Seeping Matter

It’s time for me to do my annual bowl picks, which I do every year, in order to invite cynical comments and snide remarks about how inaccurate my picks are.  I don’t pretend to be any good at this.

Without further adieu:

• Famous Idaho Potato Bowl – Ohio vs. Utah State:  I am so dang happy that Utah State is in a bowl game that I definitely have to pick them to win, which as a loyal Aggie I would do even if they were playing Alabama.  I will not be watching the game live, though, because both times I did that this year they had dramatic meltdowns against Auburn and BYU and ended up losing in the final seconds of the game.  Pick:  USU
• Maaco Las Vegas Bowl – Arizona State vs. Boise State:  Boise State gets reamed again this year, with one loss costing them millions of dollars in bowl payouts just like last year.  Arizona State had a losing record playing in the PAC-12 South where the best team was UCLA.  Boise will walk all over ASU, but it won’t be enough to assuage the pains of what might have been.  Pick:  Boise State
• Bridgepoint Education Holiday Bowl – Cal vs. Texas:  Tough pick for a pair of teams with subpar seasons for their programs.  Going out on a limb here and picking Cal.
• Champs Sports Bowl – Florida State vs. Notre Dame:  Florida State started pretty hot and then kinda had a meltdown, but I still think they are a better team than Notre Dame.  Pick:  Florida State
• Valero Alamo Bowl – Washington vs. Baylor:  Robert Griffin III deserved, and won, the Heisman Trophy this year because I think, more than the other candidates, he had the most to do with the success of the team he plays for.  I think this is enough to push Baylor past Washington this year.  Plus, one of my youngest son’s best friends is named Baylor, so he’ll definitely be pulling for them for the 5 minutes he pays attention to the game.  Pick:  Baylor
• Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl – BYU vs. Tulsa:  I don’t really care, but things will go much more swimmingly for me in my neighborhood if I simply capitulate and pick BYU.
• Insight Bowl – Iowa vs. Oklahoma:  If Oklahoma is really as bad as they looked against Oklahoma State, they are in big trouble.  Plus, every time I pick against Iowa I end up getting burned.  They’re a bunch of brawling wrestlers there in Iowa, I guess that makes them pretty bad dudes.  Pick:  Iowa
• Hyundai Sun Bowl – Georgia Tech vs. Utah:  Things will go much more swimmingly for me in my neighborhood if I simply capitulate and pick Utah.  Although, I think they’d better watch out in this one.  Pick:  Utah
• Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl – Illinois vs. UCLA:  Ah, what might have been – Utah was so close to getting to go to this bowl instead of the Sun Bowl.  They must be wringing their hands in grief that they only get to play in the Sun Bowl instead of the “Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl.”  Yes, that is SO MUCH more prestigious!  Anyway, on to this pick:  Well, UCLA pretty much reeks.  Pick:  Illinois
• Chick-fil-A Bowl – Virginia vs. Auburn:  I have to pick Auburn of course, but in fairness I actually think they should be able to win this one.  They did beat USU after all.  Pick:  Auburn
• Ticketcity Bowl – Houston vs. Penn State:  Here’s a chance for us to see if Houston, who nearly went undefeated this year, is as good as we all think they might be.  Penn State is still being punished for their crimes of years past.  Pick:  Houston
• Outback Bowl – Michigan State vs. Georgia:  Now’s when the picks really start to get tough.  Georgia won the SEC East this year, somehow, but I really don’t think they are that good, or truly even the best team in the SEC East (this year that would be South Carolina).  Pick:  Michigan State
• Capitol One Bowl – Nebraska vs. South Carolina:  Speaking of South Carolina, I also think they are better than Nebraska, but this is a close one.  Pick:  South Carolina
• Taxslayer.com Gator Bowl – Ohio State vs. Florida:  One of my favorite holiday traditions is when Ohio State travels down to the south and gets pounded on by an SEC team in a bowl game.  Jim Tressel used to be part of the reason to despise Ohio State.  Now he’s gone, but I’ve still had more than I can stand of their pro-football-playing alumni declaring their alma mater as “THE Ohio State University.”  Clearly English is not one of Ohio State’s best subjects.  Anyway, I hope Florida makes THE Ohio State University bawl their little buckeyes out.  Pick:  Florida
• Rose Bowl – Wisconsin vs. Oregon:  Nike founder Phil Knight proved that you can buy a pretty sweet college football team if you are willing to pay enough.  I’m not exactly a big Oregon fan, but I don’t think Wisconsin can hang with them.  Pick:  Oregon
• Tostitos Fiesta Bowl – Stanford vs. Oklahoma State:  If Stanford is close going into the fourth quarter, they are the team to bet on.  Problem is, I have to make my pick now, not in the fourth quarter, and my guess is that Stanford won’t be close in the fourth quarter.  Winning the Fiesta Bowl won’t be quite the same as playing for the national title for Oklahoma State, but unfortunately that’s about the best they can hope for this year, other than perhaps to beat out Boise State for the “most ripped off by the system” award.  Pick:  Oklahoma State
• Allstate Sugar Bowl – Michigan vs. Virginia Tech:  This has been a good year for Michigan thusfar, surprisingly so given the new coaching changes.  I’d love to see them win this one, but I think Beamerball carries the day.  Pick:  Virginia Tech
• Discover Orange Bowl – West Virginia vs. Clemson:  I think Clemson has superior athletes and a superior team.  Pick:  Clemson
• AT&T Cotton Bowl – Kansas State vs. Arkansas:  Two losses in the SEC West are not nearly the black mark that are two losses in the Big 12 North, especially when those two SEC losses came to Alabama and LSU.  Pick:  Arkansas
• Allstate BCS Championship – Alabama vs. LSU:  LSU somehow ends up winning games even if they are outplayed the entire time.  When Alabama played them during the regular season, Alabama was clearly the better team, but LSU somehow found a way to win anyway.  Alabama’s discipline starts with Nick Saban and permeates the organization.  It’s the same thing for LSU, except instead of discipline flowing downward it is arrogance and air-headedness.  Alabama’s discipline will pay big dividends with over a month of preparation time in hand.  Plus, if LSU wins the national title, I am going to have to stop going to church for a while, or something, in rebellion.  Pick:  Alabama
• Knudsen-B-Gon Toilet Bowl – Akron vs. North Dakota Culinary & Drama College:  Akron’s only win this season was to VMI, who themselves only had two wins against Charleston Southern and Gardner-Webb.  If I keep digging I’m going to get into high school teams and neighborhood pick-up leagues, so let’s just say that Akron is pretty awful, much like how USU used to be (shudder).  ND C&D will wipe their, uh, er, noses with Akron (ah, the puns simply abound in this one).  Pick:  ND C&D

