It's Not a Vice... It's a Versa. My Observations if not Quite a Review

With my car in the shop, I've taken advantage of a free five-day rental car. So today is day four of driving a black Nissan Versa sedan owned by Enterprise.

The Versa is a highly practical car. "Practical" was pretty much my first impression, and still sums the car up well.

But it was not long at all on day one that I made the realization that this car has no soul. This was a car designed with a fair amount of thought, but without any passion. Nothing about the car feels inspired or inspiring.

There are a bunch of little details, although several of them just barely miss the mark. The seats are very comfortable, but not lull-you-to-sleep, lazy buy comfy. They're just right for driving in, but too narrow to feel at home in. The seat recline lever is on the right of the seat bottom, because the seat is too close to the door for you to reach the left side. The gas fill is on the wrong side, too.

There are cupholders for everyone, but the front ones are in front of the shift lever and down most of the way to the floor. You have to lean forward and reach down to reach even a tall mug in them. But they have notches in them to accomodate a mug with handles. (One handle would have to face forward and one rear if you had too, they're in a spot to narrow for them to actually sit side-by-side, so they're staggered.)

Acceleration is fairly smooth, but not by any means aggressive. The suspension keeps things nice on bumpy roads, but there's a vibration in the wheel above 65 on the tollway. There isn't quite as much lean as it feels like at first in corners. The car's center of gravity is lower than yours, so you'll lean a little more than the car.

There's a little window in the front pillar ahead of the side mirrors. There are even defroster slots for those little windows. Not that you can really see anything useful through them anyway.

The seat position is nice and high in the car without pushing you into the roof. Visibility is great in every direction. The hood and trunk are both positioned so that they can't block visibility. The only thing you see outside is... outside. The irritating downside to that is that there is absolutely no visual reference for where the car ends. It's somewhere past the windows, but you can't tell where. It makes everything else feel closer to you than it probably is. Or maybe further away than it really is. Flip a coin and cross your fingers when you park.

The stereo is easy to use and in just the right spot. The radio reception isn't what it should be, and the speakers are crisp and clean until you get to a song you like and turn it up. Then they're underwhelming and disappointing.

Fuel economy is supposed to be about 30mpg, but I haven't been able to test that. It's range is clearly shorter than my Celica's. It probably has a smaller tank, and I'm averaging about 35mpg in the Celica.

The car is pretty quiet, even at highway speed. Until you have to accelerate hard, when it gives you that little "do I have to?" whine from a 4-cylinder engine that could use another 25 HP.

The car was probably very popular with the focus groups that must have played a part in its creation. Then again, the focus group participants probably only got to drive a couple of miles in it. So the Versa is a car that admits you can't please everyone, but does a good job of not offending anyone. It's inexpensive without seeming chinsy. Although the dashboard is clearly hard plastic that's supposed to look nicer than it is. It's practical, there's no denying that. The Versa could be a great first car, that reliable car that gets you through getting to college and back and lasts with you.

You can fall in love with the practicality of the car...but you won't fall in love with the car.

Determination

Writing is such a different thing than the other things I've done professionally.

Okay, to be fair, I can hardly call my writing anything resembling professional. But that's the point.

Most of my working career has been very task-oriented. Come in to work at a set time, and there's a pile of to-do list. Take a task, finish it, put it somewhere else, and grab the next one.

Recently, as an analyst, there are some reports I run that are still tasks. But there are now longer-arcing projects. Those are the things that can't get done in one afternoon. Some of them can be divided into steps, which become little tasks of their own. But it isn't like I work on it 'til it's done and then just cross it off a list.

And then there's writing.

Now, I have this long-standing tradition of starting these big, ambitious projects. All too often, Generally, I'll get to the really complicated part and then a new project/idea comes along, and I launch into that one. I leave a trail of partial-project carnage in my wake.

Naturally, therefore, I have a stack of book ideas, some with more progress than others. Some are just a file folder with a few pages of notes. Some include partial chapters and disks of note files. One has about 2/3rds or so of a first draft.

And then there's the current book. I wrote an entire first draft for it. Then a reasonably serious flaw got pointed out, and I set it aside, temporarily daunted.

