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  • Robots attack Jimmy Fallon, Phone buying guide, and Fun – WUF Episode IV

    In the Weird category, you HAVE to see this.  This video is the now well-known-at-least-in-geek-circles robot Sophia. Sophia has been on the robot scene for a while.  She\’s modeled after actress Audrey Hepburn, and is known for her human-like appearance and behavior compared to previous robotic variants. Let\’s check out that comparison real quick:

     

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    Umm…not there yet on the looks department.  I\’ve seen this robot many times, and each time I wonder why they haven\’t invested in a nice wig for Sophia. Clearly this a bunch of dudes running this show, but I digress. Sophia is quite remarkable.  According to the manufacturer, David Hanson, Sophia has artificial intelligence, visual data processing, and facial recognition.  You have to see that in action to appreciate it.  The thing that makes Fallon so awesome is that he\’s authentic, and though he didn\’t say it, he\’s clearly a bit freaked out by this exchange.

     

    Useful – Phone Buying Guide

    We\’re all thinking about it…admit it – you want one of those new shiny phones, and wondering if dropping serious money is worth it.  I\’ve searched the Interwebs and Tom\’s Guide has the best comparison out there. My question is really simply this – when did a phone become as important as a computer? Pretty nuts, but that\’s where we\’re at.  I mean, in a way we\’ve lost some ground on this tech for the tyranny of fine design. The removable batteries and the SIM cards were awesome features, and it\’s pretty clear its a money grab to not have either in modern phones.  Here\’s a couple of snippets of particular importance:

    Ignore camera megapixels. Along with battery life, the camera has become the most important smartphone feature. Pay attention to specs such as aperture (lower numbers are better) and special features such as dual lenses and optical image stabilization. Ignore the megapixels. See the Best Camera Phones for our top picks.

    How many screens have you broken in your time?  I say Moto is coming back, considering the  Moto Z2 Force,  is the first to boast shatterproof glass display. But at the very least, you should shop for a phone that has a Gorilla Glass display, which should protect your device from short drops (though a protective case will help with that, too).

    iOS is easier to use; Android gives you more choice. If you\’re torn between iOS and Android, opt for an iPhone if you want something that\’s easy to use and gets both the hottest apps first and the timeliest software updates. Android is better if you want more hardware choices and more affordable options.

    Fun! 

    I\’m a big fan of  Blade Runner 2049 – I can\’t understand why it wasn\’t a blockbuster.  However, if you\’re with me and LOVE that movie, check out Wired.com\’s editorial on it.  From that article is this chart that gives people a guide to movies and their dystopian topic matrix.  Also, if you want to know if you\’re like Sophia (aka a replicant), click here for a quiz Are You a Replicant?

    Here\’s to hoping you\’re not a Replicant! 😉

     

  • Mysterious sound in the ocean, Extend your life for REAL, and BlizzCon 2017 – WUF Episode III

    Weird – the Sound from the Deep

    Greetings everyone, for a new installment of Weird Useful and Fun!

    Under the weird category, I have a very creepy thing for y\’all to listen to.  It is a sound that researchers heard in the ocean, and despite analysis by universities and even the cryptologists in the US Government, no one knows what this is.  A sound only Steven King could appreciate…

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    Useful – Life Extention for Real!

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    Walters Art Museum: Info about artwork, Public Domain

     

    Life extension has been a very hot topic for, well, forever.  Herodotus was among the earliest accounts of a fountain of youth, the 5th century BC.  Check out this quote:

    \”The Ichthyophagid then in their turn questioned the king concerning the term of life, and diet of his people, and were told that most of them lived to be a hundred and twenty years old, while some even went beyond that age– they ate boiled flesh, and had for their drink nothing but milk. When the Ichthyophagi showed wonder at the number of the years, he led them to a fountain, wherein when they had washed, they found their flesh all glossy and sleek, as if they had bathed in oil- and a scent came from the spring like that of violets. The water was so weak, they said, that nothing would float in it, neither wood, nor any lighter substance, but all went to the bottom. If the account of this fountain be true, it would be their constant use of the water from it which makes them so long-lived.\”

    I\’ve always felt that the earth has some substance that would make us live longer, but our searches have proven futile. Now science has gotten serious at looking at aging as the disease, rather than the diseases themselves, which I think is an important use of root cause analysis. Better yet, they seem to getting somewhere.  There are three dimensions they discuss – Stem cell injections, NAH+ boosting, and elimination of so-called zombie cells that refuse to eliminate themselves. This may not mean having people live to 120 years or beyond, but it might mean that our time during the last two decades of our life will be more healthy.

    But what if there was a real fountain of youth?  What if we are really gaining on the age of longer, healthier lives?  There are two resources I\’d like to point you to. First, the video from the awesome guys at Kurzgesagt.

    This relatively new perspective on science is being cataloged in a few places, but the latest and one of the coolest is Lifespan.io, who advocate for life extension. The site is an excellent resource for those who want to look into serious treatments while removing the snake-oil salesmen. Caveat Emptor, my friends!