Recently Forbes magazine has reiterated that Utah is one of the top places in the nation for businesses.  This is especially true in the tech industry.  The country as a whole may be struggling in recession, but things aren’t so bad here in the Beehive State, even if we have to deal with being called “the Beehive State.”

Tech is alive and well in Utah.  I don’t know about other professions, but if you are an experienced software engineer and are good at what you do, it seems you can just about fall over backwards into a good opportunity here, at least if you know what you are doing.  There’s a lot of growth in Utah.  Adobe has a sizable Utah presence and they are planning to grow.  I see their new campus taking shape every day.  My employer, Microsoft, has a site here in Utah and we own multiple Microsoft products from this location.  Symantec has a notable presence in Utah and they are also hiring.  Even Novell seems to have found their feet again and are doubling down on some of their main products and ramping up headcount.  That’s not to mention the significant number of smaller technology companies that are making their presence known and hiring people as fast as they can find them.

Recently a fellow in my neighborhood asked for some pointers for a tech person who is looking for employment or looking to improve their employment situation.  Instead of answering him directly I told him I’d blog about it.

My first suggestion is to make sure you are employable.  If you’ve been successful in the tech field for a while, you’ve probably got this one covered.  If you are a bit rusty, it might be time to learn a new language or platform.  I think everyone in the software industry — developers, test engineers, product managers, system administrators, etc. — should at least know a scripting language like Ruby or Python.  Not Perl.  Perl is lame.

If you are thinking of entering the tech sector, you need to get the right kind of education.  Think about the kind of jobs you want, and then before you choose a program, find out about their track record placing people in those types of jobs.  One thing to be aware of is that lots of educational programs claim to offer the training you need to get you into the field you are interested in, fast.  Fact is, many of those types of programs don’t adequately prepare people for certain tech jobs.  As a case in point, many tech schools offer to train you to learn to be a computer programmer.  However, in my experience, these schools do not sufficiently prepare you for a job as a software developer in a high-tech software company.  If you want to write software for a bank or an insurance company, a tech-school certificate may be good enough, but if you want to write software for a software company you’d better get a Computer Science degree from a reputable university.  Fortunately, there are several good options here in Utah so that shouldn’t be a problem for you.

