Decision-Making

Circumstances have caused me to reflect upon the American High School experience - not the academic experience, the other one, the gauntlet.  Bright young kids enter as freshmen armed with loads of natural talent, skill, and ability.  Most, with the added benefit of some character, morals, and values.  The next few years aren't, primarily, a test of the kid's academic ability, they're a test of the kid's decision-making skills.  It's a battery of tests administered by their peers and it's deeply saddening to watch one with such potential, perform so poorly.

For added complexity, the difficulty of these tests isn't constant or even linear, they grow vastly more complex and challenging with each and every bad decision.   In Big O notation, they'd be much closer to O(n²) than O(1).  Unfortunately, the consequences of failing this test aren't disappointing letter grades, they tend to be much worse, as in...

... death... as one enters their freshman class, they should look around, more than likely one or more of the young people they see will be dead, disfigured, or disabled over the next few years from their bad decisions.

... parents... as one enters their freshman class, they should recognize that many of the people they stand with will become parents in the next few years as a result of their decisions.

... jail... some, will be in jail or will be making decisions that will ultimately lead them there.  Yes, even that cool football player with everything going for him, he's cool, but he sucks at making decisions.

... drug addicts... many will decide to go down a path of being addicted to drugs.   It'll start out innocently, with exploration, but they'll inevitably decide to squander away most of their God-given talent.

... consequence by association... some will make all these decisions well, but still end up dead or in jail, because they decided to associate with other people who suck at decision-making - sometimes the test is taken as a team.

... and perhaps the most frequent consequence is the failure to reach their potential.  This is a much more benign consequence, but equally disheartening.  They may start out with high aspirations and easily the skill to match only, eventually, to be satisfied by mediocrity.

There's a compounding effect to these consequences too.  The first bad decision won't likely find them in jail, rather, it might start them on a path where being in jail is more likely to occur, for example.

It's this compounding effect that makes it so difficult for those around them.  We see, as if in slow motion, the snowballing effect of bad decisions.  It's sad.  It's disappointing.  It's maddening to watch.  Like watching a middle-aged man riding through his mid-life crisis in his new sports car, the poor decision-makers are easy to spot from the outside.  Perhaps a dramatic change in style.  Maybe it's a more slow process of ostracizing those around them until they're left, isolated, with like-minded peers who also suck at decision-making.

We watch kids enter the gauntlet teasing ourselves into believing that there's a direct correlation with natural skill, academic prowess, values and long term success.  We might even allow ourselves some excitement in pondering how successful a particularly gifted young person might be.  The truth is, success most often stems not from raw talent but rather from good confident decision-making and hard work.

I love you and pray each day that God will provide you with decision-making skills equal to your natural talent.

Heading toward unemployment

It's true, beginning December 22d, I'll be officially unemployed. Assuming all goes according to plan, I'll remain in this state for four whole days. I've resigned from my current employer effective 21 December and will start the new one 26 December. I've had a good time over the past 6 years, worked with some great people and learned a lot. Now the time has come to move on and have a new experience. I'm heading to a small (~12 folks) company and suspect I'm going to like it.

My "first" birthday party

Yesterday I came home to the best birthday surprise. When Rebecca
told John it was my birthday yesterday, he was so excited and
immediately began planning. He told her they had to get me birthday
balloons, birthday streamers and birthday cake. She apparently took
him to the store to by all of those party ingredients while I was at
work. I arrived home with yellow and blue streamers over all of the
chairs (done by John himself) and hanging around in other low-lying
areas. He was apparently upset when he realized he'd forgotten the
happy birthday candle for the cake, so yesterday I celebrated my first
birthday (from a candle left over from Grace). Two and 1/2 and I
think he's got better party-planning skills that Rebecca and I
combined.

Thanks John [and Rebecca], it was the best birthday party ever;)

Boxes, bubble wrap, and real presents

We received a rather large box from the post office the other day. It was addressed to John and Grace from Grandma and Grandpa Williams and we told John he could open it with Grace after dinner. So dinner came and went and we gave him the go-ahead. The box was wrapped with packaging paper on the outside and John opened it like a present. He got a couple sides opened so that the box was now exposed, stopped, and in wide-eyed excitement looked at us and said "it's a Box!". It took some convincing that there might actually be something in the box worth taking a look at and finally he allowed me to cut through the tape so that he could open the inside. He then proceeded to pull the flaps back, reach in to the box, and grabbed out a folded up piece of bubble wrap. He pulled that bubble wrap close to him and gave it a big bear hug and tells Rebecca and I, "it's so cute!". Go figure.

P.S. He did like the robot once he made it there;)

Old Houses

So it's been a long time since I've posted and many changes have taken place since. We've completed the first part of our move back to Virginia. Our original plan was to have a short term rental while we waited for the Georgia house to settle and searched for a house up here. Between the market being unstable up here (the prices keep falling) and no inventory in the area that we're looking that we love, we've decided to move to a longer term (1yr) rental while continuing to look at the market - albeit less aggressively. We're going to simply keep an eye on prices without looking for specific houses. Once things being to level off, we'll start seriously looking again.

The short term house that we're in is an old 1940's cape code. It was remodeled right before we moved in but it's structurally defective and the windows are still old so it's cold. Since we're really looking to buy an old house when we do buy, the real purpose of this one was to give us a feel for an old house and see if we could really do it - since we've only ever owned new ones. Turns out we could do it but here are some things that I now know to look for:
o) Solid foundation - look at and open all windows, roll a ball on the floor, evaluate all exposed joists in the basement. Look for crooked inner/outer door frames.
o) Windows - if windows aren't updated, add an estimate to do so to the price of the house (it'll have to be done).
o) Electrical - see if the electrical system has been updated, if not it'll likely need to be as our appliances seem to kick the breaker constantly in this one.

Basements and potential

We're moving back to D.C. this weekend. My job has, so far, been packing up the basement. This particular job is a significant challenge. The dreams I had for this empty cement canvas are all coming back to me now as I uncover it's cold bare concrete floors. I planned a theater room here, bathroom there, and an airhocky table over there. Over the past several years, I've completely covered those dreams with boxes, toys, newspapers to be recycled, the list goes on... Now, as I pack everything up, uncovering that bare concrete, I remember all the things I hoped to do. I was only able to finish my office.

Basements are a male oddity I reckon. I mean, my wife for example, barely cares to set foot in a basement. I see a basement and the one ounce of creative blood starts flowing through my body - wow, this could be a(n).... I'm not sure what makes a basement a uniquely male facination but it sure seems to be. My wife sees cold concrete floors and walls... I see... potential.

I'm gonna miss this basement...