     

    FUN @  BLIZZCON!

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    The fun has to come down a quick shout out to my friends at Blizzard Entertainment. This convention is somewhat amazing in that its ONE company demoing their product line of games. What\’s even more amazing is that this conference is at the Anaheim convention center, which is the largest convention center on the west coast at over 1.2 million square feet. Whats even MORE amazing is that this thing sells out in a few minutes. Does this make it bigger than PAX? I\’m not sure.

    Look at the below image. If you don\’t know, this is called Cosplaying, and ALL of these people are characters from the games that Blizzard produces. It is an inspiring story to hear how the company got started from some of the folks that did it and still work at the company.

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    Finally this – As I\’ve attended this years Blizzcon virtually, I\’ve watched some amazing artist. I found this awesome  Laurel D. Austin, a principal artist at Blizzard, who posts great images like this one here.  This image is from the game Starcraft, hilariously called Cuddling with Zerg ( the little creatures next to her).   If you want to see more about this conference, rush over to Blizzcon.com .

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    That\’s it for now folks! Have a Weird, Useful, and Fun Week!

  • Digital Resurrection, A Ketosis Infographic, and Extreme Pumpkin Carving

    Though nearly everyone alive in the US recognises this man as a villain from Star Wars, most don\’t know his name. This man is Peter Cushing and he played Grand Moff Tarkin in the 1977 groundbreaking movie Star Wars. As you might be aware, Tarkin appeared, relatively unaged, in the latest release of the franchise, which is pretty good since he had died over a decade prior to that movie!  I gasped when I saw him. It was, as far as I know, the first digital resurrection of an actor.

    But how did they do it? Don\’t just say computers – we know its computers! – I mean…how did they do it?

    Filed under the category of WEIRD, I give you the burgeoning field of digital avatars. In an astounding feat of technical prowess and with the full permission of the Cushing estate, this man was digitally inserted to reprise his role of Tarkin in Rogue One.

    The latest edition of Wired.com covers the ever-improving technology of mapping people\’s video to things they didn\’t do or say. In an era of fake news, this obviously presents some challenges. In the very near future, they\’ll be able to edit voice and video as easily as we can modify photos in photoshop today.  This isn\’t just for high-budget movies. This tech can possibly make the Fake News issue much worse if we don\’t take the time to understand it.  Check out this – just watch the first few seconds and you\’ll see where this is going.  You will agree that it is weird and somewhat worrisome. Knowledge is power!

    USEFUL –  Great resource for HappyWisdomers –  I have an excellent infographic to share with you from my friends over at PositiveHealthWellness.com.

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    As you might know, I\’m a HUGE fan of the Ketosis lifestyle (not diet) and I can personally attest to the accuracy of this chart. I avoided the bad breath by 1) always drinking coffee, which is different, and 2) having gum in the car. No biggie! I\’ve written a good deal about this lifestyle, but let me touch on some of the points here.

    #2 is obviously the big one – lose weight! I am TERRIBLE at this diet, but I still have lost over 20lbs. I intend on getting more serious next year (it is a lot of work in food choices, etc.)

    #5 is 100% true and amazing. Since you\’re eating fat, you find yourself full far more often than on other diets. I love sugar, so its hard, but I can always tell when I slip out of Ketosis. I\’m hungrier and my stomach misbehaves more (bloating, etc.)

    For numbers 8-10, I have to say it wasn\’t that bad. I use MCT oil for the energy thing, and my digestion has never been better.

    Karen Reed, the creator of this and many other awesome infographics, has a great write-up about ketosis and 15 great recipes.

    Check those out here.

    FUN – Halloween Pumpkins!  

    For the last few years, my youngest son and I have tried our hands at copying the Grand Master of pumpkin carving,  Ray Villafane of Villafane studios.  Now, before you see these things, just know that its MUCH harder than it looks, and don\’t try any of it with \”standard\” tooling. What you\’ll need are clay carving tools to get anywhere close to what he\’s doing.

    Below are my favs, and our latest attempts.

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    Okay, now here\’s mine and my son\’s. Remember – harder than it looks 🙂

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    That\’s it for now – thanks for reading, and if you have any designs for pumpkins, send them in!

  • Weird, Useful, Fun (WUF) – Fish and Fidget Spinners

    Experimenting with a new format.  WUF!  The idea is to have a mix of content here, some weird, some useful, and a bit of fun at the end.  This site is, after all, HAPPY wisdom. So let\’s get to it!

     

    WEIRD:  Fish Swims Down Dude\’s Throat

    Okay, the weirdest story I saw online this week has to go to the guy who almost died when a fish swam down his throat. 