My second suggestion is to make sure you are visible.  For tech companies this means that you must be visible on the Internet.  You may hate social media, but you are doing yourself a disservice if you don’t have at least a cursory presence there.  I would consider a completed LinkedIn profile to be the minimum requirement.  For software engineers, I’d additionally suggest a profile on StackOverflow; other tech jobs might have a corresponding site that is like StackOverflow (for example, ServerFault for sysadmins).  Having a well-managed, thoughtfully-curated presence elsewhere, like on Facebook, Twitter, or a blog, is certainly helpful.  Employers are scouring the social sites looking for people with the skills they need, and are then following up with a Google search.  Curating your online presence is something that takes regular work over time, like gardening.  Just call it career management and make it a habit.  If you do this and you are good at your profession, you won’t even have to look for new opportunities at all.  The demand for good software engineers in Utah today is so strong that they will come looking for you.

My third suggestion is to make sure you are connected.  You need to be maintaining and nurturing your network of colleagues and professionals, as well as expanding it.  Keep tabs on your former colleagues and what they are involved in, where they are working, etc.  If you are looking for a new opportunity, make sure your network knows you are looking.

You also need to be expanding that network by meeting new people.  One way to do this is to try to get involved a bit with some of the interest groups.  In Utah County there are platform based user groups (like PLUG, the Provo Linux Users Group), technology groups (like the Utah County .NET user group), language groups (like the user groups for Ruby or Python), practice groups (like the Utah Software Craftsmanship Group), or others, like LaunchUp for tech startups.  If you look around a bit you can find some that interest you and get involved.  Even signing up for the mailing list can help.

Finally, my last suggestion is to be passionate.  Get involved in SOMETHING that you can talk openly about with other people.  Contributing to an open source project or creating your own software product are good ways to do this.  You don’t need to be working on this side project a lot.  If you are involved in it enough to talk openly and with spirited passion about it, even the most socially backwards of us tech geeks can convey that yes, we really do care about this job for more than just the money.

The other day at work I was walking to my truck to go get lunch and I saw this in the parking lot:

As you can see, it’s a bright red Dodge Viper.  Vipers sport a 8.3L V10 engine that puts out around 500 horsepower and about 525 lb/ft of torque.  In stock trim, it can get to 60 mph from a standing start in less than four seconds and will run an 11-second quarter mile, if you are a good enough driver to handle it.

I continued on to my vehicle.  It is also a bright red Dodge.

My vehicle is also a Dodge, and is also red, like the Viper that was parked not 50 feet away.  My truck has a 5.2L V8 that puts out 225 hp and about 300 lb/ft of torque.  In my experience, if the truck is feeling incredibly motivated, you can maybe get it to 60 from a dead stop in eight seconds or so, but usually when you ask it to accelerate it behaves like a teenager when asked to do the dishes.

Just because my truck is a red Dodge doesn’t mean it is a Viper.  No amount of me wanting it to be a Viper will make it so.

If I wanted, I could paint “Viper” on the side.  Or I could go online and, for a few bones, buy a Viper emblem to slap on the hood.  I could refer to my truck as “my Dodge Viper” and insist that others do the same.  I could enter it in car shows in the same class as other Vipers.  I could even pull up alongside people on the road or in a parking lot who are in a Dodge Viper and say, “Hey, check it out!  We both have the same car!”

This is something that seems pretty obvious, yet if you are paying attention you’ll be surprised how often this happens in real life.  For example, someone might want to criticize your weaknesses, but they don’t want to call it that, because that’s mean to do.  So instead, they tell you they are “giving you feedback” on your “growth areas.”  And then they proceed to criticize your weaknesses anyway, but they somehow feel better about it because they called it something else.  Or your buddy who is knee-deep in a MLM scheme will offer you a great new opportunity, because he’d never want to admit doing what he’s really doing, which is trying to rip you off.

