NUMMI gets hit by the economy
For those that don't know I used to work for New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc, or NUMMI as it was often commonly referred to, the Toyota/GM joint venture assembly plant in Fremont. I worked there for nine years and was a pretty happy employee for the better part of those years. Then about two and a half years ago I decided to pursue a different direction in life and decided to become a full time web developer. Yes, that was quite a transition. But there is a point here and it has nothing to do with that transition.
The point that I am trying to make is that the once immovable company that is the NUMMI plant seems to have hit its limit in the recent economic downturn. As of tomorrow the company will be placing their hourly staff on a one-day-a-week furlough plan. Generally what happens to the hourly staff trickles down to the salaried staff, of which I used to be a part of, but usually with overarching consequences.
When it comes to cutting back the NUMMI way was always one of "do more with less". I believe that comes from a Toyota principle somewhere, but it was a very real way of doing things there and often resulted in people being held responsible for way more than they were legitimately able to bear. I cannot see that changing for the poor souls still on the salary roll over there. I can almost see it, huge chunks of departments not backfilling vacated positions. Retirees not being replaced. New projects being borne by already overwhelmed departments.
Not that this is not something being done by just about every company in the country right now. I mean you have to do what you have to do to stay in business. The point I was trying to make in all of this? I am so glad I got out when I did.
The industry I am in right now seems to be relatively unscathed by the downturn. In fact my current company has experienced unprecedented growth, profitability and expansion in the last year. We are tightening out belts like everyone else, but we are not in the same place everyone else is when it comes to layoffs, massive cost cutting or any of that. We are being smart, but not desperate. It is a nice feeling to know that even in a bad economy I can still provide for my family.
I just pray that it stays that way. And my heart goes out to tall the folks at NUMMI. While it was tough for me the last few months I was there, even though I enjoyed the time I spent there, I can't help but think of how stressful and overwhelming this must all be for those folks that are still there. I hope the company can weather this storm.
Government knows best
There was a time in our country when parents were afforded the position of "knowing what is best" for their children. In fact it wasn't that long ago that parents were not only expected to tend to their kids but were encouraged to do so. But it seems as though the government has become increasingly interested in the governing of not just the political landscape. Apparently the government wants into your family now.
I had heard about this issue originally from a Home School Legal Defense Association newsletter and I later read about Senator Barbara Boxer seeking to ratify the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. After reading the content and the message behind it I am left with an overwhelming disgust for our government. Not that I liked the government before, but this makes me want to become a politician just so I can speak out against this crap.
How can any politician believe, at all, that the government knows better than a parent when it comes to raising and handling their own kids? I know there are edge cases of neglect, abuse, bad parenting and utter parental stupidity that could easily be recounted that might provide a small sense of justification for this. But I would say that in the bulk of families that could be affected by a decision like this most have parents that are in some way or another involved in the welfare of their children. The government does not need to pass an intrusive legal decision that would in effect put the governments decisions regarding children above the decisions of the parents of those children.
Does this not seem odd to you? I take comfort in knowing that as a parent I am responsible for my children. I take comfort in knowing that since I live in a free country, a country that does no derive its identity nor its principles from the government which covers it, that I can parent my children however I see fit. Like home schooling my kids. Like disciplining them as I see fit. Like providing for them, sheltering them and teaching them the way that I, as their parent, think is the best way.
I hope Senator Boxer takes one on the chin with this attempt. Seriously, the government is meddling in affairs that it just should not be in. Parenting is one of those areas and that really needs to be left up to the experts: us parents.
Social or socialistic?
I found this little tidbit on Angela Steven's Domestic Divapalooza blog. It would be funny if it weren't so true. I wonder if that day when we awake to communism is going to be within the next four years?
I pray it isn't so. But given the rise to fame of Obamasiah and his apparent inability to do anything wrong in the eyes of mainstream liberal citizens, it would appear that whatever he says, goes. And every day, through the social web, print, radio and television, we are bombarded with messages of his awesomeness, messages of hope and change, messages of past administration failures that he inherited but is going to do something about. Messages that are conveyed without opposition, without question and with a complete reliance on this man to bring about the restoration and change that will save our country.
He used the media to generate an extraordinary following. His message was everywhere your eyes and ears were and his followers were primarily youth who glommed on to his message and hung onto every word. His supporters would hold rallies and have meetings and he would deliver wonderful speeches. His promise was for change and stability and financial success and his victory was sweeping.
After being elected in a major win, and once in office, he took a firm and bold stance and immediately implemented sweeping changes similar to what he promised as he campaigned. But soon things took a different turn and before long the Hitler regime was implementing nationalization and socialism throughout Germany.
Wait, you were thinking I was talking about Obama?
No good deed shall go unpunished
I friend of mine sent me a link to a story about a man that was ticketed for jay walking after he helped save a woman from being hit by a bus.