    Do NOT Try to Kiss a Dover sole

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    Location: Bournemouth, England

    According to the several media channels, in a 28-year-old\’s man\’s life was in jeopardy after he stopped breathing for three minutes after the six-inch-long fish stuck in his throat.  This event, while funny only because he survived, sounds insanely harrowing:

    \”Using forceps I was able to eventually dislodge the tip of the tail and very carefully, so as not to break the tail off, I tried to remove it – although the fish\’s barbs and gills were getting stuck on the way back up….Eventually, after six attempts, the fish came out in one piece and to our amazement it was a whole Dover sole, measuring about 14cm in length.\”

    Mr. Box added: \”This story just highlights how important it is for friends or bystanders to step in and start CPR when someone\’s heart has stopped.\” Weird, and good news for sure.  (Yes, I did check Snopes, this is for real. Check out the article here. )

     

    USEFUL: Wellness…what is it? 

    There is a lot of great resources out on the Web to encourage you, to make you better, or to make you feel worse by comparing yourself to some artificial standard.

    It turns out that we\’re not all so different, and as humans, we need to address eight different areas of our life. If we can find time to visit each of these dimensions you will likely uncover where that issue is.

    Here are the eight:

    1. Emotional – do you understand your feelings and express them to people you trust?
    2. Environmental – is your home calming and pleasant?
    3. Financial – are you in a place where money isn\’t a constant worry? Worry about this can affect your health so do you what you can lifestyle-wise to make this less of an issue.
    4. Intellectual – are you a life-long learner? Foster curiosity in your life and it\’ll become more interesting.
    5. Occupational – is your job or your volunteer work satisfying?  If not, you\’re not a tree – move!
    6. Physical – fitness is a well-proven component of mental health. Even 2-3 ten-minute walks a day would suffice!
    7. Social – do you have the right support network of family and friends?
    8. Spiritual – what connection do you have to the Big Picture? Tie into the deep mystery of our world with mindfulness.

    There it is, in short. There\’s a nice little video on it, below, and I\’ll likely aim some future HappyWisdoms at this list.

     

     

    FUN! Fidget Spinners in Space

    Like many trends, I initially disparaged the Fidget Spinner as a useless device that isn\’t that satisfying. However, after playing with some of the higher-end models, I have to say its fairly entertaining. It\’s not only me – apparently, the guys floating around in space found the time and space on their spaceship to make room for a Fidget Spinner.

    What\’s super interesting is it looks like the angular momentum from the fidget spinner can be transferred from it to the astronaut. The raw power of physics is made even more interesting in zero-G environments.

  • Five Lessons of PAX and Burning Man

    My first version of this blog post was to pit PAX West, my favorite conference, versus the simultaneous Burning Man Festival, which I\’ve been curious about but unable to attend. Yet this seems distasteful to me now that there has been a suicide there. I have no desire to take down Burning Man, to kick them when they\’re down. Indeed the more I read, the more I respect it.

    Pax and Burning Man have more in common than I expected and both transcend their surface appeal of video games and sex, respectively. What makes them so special?

    First, some facts:. They are growing, each drawing over 70k people (of course, PAX does this three times a year).  PAX West occurs on Labor Day weekend with \’Man, and both are on the West Coast. They involve the option of dressing up (or down), and both have music tightly integrated into the experience. What is it about these two events that makes them so helpful or valuable to so many? I\’ve found five items…there are probably more.

    1. SELF-EXPRESSION  – There are many installations at Burning Man that are simply astounding, like here, and here. People will paint everything so careful what you search on there, bub. PAX has fantastic costumes as well, encouraging attendees to Cosplay, costume play, as their favorite characters from the entertainment world, like here and here. Astounding effort goes into both, and it\’d be tempting to think that Burning Man, with its enormity, would have the market cornered on this one. The Gentle Reader must understand that video games are a form of expression. Both attendees and vendors are in a symbiotic dance of creation and fandom, amplifying one another ad infinitum. Finally, video games are literally creating new worlds and experiences, sans drugs. During this PAX, I wore the Oculus system and became the Hulk.  It was weird and wonderful and transported me to another place, without going to a desert.  This was my new world, with my huge arms –

    Check out a review of that experience here – but TL;DR – it was amazing.

    At the end of the day, both PAX and Burning Man are tornados of creation and both are bound by time. Like the smoldering remains of over 30 burns in the desert, video games and their millions of lines of code are like sandcastles, cast into the trash bin the next time a great graphics engine comes out.   – – – Lesson 1: Create something new, experience something new, and then let it go

    2. ENTERTAINMENT- Every video game and board game in existence show up at PAX, with Twitch and YouTube live vying for interviews and streaming games. Those in for quieter fare go to the dozens of board game areas, console play areas, PC play areas, vintage video game areas, or…pausing for effect..go to a panel of video game experts to learn how to participate. Burning Man has a program full of events, and, like PAX, you feel almost feel more FOMO for going than not, since you become aware of what you\’re missing out.  I got more steps during PAX than I did at the Seattle Rock and Roll 1/2 marathon. Fun can be exhausting. Speaking of gaming, Drift Hunters can immerse you in the world of racing, providing thrills and excitement.        – – – Lesson 2: Have fun, Let Go, and pace yourself. 