My favorite example of this is something you see on nearly every Disney DVD.  Soon after the DVD starts up, a friendly voice invites you to take advantage of “Disney’s FastPlay” which, interestingly, is the slower of two options for playing the DVD.  Calling it “FastPlay” is not only a misnomer, it is a flat-out lie.

My best guess is that they think doing this is going to make me feel better about it, somehow.  Unfortunately for them, I happen to not be a complete doofus.  So instead it ends up insulting my intelligence because it makes me wonder what they must think of me to assume they can trick me into thinking a red Dodge pickup truck with “Viper” painted on the side is the same thing as a real red Dodge Viper.

Karate is a form of martial arts that you may find mysterious.  I did too until I did a little research and found that it is actually really easy to understand.  Here’s all you need to know about karate:

• The primary purpose of karate is to break things, like boards.
• Sound effects are very important in karate.  Every striking move has an associated sound.  Fortunately there are only two striking moves — the kick and the hit.  When you kick you have to say, “Haaaaa!”  And when you hit you have to say, “Hi-Yaaa!”
• In karate it is illegal to punch with your hand.  You have to strike in a chopping motion.

I’ve been thinking a bit more about my last post and trying to reconcile all of this in my own mind.  There’s two conflicting trains of thought here.

The first is what was reflected in the post and the attached video, and what has been additionally mentioned in a lot of self-help, success, and business literature (like the excellent book “First Break All The Rules”), which is this:  A key to greatness is to identify what your strengths are and capitalize on your strengths.  Focusing your effort instead on your weaknesses is unwise because:

• It has the effect of driving you toward perfect mediocrity because as you shore up your weaknesses to take them from poor to average, you neglect nurturing your strengths which causes them to deteriorate from great to average, and thus you become capable in many areas but not a standout in any of them.
• As a side effect you never know what you could accomplish with your greatest strengths because you don’t have enough time to focus on them since you are too busy working on your weaknesses, which is likely to take a lot more effort to achieve marginal results.
• Frustration is the dominant emotion because you don’t spend nearly enough time killing it doing stuff you are good at, and instead you spend a lot of time feeling like you are swimming in a tar pit, experiencing continual ineptitude and even failure trying to work in your areas of weakness, which is exacerbated by the knowledge that you are really excellent at other things that you would rather be doing.

The other side of this conflict comes from some core foundational beliefs based in religion.  When Jesus Christ was on the earth his expectation was set forth in clear and unmistakable language:  ”Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).  Is there room in a perfect person for weaknesses?  Further, in the Book of Mormon, the Savior implores us to come to him to address our weaknesses, saying, “If they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them” (Ether 12:27).

It seems pretty clear that, despite conventional “wisdom,” we are actually expected to address our weaknesses.  But we still have to live and function in the world, which requires at least some modicum of success as well as trying to enjoy the life we have.

Where I settled on this issue is that addressing weaknesses is meant to be a personal issue.  It is one thing to know that I need to work out more and decide on my own to try to address this weakness while my wife patiently and lovingly supports my efforts and remains focused on the one or two things I do well in our marriage.  It is another thing completely if she is always pointing out to me how fat I’m getting, how I’m not getting into shape, and reminding me how much it is hurting our marriage because I won’t get my act together.  In the first case I feel supported and that I’m succeeding while trying to improve.  In the second case I feel that I can’t do anything right and that I’m drowning in failure after miserable failure.  Luckily for me, the first situation describes my marriage and family, where I feel blissfully happy all the time because my family appreciates the things I do well.  The number of shortcomings greatly outnumbers the good things, but I know what they are and feel supported in addressing them at my own pace.

Maybe that is why in “First Break All The Rules” they encourage managers to focus and build atop their employees strengths and manage around their employees weaknesses.  It isn’t that the employees shouldn’t address their weaknesses, but how and when they do this should be their decision.

Some time ago at work, breakroom talk with a friend led to a discussion about Auto-Tune, a technology I oddly had never heard of before but had suspected for some time.  Auto-Tune is a pitch-correcting technology used to analyze and correct the pitch of a tone that would otherwise be considered off-key.  From what I’ve read, it can be used in recordings to add an obvious digitized effect to vocals (think Cher’s “Believe” as an example), but can also be applied more subtly such that it might not really be noticed (minor pitch correction in a live performance, for example).

This is something that at first glance seems like a great idea.  I mean, why not use Auto-Tune all the time?  That way you can ensure that your vocal performances are spot-on perfect all the time.

