A new me...revealed!

I am not who you think I am. Anymore. Or maybe I am. Yes, of course I am.

Since I was young, I've gone by my middle name. I did this because my dad used my first name. Well, actually I guess it was his name first. I was a Jr. I never used my official first name because, well, that was his name. I used some variety of my name in all of my school records, the obligatory diminutive names giving way to the more grown up version in high school. I used my name when I filed my taxes. I used my name when I bought my first car. I used my name on everything... until recently.

Several years ago, things started to fall apart. I think it was our mortgage that first forced me to use my official name on a document. Then it was financing on my car. Then my bank account. Then one thing after another - most recently my Red Cross card and my new ID badge at work. Part of this is fed by the forms, printed and on-line, that state "First Name, Middle Initial, Last Name." Not everyone goes by their first name and they have no way to deal with "First Initial, Middle Name, Last Name"-type people.

Over the years I've been able to "correct" a few of the issues (or at least get them to use "First Initial, Middle Name" format), but it's becoming more and more difficult. I'm not trying to hide or change who I am, but rather to solidify my identity.

My driver's license seems to be the root of all of these problems. It has my full name on it. But... it has my signature on it. I've used that argument on a couple of occasions with some success when I was asked to "re-sign my full name." If my drivers license has my "official signature" on it, then if I signed something different on a form, they'd not have anything to compare it against to prove that it was me that signed the document.

I understand the need to be "more diligent" nowadays I guess, so I recognize that it will only get more difficult, not easier as time moves on. So, after discussion with my dad to ensure him I was not trying to forsake his (ok, our) name, I finally got the ball rolling to change my name. I will no longer be "First Name Middle Initial Last Name" guy. With the full authority of a court order behind me (sigh, that's a story for another time), from this day forth, I will now be [Middle Name] [Last Name] guy. Well, not exactly 'cuz that would just be weird, but you know what I mean...

Now the fun begins - "fixing," officially, all of the places that have my name wrong. This includes strangely enough, re-writing history. I have to change all of the current and active documents that have my "old" name, but I also need to have my birth certificate, our marriage license, the kids birth certificates, and a host of other documents reissued so ensure that when the day comes where my name is written on a headstone (or small vase or plastic bag of ashes), no one will question the rights of my family to take what little I had at the time.

Finally a date has been set for reveal :-)

One step closer...

:-)

A new me... (teaser)

I have something in the works that will totally change who I am... Stay tuned... :-)

This makes me feel really old :-(

For Release: TUESDAY, AUGUST 23, 2011

Author contacts:
Ron Nief (608-770-2625)
niefr@beloit.edu
Tom McBride (608-312-9508)
mcbridet@beloit.edu


Beloit College Releases the Mindset List for the "Internet Class" of 2015

Beloit, Wis. - This year's entering college class of 2015 was born just as the Internet took everyone onto the information highway and as Amazon began its relentless flow of books and everything else into their lives. Members of this year's freshman class, most of them born in 1993, are the first generation to grow up taking the word "online" for granted and for whom crossing the digital divide has redefined research, original sources and access to information, changing the central experiences and methods in their lives. They have come of age as women assumed command of U.S. Navy ships, altar girls served routinely at Catholic Mass, and when everything from parents analyzing childhood maladies to their breaking up with boyfriends and girlfriends, sometimes quite publicly, have been accomplished on the Internet.

Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List, providing a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall. The creation of Beloit's former Public Affairs Director Ron Nief and Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride, it was originally created as a reminder to faculty to be aware of dated references, and quickly became a catalog of the rapidly changing worldview of each new generation. Mindset List websites at Beloit College and at mindsetmoment.com, the Mediasite webcast and their Facebook page receive more than a million hits annually.

Nief and McBride recently applied their popular format to 10 generations of Americans over 150 years in their new book, The Mindset Lists of American History: From Typewriters to Text Messages, What Ten Generations of Americans Think Is Normal (Wiley and Sons.).

As for the class of 2015, without any memory whatever of George Herbert Walker Bush as president, they came into existence as Bill Clinton came into the presidency. Their parents, frequently older than one might expect because women have always been able to get pregnant almost regardless of age, have hovered over them with extra care and have agreed with those states that mandated the wearing of bike helmets. Ferris Bueller could be their overly cautious dad, and Jimmy Carter is an elderly smiling public man who appears occasionally on television doing good works. "Dial-up," Woolworths and the Sears "Big Book" are as antique to them as "talking machines" might have been to their grandparents. Meanwhile, as they've wondered why O.J. Simpson has always been suspected of something, they have all "been there, done that, gotten the t-shirt," shortened boring conversations with "yadda, yadda, yadda," and recognized LBJ as LeBron James.
For those who cannot comprehend that it has been 18 years since this year's class was born, they will quickly confirm that the next four years will go even faster and, like the rest of us, they will continue to grow older at increasing speed.