    3. SENSE OF HOME:  On the binding of the PAX conference guide the term – \”Welcome Home\” appears.  This term comes up again, but in a welcome at Burning Man: \”When I told people that it was my first Burn, many of them said, \”\’welcome home\’\”.  Even a conservative got a warm welcome, which is as fantastical as any outfit at either event. It goes without saying that at both conferences there\’s plenty of geek and nerds. A good chunk of both populations were in the AV Club, Computer Club, chess club, or played Dungeons and Dragons. I\’d gamble many of them had a heck of a time surviving the Darwinian grinder we call school. I know I did. These folks are survivors. They are creating, building, working, and showing their stuff for all to see (in more way than one). They\’re creatives, through and through, and have brought their uniqueness home, a home that they too created.  – – –  Lesson 3: Find and make your home

    4. VALUE:  Both of these events cost a TON of money. PAX tickets are spendy, but not nearly as spendy as the \’Man, who will run you over $400 just to get your vehicle in. People work hard to build a city for a week with no resources and then leave zero footprint on the place. I agree with the aforementioned conservative- he wishes all cities were run with Burning Man principles shown below. In PAX, people are constantly giving you merch, discounts on computer gear, hats, and mouse pads, but like going to Costco, it\’s hard to leave without dropping several hundred bucks before you know it.   – – – Lesson 4: Save your money and spend it where it counts most

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    5. SELF-DISCOVERY: Being with strangers, completely dependent on their generosity, and facing a week without electronics and connection to the world seeps of self-discovery. Burning Man has the temple, where you put names of loved ones you\’ve lost, messages you want to send to them or to the world.  This whole thing is built around self-discovery and I would go just for that one reason. Now, PAX is a bit more of a stretch. There is little quiet, since the days are packed with people and activities. And yet there are many moments in the five years I\’ve attended PAX where I wondered about the future. Where is all of this going? How do I, as a techie and story teller, work in this new medium? What ethical/moral challenges does this new age present to society? How will VR change the world? You have to make time for the self-discovery or it won\’t happen, even in a desert.   – – – Lesson 5: Make the time and space for self-discovery

    WRAP-UP –   Nearly 200,000 people go to these two events combined, celebrating life, who they are, and what they\’ve created, together. What works for them should work for you.

    The point – By saving your time and money to seek out self-expression and a sense of home, mixed with some fun and self-discovery, you are sure to find strength for the real world, giving yourself fuel for expression and engagement.

    What is your PAX? What is your Burning Man? What is that thing that you do to challenge yourself, revive, and reinspire?

  • What I learned from the Eclipse

    No, I did not get an amazing photo of the eclipse. It was fun, and the glasses we got at Lowes were awesome. We went to the parking lot here in town, since we were getting about 96.1% of the view. I figured, \”Heck, I\’ll take a 96% any day, especially when the alternative is driving an undefined number of hours down to Oregon. Everyone was saying it was going to be an apocalyptic amount of traffic.\”

    I mean, it was cool, really cool when we started getting cold as the sun went away. In the cloudy Pacific Northwest, we\’re glad to see the sun any day,  and I feared we\’d miss the whole thing when a low fog came in that morning.

    Yet, it wasn\’t that amazing. The crazy photos, like the one above, plus many other personal friends of ours said that it became truly dark during the eclipse.  For us, it got a little dark, like a dense storm cloud. Hat\’s off to the sun, who knew that with 96% of the orb obscured we\’d still be nearly full daylight?  And yet, there are some that made the trip down there and regretted it, reporting over ten hours of commute time for a fifteen-second experience. 

    4% of the sun remained. Our efforts were 4% off, and it made all the difference. We missed out on totality, and it mattered. 

    I wonder how many things are like this in our world these days? You get close, you work hard, and you become VERY good. That book you\’re writing is great. That painting, that code you\’re writing, that sale you\’re working on – all excellent.  But are they 96 percent, or 100%?

    I\’m not talking about outcomes here, e.g. if you get famous, if you get rich, etc. That stuff we cannot control. Instead, imagine the eclipse as effort. If we really put in that last 4%, could it make all the difference in the world?  Or would we be wasting our time, chasing things that we cannot have or cost too much, making any victory pyrrhic?

    It seems to me that the trick here isn\’t to treat everything with 100% or you\’ll go crazy, nor is it settling for the 96% all of the time. No, it\’s about finding that balance, taking big bets on what would pay off for you emotionally and go for it, and letting the other stuff be simply okay, being happy with dark glasses in a mall parking lot, sipping coffee with loved ones, gazing towards the sky in wonder while trying not to go blind.

    -Joe

     

     

  • Summer Update – PNWA Conference, GamerSusan, Hurrah!

    When June hits in our household and the sun comes out in the Seattle region, people hit the outdoors and don\’t return. It doesn\’t get dark here until nearly 10:00 pm, so it really guts one\’s blogging time!  But we\’re back, and here\’s what I\’ve been up to.

