bentangle

11 cents.  That’s how much cash was left in my pocket after two weeks on the road.  I honestly only used cash for minimal incidental expenses that required it (e.g., train & bus fares, items from convenience stores and news stands) and I only started with a little over $100.  I just find it funny how closely my funds matched my needs.

Anyway, I’m glad to be gradually returning to normalcy.  Though while Saturday with the family went smoothly, Sunday my children did their best to remind me of what I didn’t miss while I was gone.  Grasshopper seems to be going through that phase in life where he is realizing that he is not in charge and is fighting that reality tooth and nail.  And Cricket seems to be giving us a preview of her teenage drama queen years to come.  All upon the backdrop of dinner with the in-laws – their older cousin got fed up with the behavior and I’m sure the parents of their younger cousin were not thrilled with the image of their possible future.  It seems my wife and I have some work to do with them.

On a good note, there were some positive aspects of Father’s Day this year.  My family made me French toast in bed, got me a nice geeky card, and got me Super Mario Galaxy 2 (which the kids proceeded to watch me play for hours).  The game is a good continuation of the series in that it keeps some continuity with the previous installment.  But it is also an improvement – the level layout is much more sensible and enjoyable.  In the first you had this huge “ship” with various rooms to navigate to find the levels of play.  In the new version you steer the ship (which is smaller and simpler) to the various worlds which are all laid out on an easy to navigate map (more similar to games like Super Mario World or Super Mario Bros. 3).  And they brought back Yoshi which adds a fun new variation on the game play (plus the kids love to watch me make him eat things).

Anyway, now that my travels are done, I must return to reality and be a productive member of society.  I look forward to getting back into more interactive tasks than just sitting still and listening all day.  I look forward to getting to go home every day and enjoying some time with my family (maybe a bit less of it like this weekend panned out).  And I look forward to getting refunded all of my travel expenses so that I have more than a dime and a penny to line my pockets.

As exciting as I’m sure my daily chronicles of travel have been, I’m going to take a day off from it to write about something else.  This concept was something I discussed with a colleague last week at the conference in San Francisco and got to talking about again with another colleague this week in NYC.  After chatting about it, we dug up this link and made some popcorn.  The below video is a condensed version of a longer talk – the longer talk is good to, but doesn’t include the awesome whiteboard work demonstrated in the video below.

In watching this, as baffled as the results seem to be to a number of experts apparently, to me this seems akin to common sense.  While money can be a decent incentive, it is not the great incentivizer.  If it was, then rich executives would be the hardest working people in the world (while a handful of them might argue that they are, most of them are far from it).  The interesting coincidence of this topic is that in the discussion, the company that is used as an example of a different way of thinking about incentivization is the very one that sponsored the conference I attended last week.

I am very tempted to send this video to the top executive team at my company and see how willing they may be to adopt some of the habits of it.  I’m sure they will really love the full-length version as it seems to suggest that the sales commission model may be flawed as well (well the CEO and COO would like it, sales maybe less so).  What is important to glean from this, though, isn’t that monetary incentives like bonuses don’t work (though apparently they don’t), but that what does work is to pay people what they need and deserve (so that money is not an issue) and motivate people through personal challenge and growth, a level of autonomy, and a sense of purpose.

I am also motivated to consider the lessons of this set of studies in the context of parenting.  Obviously children aren’t motivated by money (at least not most kids) and material rewards and punishments have limited results. But perhaps more intrinsically valued rewards may be more motivating.  If I have any luck with it, I’ll post an update on the matter.

I’ve noticed that I’ve gotten into a habit of writing nothing but book reviews lately.  That is mostly because I’ve been doing little else but reading in my spare time.  I’m sure there may have been other things to write about in the meantime, but a lot of that writing time I’ve been, well, reading.  So today I will break that trend (and then tomorrow I’ll likely write another book review).

It seems that June is going to be a stressful month in many ways – some positive, some negative, and most of it stemming from a confluence of just a couple of events.  My company is sending me to two conferences that take me in opposite parts of the country.  Also my wife will be managing a farmers’ market launch and juggling a few photo shoots including a wedding.

I’m both excited and nervous about the conferences.  While they will be fun and positive experiences and allow me to see some new sites (one is in SF, the other in NYC), and it is great that the company is willing to pay my way (it seems the worst of the effects of the recent economic downturn have passed – at least for us), but it is a long time to be away from my family and it is a lot of money to spend in a short amount of time between food and lodging.  I don’t envy my wife’s role in this – a 3-year-old and 6 year-old all day every day for 2 weeks without reprieve is a test of anyone’s patience.