A good Samaritan who helped push three people out of the path of a pickup truck before being struck and injured has gotten a strange reward for his good deed: A jaywalking ticket.
Family members said 58-year-old bus driver Jim Moffett and another man were helping two elderly women cross a busy Denver street in a snowstorm when he was hit Friday night.
Moffett suffered bleeding in the brain, broken bones, a dislocated shoulder and a possible ruptured spleen. He was in serious but stable condition Wednesday.
The Colorado State Patrol issued the citation. Trooper Ryan Sullivan said that despite Moffett's intentions, jaywalking contributed to the accident.
Now as big a fan of the law that I am I have to say that the police in this case dropped the ball pretty hard. Police let people off all the time for things like speeding, illegal turns, red light violations, etc. And jay walking is one of those infractions that few officers actually cite for, opting instead for real infractions. So this leave me a bit baffled as to why an officer would take it upon himself to issue a citation to someone who just saved a life.
I mean, would it have been better to let the woman die and not jay walk? And in that same vein, did the woman who was saved get cited as well? And lastly, as in the case of self defense or defense in need (like saving someone from attack by attacking the attacker), would this not qualify as a circumstance in which a law broken to save a life was certainly worthy of being negated by the fact that a life was spared? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
Well, I can assure you that if ever I am faced with the prospect of jay walking for the purpose of saving someone from the certain death wrought by the impending collision with a speeding bus, I am going to do it. Cite me if you must. Just know that I would take that citation to court and probably win.
I do not like your Christians
Mohandas Ghandi is quoted as saying:
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
This statement makes a lot of sense to me given the nature of the Christian church today. We have blown it so bad as a religious group that many people have no idea who Christ is because his ambassadors are so tore up.
But the most ironic part of Ghandi's quote about Christians is that he made it some time before 1948, when he died. That means that in the last sixty years we, as Christians, have really not changed much. Please understand that this is not meant to be a blanket statement covering all Christians. Every religion has its wierdos and freaks. Christianity surely does. But isn't it somewhat beneficial for the religious group to at least try to make its image a bit more, well, in line with its ideals?
Something I have noticed lately, even from the pulpit at times, is that in an effort to be a strong Christian we have sort of lost site of the fact that Christianity is about taking the message of the cross to all the world. We are not supposed to be bringing a message of stupidity to those we feel are in need of our salvation the most. We are not supposed to try to save the saved. The message is simple and unchanged: Love.
Love is the primary commandment of Christ. When Christians become judgemental fools the only message that is taken to anyone is foolishness. We cannot embody the image of love if we are broadcasting that we cannot love. And I am not talking about toleration, but true love, the love that can look right past the outwards appearance of sin (to a Christian) and look right into the heart of the person.
I think when Christian begin to learn that there is a heart in everyone regardless of the actions of that person Christians will begin to understand how it is God loved humanity enough to send His Son to die for all of mankind.
What, no Fremont A’s?
Thank you God. That is all I can say. I had heard rumors of the Oakland A's ending their attempts at relocating to Fremont recently and was a little skeptical at first because this little endeavor has been up and down at best. But today it was reported by the San Jose Mercury News that the A's are indeed not going to be pursuing a move to Fremont after all.
The Oakland A's move to Fremont is dead.
In a statement released this morning, A's owner Lew Wolff said the team is stopping all work on a stadium in the Southern Alameda County community.
"After much consideration, today we informed Mayor Wasserman and City Council members that the Oakland Athletics will cease efforts to relocate our franchise to the City of Fremont," Wolff says in a statement released by the team.
I couldn't be happier. The thought of a professional sports team stadium in my city was pretty ridiculous to start with. The location they were planning on putting it into was even more ridiculous. The amount of greed expressed by the city and the city council was even more ridiculous than that. This was just a ridiculous idea to begin with.
I think Fremont is better off without the A's in town. It really would have only benefited a handful of people, a few businesses and a lot of greedy developers. The traffic would have been stupid, the land waste would have been enormous and the cost to the taxpayers of the city would have been immense.
So while Lew Wolff, owner of the A's, thanks Fremont for "all we have done" to try to help them get here, I am thanking him for finally coming to his senses and putting the kibash on the entire idea.
Teaching your child beyond the textbook
The other day I was at my sister's house. While I was there I noticed by niece doing her math homework and as I sat next to her my sister asked me to help her because she was having a hard time with it. As I reviewed the material and looked at the problem it became clear that my niece's struggle with her homework was not because she couldn't do it or because it was too hard. The struggle was that context of the problem was completely irrelevant to her and as such, didn't offer much in the way of motivating her.