    ~ GamerSuzan – This one is a passion project. Our family loves board games and this site will be a testament to that, and a lazy-Suzan-like device to hold people\’s games.  Check out the fun at gamersusan.com (in work!).

    ~ I ran the Seattle Rock and Roll 1/2 marathon and it was FUN!  I beat my previous time by more than 30 minutes (and that was like seven years ago).  Woot!  I\’ll have some interesting blog posts on that soon.

    ~ Pacific Northwest Writers Conference – PNWA is an awesome organization and they put on the premier event in the Northwest for authors in the area.  I\’ll have at least one blog post coming out soon on that one.

    ~ Travel – There\’s been a lot of traveling in my family lately and there are huge lessons I\’ll have up soon.

    ~ Agile –  I\’ve been working on the site virtualagilecoaching.com. 

    So it\’s been a time of high variety but low focus and finish. But that time is done, and now we move towards finishing things!

    I hope you\’re having a great summer as we are here in the Northwest!

  • It\’s Okay to Suck if You\’re a Team Player – My Lessons from Rocket League

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    Happy Week 21! How\’s your Summer? It just got started, so of course, when the sun comes out, I close the blinds and do the same thing I always do (when not writing) – play a team-based car soccer video game with my sons, aka Rocket League!

    For those not familiar with this video game, first off, shame on you. It\’s amazing, and if I\’m going to be obsessed with it, you should be too. If you decide to try it, know that initially, you\’re going to suck at this game. It\’s  compared mostly to soccer with cars (football for everyone not in USA) but those in the know would say it\’s gameplay is more similar to hockey. It\’s cars hitting a giant ball trying to score goals. Very special cars.

    There are no guns, no shooting, very little more than soccer with cars that have rockets. The cars are invulnerable save the opponents supersonic demolition attack. They can be endlessly customized with items that are earned or purchased. The most fun is flying. It\’s very difficult to do effectively, but some can fly across the soccer field and handle the ball with astonishing grace. Gentle Readers, this sort of game is the future, if not this game specifically. Check out this trailer and tell me it doesn\’t give you chills.

    The amount of skill and practice that goes into that should forever banish the concept of \”just a video game\”.  Rocket League, like all e-sports games, has a robust ranking system, going from Bronze I to Grand Champion.  Those at the top of the ranks do this professionally, for money, and earn a good amount of fame to boot. I am not one of those people.

    You see, with middle-aged eye-hand coordination and limited practice time, I struggle. I\’m still a bottom-rung Bronze I when I play one-on-one matches.  However, this game gives separate rankings when you\’re in a team, and when I team with my two sons, I become a Silver-tier, currently Silver III.  Silver III\’s would destroy me when I\’m alone.  But with my boys, who are far better than me, I\’m better. But here\’s the surprising part – when my sons team with others who are better than me but terrible teammates, they do worse.

    I heard this the other day: \” I\’d rather play with Dad than that guy any day….\”  This is not the norm. Most days my boys are roasting me for missing a shot or an easy save. Eventually, you\’ll be able to see all the awesomeness on our shared channel, where they\’ll be a segment on older gamers trying to play complex video games. For now, take my word for it – I am not good, and very often my sons have to carry me. Yet, we frequently beat teams with players much higher rank than I. Why?

    We play higher than we should because Rocket League is truly a team sport. Unlike other endeavors, say golf, or even other video games such as Call of Duty, it\’s more about your individual excellence.

    In the modern era, most of our endeavors are team based. We are hopelessly interdependent. At work, we depend on our teammates to do the things we\’re collectively committed to, but we also depend on the support folks, e.g. the accountants in payroll, the security guys blocking the hackers, the sales guys landing that next big account. One of the natural responses to an increasingly complex reality is to gather in groups allowing individuals to specialize. Yet, specialization comes at a cost – it means that we generally suck at most other things.

    \"\"II. We Suck at Most Things

    Now, many of those folks might have the 10k hours and natural disposition for their chosen path ( I, for one, think both play a part). Recognizing specialization and building complementary abilities is a skill that those who aspire to lead should work on developing. I\’ve known many developers that have the most cantankerous personalities you wonder how they\’ve progressed through life without being fitted with cement shoes. There\’s the too-directive project manager, the always-late Larry that misses the daily stand-up, or the forgetful database guy who neglects to load your schema changes during a deployment to production.

    This weakness shows up as well in the family domain, which can be worse. If a parent doesn\’t pay a bill, feed the family healthy food, or a thousand other things that adults do, things break.

    Who is good at all the stuff that adults/parents have to do in our complex world? Nobody. Therefore, since we have to deal with our human weaknesses the best way to do that is to be part of a team with complimentary strengths.