The Mindset List for the Class of 2015

Andre the Giant, River Phoenix, Frank Zappa, Arthur Ashe and the Commodore 64 have always been dead.

Their classmates could include Taylor Momsen, Angus Jones, Howard Stern's daughter Ashley, and the Dilley Sextuplets.

1. There has always been an Internet ramp onto the information highway.
2. Ferris Bueller and Sloane Peterson could be their parents.
3. States and Velcro parents have always been requiring that they wear their bike helmets.
4. The only significant labor disputes in their lifetimes have been in major league sports.
5. There have always been at least two women on the Supreme Court, and women have always commanded U.S.Navy ships.
6. They "swipe" cards, not merchandise.
7. As they've grown up on websites and cell phones, adult experts have constantly fretted about their alleged deficits of empathy and concentration.
8. Their school's "blackboards" have always been getting smarter.
9. "Don't touch that dial!"....what dial?
10. American tax forms have always been available in Spanish.
11. More Americans have always traveled to Latin America than to Europe.
12. Amazon has never been just a river in South America.
13. Refer to LBJ, and they might assume you're talking about LeBron James.
14. All their lives, Whitney Houston has always been declaring "I Will Always Love You."
15. O.J. Simpson has always been looking for the killers of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
16. Women have never been too old to have children.
17. Japan has always been importing rice.
18. Jim Carrey has always been bigger than a pet detective.
19. We have never asked, and they have never had to tell.
20. Life has always been like a box of chocolates.
21. They've always gone to school with Mohammed and Jesus.
22. John Wayne Bobbitt has always slept with one eye open.
23. There has never been an official Communist Party in Russia.
24. "Yadda, yadda, yadda" has always come in handy to make long stories short.
25. Video games have always had ratings.
26. Chicken soup has always been soul food.
27. The Rocky Horror Picture Show has always been available on TV.
28. Jimmy Carter has always been a smiling elderly man who shows up on TV to promote fair elections and disaster relief.
29. Arnold Palmer has always been a drink.
30. Dial-up is soooooooooo last century!
31. Women have always been kissing women on television.
32. Their older siblings have told them about the days when Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera were Mouseketeers.
33. Faux Christmas trees have always outsold real ones.
34. They've always been able to dismiss boring old ideas with "been there, done that, gotten the T-shirt."
35. The bloody conflict between the government and a religious cult has always made Waco sound a little whacko.
36. Unlike their older siblings, they spent bedtime on their backs until they learned to roll over.
37. Music has always been available via free downloads.
38. Grown-ups have always been arguing about health care policy.
39. Moderate amounts of red wine and baby aspirin have always been thought good for the heart.
40. Sears has never sold anything out of a Big Book that could also serve as a doorstop.
41. The United States has always been shedding fur.
42. Electric cars have always been humming in relative silence on the road.
43. No longer known for just gambling and quickie divorces, Nevada has always been one of the fastest growing states in the Union.
44. They're the first generation to grow up hearing about the dangerous overuse of antibiotics.
45. They pressured their parents to take them to Taco Bell or Burger King to get free pogs.
46. Russian courts have always had juries.
47. No state has ever failed to observe Martin Luther King Day.
48. While they've been playing outside, their parents have always worried about nasty new bugs borne by birds and mosquitoes.
49. Public schools have always made space available for advertising.
50. Some of them have been inspired to actually cook by watching the Food Channel.
51. Fidel Castro's daughter and granddaughter have always lived in the United States.
52. Their parents have always been able to create a will and other legal documents online.
53. Charter schools have always been an alternative.
54. They've grown up with George Stephanopoulos as the Dick Clark of political analysts.
55. New kids have always been known as NKOTB.
56. They've always wanted to be like Shaq or Kobe: Michael Who?
57. They've often broken up with their significant others via texting, Facebook, or MySpace.
58. Their parents sort of remember Woolworths as this store that used to be downtown.
59. Kim Jong-il has always been bluffing, but the West has always had to take him seriously.
60. Frasier, Sam, Woody and Rebecca have never Cheerfully frequented a bar in Boston during primetime.
61. Major League Baseball has never had fewer than three divisions and never lacked a wild card entry in the playoffs.
62. Nurses have always been in short supply.
63. They won't go near a retailer that lacks a website.
64. Altar girls have never been a big deal.
65. When they were 3, their parents may have battled other parents in toy stores to buy them a Tickle Me Elmo while they lasted.
66. It seems the United States has always been looking for an acceptable means of capital execution.
67. Folks in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City have always been able to energize with Pepsi Cola.
68. Andy Warhol is a museum in Pittsburgh.
69. They've grown up hearing about suspiciously vanishing frogs.
70. They've always had the privilege of talking with a chatterbot.
71. Refugees and prisoners have always been housed by the U.S. government at Guantanamo.
72. Women have always been Venusians; men, Martians.
73. McDonalds coffee has always been just a little too hot to handle.
74. "PC" has come to mean Personal Computer, not Political Correctness.
75. The New York Times and the Boston Globe have never been rival newspapers.