But I'm back to it now. Sure, I could pick an easier one to come back to. That 2/3rds first draft is one or two main point-of-view perspectives. I think I have a reasonably complete outline for it. I understand the characters, the motives, the conflicts that drive the plot.

But no, not yet. Maybe that'll be next. I have...three or so that I'm looking forward to starting next.

The current one gets intimidating at times. In the current revision process it has grown from three point-of-view characters to six (one of which I'm already thinking might get removed in the next round of revisions). That makes the whole thing more complicated. Before, there was one character arc that didn't get a complete ending. Now I have to add in two more endings and fit them into the same overall story.

I've been taking the revisions one character at a time, for the most part. I've started with the characters added in. They get smaller shares of page space than some of the others. I'm nearly done with the third and final addition. Just a few chapters to go.

The main two characters I might have to re-write together some. They're a bit interwined, and they're also going face some large changes. It's a lot to keep track of.

The next step, then will be to put the chapters back into book sequence so I can read it straight through. Then I'll go through it again, in sequence this time. I'll have to make sure chapters transition nicely. I'll have to check pacing. I'll re-evaluate each character arc to make sure they achieve what they need to.

Only after that will I start the real polishing and proofreading. All that for a book that a lot of people would suggest I not try as the first one to publish. But even if it doesn't end up the first one I send out to agents/publishers, I can't afford to set it aside half done. That's a cycle I can't afford to leave unbroken.

So that's where things are at. Long way to go. I'll never finish it if I don't keep making progress. Find/make time. Avoid distractions. Focus. Take it in manageable steps. But at the end I'll have something I can be hugely satisfied with. Then I'll start over again with a new book. There is one idea for a long series that is far more ambitious. Yeah, I'm not starting that one next...

No Child Left Behind--But Where Are They Going?

I got into one of those dangerous-at-work conversations: Education. Okay, sure, it isn't generally lumped in with the Big Three topics, but still. It's something I feel very strongly about. That's all the red flag you need at work. Mind you, I stayed civil and vague and caught myself before ranting. (So I might as well do it here, eh?)

He wants his kids to go to public schools. It's not about cost. It's not about wanting to avoid anything religious. It's not even really about the prestige of the school. He wants them to excel at standardized tests.

He doesn't want his child Left Behind. But it's more than just that.

Here's some of his reasoning:

College admissions are heavily influenced by test scores. The people he recently went to college with (Masters Degree in Information Systems) seemed to succeed or fail based on whether they had mastered multiple choice questions. During his college years, he has witnessed a virtual disappearance of essay questions--replaced by multiple choice, standardized tests. ((I did hold back my suggestion that maybe he encountered a lot of idiots at college because the college admissions staff were just looking for students with high test scores...)

He recently had to re-take his driver's license test. He failed it the first time. There were no questions about turning into a skid, for example, but rote memorization questions like, "How much is the fine for parking in a handicapped space?" He seemed pretty sure that was the one question he failed the test by.

He feels strongly that in today's world, in order to succeed and get ahead, you have to know how to memorize, repeat, and score well on standardized tests.

(Maybe on our tax forms we'll just have to fill in the circles? Wouldn't that be so much simpler?)

He has even had trouble getting jobs because of his degree. Master's Degree, less experience and in today's job market? "Overqualified." He took the degree off his resume and suddenly started getting interviews.

All this paints a picture for him of the world his children are growing up in. He wants to prepare them for it. Can't blame him for that.

So I hid my horror. At least I think I did. I hope I did. But it was there, as real and cold and unavoidable as the omnipresent overcast gray sky outside.

And just as horrifying, I could understand how he could see the world like that. I couldn't argue that the world of today looks any different than that.

And yet (at least I really hope), that isn't the world my children will live in. Today is just now. It's the world of ten to twenty years from now that the children of today need to be ready for. I'm pretty sure it will be a very different world than the one we have today.

I'm pretty sure that world will need innovators, problem-solvers, creative thinkers, and articulate expressors--people who can have a unique new vision and be able to manifest it, people who can collaborate in a team and genuinely lead, not just manage people. I don't think that rote learning and standardized test skills will have a lot to do with that...

