- I miss electricity. #
- @prosperousfool Do you still need a dropbox referral? in reply to prosperousfool #
- @prosperousfool Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTE1Mjk2OTU5 in reply to prosperousfool #
- Don't let anyone tell you otherwise: Electricity is the bee's knees, the wasp's nipples and lots of other insect erogenous zones. #
- @prosperousfool Throw in a Truecrypt partition and the PortableApps launcher and it gets really neat. in reply to prosperousfool #
- @prosperousfool Universal accessibility. I put an encrypted partition on it so any receipts or credit card info or login info would be safe in reply to prosperousfool #
- RT @untemplater: RT @jenny_blake: Deep thought of the day: "How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours." -Wayne Dyer #quote #
- @FARNOOSH So what's happening to the one good show on SOAPNet? in reply to FARNOOSH #
- RT @flexo: RT @mainstr: 1 million Americans have been swindled in an elaborate credit card scam and they may not know http://bit.ly/cr8DNK #
How Much Should You Tip?
- Image by cemre via Flickr
This post from CNN Money has been making the rounds. I’m getting into the game today.
With the holiday season upon us, tipping the people you work with is a tradition in some cases and actually expected in others. Here’s what CNN came up with and my take:
- Housekeeper. We don’t have one. I’d think $75-100 would make a nice tip/Christmas bonus. I seem to be more generous than average with my imaginary maid. Maybe that’s because of the outfits she wears.
- Gardener. Once again, we don’t have one. Even if we did, I live in Minnesota and have close to a foot of snow over the patch of weeds I call my garden. If I did have a gardener, I wouldn’t have seen him for a few months by now, anyway. $0!
- Mail carrier. I’ve only met my mail man a dozen times and I’ve never considered giving him a Christmas present. Do people really do that?
- Barber. I don’t have one any more. My wife has started doing my hair for me. When I did, I tipped about 25%, but again, I wouldn’t think about a Christmas present. I only saw him quarterly. I don’t think my wife has a regular stylist either. She’s just got a shop she goes to and gets whoever is available. Is there holiday tipping protocol for that?
- Garbage collector. No way. Really? I don’t know that I’ve seen the same guy twice. Am I supposed to give a present to the anonymous, interchangeable union guy that drives past my house every Friday?
- Newspaper carrier. One night, twelve years ago, while my wife was still working graveyard shifts, she had a hard time sleeping on her nights off. That’s natural for 3rd shift workers. At about 4AM, she was watching TV and saw someone run past the window. Scared, she came to wake me up. I handed her the phone to call the police, while I grabbed the only thing I had for self-defense and went to investigate. I ran out on the front step–in my boxers, carrying a sword–and saw someone lurking in the neighbor’s yard across the street. I yelled, “Y0u don’t belong here!” only to hear “I’m delivering the paper!” That’s when I start tipping the newspaper carrier. I stopped when we canceled our subscription a few years later. Who needs a dead tree in the morning, when there are a million news sites on the internet?
If the majority of people are giving Christmas bonuses to that many people, and are as generous as the article suggests, then I fall far to the loutish end of the bell curve. I am planning to give my virtual assistant 1/12 of the pay he’s earned this year, so that should make up for some of it, but that is an ongoing business relationship.
How do you compare when it comes to holiday tipping?
Good Friday
We don’t have daycare on Good Friday.
We do, however, both have to work today. Two rounds of little-girl tonsillitis have zapped our available vacation time.
On an entirely related note, we put our 12 year old son through Red Cross babysitter training a few weeks ago, just for something like this.
My wife gets nervous at the idea of leaving the girls with the boy for very long. I think she thinks the world will explode if he takes care of them correctly.
Our solution for today is to have a slightly older friend come over and help.
She’s 13 and she brought her 10 year old brother with her.
That’s kids aged 3,5,10,12, and 13 in my house today. Total Lord of the Flies.
Hold that thought.
My son, being 12, doesn’t feel it’s necessary to brush his hair for school, or change his clothes every day, and he needs to be reminded to brush his teeth.
This morning, he woke himself up and ran into the bathroom. He emerged with clean teeth and combed hair. I asked him if he was wearing the same shirt as yesterday, and he flew into his room to change.
Hmm. Something is afoot.
While I was putting my shoes on, I reminded him to take care of the house and his sisters, and he made some smart-aleck joke in response.
She giggled.
Watson, I think I’ve found a clue.
Her father told me, just yesterday, the she thinks boys are gross.
The boy has never shown an interest in girls, until this morning.
Grr. The next decade just got considerably more interesting.
Time to lock them both in their respective basements until college.
Insane Incentives
Spring is in the air.
At my son’s school, that means it’s time for the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment tests. These are the standardized tests created by the No Child Left Behind Act that determine if a school is doing its job in educating children. If too many kids have lousy scores, the school gets put on the “Adequate Yearly Progress” list and will eventually get penalized financially.
That creates a perverted incentive in the school system. The main metric for a publicly-funded school’s success in Minnesota is the MCA. If a school can churn out illiterate trench-diggers, they will get increased funding as long as the test scores are good.
For a full two weeks before this test, the school effectively shut down the education program to prepare for the MCA test. That’s two weeks of studying for a set of standardized tests that focus on reading, writing, and arithmetic. I’m a fan of schools prioritizing the three Rs over other subjects, but that’s not what they did.
They spent two weeks studying testing strategies, not the material contained in the test.
In science class, they covered essential scientific elements like “Answer all of the easy questions first, so you can go back and spend time on the hard ones later.”