I thought about this for a while and wondered if this would really be such a good idea.  With this in mind, I started paying closer attention to music as I was listening to it and started noticing the vocals.  I’d ask myself, “Does this artist sing on tune all the time?  If Auto-Tune were applied to this vocalist would he/she sound different?”

The most important question was the follow-on:  “Would the application of Auto-Tune to this vocalist improve the song or have the opposite effect?”

Here’s some artists that I thought would probably sound quite a bit different with Auto-Tune used:

• Brian Johnson (AC/DC)
• David Lee Roth (Van Halen)
• Bono (U2)
• Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden)
• Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam)
• Bob Marley
• Dave Mustaine (Megadeth)
• Geddy Lee (Rush)
• Axl Rose (Guns N’ Roses)
• Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin)
• Joe Elliott (Def Leppard)
• Kurt Cobain (Nirvana)

You’ll notice that these are among the most influential musical artists of the past 40 or so years of rock music.  If you are familiar with the artists, think about the music they make and the sound of the vocals.  Try to imagine what those vocals would sound like if they were sung with a perfectly clear voice that is always on-key.

I think you would agree with me that using Auto-Tune on the vocals for these artists would have completely ruined their signature sound.  U2′s “With or Without You” wouldn’t have sounded so yearningly desperate if Bono had been precisely on tune the whole time.  The vocals may have been technically perfect, but it would have completely ruined the song.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the imperfect vocals of these artists is part of what makes them special.

Can you imagine if instead these bands had been formed by an executive committee of businesspeople?  Can you imagine if every recording had to be approved by this committee?  “Mr. Vedder, you are still not 100% on-key during the chorus of ‘Evenflow.’  I know you are trying to sing that with emotion, but we need you to do that on-key.  If you cannot do that, we’re going to have to find someone else who can.”  And then you’d have Pearl Jam without Eddie Vedder, which would be … what exactly?  Anything noteworthy at all?

The application of Auto-Tune to “improve” vocal performance is simply one example of something we see so much lately in America.  We have this belief that there is a clear definition of what “excellence” is in any particular realm, and that anything failing to meet that definition is substandard.  When it comes to vocals, for example, singing perfectly on pitch meets that definition; anything else would fail to meet the definition.  What we miss here is that doing this also has the effect of causing everything to be the same.  Auto-Tune may correct pitch, but it also has the effect of removing some of the distinction from the way I would sing (which isn’t good, by the way).

Look through the examples again and I think you will agree that there is value in the distinction and the uniqueness.

Another example of this is in contemporary corporate-America’s valuation of “diversity.”  Modern companies, especially big ones, make a big deal about valuing diversity, but this mostly has to do with avoiding discrimination:  Valuing older and younger employees equally, valuing women and men equally, valuing different races equally, etc.  But what it really means to value diversity is to value the things that make people unique and therefore give them unique value.  If you don’t like Iron Maiden that’s fine, but to dislike Iron Maiden because of the way Bruce Dickinson sings is missing the point.  That’s like saying you would like chocolate chip cookies if they didn’t have chocolate chips in them.  Without chocolate chips, they may still be tasty, but they certainly aren’t chocolate chip cookies.  It wouldn’t make sense to say you value the unique sound of Iron Maiden while simultaneously trying to get Bruce Dickinson to change how he sings, just as it doesn’t make sense to say you value the unique talents and contributions I bring while simultaneously pushing me to change to become like everyone else.

Everyone has unique value, unique talents, unique abilities that set them apart from everyone else.  People naturally try to make order and sense in the world by understanding and categorizing things.  The effect of this is that society is always trying to tell you to suppress your unique value and conform.  “Don’t sing like Brian Johnson,” they’d say.  “He sings terribly and he’ll never be successful that way.  If you can’t sing with feeling and also sing on key, you need to learn to suppress the emotion because people like their music to be on key.”

All evidence to the contrary.

I’ll sum it up with this video featuring Steve Vai.  Steve Vai is a guitar virtuoso and one of my guitar heroes.  Vai’s style is not exactly traditional and so he’s not so popular as, say, Eddie Van Halen.  Steve Vai could have modified his style some 25 years ago when he was playing with David Lee Roth or Whitesnake to try to make himself more mainstream and thus more palatable an artist.  But doing so would have also made him not become the marvel that Steve Vai is today.  Instead, he remained true to himself and became a truly unique, fascinating, and marvelous guitar virtuoso, and his impact on music and the music industry is certainly much greater than it would have been otherwise.