So I decided to do to her what I do to my kids: teach her outside the textbook in a real life context that would make sense to her. This isn't a cutting-edge principle by any stretch of the imagination, but it is one in which many parents fail to provide adequately for their children's learning. And please don't take that to mean that parents are failures at teaching. To the contrary, parents that invest time into their children are smashing successes. It's just that often children need more out of their young education than their school or teacher can give them (hence my love for homeschooling).
The problem that my niece was working was pretty simple as it was stated: "A basketball team has won 15 out of 21 games. What percentage of games did they win?" Simple enough, right? But beyond setting up a percentage division equation, where is the thought supposed to come from in this problem? When is the last time you had a problem to solve that was written down on a piece of paper for you?
So after I explained how to set up the necessary equations to determine a percentage from a total and a quantity and I threw a few problems at her. The first was a handful of crayons. There were broken crayons and complete crayons. I asked her to first tell me what the total was. Then I asked her to count how many of the crayons were complete. Then I asked her to tell what percentage of crayons were complete.
We moved on from there to looking at the complete crayons and I asked her to tell me how many of the complete crayons had yellow wrappers and then tell me the percentage of complete crayons that had yellow wrappers. Each time I asked her to set the problem up on paper only after she was able to look at the situation and determine the variables and values for herself.
Then I gave her another problem, a little more relevant to what she does for fun. She is one a swim team. So I told her that there is a swim team that just competed at the championships. The team had 150 swimmers on the team. Of those 150 swimmers 20% were girls under the age of 12. I then asked her how many of the girls on the team were under 12. After that I told her that the coach wanted to surprise the girls under 12 on the team by taking them to a water park to celebrate their season. But the coach found out at the last minute that only kids 8 and over were allowed in the park. I told her that there were 9 girls on the team that under 8 years old that wouldn't be allowed to go. I then asked her to calculate the percentage of girls under 12 that would not be allowed to go to the water park. Then, as a recap, I asked he to tell me the percentage of the swim team those 9 girls represented.
I set up problems like this for my kids all the time. I can, because I am one of their teachers. Very seldom do I take a problem as it was written in a book and hand it to them to solve. I am actually looking for a few things from my kids when I teach them, none of which is available from them calculating numbers on a page.
The first thing I want them to do is understand the nature of the problem they are solving. Setting up a solution to a problem has to start with understanding the problem at hand. If not, well your foundation will suck and will ultimately lead to potentially questionable results.
The next thing I want them to do is think about the simplest way to solve the problem. Complex problems can sometimes be solved by simple means. But looking at something and thinking right away that it is a huge problem and then getting worked up over it can and usually does lead to something going haywire. Thinking about the nature of the problem often presents potential paths to a solution, and sometimes even offers a simple solution.
After figuring the best way to solve the problem I like my kids to setup the way in which they will solve it. This can be the part where they write and equation, or using block put some on one side of a table and some on the other, or using army men or ... you get the point. Whatever path they have chosen to solve the problem needs to then be converted to a solvable schematic.
From there it is just a matter of arithmetic or simple logic. When it comes to math I am really not at all concerned with the correct answer being returned so much as I am with the correct means to a solution being used. Arithmetic is the easier of the things to teach when it comes to math. Logic, not so much.
And such is the case with almost all disciplines of education. Language, history, science... all disciplines have challenges that need to be solved, solutions to those challenges and basics that are used in those solutions. unfortunately schools, textbooks and teachers often have to rely on making things as simple as they can for the bulk of the students being taught and this often results in many students that could learn more or learn faster being restrained and often retarded in their learning.
But if you are a parent you have opportunities every day to test your children, teach your children and train your children. In fact, it isn't so much an opportunity as it is a responsibility. And it is a responsibility that parents must necessarily take seriously given the condition of our public education system.
Wrapping it up
Just for grins I gave this problem to my three older daughters yesterday after watching a cake competition on Food Network. Sarah gave me the answer before I finished telling her the problem. Lets see how well you do:
Say you are making a stacked cake. The bottom layer of the cake is a perfect square in shape with a known side length of L. Now say we are going to put a round cake on top of this layer and we want the round cake to be exactly in the middle of the square cake below it. The round cake will have a diameter, D, that is smaller than the length L of the square cake. How would you determine where on the square cake to place the round cake so that the round cake was exactly in the middle of the square cake?
Ready? Go!
Boobs: What’s the big deal?
The content in the original post was posted without my exercising good judgment and sensitivity and as a result needed to be taken down. I have chosen to leave some of the better portions of that post up, however. At least better in a way that I would think are better.
Man tip: It should go without saying that any time you are faced with the issue of a wife telling you she is feeling insecure about herself in any way that you reassure her that she is more than adequate in every way.
Man tip: If your wife does something that in any way speaks to any part of who you are as a man, tell her. She needs to hear it.
Man tip: Your wife is the most beautiful woman in the world to you. Always. This is never a question as much as it is an affirmation.