Yes, and it helped the Internet, too?

There's an article on cnn.com about how More authors turn to Web and print-on-demand publishing.

The basic idea is if you can't get a traditional publisher to publish your book, pay a company that will publish anything for a fee. These were origially called vanity presses, but now more and more of them are moving away from that name as they get digital presses. Now they're Print-On-Demand. There isn't an upfront investment, unless you want extra services, like layouts, or covers, or maybe some editing/proofreading. This is self-publishing.

It's easy to see that as a way to get published. Famous authors have self-published. In many cases because the traditional publishers didn't exist yet. Most poetry is self-published. If you want to publish a poetry book, you might have to do it yourself. That's different.

But here's why self-publishing is bad, from a novelist's perspective. Anyone can self-publish. Anyone can pay a vanity press to put out a book. It doesn't matter if the book is any good. It doesn't matter if it uses sentences or not. It might be unreadable tripe. The vanity publishers don't care. They get their money from the authors. They don't risk a dime of their own. They aren't invested in the book. They don't lose anything if the book is a dismal flop that readers hurl against the wall screaming.

The traditional publishers, on the other hand, invest fairly big money up front. They have to take a risk with every new title they put out. They aren't going to do that unless they think the book has a decent chance of success. They get huge piles of submissions. They rule out many of them just from the query letter that introduces the book. If you can't get a few paragraphs with proper grammar and spelling, they aren't going to invest time reading even a few sample pages. Some of the ideas will sound interesting. Some of them will be old ideas that have been done to death. Eventually, the publisher will find a few that they'll want to read a few sample chapters of. For the most part, they'll know in a few pages if the author can handle the language or not. Then they'll see if he can tell a story.

It's hard to get published this way. You might have to go through a dozen publishers, or a score. Some of them will tell you why they won't buy your book. Then you know what to work on. But these publishers are professionals. They've got some ideas what the readers they market to will and won't buy. They're looking for the books that will leave readers wanting more books from the same author. I'm sure Ms Rowling had to send her manuscript to quite a few publishers.

"When everyone is special, no one is."--Dash, The Incredibles.

In the academic world, you aren't published unless its a peer-reviewed work. Your peers review it to make sure you've got your facts straight, that what your saying can be backed up. To make sure it's reliable. Anyone can put their article up on a web page. Not the same.

When you buy something published by one of the traditional publishers, you can know that it has been screened, at least to some degree. It has been through some editing. (Some established authors bully their way through that process. You may have read books where the quality goes down as a series goes on. That's why...)

Anyone can put up a web site, or a blog. That isn't publishing. Publishers pay authors. Authors make a product and then sell it. With vanity publishing, you make a product and then pay to distribute it. Would you do that with any other product you make?

When I was in college ('89-93) there weren't a whole lot of people on the internet. It took some figuring out how to do anything there. So the ones that were there were having some pretty intellectual discussions. Logical debates. Thought out posts attempting to make a case or explain things. Then the Web came out, AOL got big. Spewing ideas was easy. Anyone could do it. And they did. The signal-to-noise ratio changed.

Now, I'm not going to say that all self-published books are crap, and that no traditionally published book is crap. There are gems and piles in both categories. Similarly, there are the occasional intelligently written MySpace page.

But then, these days anybody can type up a rant and click "publish" without even going back to re-read it...

Sometimes They Do Listen...

There was a recent program at work to gather employee suggestions to reduce costs, or save time, or help morale, etc. A committee was set up to make sure that every idea was reviewed. The goal was to find one or two ideas from each floor to put into place. (And then continue getting more and getting everyone involved.) They mentioned no idea was too little. There was a submission form to explain the idea, the possible benefits, and what it would take (including costs) to implement.

So I put some numbers together. Every four coffee drinkers in the office was using a case of paper cups a year. Each case had a cost, but I also noted the total paper weight of those cups. In a company with something like twenty thousand employees that adds up. I noted the cost of decent quality insulated travel mugs with printed logos. They'd pay for themselves in about 6-9 months.