My favorite quote from the video:  “I have strengths, and I have weaknesses.  I don’t work on my weaknesses.  I ignore them, and I cultivate my strengths.”

Enjoy.

Earlier this week I was taking off my well-used Skullcandy Skullcrusher headphones when, inexplicably, one of the earpieces broke off.  I was pretty bummed about this because I’ve quite liked these headphones.

On a whim, I thought, “Is there any chance they would still be under warranty?”  I’d heard Skullcandy was pretty awesome about such things, but still, these headphones are like three and a half years old.  However, when I went to Skullcandy’s website to try to process the warranty return, it went without a hitch.  Basically the website said, “Were you being irresponsible and stupid when they broke?  No?  Then they are fully covered.”

That’s pretty sweet.

So I sent them back to Skullcandy yesterday.  I went to the UPS store where the clerk made an interesting comment.  He said, “Oh, yes.  We’ve seen a number of people send their headphones back to Skullcandy before.”

It occurred to me that this was potentially an example of how a single metric, taken out of context, could be completely misinterpreted.  The UPS store clerk, probably unintentionally, was nevertheless suggesting that Skullcandy headphones get sent back to Skullcandy more frequently than perhaps some other brands.  One might assume that perhaps Skullcandy headphones get sent back more frequently than headphones by, say, Sennheiser, Grado, AKG, Denon, or Audio-Technica because those headphones are quite a bit more expensive than Skullcandys are, and are therefore presumably of higher quality.

However, this statement also implies that Skullcandys get sent back more frequently than headphones that are much cheaper.  How can that be?

Actually it is pretty easily explained if those cheaper brands do not stand behind their headphones.  If I buy a $70 pair of Skullcandy headphones, being fully aware of the lifetime warranty, I’m much more likely to send those back than a set of $5 junk headphones by some no-name brand that probably don’t have a warranty anyway.  And if that is the case, it is much more likely that the UPS store clerk sees packages getting sent back to Skullcandy more frequently.  Additionally, if I hate the $5 headphones, I’m likely to stop using them when I realize they are junk, so it is likely they will never actually get used enough to break.

In other words, given a simple measurement (frequency of headphones getting sent back), the most obvious explanation (that brand of headphones is low quality) may not necessarily be the correct interpretation, once further context is applied (headphones that sound great will be used more frequently and therefore are more likely to break; broken headphones only get sent back to a company that stands behind their product).

It’s why it is so important to known exactly what you are measuring and to interpret the measurement correctly.  And it’s why it is so important that, as an employee, you understand exactly what measurements are used to determine your performance and how they are interpreted.

When I was in fourth grade in 1981, my elementary school purchased their first computer, an Apple II+.  I was one of only a handful of students selected to learn how to use the computer.  I would go down to the library, where the computer was, every so often and play some basic games designed to help people learn to use the computer.  For me, that was genesis.  My life in computers began with the Apple II+.

I never met Steve Jobs, but somehow I felt really saddened to hear about his passing yesterday.  I was reminded of that scene in the movie “Mr. Holland’s Opus” where Mr. Holland learns that John Lennon had died.  Like Mr. Holland, I suddenly felt sorrow and loss to hear that Steve was gone, despite not knowing him personally.  Certainly his impact on my career has a lot to do with that.  There have certainly been ups and downs, but all told my life and career in technology has been pretty special, one I’m grateful for, and I feel that Steve Jobs and Apple have had a lot to do with that.

There’s a part of me that thinks the world will never be the same now that he is gone.  Lately I’m trying to be more optimistic, but I can’t get past this feeling.  I think the most amazing thing about Jobs’ legacy is that he seemed to believe that life should be joyous, and therefore the things that are a part of our lives should offer as much joy as possible to our lives.  So Apple didn’t just make computers, MP3 players, or smartphones — they made wonderful devices that were beyond comparison with the other devices in their category.  Using them had the effect of making your life seem better.

Steve was never willing to settle for the purely functional or for the good enough.  I think that beyond the iPad, iPhone, iPod, the Mac, and even Apple or Pixar, that is Steve Jobs’ legacy:  Life should be joyous, and only the best is good enough to maximize our joy.  With him gone, it is up to others — you and me — to carry the torch forward.