    \"\"In the book Group Genius, Kieth Sawyer talks about the W.L Gore & Associates company, creators of the innovation Gore-Tex that keeps us warm in the winter, who organized the company into small tasks forces that constantly self-organized and regroup in response to changing needs. Morse, the guy who created Morse code, required many iterations, and the Internet itself was the collaboration of many ideas and a confluence of countless people\’s efforts, from creation of computers to  HTML, to the database, fiber-optics, and the foresight of government officials to make way for it to flourish (or to at least get out of the way while it happened).

    Final example – As you might know, I\’m working on my first work of fiction. I am working closely with an editor who sees things I did not and has skills I am still learning. Read any acknowledgments section from any author. Even writing, one of the most solitary tasks out there, requires teaming.

    III. Tips for Sucking Less

    There are many conditions that are required for this to work. One, and the one I use in Rocket league to best my betters is Knowing Your Place. I have a keen understanding of where I am in the food chain as  I play this game. I know I can\’t dribble or juke like these other players. This means I stay back more, play more goalie, and wait for the more open shots. I see myself as a support role for my two sons, who have incredible synergy and teamwork.

    You could say that I\’m just being carried along and I\’m \”dead weight\” – and on certain days my boys would agree!  It is true that they have to play on their own to get better, as do I at my level. I\’m not saying that a better player wouldn\’t make the team better. I am saying that I am better at teamwork than many, which enables me to play above my own station and win.

    Right now our team is nearly Silver III, which is astonishing really considering how low I rank on my own. I have no idea how far we can go. I imagine they\’ll need someone at their own skill level if they want to get serious about it, but that doesn\’t change the fact that with teamwork you can get much farther than individual skill and no teamwork. 

    Knowing Your Role  –  Try to find your place in your team, if it\’s at work or in your family or on your team. Don\’t try to be Tom Brady if you\’re a Big Ben – both excellent, just add different things. They know what they can, and cannot do. Steve Largent knew he was a better route runner than blazingly fast like other wide receivers. Know your place and your unique value.  In Rocket League, I\’m far more willing than my sons to play goalie. This makes us better.

    Find complimentary skills and players – one of my sons is fabulous at passing, the other can score like crazy. I try to enable that interaction with both my passing and defense. They feed off of each other\’s excellence, as do I.

    Grow – if I\’m the guy who does defense, then my job is to get better at that. Yes, we\’ll need to be generalists, but think about the T-shaped person – deep in one area, wide in the rest. And yes, I\’ll need to actually score on occasion.

    IV. Summary

    • You\’re going to suck at a LOT of things, but you have to be good at something or at least have the potential to be so.
    • Think about the 10,000 hours concept, which has not been proven, BTW, but carries a lot of cultural weight.  If we have 10k hours, we will not merely be good, we\’ll be in the top 1%, a master, a virtuoso, world class. Of course, that\’s about five years of nearly constant practice, which means we have to be very selective about what we do in that domain. What we\’re going to be world class at probably can be counted on one hand, but reading this counter position might be useful (TL;DR  – The 10k hours thing is domain specific.)
    • For everything else in your life, you will possess a varying degree of suckiness unless you\’ve got a great team around you. However, if you can sense your position in the system and exploit what you\’re good at, then you can change Bronze into Gold.

     

    Author\’s note: in chatting with my twelve-year-old son about this article, he had several things to say, so instead of just telling me, I had him write his feedback below. Ladies and Gentlemen, my son Ryan, edited only for grammar. 🙂

    Extra notes by Ryan

    So there are a few points I want to make clear.

    One: that we are just as willing to be goalie as he is. He said that he is much more willing to be goalie than we are. This is false. We have a rotation that we follow to make all of us passing, defending, and shooting equal amounts of time. And we actually tell him to go up to attack if it\’s our turn to defend, and occasionally we bump him up. 

    Two: [Regarding] that my brother is better at passing than me and I\’m better at shooting- this statement is false. The basis for this is that I have a higher percentage of goals than assists. This information is true but only because I play more 1-v-1s than my brother does. This makes it so that I have an inflation of goals and a deflation of assists. My brother is even on goals, saves, and assists because he mainly plays 3-v-3s. 

    That\’s it for my notes. PEACE M8s!

     

  • 6 Tips for Dads of Daughters who Date

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    Gentlemen, it’s not easy what I’m about to tell you. I don’t have any solutions to the fact that our daughters are going to date, and in general, they’re going to date men. For those differently inclined I don’t mean to leave you out, but I must speak from experience, and in mine, it’s boys darkening my doorway in search of my baby girl.

    I know, it’s hard to hear. I live in the West, so we don’t arrange our marriages. The wisdom of the arranged marriage approach is crystal clear to me now, but I’m guessing that’s not something we can retrofit into the culture.

    So what are we to do?

    I have only one daughter and she has been a delight. She wasn’t (and isn’t ) a super girly-girl. She didn’t dream of prince charming or have early crushes, being more about Pokemon than Princesses. As far as I knew, she wasn’t that into boys and didn’t really plan on dealing with them until after college.

    That was the plan. I had time to adjust. So I thought.