There were a dozen or so total submissions from our floor. I figured at least I spoke up. This was a couple of weeks ago.

Then I came in today. There was a nice red travel mug on my desk. Insulated, stainless steel liner, not cheap plastic. There are no paper cups to be found on the floor any more. Even the plastic ones for water are gone. I haven't checked any of the other floors to see if it happened everywhere or not.

Hrm. Whatdyaknow? :-)

Seventy Percent...of the problem?

(Warning, this might get long...)

Early on we were a hunting and gathering people. Population was limited by the available food, and most of daily life centered around staying fed.

Then the agricultural revolution came along. We realized we could spend less energy and less time if we took control of our food and grew it in an organized fashion. So what happened? We spent less time hunting and gathering, and had more time and energy for other things. Ancient agrarian cultures gave us art, architecture, philosophy, science--all kinds of new and great thinking. Okay, I'll admit, it also brought about slavery, since the more people you had farming, the more people you could support.

But there was also some natural limiting factors. We could only keep so much surplus. Some of the extra was traded off, but it isn't like farming spiralled out of control, per se.

Then the industrial revolution came along. But this time, it wasn't "hey, we can spend less time making stuff and more time thinking and expanding our consciousness," but rather, "hey, we can have more stuff!" Now everyone can have cars, and all kinds of fun things. We invented new and innovative forms of advertising. The more people wanted stuff, the more stuff we could make, which made it more affordable for people to have more stuff.

Then there was the credit revolution. Now we could buy even more stuff. Even if we couldn't afford it. Now we could "keep up with the Joneses." Now we could accumulate debt in style. We came up with new and innovative ways to buy things beyond our means.

Further technological advances made it cheaper to make disposable things than to repair things. After all, manufacturing is cheap. Repairs are labor intensive, and time is money, after all. Oh, and repairs take skills. Manufacturing just takes automation--or outsourced labor. Besides, the more we can make stuff cheaper, the more stuff we can all have.

There was a time when ninety percent of the economy was farming. Now that's quite a bit smaller, and about seventy percent of the economy is "consumer spending."

In other words, consumption. Nearly three quarters of our time and energy are centered around using things up. Maybe that's an oversimplification. Or maybe it's just a truth people don't want to admit to themselves.

The economy is down because people are spending less--consuming less. Our priorities have gotten so out of whack that consuming less has become a national crisis. Ah, but the solution is easy, right? Get people to spend/consume more. That fixes the economy.

There are government incentives going on to encourage you to throw your car away to buy a new one. But the VIN of your old car has to get recorded to make sure it comes off the market for good. Somehow buying used is bad. Repairing is bad. Disposable has become the solution.

Maybe we don't need to "stimulate" the economy. Maybe we need to take it apart and fix it. Maybe we need to heal it. Maybe we need to heal ourselves.

Maybe the consumption itself, rather than insufficient consumption, is the problem. Maybe we don't need new cars. Maybe we don't need McMansions, and ginormous flat screen plasma TVs. Maybe we don't need hundred million dollar summer blockbusters to watch for a couple hours and then mostly forget. Maybe we don't need everything in our lives to be disposable stuff made in other countries with materials we don't know about. Maybe we don't have to devote our lives to working too hard to pay off the debt from all this disposable crap stuff.

Maybe, instead, it's time to rethink it all. Maybe we need to start valuing ideals and ideas again. Maybe it's time to start valuing art, and thinking, and ideas, and creativity--you know, things that originate in minds and imaginations rather than things that originate in foreign sweatshops and only exist to get used up and then disposed of. Maybe we should start seeing the real value in artisans, and writers, and debate. Maybe we should consider that what our teachers do is of tremendous value. Maybe we should consider that parents staying at home to raise children in a loving home aren't "sacrificing their careers"--that they're doing something far beyond anything we can put a price on.

Maybe we should be distracting our children less and encouraging them more. Maybe we should be sheltering and sanitizing them less and helping them grow strong and independent instead. Maybe we should be worrying less about that they can memorize and instead marvelling at what they can understand.

