Rob wants to know what five things in your office you must have in order to function.

Take a look at your desk or workspace. If youÂ’re anything like me then itÂ’s a carefully crafted piece of chaos theory in action.

Everything on there is useful or has purpose but of all the clutter (apologies if youÂ’re one of these uber tidy people for whom a desk is a sacred, set square perfect place) which 5 things canÂ’t you live without?

Hmmm...

My laptop is definitely number one. Without it I can do nothing constructive and instead must fill my time with useless fillers such as coffee breaks, trips to the bathroom and meetings.

Number two is a combo of the red pen of doom and the highlighter of death. These weapons are used to disembowel substandard documentation that is given to me as sacrifice. I return the carcasses to the petitioners for disposal and occasionally grant them my blessing.

My phone is annoyingly required and comes in at number three. Not for regular phone calls - I never make those and receive a stunningly low amount of them (thanks to IM and email) - but for the increasingly frequent online meetings that I dial into.

My fourth required item is my Blue Power Ranger action figure. It was given to me by Bear and it guards my cube 24x7.

My fifth is pretty much the same as Rob's. I have a business card pinned to the wall next to my monitor because I am apparently incapable of remembering where I work or what my phone number is.

Posted by: Jim at 11:00 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Da rules:

1. Leave me a comment saying "interview me". The first five commenters will be the participants.


2. I will respond by asking you five questions.


3. You will update your blog/site with the answers to the questions.


4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.


5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions. (Write your own questions or borrow some.)

My questions come from Nick Queen of Patriot Paradox fame.

How would you describe yourself, and how would this differ from your wife's description of you?
Mild mannered, geekish, a bit anal retentive and possessed of an excellent sense of humor. Lovely Wife would probably agree with that but might stress the anal retentive aspect a bit. She'd also mention my "magic fingers".

What is your favorite joke?
Congress.

What is the worst job you've ever held?
I was stock boy at the bookstore of the University of Buffalo for the better part of a year. Combine tediousness, lack of pay, zero benefits and stultifying boredom interrupted with periods of unrelenting stress. I got a parking ticket once for parking at work during book rush one semester. During this period of incredibly heavy business, students can only park in the bookstore parking lot for one hour at a time. I was there all day and had a student parking tag so they gave me a ticket. I complained, saying I worked there and had been at work the entire time. Employees who were not students parked at work with no problem. The response was basically "Eat the ticket and don't park at work during book rush if you're a student".

Do you believe in anything paranormal (ufo's, Bigfoot)?
I believe in two things: Occam's Razor and the infinite ability of people to invent things. Sure, there have been unidentified flying objects but aliens are way down on the razor's list of explanations. I can't imagine a race that is scientifically advanced enough to cross the infinite vastness of space would do so in order to feed their hillbilly butthole fetish. Bigfoot? It's certainly possible that there's a big monkey out there that hasn't been tagged and bagged yet. New species are being discovered all the time. Far more likely is a mixture of misunderstanding, imagination and hoax. I guess you could safely label me as a skeptic.

What is the most embarrassing moment in your life thus far?
Going to a beach party in San Diego and waking up naked on a beach in Los Angeles. Not only was I never able to definitively discover what had happened at the party but the adventure of getting back to San Diego threatened to leave my face in a permanent reddened state.

Posted by: Jim at 04:55 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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Anita's son is having a problem in math class. He does complex division problems correctly in his head but his teacher isn't looking for the answer, she's looking for long division. She wants to see the work between the question and the answer.

This is a touchy subject for me. I was exactly the same as her son with long division. I did it in my head lickety split and got the correct answer in a fraction of the time. My teacher enlisted my mother and forced me to go through long division, the very same situation that Anita and her son are in right now.

Why use long division?

The rote answer is "you need to know the process". Why? We use a process that works. We get the correct answer faster. We also get the correct answer more reliably. Long division is only a regressive loop of simple division problems. An error at any step yields a wrong answer. What is wrong with our process?

Absolutely nothing. It is superior to long division in efficiency and accuracy. The problem is that only a fraction of students can do division this way so it is not permitted in school. This is lowest-common-denominator instruction at its worst. Hold back the advanced students to the limits of the generic lesson plan. It is incredibly frustrating to somebody who is being thrashed with it.

I despised my math teacher after the long division debacle and my opinion of my mother went down several notches as well. My "math sense" went way down and I started hating math class, formerly my favorite subject. I got fed up to the point where I forcibly rejected long division. I spent months unlearning the method that had been hammered into my brain and relearning my method. Once I'd removed the taint and returned to my method the problems went away and I enjoyed math class again.

A few years later I was placed in an advanced self-paced math program. The guide/teacher not only acknowledged fragmented division (the name he gave to my particular method) but promoted it. Do a Google search for "long division in my head" and you'll see just how common this is.

My advice to Anita? Don't force your son to lose his process. Educate the educator. If she can't be brought around to the fact that there is more than one way to do division then you face a very tough choice. Maybe he can use his method to get the answer and then use long division to provide the proof. That will frustrate him too, but not as much as having to abandon his method.

When it all comes down to it though it's about education and not grades. He has the education part covered and it's superior to what the teacher is trying to impose. I'd rather have that and an "F" than to go through what I went through.

Posted by: Jim at 10:35 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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1. Sucked on the teat of a giant cow.


2. Electrocuted myself twice while fixing a single lamp.


3. Taken a one month working vacation to Virginia Beach, courtesy of the Navy.


4. Been paid to not do karaoke.


5. Recorded a duet.


6. Been paid not to play the tape of said duet.


7. Lived with three women, all single, and not related to me. Two of them were hot, too.


8. Snorted vodka up my nose until black stuff started coming out.


9. Attacked a snow drift. (With admittedly limited success. #8 played a pivotal role in this adventure.)


10. Gone to a beach party in San Diego and woken up naked on a beach in Los Angeles.

(Found at LeeAnn's House of Cheesy Goodness)

Posted by: Jim at 05:41 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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