Additionally, the second conference will bring the added pleasure of traveling, rooming, and spending most of my time with a colleague who has a rare talent of pushing my buttons (he knows it too).  Professionally, I can respect his talent and appreciate his contributions.  But personally, he can drive me crazy sometimes.  I’d be remiss to say that his affect on me hasn’t had an upside – his insistence on challenging my ideas has drawn me to rethink some and become more confident in others.  And I’d like to think that I’ve helped steer him towards being an improved version of himself (you can never be sure how much is your influence and how much will stick).  But while we’d learned to worked well together, lately we’ve been pushing each other’s buttons more than we intend to and I worry that this conference could bring the straw that breaks one of our backs.  Most likely he will push my buttons, but I’ll roll with it, stew over some of it for a few days after, and then flow back into our regular routine.

Anyway, two weeks of conferences with travel should be fun.  But I know that tensions from my absence from family and/or work will build up.  I’ll likely have to work on both while I’m away.  Still looking forward to it, though.  I just have to remember to pick up some books to read on the planes.

I’ve lost it.  All of it.  Well … most of it … and hopefully only temporarily.  Specifically what I lost was data – lots of it:  hundreds of digital photos, thousands of MP3s, countless documents, spreadsheets, graphic design projects, videos, etc.  All gone without so much as a hiccup of noise to announce their departure.  You see, they were all saved on an external USB hard drive – a 1Tb drive that I treated myself to last fall – that suddenly decided to cease to function.

The loss is inexplicable and immeasurable.  The drive had been working fine no more than a couple days ago.  But when my wife attempted to fire it up today to access it, it seemed disinclined to come to life.  The power light would come one and blink a bit.  Her laptop would attempt to connect to it.  But in the end, the drive didn’t seem to want to perform.  I, being the manly man of technology that I am, attempted to use my own laptop and a number of different USB cables to troubleshoot the issue, but to no avail.  It is kaput.

The good news:  (a) it seems the device is still under warranty and (b) there are services available who may be able to recover the lost data.  So hopefully at some point in the near future I will have a shiny new external hard drive that works and all of my files conveniently found and restored (unfortunately not without incurring some costs, but little in life comes for free).  And beyond that I hope that I can manage to get to a point where such a loss is less likely (e.g., having my files in more than one place to avoid such catastrophic results).  But in the meantime, I’m floating in the limbo of not knowing if, when, or at what cost I will have my data recovered (or whether one of the costs of recovery is a void to the warranty).  And such a lack of knowledge leaves me at a loss for comfort, security, or resolve.

They are too few and too far between, but this evening I took my wife out to dinner.  We considered extending the evening by going to see a movie, but after paying the bill for our fancy dinner, we decided to call it a night.  But it was at least nice to eat a meal together where we could eat and converse without outbursts, interruptions, or the frustrations of getting our children to sit still and eat something.

The reasons that we don’t do such things more often are many, but here is the short list:  lack of time, lack of money, and lack of available sitters.  On the issue of time, there simply doesn’t seem to be enough of it lately.  I often don’t get home from work until 7PM, occasionally have to do more work in the evenings and weekends once I’m home, and the free time that we have together is always busy doing things as a family.  We are lucky to manage to sit and eat three meals in a day at all none the less together and with significant planning.  As for money, a single income only stretches so far.  My wife is very sensible and frugal and stretches every dollar she has an opportunity to spend.  But with a mortgage and 2 car payments, our entertainment fund is nearly non-existent.  Finally, sitters – we have yet to actually procure paid sitter services.  I know that there are sites where you can find and contact local and reputable sitters, but neither of us have the time to vet one properly and that would also have to come out of the entertainment fund.  We do have access to some free sitter services, but schedules rarely align properly.

But tonight, things seemed to align – we had a willing (and free) sitter available, the kids were in good spirits, it was a nice day … and we had a coupon.  So we got dressed up (ish) and headed out to a nice little Italian place (the kind with a fairly short menu and very few pasta dishes on it).  We had a pleasant conversation along with good food from appetizers to dessert.  And now that we have done so, my wife can feel less guilty next weekend when she leaves me with the kids to go camping with her girlfriends … on our anniversary (our 12th – what is that, silk?  I can’t think of any camping items that should be made of silk).  I kid – no guilt necessary.  It is just a day after all.  We celebrate the marriage every day.  And the milestone will be no less important apart.

Hopefully we will make the time to go out more often in the future.  Only time will tell.  But expect to see more entries this week relating to my significant other and related topic.  In retrospect, as important a part of my life as she is, I probably should be writing more along those lines all the time.  The sentiments are there, just the expression seems too few and too far between.  I’ll have to work on that.