Maybe our children don't need every little disposable synthetic gadget or mindless TV to distract them and keep them out of our way when they could be doing things to nurture their growth so they can become poeple truly living life and "in" the world. Maybe we don't need to be distracting ourselves with instant gratification when we could be creating--creating lasting gratification and building a future instead of just making a mess and hoping our kids will clean it up when their older. How are they supposed to do that if they don't even have an example to follow.

Oh, but if people don't spend and consume, that'll just drag the economy down more, and that hurts jobs, right? Then more and more people would be having to either settle for lower-paying jobs that don't support their consumeristic lifestyle or they'll have to get education to switch careers.

Maybe if our lifestyles weren't driven by consumption then we wouldn't have to chase each other's carrots up corporate ladders. Maybe if we weren't focused on crap stuff we could focus on what was important. Maybe the solutions are not about spending more, or borrowing more, or banks lending more. Maybe that's actually the problem, instead. Maybe we should only buy what we can afford. I know, revolutionary concept, I guess. Radical, isn't it? If we can't afford a down payment, then maybe renting makes sense. Maybe buying used cars works just as well. Maybe other forms of transporation are better. Maybe if we worked a little more locally. Maybe two hours a day commuting could be invested, rather than just spend. We even let our time be used up--consumed. Or maybe time really is money. I really hope not.

Why I have Trust Issues With Corporate America

In the fall of '99 I started a temp job at Sara Lee Coffee & Tea, although it was known as Superior Coffee at the time. I was filling a position while they tried to find the permanent person. I got that officially in December of that year. I was hired as a Department Assistant. It was my first real job. Everything before that had been part time or temp jobs.

Along the way, the company's name changed, and my title became Sr. Department Assistant. But they had three different sister companies all doing more or less the same things to more or less the same customers. The three got crammed into one. There were round after round of layoffs. They didn't need three HR departments, or three IT departments, and so on.

In 2004 I got a new boss during one of those rounds of restructuring.

Then on a Monday in August (still '04) I had a meeting with him. Everyone has having those meetings. It was partly him getting to know everyone and what they did, and partly discussing the future and how they wanted the different teams structured.

It was an afternoon meeting. We talked about what I was doing, and he asked where I saw myself in the future. I talked about how my position had already grown beyond just an admin, largely because I had kept taking on new responsibilities. I suggested potential titles to more accurately reflect what I did, and I talked about where I thought the job should evolve to next. He seemed to like what I was saying. He talked about how he would review with the senior management crew and together we would work out a plan to get me there.

Everything he said was a lie. That Friday I found out, when he asked me to join him in a meeting. I followed him into a conference room. There was an HR person there. The meeting was going over my severance package. They told me I wouldn't be allowed back to my desk, but assured me any personal belongings would be mailed to me, but that it might take some time. My boss went up for my lunch and car keys.

Shaken and a bit numb I drove home. There were things at my desk I needed pretty quickly, so I called the lady I worked next to. I told her where to find most of my personal stuff. She boxed it up and mailed it. She was great.

I never got the rest of my stuff.

Included with the severance package was some layoff paperwork. Signed by my boss that Monday morning. Morning. The morning just before he told me how he was going to help me plan my career path and career evolution.

I still haven't gotten over that. I'm still resentful. Nearly five years later our finances still haven't recovered.

A year or two ago he applied for a job where I'm working now. One of the HR guys asked me if I knew him. I said I did, but admitted I couldn't give them an unbiased comment and explained what had happened. He didn't get the job.

I still can't help but get a little anxious whenever I see my boss meeting with HR. Part of me still gets a little uncomfortable on Fridays. Every job I've ever had end unexpectedly (albeit mostly temp jobs) did on a Friday.

This week we were told there would be changes to the org chart to "better align" us with another major arm of the company that restructure recently. Monday we're supposed to see the new org chart. There are people anxiously waiting until then so they can look to see if/where they are on it. One of the bigger things I'm working on is one of the major initiatives for 2009. While intellectually I can tell myself I should be okay, I just can't shake the dread in my gut.

I guess I know what I'll be discussing with my therapist tonight...