Spanish class covered verb usage similar to “When the time is almost out on the test, answer ‘C’ for all of the hard questions you have left, que?”
They weren’t being educated, they were learning the most effective way to solve a test to gain funding for next year.
For 2 weeks.
That’s not reading practice, or reviewing the parts of speech, or covering the necessary math skills. It’s “This is a #2 pencil. This is a circle. Practice until lunch.”
Is this really what NCLB was trying to accomplish? Standardized tests to measure school proficiency should be a surprise. Let’s randomly send in test proctors to take over a school for a day and see what the kids have actually learned.
Stealing Motivation
We go a bit overboard on Halloween.
Maybe more than a bit. The yard in the video is mine. As I write this, I’ve got 40 tombstones, more than 200 skulls, and half a dozen life-size props in my yard. The coffin leaning against the tree was bought used on the secondhand coffin market.
I have a motion-activated monster whose eyes light up as his head turns to watch you as you walk past. He just happens to be the exact size in all dimensions as my son was 4 years ago.
A few years ago, I built a beautiful zombie who–not so coincidentally–had the exact height and proportions as my wife.
Last year, a few days before Halloween, somebody came into my yard and stole my bride. They also tried stealing the small coffin, but only managed to get away with the lid, leaving the coffin itself behind.
I hate thieves.
This year, I was at the Financial Bloggers Conference the weekend I traditionally set up for Halloween, so I was getting a late start.
Every time I’ve tried to get out and set up my yard, I just keep thinking about the irreplaceable pieces that were stolen. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a child-sized coffin lid dating back to 1863? Or how impossible it is to get the 100 hours of my life I put into my zombie?
I think about how hurt I would be if somebody stole my son-sized animatronic ghoul or the demon who shares my measurements, but is two feet shorter. I’ve spent hundreds of hours per year, over 10 years building my yard full of one-of-a-kind props, and someone felt it was acceptable to tear down a section of my skull fence, come into my yard, and steal a little piece of my life.
Motivation has been difficult this year.
Last night, while I was out arranging my much-reduced yard haunt, a neighbor came by to let me know that he was disappointed with the smaller production. He wasn’t upset, but he–like the entire neighborhood–love watching the gore grow in my yard while anticipating the evening full of screams as the kids wander through every Halloween.
I can’t do it.
The thieving punks stole not just two of my favorite props, but a huge piece of my desire to scare the neighborhood kids.
Maybe I just need a year off, so I can come back with better ideas and a security plan more detailed than “my neighbors love this, none of them would steal anything!”
I would love to find the thieves. Post-beating, I’d explain how stealing from anyone is stealing a small and irreplaceable part of their lives. Stealing their handcrafted treasure is ripping out a piece of their soul. Stealing their motivation is stealing the memories for every visitor who would ever benefit from their craft, if the motivation is dead enough to kill the production.
I hope I’m not to that point, yet, but I can’t promise anything. Maybe next year.
A Late-Blooming Career Cut Short: Dennis Farina Passes at 69
Dennis Farina’s acting career was unique in Hollywood as one of the few actors to garner success later in life. This “late-bloomer” started his acting career at 37 years old, after almost 20 years as a Chicago police officer. He
was well known as a character actor, playing a cop on NBC’s “Law & Order,” and one of the only cast members that had been on the police force in real life.
Dennis was born on February 29, 1944 to Italian parents in Chicago. His father, Joseph, was a doctor and an immigrant from Sicily. This leap-year baby would go on to serve 3 years in the military and then to serve his native city as a policeman from 1967 to 1985. He worked mostly in burglary and it was there that he was hired by director Michael Mann as a consultant for the movie “Thief” (1981), starring James Caan. Farina was given a bit part in the movie and would go on to work for Mann in future roles. After a brief stint acting in Chicago theater, he left the police force for a lead role in Mann’s television series “Crime Story” (1986). He also played mobster Albert Lombard in Mann’s other television show, “Miami Vice.”
Farina’s distinguishing looks made him perfect for his roles as a cop or a gangster. He was tall and imposing, with a memorable silver mustache. He worked steadily in both television and the movies after quitting the Chicago police force. His first major movie role was another Michael Mann movie, “Manhunter”(1986), in which he played an FBI agent. This was the first of the Hannibal Lecter films and Farina would go on to star in all three.
Farina’s most memorable movie roles were in 1998’s “Saving Private Ryan” in which he played a colonel who convinces Tom Hank’s character to rescue Private Ryan from the Nazis. He was known for his comedy roles as well as his serious characters. In “Get Shorty,” Farina received an American Comedy Actor award for his performance as “Ray ‘Bones’ Barboni, John Travolta’s rival.
Dennis Farina’s other screen credits include “Out of Sight” with Jennifer Lopez; John Frankenheimer’s “Reindeer Games,” Guy Ritchie’s “Snatch,” as well as the 2008 comedy, “Bottle Shock”. He was narrator for the TV show “Unsolved Mysteries,” replacing Robert Stack as the original host. Farina starred alongside Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher in “What Happens in Vegas” (2008). Another comedic role was in HBO’s “Empire Falls,” starring Helen Hunt and Ed Harris. His last recurring TV role was in “Luck,” the 2012 horse racing series.
Farina and his wife of 10 years, Patricia, had three sons. Joseph Farina followed in his father’s footsteps and became an actor. And sadly, Dennis Farina’s second act in life came to a close on July 22, 2013. He was only 69 years old when he died from a pulmonary embolism at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona.
