So, this is another story that lends more evidence as to why I should just buy everything online.

We were shopping today for various necessities, and I remembered that one thing we’ve been wanting to get is a handheld vacuum cleaner for those little messes the young’uns make that don’t require hauling out The Beast. So, I wandered into a local “Linens ‘N Things” to make what amounted to an impulse buy.

I was looking at the various options and boiled them down to 2: a $20 corded vac and a $60 cordless one that “supposedly” offered tons of sucking potential. As I was mulling over my purchase (no Internet on hand to make an educated buy), a sales drone came by and asked if I needed any help.

Well, sure. Why not? I mean, I don’t know which one I want. Perhaps this guy could be helpful. So I say to him, “I’m having trouble deciding which way I should go here. This one is 3 times more expensive and I’m wondering if it’s worth it.”

Well, he takes a look at both boxes, one of which (the $20 one) says “600 watts!” (which he points out) on the box and the other which says “12 volts!” (again, pointing that out) on the box and declares (pointing to the 12V one, which was the cordless), “Oh, well, with that one you’ll get a ton more power.” (or something extremely similar to that).

I look at him blankly and almost ask him if he even knows what he’s talking about since either he has a ton of E&M knowledge sitting around in his head because he was able to – at a glance – determine the relative Power of the vacuums with only those 2 figures at hand*, or he looked at the relative size of the boxes and the price tags and made a value judgement of quality based on that.

While considering whether or not to make this guy prove right then and there how he knew for sure which vacuum actually had more power, he managed to redeem himself by asking me, “Do you think you’ll always use it with an outlet handy? Like, would you use it in your car?” And, voila!, a sale was made!

I suppose the moral of this story for folks who work in retail is that you should never try and make a sale by trying to bullshit the customer into thinking that you know what you’re talking about (unless you DO know what you’re talking about) because while sometimes the customer may take what you just said at face value because (s)he may be completely clueless about what they’re buying, at other times you’re just making yourself irrelevant to the purchasing process and the customer no longer trusts that you add value. In this case, the salesperson was able to make a sale not by some mystical store of wisdom on vacuum cleaners, but by making me see why I would need one feature over another. That’s adding value in my book.

* NOTE: Being a bit “sciency” myself, my bullshit detector went off the scale the instant the guy said what he did. One should be aware that Power (measured in watts) is the product of voltage and current (P=V*I). And, really, I think that the “600 watts” on the box probably really refers to the amount of power the vacuum consumes and really has very little to do with how well it sucks, though there’s probably some correlation to how well the motor works. I assume an E&M and mechanical engineering savant is not who I ran into at Linens ‘N Things today.

Twelve families had their hopes dashed today that their loved ones were going to come back alive from a horrible cave in. In our 24hr instant news cycle culture which – make no mistake – can be a very cool thing getting news nearly instantly, there’s so much pressure to get the headline out there as fast as possible that fact checking and actual investigative reporting may take a back seat.

Now, I’m no journalism guru, but is it worth breaking the hearts of 12 families so you can scroll a line on the bottom of the screen that’s not true? This stuff is fact reporting, not the spin and political ass-kissing that is mistaken as news that you see so much on Fox News, CNN, and the rest. Perhaps in News like other corporate entities, it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission. Perhaps they need to ask the forgiveness of those 12 families.

You get a lot of these sorts of retrospectives on this date every year, and as I sit and type this out I wonder just how much I’m going to publicly muse about.

The year started not with a bang, but a whimper. We had just successfully hosted Christmas for both my family and The Wife’s family (not in conjunection, but serially), so January started off as being a resting period after the holidays. We also FINALLY (or so we thought) completed a basement remodel after a gruelling 8 months for what was supposed to be a 6-week job. I recall that I caught an especially nasty cold/flu from my brother-in-law just as work started back. Yay.