Copyright© 2011 Beloit College
Mindset List is a registered trademark

Thanks Gary!

It's been a little over two years since Gary passed away. Because of his needs, I was introduced to additional forms of Red Cross donations. I had been donating whole blood since high school, but now, thanks to Gary I've also been donating platelets. So far, I've donated platelets over 20 times (each donation session may provide up to the equivalent of 12 whole blood donations) and have been able to help many people that I would not otherwise have been aware of. On behalf of all of those people, Thanks Gary!

For those of you who have a couple of extra hours a month (or at all), please consider some of the additional donation methods: Platelets, Double Reds, and Plasma. The process is no more painful than regular whole blood donation. Your time could save a life.

See http://www.redcross.org/ or call 800-Red-Cross for more information or to schedule an donation appointment.

Spooky!

Happy Pi Day!

Boys will be boys....

I hate watching American Idol with my sons. We can't get through a song by Pia Toscano without them rolling on the floor laughing about her name. Too bad. They're missing a great singer. I, on the other hand, can rewind the DVR later :-)

I thought Thea Megia was gonna be the one to make them laugh.

Backed into a corner

When someone asks you if the glass is half empty or half full... just tell them that the glass is just the wrong size :-)

(...and pray they don't ask you if the glass should be larger or smaller)

Sight to see

Caught a little Thundersnow last night! Not exactly a double rainbow, but cool nonetheless. I think this was the first time that I've actually seen/heard thundersnow. All of that coolness was overshadowed by the 10-12 inches of snow that accompanied it though. Didn't make for a nice Monday...

Letter Order Unimportant

Snopes still has this listed as undetermined, but it's interesting nonetheless.

"Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pclae."

It's a good thing too. When I type messages at work on our instant messaging client I type close to 100 words a minute. Well, more accurately, close to 100 partial words a minute. Sometimes those partial partial words are the letters at the beginning of words, other times they're at the end. When I'm typing an email, I have the luxury of of AutoCorrect for things like 'teh,' 'nad', 'jsut', and a lot of others that my fingers type a little faster than I can control them.

When I'm typing emails (or instant messages to my manager) I tend to correct the misspellings (those little red lines under my letters drive me nuts), but, sorry co-workers, I generally haven't bothered to correct the chats. I think that the difference is the expectation of real-time communication when chatting. You need to get the response quickly in order to move the conversation along. With emails, you expect a delay in the response.

Whether Snopes ever proves this true or not, I think that my co-workers are evidence that the human brain can understand even my nonsensical typing :-)...

Do what you're told!

Apparently, most of us will just do what we're told without questioning. For little kids, in their parent's protection, that's the best advice. In general, parents know better and act on their kid's behalf to keep them safe and train them in cultural norms. As this video shows though, most of us never break out of that paradigm and continue to blindly follow though there is no obvious reason. We are a nation of sheep, not shepherds. We have become a nation of followers and not of leaders. We live in a [psuedo-]democracy, and yet all of that is erased if we let someone else tell us how to vote. We need to break out of the yes-men style of business, and education, and finance, and invention and ask ourselves, and those that are telling us what to do..."Why?" If the answer given does not make sense, do not follow. Find a new path and lead.

People Watching Plus from Rune Madsen on Vimeo.

