Random Observations - Late Night Edition

I just linked my American Express Blue card rewards points to my Amazon account. It looks like 10,000 points yields about $70 or so in rewards. I use my card whenever I can to maximize my rewards points. If I didn't have this damn no new book resolution I would be getting ready to buy $70 worth of new stuff...

I've never been a big rap/urban whatever you want to call it fan, but the Boom Box on WNRN, a great public radio station out of Charlottesville that has transmitters scattered all over the state (the also have an iPhone app, that's how I'm listening to the station now), is starting to make me a convert.

I have always felt particularly creative and thoughtful late at night. I feel very percolative now. It probably won't come to much, I've had too much of Lagunita's brewery's IPA Maximus, but it's nice to know that I can still have moments of intense creativity.

I've never been a big poetry reader, but the Kindle, well the Kindle App, is making me a convert. I've been reading poems during my son's tae kwon do lessons. It's amazing how much really good poets can express in a few lines. If ever asked what book I would want if I were ever stranded on desert island, I always thought Shakespeare or something would be my answer, but now I think I would take a very large poetry anthology. (The Kindle app makes these poems more accessible because I can carry a bunch of them with me and read a few when I have a few minutes here or there. They're like blog posts, much more literary blog posts, from many years ago. Reacting to a poem could actually be an interesting way to generate blog posts, hum, that's something to consider.)

I think I've won my NCAA tourney pool. I'm going to wait to see how the scores look after tomorrow's games, but I think I am in very good shape. As such, I have no conflict in rooting for VCU tomorrow against Kansas (although I would happily have my bracket wrecked to have VCU in the Final Four). I was not surprised that VCU won their games to this point, my picking them into the Sweet 16 is one of the reasons why I'm winning my pool, but I don't like their chances against Kansas. At the same time, the Rams play good D and everybody on the floor can score. I'll watch as much as I can tomorrow.

The beer is gone and it's getting late. Time to call it an evening.

Career Panel

I'll be 50% of a career panel tomorrow afternoon. I've participated in this panel for other sessions of this chemistry class, it's something about professional practices for chemists or some such thing, but this is the first time that I'm going in with a good deal of angst and uncertainty about the future of my career. I'm trying to decide if I want to lay all of my career uncertainty out there for these kids to see. I could go in and give the stock answers that everybody expects to hear, but I sense that I would be wasting an opportunity to work through some of the issues I'm having with my career. Talking about it out loud, discussing it with a group of undergraduates, and hearing what other people have to say may help me get out of the endless loop of doubt and uncertainty that I've been in for a few months.

My doubt and uncertainty has been increasingly acute this week. I keep revisiting how I handled questions about becoming a formulator. A purely career-driven response would have been an enthusiastic willingness to make the jump as soon as possible, but I had to get all introspective about it. I muddled the entire situation. The further away I get from those couple of days, the more I start to wonder if I really screwed the pooch. I'm sure I've mentioned it in previous posts, but my current position presents few opportunities for advancement. Moving out of the lab and into a design role is the best way for me to get some space to build my career. Have I missed my chance to make that move? More importantly, is that the right move for my career?

I have never had a grand vision for my career. Maybe that's my big problem right now. I want challenge and responsibility, the opportunity to solve interesting problems, and a chance to lead. But I also want to work on projects that are innovative and paradigm-shifting. I've been busting my ass for the last month and a half trying to launch a product that is already being sold by another company. I have to confess that it pisses me off to think about how hard I've been working for something that we're taking to market just to have something to launch this year. I could have been working on something cutting edge, but instead I'm working on a me too product. Regardless of how successful I become with my current company, what's the point if I don't really care about what I'm working on? My lack of a career goal isn't my big problem. My problem is working for a company that is happy to churn out the same old crap rather than taking a risk on something totally new.

Random Observations - NCAA tourney edition

I've tried to write this post three times, but I've been too distracted by the games to write something coherent. I'm glad I failed in my previous attempts as Charles Barkley provided the seed crystal to crash my thoughts into something that I can capture in a post. I was watching the halftime discussion during the Kentucky game, when Charles mentioned that he liked Kentucky to win (they were 5 or 6 points behind WVU at the time) because they had the superior talent. College basketball, well, pretty much all college athletics, is built around the ability of the coach to get the most talented players possible to come play for them. It's all about talent evaluation and recruiting.

Why can't other endeavors place a similar emphasis on talent? What if my manager spent as much time finding and attracting talent to our building as a college coach spends wooing a 17 year old high school senior? What if we went after the best rather than simply waiting to see who would like to come work for us? If Charles is right, and talent trumps effort, grit, and a system, why not go get the best people possible and see what they can create? Google, Microsoft, and other tech companies chase the hottest technical talent. Why can't we go after the best technical talent in our industry? Wouldn't that give us an advantage over our competition?

I get frustrated that the members of my group are treated like interchangeable parts. I would like to see more specialization. We could gain efficiencies and provide people with a means to differentiate their effort from other people at the same level. It would be a challenge to manage, but does that mean it's not worth trying? If our managers can't handle it, does that suggest that greater effort needs to put into selecting and training our management. Talent, talent, talent.

Spiritual Exploration

I was chiding my brother for working late on Saturday (yet another reason not to become a lawyer, who other than a first year lawyer is at work on Saturday night). Please tell me you're going to a bar on your way home, I told him. Nope, he gave up alcohol for Lent. He was drinking too much (who can blame him given his insane hours). In response to my comment that giving up alcohol is a bold choice for Lent, he tells me that he gave up theology for Lent one year.