The rest of January into February was not terribly noteworthy. We had one last remodel drama regarding the heating element in the bathroom floor (which is STILL not working quite right). The Wife was solidly into her 2nd trimester and work had its own dramas, much of which aren’t terribly interesting to the casual reader, I suspect. Life as a 1-child household seemed fine, though our Son didn’t so much have a “terrible two’s” period as one famously hears about. About this time, the child-rearing stress had much to do about what we were going to do about his pre-schooling. Much like my sister before us, we only applied to a single school for our Son and waited to see what would come of that.

March rolled around and there were 2 things to get excited about – the launch of the Sony PSP in the U.S. and enrollment decisions for our Son’s preschool. I was a launch day geek for the PSP, though I did NOT wait in any sort of line to get one. Turns out, it wasn’t all that hard to get one. And our Son got waitlisted to his pre-school. That generated a bit of angst, and I must say the enrollment process for ANY preschool is a bit baffling. What, really, do you have to go on when it comes to a 3-year-old child?

April rolled around and the Tax Man taketh away. The year prior we got some kind of obscene refund, but the pendulum swung the other way this year. I have to admit to being baffled by the tax process. It was in April that I also took my first business trip in a while. I was sent to The Hague to visit a bigtime customer of the company. It was my first trip to Holland, and I was pleased to have been able to go and see places like Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Delft, Scheveningen, etc. Pictures of said trip can be seen here.

May rolled in and our 3rd, 36th, and 32nd birthdays were celebrated, though not with our traditionaly family party. The Wife was now in her 3rd trimester and there was no partying to be done! So we had a private family party for our Son with the promise that next year’s birthday would be an even bigger bash than normal. I bought the Wife a 4G iPod only to see it evolve in very quick succession over the next few months. Damn you Steve Jobs!

The big highlight of the past year, of course, has been the birth of our Daughter in June, and just in time for Father’s Day! I had forgotten just how nice it was to have an infant around and am already regretting that I did not enjoy the time as much as I could have with our Son. Of course, I suspect one never truly gets to spend the kind of time one would like. Anyway, her birth and the subsequent weeks I spent with her on paternity leave was truly wonderful. I cannot find the words for how I feel when I see her smile at me.

July and August came and went mostly with work stress, though we did spend a nice week up on Orcas Island with the Wife’s parents and sister. Oh, and our Son did get into his pre-school, though only part-time (60%). And what better time to throw in yet more change than to start him in pre-school at the beginning of July? He was a real trooper about all that. I’m very proud of him.

September rolled in with Paternity Leave and I got to stay home with our Daughter full-time and also have our Son 40% of the work-week. Let me tell you that when you have 2 kids, it is in your best interest to get out of the house as soon as you possibly can. I was never so motivated to get out of the house by 9am as when I had both the kids. Nothing is worse than a 3 y.o. who is stir crazy and bored. Even with that, the weeks I spent at home with kids seemed to go by too fast. I had the best time being at home with them and I have never felt so calm with myself and my family as I was when I was on leave.

And…… oh hell, even I’m starting to get bored of this post, so I’m just going to end it here. The rest of the year came and went, and much of it had to do with work angst intermingled with playing with my kids. I had some grand vision of going back through and adding my own commentary to the more global events of the year, but I just can’t be bothered to spend the time at this point.

Welcome to 2006.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Dante reserved the deepest circle of hell to traitors, and this circle of hell is not fire and brimstone, it’s cold. Deepest, bluest cold frozen in a lake of ice.

So I was looking forward to using this metaphor during our trip to Minnesota, but the weather has not cooperated. It was in the upper 30’s today and the weather looks like it’s going to hold for the next week.

So, it’s not bad.

When you have kids, your perception of time changes dramatically. Various parts of your life appear to go by at double speed while other parts seem to crawl by frame by frame.

Traveling is one “hurry up and wait” time slice after another. When you don’t have kids, the “and wait” portion is usually spent paging through some magazine or another and basically being bored. YOU MUST SAVOR THIS TIME! When you have kids, the “and wait” portion is spent desperately trying to entertain your children with whatever assortment of toys you’ve brought with while not trying to blow your wad since you have 3 hrs to kill while on the plane.

