GarGoyle-Design

"Kio, check Jack 15. The last rider says he's having some problems with the controls, slow response times or something. Oh, and some audio glitches." Kio's boss barked over the comm. "He's docking and offloading in the bay now."

"On it." Kio responded. He was getting tired of debugging Jacks. This was the fifth Jack in the last month that was showing defects. For the most part it was minor stuff, slow response, radio signals coming across the audio, and sometimes speaking errors. A couple were a little more disconcerting.

So I'm thinking about Shrek sitting alone in his swamp... Not really, I just thought up the title on the fly. But it is a good direction to go either way. To some degree I'm like him. I like my quiet little smelly place where I can pull the wings off flies and yell at kids to get out of my swamp! It's a comfortable place. NOT REALLY! It's smelly and there are dead flies everywhere and unhappy kids and it's a swamp! Be serious, who wants to live that way!?

Preface: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/07/05/iran.stoning/index.html?video=true?video=false&hpt=T1

There's a story in the old testament many people are familiar with about the judgement and wisdom of Solomon. It goes like this: Two women are fighting over a child each claiming it as their own. They are brought before Solomon. He draws a sword and proclaims that each woman will be given half a child. One woman agrees that they should receive half a child. The other woman protests and says that the other woman can have the whole living child. Solomon gives the whole child to what's assumed to be the real mother, or at a minimum the best of the two mothers, who would want to keep it whole and alive.

But what if it hadn't gone that way. What if both mothers agreed with the split, that they'd each rather have half of a dead baby than to give up the whole child to the other woman. What would Solomon have done? Cleave the child in twain? Devise another test? Leave the women to fight it out themselves? What happens when some extreme is hit and the normal wisdom no longer holds the same strength.

The footage reminded him of a nightmare, worse than any he had ever experienced. Gunfire and screams, fire and darkness, hazy monstrosities just at the edge of your vision and then when you turn they're gone. He could still hear their growls and see eyes burning in the darkness hours after the video had come to an end.

"Dr. Olaf do you know of any robotics capable of throwing a man a 50 meters?" Someone asked, at the edge of his perception. "Dr. Olaf? Dr. ...?"

"Tim" someone to his right said and placed a hand on his shoulder. The woman patted and then pointed back down the table. "General Simmons had a question."

Just after a demo meeting on Friday my wife called from somewhere near Table Rock Lake. She was lost. When I asked what she needed she said "I need to get from where I am to where I need to be." HA! Smart ass!

So I went back to to the office, pulled up Sprint Family Locator, pulled up Google Maps, and pulled up the state park map. I asked her to walk out of the store she was in, face the street and tell me what was to her left and her right. What I got was "There's a McDonald's, a fire station, a [insert laundry list of buildings without location or orientation]."

Almost daily I hear "You're it, man!","If something happens to you we're screwed", "You're the man!", "You're doing a great job!", "We really want you in more of a leadership role." While I enjoy the praise I've gotten the last year for my work it's also starting to get on my nerves.

For Father's day I decided to go against the norm. No big screen T.V., surround sound, grill, or new toys. Instead I devised a list of things I wanted, actions not purchases. In some ways it was my gift to my wife, to take the pressure off of what she would have to buy me, since I'm so notoriously difficult to buy for. In another way it was to take the pressure off of me. A typical father's day in my household is anything but relaxing.

My wife bought "The Surrendered Wife" a couple of weeks back. I don't have any expectation that she'll actually read it. I think it was more an impulse buy than something she'll take anything from. But it got me to thinking about the concept;How surrender and submission transform people and those around them.

Looking at review after review I saw a few things:
1. Women taking parts of the book and improving their lives and relationships.
2. Women bashing the book without trying.
3. Women trying the book, seeing success, and then panning the whole thing as stupid anyway.

I heard a story on NPR today that made me connect the failures of software development and the failures of NGOs and other attempts at saving the world. The problem almost always comes down to scope and an inability to deal with change.

Today's story was in part about "Mango Man" a Haitian business man attempting to sell mango's to New York grocers. His idea was that if he could get more high quality mango's from local farmers then he could double their, and his, profits. The problem seemed to be a simple problem with a simple solution.