Steve, your impact on the world is beyond measure, but certainly the number of lives you’ve affected for good numbers in the billions, and this impact will persist long beyond your death.  I, with the rest of the world, am deeply grateful and we mourn your passing together.  May you rest in peace.

image source: apple.com

Check out this touching video.  It is a tribute to Sgt. Daniel Gurr, who was killed in action in Afghanistan in August 2011.  Sgt. Gurr grew up in the Uintah Basin, where I’m from.

I feel a great debt of appreciation and gratitude for the men and women who have served and serve today in our country’s military.  Despite the troubles our country faces, it is still the greatest on earth.  There are many billions of people worldwide who don’t enjoy the prosperity and freedom offered to everyone in the United States, and we who live here are very fortunate to enjoy these blessings.  It is because of the courage and conviction of countless others like Sgt. Gurr that we experience the blessings we do here, and I am truly grateful.

What I have to say next is not meant to qualify my previous statement at all.

I think one of the biggest snow jobs our government leaders have sold the American public within the past decade is that these wars are actually necessary.  I cannot count the times I’ve heard statements similar to those I just gave, but worded something like this:  “I’m so grateful for those in our armed forces who are fighting to keep our country free.”

If I were saying it, I’d say it like this:  “I’m so grateful for those in our armed forces who are serving and fighting because they love America and want to keep it free.”  That’s how I truly feel.  But let’s not get confused:  Our military forces are not really fighting for American freedom in the Middle East.

That’s why I’m getting so frustrated to hear about these young people dying in military service in these wars.  Their sacrifice is no less honorable, their deaths no less tragic.  I’m getting frustrated because these are the future of America, some of the best and most noble we have, and their lives are being spent in pointless pursuits at the whims of egotistical government leaders to satisfy selfish, personal motives and political agendas.

The purpose of our military is for national defense.  It is to protect our citizens and our freedoms.  Preemptive strike and the invasion of sovereign nations is not what national defense is about.  It is wonderful that we honor the lives of our fallen servicemen and women.  I suggest we start honoring the lives of those who still live by bringing them home and allowing them to instead build the future of America.

Usually when they take a great book and try to make a movie from it, the movie ends up being a disappointment to some degree.  I’m hard-pressed to think of a better example of this than Starship Troopers.  The book, Starship Troopers, is an absolute must-read, not for it’s compelling story (although it is a good story), but for the great lessons the author, Robert Heinlein, teaches in the context of the book.  The movie, Starship Troopers, was typical Paul Verhoeven fare, which means it was mostly an excuse for sex, nudity, and graphic violence, with a backhanded jab at Mormons tossed in for good measure.

In the book Heinlein suggests a future (the book was written in 1960) where the military force is primarily a volunteer force, i.e. not conscripted soldiers.  In this future, military service, while entirely optional, is prerequisite to citizenship.  Citizens have rights that the non-citizens don’t, like voting.  In sum, in the Starship Troopers world, you don’t gain the rights of citizenship via birth or age, you gain them via military service.

So military service is prerequisite to the right to vote.  Why?  Through the book’s dialogue, Heinlein points out that those who have served in the military have internalized the value of choosing what’s best for the majority over what’s best for the individual.  In the military, an infantryman will take point on a scouting expedition, at great personal peril, because it is better for his platoon to have someone on point.  The platoon, in turn, takes the expedition because it is better for the military campaign.  And likewise, the entire armed force will engage in battle because it is for the best benefit of those living in the country, even though it puts their lives at jeopardy.

(I admit, these statements perhaps only questionably apply to current US military engagements, which I believe have motives of questionable integrity.  This I say with no disrespect and with full appreciation and gratitude for all those who serve.  It’s the people sending them there I wonder about.  But I digress.)

I remember reading that point from Heinlein:  Those in power to vote should have internalized the principle of being able to choose the good of the majority over their individual desires.  It’s something I’ve tried to consider when I’m evaluating political issues and candidates.  It’s something I don’t see a lot of.  I see many who align behind a political stance or candidate because it will benefit them personally.  It makes you wonder how many of our country’s current crises might be related to this type of thinking, and how many of these crises could be rectified if instead we’d start making choices based on what will be best for the largest number of people rather than what will be best for us individually.