    When my baby girl turned fifteen it started. Boys were around, and before I knew it they were lining up like she was Penelope waiting for Odysseus to return. She repelled most advances, but then one got through.

    Then another. And another.

    Now I don’t want you to think I was unrealistic. I knew the day would come where my little girl would meet a boy and, after a careful vetting process, we’d all agree that the boy could proceed to date her. Then, through a series of control gates, we’d review the progress of the relationship, see if it’s worth continuing, have a Go/No Go decision, and sharpen our evaluation criteria for future suitors.

    A completely rational plan that didn’t have a chance in hell of succeeding.

    You see, it’s about random chance as much as anything.

    Tip 1 — Do not allow for random chance

    That’s right. You must structure her engagements so that the surrounding population of boys is either zero (aka all-girls school), gay, or from families so rich it doesn’t matter because even if they get divorced she’ll be set for life.

    You see, as fathers, that’s what we’re all about. We want to keep our daughters clothed, fed, and, as Chris Rock put it, “off the pole”. He had visions of his daughter doing strip club routines on a dance pole. I have a vision of my daughter living under a bridge somewhere in downtown Seattle swatting flies off of a half-eaten bagel she found in a dumpster. I have a strong imagination.

    Tip 2 — Stop Your Imagination — Choose melancholy instead

    There’s nothing there for you, Dad. An imagination of the future brings agita and gallons of Pepto Bismol. Even if the dude is Prince Charming (a two-dimensional cartoon), the idea that someone is even thinking about your daughter in that way should convince you to limit all thoughts of the future. Instead, dig out that box of photos or log into your cloud service you use, and watch time go by, frame by frame, picture after picture of when she wanted to be with you more than anyone else.

    Tip 3. Try to go easy on the guilt trips

    In today’s connected reality we get to stay in touch (bother) our daughters 24×7. This isn’t a terrible idea since obviously, it’s the internet’s fault that your daughter is dating this person. I mean, he’s texting her day and night — no wonder she can’t get a minute to think, to break free of his clutches, the evil spell he’s got her under. So, Dads, text away! However, let’s go over some examples of good and bad texting:

    Don’t: “Hey daughter, it’s fine I haven’t seen you in three days because I’m so old now I barely notice you’re gone. What’s your name again?”

    Do: “It’ll be great to see you when you get home”

    Don’t: “Daughter, I know this is kind of random, but I wanted you to know that if something ever happened to me you can have my laptop and all my Wired magazines.”

    Do: ”It’ll be great to see you when you get home.”

    Don’t: “Little girl, have we ever done a background check on <insert suitors name here> ?”

    Do: “It’ll be great to see you when you get home.”

    Don’t: “Here’s a pic of when we were at Great Wolf Lodge. Remember when you used to like hanging out with me?”

    Do: “Let’s go get a coffee sometime — I’m buying”

    That brings me to the next tip. You see, through a terrible depression of wages and a ridiculous increase in the cost of houses and college, the Millennials and Zers are generally broke. Heck, Gen Xers are broke too, but we have great credit! So break out that plastic and treat your little one to something real nice. Think big here, Dad…

    Tip 4: Buy a ticket to a foreign country for her “spirit journey”.

    You might think this a bad idea, because who knows what she’ll drag home from Bangladesh or Sri Lanka? But you know what? Your luck hasn’t been all that great having her meet boys at the local Starbucks, so what do you have to lose? Especially if it’s a one-way ticket. Just kidding. Mostly.

    You have to understand that your daughter will not understand your misery, and your wife may not understand its depths. They’ve never been fathers of a daughter. They never will be. Instead, they’ll throw in your face the fact that your daughter’s very existence depended on you dating and marrying her mom. Blah blah blah.

    You will, of course, try to convince her that this is not the same, that you followed the rigorous aforementioned gated review process with your future father-in-law. It was all pre-approved, baked in, and certified “good for humanity” before anything progressed. At least in your mind, it was.  It’s all for naught, dear fathers. Your baby won’t listen, and she’ll stick to that boy like flypaper.

    Tip 5 — Develop a nervous tick or a medical condition

    Dad, there will be touching. Kissing even. There’s no preparing you for this in advance and there’s no appropriate response. You just have to experience it, along with an accompanying nervous tick and hives.

    I am told eventually it becomes natural, but until then, I’ve developed a helpful digestion issue that causes me to run at some velocity to the bathroom. You could leverage a spoon and gouge your eyes out, but that’s a bit dramatic. In the age of cellphones, there are options like having your cell phone call you at random intervals. There’s an app for that.

    Tip 6 — Chase two rabbits and they both get away

    This is the most important tip of all.

    You try to both pursue to advance your relationship with your daughter AND chase every suitor away, you’ll accomplish neither. So don’t be a fool. You’re her Dad, and this is one position that cannot be challenged. She can have 1-n number of boys and even husbands in her life — but only one dad. You sit on a seat that no one else can, you alone have the Iron Throne, and you cannot be usurped.

