Category: Uncategorized

It’s good to know that Kitten know how to keep herself amused in lines. Like Mother (and Father), like Daughter.

Katherine and Super-Guinea!

Eat them up, yum!

Temps up in the 70s today. Needed to sit in the shade when not in the pool. Utterly beastly.

Take one girl, a batch of cookie dough, many types of sprinkles, mix well …

Joined the Tire Invisible.

An overnight stay at the LAX Hilton.

“Christmas time is here, by golly!”

We got the “surf boards” up in Katherine’s room. Cowabunga!

My folks come into town this afternoon for the long weekend.  Fondue, golf, movies, and other activities are all planned, but most importantly we managed to get the house in livable order last night before they arrive. 🙂

Home again, home again, jiggety-jig!

Yumminess at El Nido.

Margie and I were on the exit row to Denver. We were amused by the “Don’t worry, just drop it” part of the sign.

Badminton has a rep as a silly, effete, amateurish, and/or wussy game — but from my own recollections in high school (where I did not half-bad at at), it has the potential for being as fast, active, and brutal as any other volleying game (tennis, volleyball). As Exhibit A …

(via Doyce)

The Bangor City Council has banned smoking in your car if there are kids there.

People who smoke with children present in the confined space of a car or truck might as well be deliberately trying to kill those children, said City Councilor Patricia Blanchette, who is a smoker.

“Let’s step up to the plate and lead; our children are worth the fight,” she said.

The ordinance, which was approved by a 6-3 vote, applies to any motor vehicles on any public roads within the city. Violators face fines of up to $50.

An amendment that was added Monday to the original proposal makes the violation a primary offense, rather than a secondary offense. That means police can pull over vehicles if they see somebody smoking with anybody under 18 in the vehicle; if it were a secondary offense, police would have to stop the vehicle for some other reason, such as speeding.

Like Doyce, I agree with the sentiment here. Second-hand smoke is unhealthy for people, probably especially for kids. That said — how many other unhealthy or dangerous acts are we going to ban or prohibit or fine? How many unwise actions are we going to punish by law? Heck, what about prolonged exposure to cigarette smoke in houses? Should smoking be banned in any house occupied by a child? What
about just having a 10 yard smoking ban around any kid? Or just outlaw the things altogether — after all, they’re harmful to adults, too.

Rrg. I suspect there are many more important (and even life-saving) things the Bangor City Council (and the police) could be doing than this sort of nanny state meddling.

I love my wife, but … No.

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The history of the cubicle.

Economics was the one thing Propst had failed to take into account. But it was also what triggered the cubicle’s runaway success. Around the time the Action Office was born, a growing breed of white-collar workers, whose job titles fell between secretary and boss, was swelling the workforce. Also, real estate prices were rising, as was the cost of reconfiguring office buildings, making the physical office a drag on the corporate budget. Cubicles, or “systems furniture,” as they are euphemistically called, offered a cheaper alternative for redoing the floorplan.

Another critical factor in the cubicle’s rapid ascent was Uncle Sam. During the 1960s, to stimulate business spending, the Treasury created new rules for depreciating assets. The changes specified clearer ranges for depreciation and established a shorter life for furniture and equipment, vs. longer ranges assigned to buildings or leasehold improvements. (Today companies can depreciate office furniture in seven years, whereas permanent structures–that is, offices with walls–are assigned a 39.5-year rate.)

The upshot: A company could recover its costs quicker if it purchased cubes. When clients told Herman Miller of that unexpected benefit, it became a new selling point for the Action Office. After only two years on the market, sales soared. Competitors took notice.

That’s when Propst’s original vision began to fade. “They kept shrinking the Action Office until it became a cubicle,” says Schwartz, now 80. As Steelcase, Knoll, and Haworth brought their versions to market, they figured out that what businesses wanted wasn’t to give employees a holistic experience. The customers wanted a cheap way to pack workers in.

Now, bearing in mind that the cubicle leveraged away the “bull pen” of rows of mere desks, where one’s workspace was a desktop and an in box, cubes aren’t all that bad. I suspect most of the animus against them has to do with dislike of work, work conditions, and office culture in general, with “cube hell” being a convenient (and sometimes justifiable) target.

But, then, I’ve been oddly fortunate enough to have office space for much of my professional career, so I’m probably not the right person to talk. And, given that so much of my job is spent (ugh) on the phone, hopefully that will remain true.

There’s much to recommend Washington, and Seattle has always seemed like an interesting city to me, and certainly there’s a lot of natural beauty in the area.

That said, Defective Yeti provides the definitive reason why (aside from our love of Denver) a move to Seattle is not in the cards for us.

Yum.

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