In the end, it’s a crapshoot, though. Kids will be kids and they’ll do what they’re going to do on the plane. But then, this is what makes them endearing the rest of the time, so you take the good with the bad. That said, you’re probably better off not traveling unless you have to.

Twice a month we get together with the remaining 3 families of our PEPS (Program for Early Parent Support) group to socialize and watch our kids play over a meal. Today we had a brunch at our house and it was also our annual “Christmas” (or “Holiday” for those so inclined) meeting.

We had a nice brunch of pancakes, ham, bagels, fruit, coffee, and juice, but the real show was to have Santa show up for the kiddies and give out the gift swap presents. Now, the boys are currently all 3.5 years old (and the matching girls range in age from 4 mos – 11 mos old), and the previous 3 Christmas get-togethers have resulted in some wary children when it came to Santa.

Since we were hosting, the Wife pulled a “Johnny Bravo” on me since I apparently “fit the suit”. Well, being game and all, I capitulated and was Santa this year. While last year’s Santa was the source of some crying and other mistrust, the boys have all come to realize the symbolism of Santa this year and the moment I showed up, the Christmas lists were flying! I could hardly take in all of the requests. I have to say it was pretty amusing to watch the boys’ faces light up when they saw who it was. I had figured they’d see behind the suit and see our son’s father, but they didn’t seem to catch on.

So, the boys and the girls all got their gifties and Santa had to depart. Shortly thereafter I showed up after having made a “trip to the bathroom” and found that I had missed Santa. I have to say the even though the magic has dulled for me over the years, it was a real treat to see the boys’ (the girls were skeptical about the whole thing) reactions to Santa’s appearance.

When they release the “Best of…” DVD boxed set of my life, I would imagine the fade in to be of me sitting in a chair with the soft-white glow of a monitor lighting up the front of my upper body. Much of the time I spend awake is dedicated towards illuminating my face with liquid crystal goodness during which I generally happen to have various looks ranging from boredom to outrage to incredulousness (incredulousity?). Occasionally, I get up and away from the computer in order to give myself a bit of a break, so I fire up the PSP or Xbox or perhaps enjoy a bit of hi-def eye candy in the tv room. I feel blessed by all the different types of activites I have at my disposal. Oh, btw, you will probably find – should you be a long-time reader of this blog – that I will rant and rave about the utter crap that is my Comcast HD DVR. This is likely to be a great source of content inspiration for me.

I guess since this would be the boxed set, it would be expected that I would not actually play myself. So, I suppose if I had to choose, I would have John Cho of “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle” fame play yours truly. The wife happens to think he’s cute. Since we’re casting here, I think I’d have recently killed-off “Lost” hottie-pottatie Maggie Grace play “The Wife”. They would make quite a good looking couple, don’t you think? Perhaps they would be worthy parents to our kids whom we feel have far surpassed their parents in the looks department (I know all parents think their kids are just the cutest darned things on the planet, but this is mostly a lie they tell themselves to make them feel better. Not all, I’m saying. Just some.).

Anyway, back to the original point, which was to kick off this blog. I have many interests so perhaps I can mine the great store of things I give a shit about for things to write about. It’s hard to say. I just may end up spending more time dorking around with the blog infrastructure than actually posting. I already find that I have much to learn about all of the different ways I can customize this thing. So you’re likely to see everything from:

What you’re unlikely to find is specific blogging about specific work things. I’m still leery about doing that. Besides, you’re probably not going to be all that interested in the inner day-to-day workings of a megacorporation anyway. You can find that stuff elsewhere in the metaverse.

So, anyway, this is how the world begins. At least my blogging world, that is. And since it’s December 15th, I’ll wrap it up by giving a shout out to my little sis since it’s her birthday. Hope you had a good birthday, sis! I’ll have to think about who to cast as you.