    It is, unfortunately, true that you’re more of a figurehead now. However, your daughter will eventually seek you out when she’s exhausted the (stupid) ideas and/or capabilities of her mate. When they have trouble installing that garbage disposal, or when their computer doesn’t boot, or when they need to complain about the boy to someone, you’re there. You’ve got her back, always, through everything. Bonus points: eventually the boy will even come to appreciate your help (I sure did!).

    Hopefully, you’ve retained some common interests. Is it fishing? Video games? Camping? Mine is geekdom, particularly around conferences like ComicCon or PAX. We’re huge nerds in this space, and it’s completely authentic.

    Whatever it is, keep it. Feed the link between you and her and be nice to the boy, as nice as you can. You don’t want to lose her completely and she doesn’t want to lose you either. It’s the way of the world, this mating thing, and we are simply screaming into the wind when we protest.

    Keep your thing with her, and when your little girl comes back, she may be accompanied by smaller versions of herself called grandkids. Grandparents report a high level of happiness and satisfaction from these small humans. Will it be enough to set back the clock, to re-balance the scales after losing your baby girl? I don’t know; only time will tell.

    I imagine that this topic will arise again when my granddaughters come of age. Then the question will morph into something like “how can we prevent our granddaughter from dating?”

    The ultimate irony will be that both your daughter and your son-in-law will be asking that same question with you.

  • Use SCARF This Summer – Making Change Work for You using Brain Science

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    Happy Week 20, Dear Readers!

    Despite the name of this blog, sometimes I do get unhappy and rarely do I feel that wisdom is going to help me when I am indeed unhappy.  The last thing I want is some schmuck trying to spout wisdom when all I want to do is punch someone in the face. Of course, that’s exactly what I’m going to do, so…sorry not sorry. 🙂   What makes us unhappy? I submit that change is a major source of unhappiness. Dr. Spencer Johnson created a career out of his smash hit book Who Moved My Cheese, selling a gazillion copies attempting to answer this very question. 

    But what about change makes it so awful? Occasionally change is thrust upon us, like an illness, or a bad boss. Some change you bring by your actions, directly or indirectly. This article discusses how to ensure that change that you’re bringing to yourself, your team, or your company is closer to the change you intended, rather than the change you caused inadvertently.  

    Now, the SCARF in Summer!

     

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    So, what is this scarf that I speak of? No, it\’s not a piece of clothing, but a book, namely David Rock’s excellent work Your Brain at Work. In this work, he presents the SCARF Model, a popular neuroscience tool for determining how certain actions will cause fear responses or other undesirable outcomes.

    Status – Importance in relation with others, e.g. Is my personal status in this group going to take a hit, or go up?

    Certainty – Ability to predict the future. To some extent, we need to know what’s going to happen or our brains start doing crazy things.

    Autonomy – Perception that I can ( or cannot) change my environment.  Do I have a say over what happens to me? If I don’t have choices, I’m going to start feeling stressed.

    Relatedness – Feeling of security in relation to others.  Do I belong in this group? Are they sharing information with me and collaborating? Or is this a dog eat dog situation?

    Fairness – Transparency and clear expectations on rewards and recognition.  Who’s winning here? Do I know the rules? Are they fair enough for me to feel that I have a chance in seeing rewards if I participate?

    The way to use this model, in short, is to review the items you\’re doing as a leader and ask yourself if this action would affect one of the SCARF parameters? Think of SCARF like a divining rod, finding trouble underneath the ground of change.  Here are three areas where I see immediate applicability: 

    I. When we lead – we should ask ourselves each of these questions when we intend on introducing a change. For example, in my field of agile software development, when we say that the Project Manager is no longer assigning tasks but facilitating meetings, how does that affect the PM’s perception of their status? Can we position the PM as the Agile Champion for the team?

    II. For ourselves – This model is also very powerful to probe why we’re upset. I get into funks on occasion where I can’t figure out why I’m in the funk in the first place. I have used this list to see if any of the five dimensions have been recently impacted.

    Some time ago I had this happen. At the time, my mood at work varied more than the weather in Seattle, and I had hit a very low point. By going over the SCARF model I was able to center on what was bothering me so. I had lost Status, Autonomy, Relatedness, AND Fairness! (it was a rough time). The only thing I had was the certainty that our efforts would struggle greatly. It was clear that I had to move, and I did, and it made all the difference. 

    III. Parenting – Parents need all the tools we can get, especially with the almost-adult crowd we call teens. While a parent should not be able to affect their Status (unless we\’re trying to embarrass them), the dimensions of Certainty and Fairness are ground we can have in common with our teens. At least with my teens, they have a keen sense of fairness, and if you can explicitly establish the SCARF model of understanding with them, you will have a more powerful vocabulary to work with.  

    I strongly recommend that you check out the SCARF model and give it a wearing, even this week.

    That’s it for now, Dear Readers! Until next time!