you gauge how much to budget for fuel. There are some great fuel calculators on the Internet that can help you compute gas usage or diesel consumption.
Neither do they spin ...
May 8, 2008
Irises have always been my favorite flower.
When I was a kid, my folks had a vegetable garden as well as patches of daffodils and tiger lilies, but the irises were scattered around. So I asked if I could make an iris garden. Not knowing much about it, I dug an 8-foot square bed and with my folks' help, separated a bunch of irises and tubers and carefully planted them. To my surprise, they flourished.
Our house has a lot of irises, from a couple of big beds to small accent beds to a long row along a fence. The fence separates the backyard from a pasture where our big burros, Edgar and Rice, live. Burros like to browse, as well as graze, and they have decided that iris buds are great appetizers. So our long row of very healthy iris has fewer than 20 blossoms. Sigh.
How we came by these iris is a story in itself. Some came from an acre-plus field maintained by an acquaintance of my wife. Three or four years back, he was tired of tending to them and planned to plow them under, so we filled our cars with iris plants. Around the same time, a neighbor on a quiet side street where I walk decided to redo their landscaping and evidently got a small earthmover to dig out and deposit a sizable bed of just bloomed iris on the curb. I spotted them on my walk, ran home for our pickup and literally hauled the whole clump into the truck bed. It took less than an hour to transplant the whole batch in a corner. Voila - instant landscaping!
So, enjoy the fruits of our labor and the survivors of snacking burros.
Of Weasels and In-duh-viduals
April 23, 2008
Though I never worked in a large corporation, Dilbert has always been one of my favorite comic strips.
Maybe that's because, just as all politics is local, all businesses are the same at some fundamental level. No matter how much we like our colleagues, sometimes they drive us nuts (not that they ever think that about us). And no matter how much we may dislike a colleague, wishing they will be assigned to Elbonia simply won't get rid of them. Treachery and deceit may, however, speed up the process.
So: Dilbert captures the essence of the workplace. Any workplace. In Scott Adams's pared-down style, we see the often frustrating struggles for one's daily bread and java. I start my day with Dilbert online, over my toast and coffee, because like Wally I am too lazy to go to the end of the driveway to get the newspaper. Besides, the coffee would get cold.
Adams very recently redesigned his Web site, giving the whole a more techy cast such as displaying the day's strip in a console. The redesign greatly enhances the opportunity for reader interaction and adds features such as animated strips and a mashup feature that lets readers write their own dialogue for Adams' strips. A quick sample shows that we should all keep our day jobs ...
I've worked with a few Wallys - as well as rage-consumed Alices, overly qualified intern Asoks, a bunch of Teds (usually the empty-headed marketing guy).
The animal characters in Dilbert remind me of some other folks in my work history (notice how cleverly I avoided a specific verb tense here). Dilbert's ineptitude with women pings my inability to make small talk in social situations and reminds me of many a failed evening.
Oddly, I've never had a pointy-haired boss—if you don't count the guy who hired me at a print shop out of college and then proceeded to bounce my payroll checks. I have seen my share of buzzword toters, though.
In short, reading Dilbert before heading into work every day is like putting on clean underwear and using Dial soap - it gives me the illusion of being ready for whatever greets me at the door. As the fan spins merrily around me, I can snort and think to myself, "Well, at least this isn't as bad as Dilbert was today." Adams's monthly newsletter outs in narrative form the weasels and "In-duh-viduals" that populate cubicle farms and machine shops alike.
Having said all this - if you are still reading this, I guess I am still employed here. Dilbert and continued employment don't always go together. While untold millions of copies of and links to Dilbert strips have flown around workplaces for years, there was one that landed a guy in deep Elbonian doo-doo a while back.
Posting the famous drunken lemur strip at his workplace - a failing casino - got Iowan David Steward fired. He sued and the company let it go to court, instead settling it in a more civilized way such as jello-wrestling in the town square.
The judge, who had a better sense of humor than a drunken lemur apparently does, ruled for the guy who got fired. Then Adams twisted the stapler deeper in a series of strips in which Wally is fired for posting that same offensive cartoon.
Revenge is sweet. Mockery is even better. Dilbert is tiramisu drenched in expresso ice cream.
I'm With StupidFilter
April 16, 2008
Although the StupidFilter would probably help knock out some spam, it sounds like it's more geared to the junk you get from your rabidly right/left-Dem/GOP-pro/antiwar friends, colleagues and associates.
Ditto the stuff your new-to-computers senior citizen aunt or uncle or pew-sharer spends weeks forwarding, like the ancient nickel-per-email Bill Gates hoax. Speaking of which, Snopes.com is an excellent resource for debunking suspect e-mails - used regularly and in conjunction with the "reply all" button, it can embarrass all but the most dedicated spam-passer into checking their facts first.
Any message containing a phrase like "but you won't see this in the media!" would be automatically 86'd. Pleas to send bottle tops to an ill child somewhere in northern England - please, delete them.
You get the idea. If not, I got a sign for you.
MS Walking
April 8, 2008
My wife has MS - multiple sclerosis. So do several people I've worked with over the years, as well as some friends or their relatives. It's a puzzling, confounding disease - or maybe family of diseases - that once was called "the crippler of young adults." That's misleading, at best, in no small part because it has an unpredictable course. There's no cure, and it doesn't even behave the same from person to person.
Research is chipping away at the mystery, and some of the funding comes from MS Walks around the nation. We've participated or helped out for several years at the one in our hometown, which drew a large crowd on April 5 despite temps in the 40s, a stiff breeze and humidity left over from more than 3 inches of rain the day before.
Some celebrities who have it include Teri Garr, Monteil Williams, Clay Walker, Neil Cavuto, Lena Horne, Annette Funicello, "Squiggy" from the "Laverne and Shirley" TV Show, the late Richard Pryor, and J.K. Rowling's mother. MS has hit each of them differently - some are active and some were quickly and severely disabled by the disease.
My wife was diagnosed 20 years ago this spring, following a frustrating skiing vacation that she spent mostly lying on the snow. MRIs are used to help diagnose the disease; they mixed up her films with those of a gentleman who had a large brain tumor, so when we first pulled them out to look at the images, both our hearts nearly stopped until we noticed the discrepancies in name, etc. Somehow that seemed to give us courage to face whatever the real diagnosis turned out to be.
The more we learned about MS, the less courage I had - my wife adopted the attitude that it's a damn nuisance and bore up patiently with my anger, angst, frustration and hovering. As time went by and her symptoms continued to be mild, we realized our experience would be different from that of many others.
So if there is an MS walk in your community, join your neighbors, write a check or just come out to cheer them on. A lotta good people will thank you.
Marines, Vanderbilt Med Center Save Young Iraqi Girl
March 13, 2008
Thanks to an alert squad of US Marines deployed to Iraq, a little Iraqi girl with a potentially lethal heart condition received life-saving surgery at Nashville's Vanderbilt University Medical Center and is now home with her family.
Two-year-old Amenah Thabit of Haditha is not the first child (or adult) in war-riven Iraq to be helped by US Forces, nor will she be the last. A big Marine Corps OORAH! to those Leathernecks and to the docs and nurses at Vandy and to the Nashville area family who hosted Amenah and her mother during their stay here.