OK, now that I've said that... How do we do it? We have spent decades if not millenia getting our nation to where it is today. How do we turn it around? How do we change the culture embedded in our companies, our communities, our schools to let the norm be game changing and not the exception? How do we foster the atmosphere where people aren't afraid to raise their hand and ask questions, or to suggest something different, if not better, without being knocked back down into the same rut that the rest of us are in? How do we encourage people to break from the pack, find new ground and then settle and secure it? We've trained, or allowed ourselves to become so risk adverse that this great nation of ours is falling behind in every measurement imaginable - patents, wealth, health, freedom, and all of the rest.

I don't have the answer. I'm stuck behind the same financial obligations that most of the rest of you are. If I had no debt, no need to spend my time making money to pay off that debt, more time to think and act outside of the box, I'd like to think that I could be more productive to society. Maybe not, but it's a vicious circle. How I tall until I'm out from under financial control of the norm?

Got some ideas on how to fix this mess? Let me know.

Front Line

I had occasion to call my mortgage company today. I've dealt with a lot of customer service reps over the years, but something really struck me today.

I understand that in the low-paying, cost-center world of customer support, businesses are looking to save every penny that they can. Part of that may mean sending the call center overseas. Whether that's what I experienced today or not, one thing that companies need to remember is that their customers need to be able to understand the people on the other end of the line. The person I spoke to today had such a heavy Spanish (?) accent that it took two and three times of them repeating a phrase before I understood what he was saying.

I work with people in the technology field who speak many, many different languages with varying degrees of heaviness in their accent. It's part of the world I live in. But that's me -- I suspect the same is not true for the majority of people. That being said, I still had a hard time understanding this guy. I'm (pretty) sure that he was technically capable of his job, but if I, as the customer, can't understand him, that pretty much invalidates the service he's capable of performing.

I have nothing against people that don't speak fluent English - I actually find some languages really cool to listen to, Spanish being one of them (and Mia Rose's Portuguese as well), but don't put them on the front line of customer contact if they are not able to communicate with the customers.

Just my rant for the day I guess... Tomorrow - The drivers that cut me off by turning left in the "outside" lane and then cutting me off to get into to the "inside" lane to get on the expressway...

Some people...

…are so clueless they don't even know that they're clueless.

FINALLY!

This is EXACTLY the what I've been looking for! Anyone looking for a Christmas present for me? :-)

I've always wanted something like this. Maybe if I'd had this on today I would've captured the JERK that cut me off on the way home.

FREE Admission on 9/25 - You are invited to Smithsonian magazine's Museum Day

Get your free ticket now while you can! Locations available all over the US (and Even Puerto Rico if you're planning to travel!) Have Fun! Learn something! Experience it!

Recession Wallpaper?

My kids are always asking to pick up the paint chips at Home Depot or Meijer or Walmart or wherever we happen to be. Every once in a while I cave, but I generally turn them down because we only end up recycling them as soon as we get home. Every once in a while they use them for some craft (blanket for a creature, etc). I saw this one online the other day and I immediately thought, "Hmmm... Maybe..." :-)

Kinda cool I think.

I'm back...

Sorry for the long intermission. It's been almost three weeks since I posted last and even I have missed it. I've been slightly pre-occupied with a few other major things going on around here. We just got back from a great, week-long trip to the Mountains. Immediately prior to that was about two months of horrendous auto issues that I'm still trying to completely resolve. I'll spare you the gory details, but GEEZ! Add to that the prep work I was trying to get done on the Family Tree before our trip so that I could take advantage of some assistance available down in the Mountains. It just got too crazy.

I'll try to play catch up soon. Thanks for coming back.

Happy Birthday America!

Read a plain text version here

Airspace rebooted

It always amazes me to see how much air traffic there really is at any one point in time. The Icelandic volcano eruption a while ago caused all air traffic to be grounded for a while for safety reasons. The video below shows what the skies looked like as things went back to normal over the course of many days.

Airspace Rebooted from ItoWorld on Vimeo.

A visualisation of the northern European airspace returning to use after being closed due to volcanic ash. Due to varying ash density across Europe, the first flights can be seen in some areas on the 18th and by the 20th everywhere is open.



The flight data is courtesy of http://www.flightradar24.com and covers a large fraction of Europe. There are a few gaps (most noticeably France) and no coverage over the Atlantic, but the picture is still clear.



The map data is CC-by-SA http://www.openstreetmap.org and contributors.



This CC-by-SA visualisation was produced by http://www.itoworld.com with support from http://ideasintransit.org



UPDATE: New 1080p version with different view, more data, and CO2 burn rates: http://vimeo.com/11739091