Here's the exchange about this choice that we had in gchat:

me: How do you give up theology? Don't read it? What if you thought about it? I have all kinds or random thoughts about my research come to me in the car or while I'm showering. What if you suddenly understood a passage that you read before Lent? Would you be breaking your fast?

11:28 PM Brother: It was a certain type of theology

  I did not give up devotional practices, but I replaced Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr, Bonhoeffer for Luther's Small Catechism

11:29 PM I stopped thinking about justice and social ethics from a theological perspective to focus on personal piety

  something I still suck at

  I am not pious 
I can relate. When I say I want to explore my spiritual side, I mean that I would like to see if I could ever have a religious feeling that is not entirely intellectual. The religious sentiments expressed in the letters and diaries quoted in the Civil War book I just read illustrate a deeply emotional relationship with God. The writers are not praying to an abstract intellectual construct built from ideas found in books. They are seeking the intervention of a divine presence in their life. Their faith in God is a foundation of their identity. That sentiment is a central feature of their life. It's not a choice or a duty. It's a physical need.

I feel that need, but I have no way to satisfy it. I am not ready to make the commitment required to embrace God in my life. I'm not even sure what I mean by "embracing God in my life." This is the crux of my spiritual dilemma. I'm far more likely to take my brother's tack and explore religion as an intellectual exercise, but I know that I will not achieve my aim with that approach. It's not the act of worship by going to church or engaging in the overt actions of worship that I'm looking for either. It's something deeper and more personal. It's praying and feeling like I am actually doing more than whispering words to myself. It's acknowledging a power greater than myself. Something mysterious and unknowable intellectually, but something deeply and profoundly emotional.

College athletes are slaves

The hubbub around Jim Tressels's failure to report that a few of his players sold memorabilia to get a tattoo illustrates the insanity that are NCAA rules. Coaches, administrators, and TV executives make millions of dollars by selling the talents of college athletes. The athletes get nothing. Yes, they get nothing. They use some of the crap they get for playing in a bowl game to get a tattoo and all hell breaks loose. They're not allowed to work during the school year. What are they supposed to do for money?

I know their tuition, room, and board are provided in exchange for their athletic skills, but they're not getting an education. The football and basketball teams that you see playing on TV are essentially minor league pro teams. Those players are not at school to get an education. They're there to perform on the field/court for full stadiums and living room big screens. They register for classes because the NCAA wants to preserve the pretext that they're "student-athletes." That charade undermines the mission of a university, assuming the university is about learning and education. If the school is interested in making money, then supporting minor league professional teams to bring in TV revenue makes perfect sense.

Schools like Ohio State are modern day gladiator schools. Gladiators were provided training, room, and board for the glory they brought their houses. Gladiators were also slaves. College athletes are modern day gladiators. They're also slaves. They willingly subject themselves to the arbitrary rule and whimsy of the NCAA in exchange for the opportunity to audition for a spot on a professional football or basketball team. A few make it big in the pros and make millions of dollars, but most end up right back where they started with lots of stories about the time the played on TV or in a famous bowl game. No degree, no prospects, nothing but stories of past athletic glories.

Of course, I'm writing this with the Big Sky conference championship game on TV. I have nothing against college athletics. Let's just drop the amateur pretense and admit that these kids are at Montana or Duke to play their sport first, party second, and attend classes third. Let them major in their sport and find a way to get them some money for their services.

Rules

Law would have been a bad choice for a career change. At least that's a preliminary conclusion that I've made from reading my business law textbook. I wrote a brief for a case that hinged on whether or not a golf cart changes the nature of competition in a golf tournament. This mattered because the American's with Disabilities Act requires accommodations to the disabled as long as the nature of the event is not fundamentally altered. Were the rules followed? The law set the rule and lawyers and judges had to come in to determine if the rule was followed.

I hate the tedium of close adherence to arbitrary rules simply for the sake of following the rule. The rule becomes absolute no matter the context or the need. Being compliant for compliance sake replaces consideration of an appropriate action based on circumstances. Following the rules becomes the goal rather than seeking to achieve something worthwhile in the most appropriate manner. The richness of experience becomes a myopic fixation on meeting every aspect of a checklist. The action replaces the experience in import.

The procedure must be followed for the simple reason that the procedure is always followed. I'm working on getting some methods that we developed in my lab into the QC lab of a plant. The plant is begging for product specifications. Why do they need them? Because that's the procedure. Why are product specs part of the method transfer procedure? They don't care, at least they haven't cared enough to tell us. I had to ask somebody who used to work in the plant why they needed them. His explanation made sense. Had they told me that they need specifications to confirm that the method provides appropriate data, I would have a reason to provide that information. Just doing it so another item can be checked off the list doesn't help me see how my actions facilitate their process.

Rules take away too much of our freedom. They train us to seek our instructions on appropriate behavior for every situation. Rather than thoughtfully considering the specifics of a situation and how to react appropriately, our reliance on rules prompts us to seek a check-list. The most read post at the HBR blogs the last few days has been a post on how to set and achieve goals. You could call it a post on the rules to follow if you want to be successful. Adherence to the rules limits options. Limiting options shields somebody from a new experience that could provide a critical insight into a pressing problem. Rules provide comfort, but comfort is safe. Safe is easy. Easy is the fastest way to an empty mediocrity.