Communication
Communication has been a serious problem in human relations for centuries. I have seen at least two such incidents this week.There are many ways such incidents could occur:
A teacher in a computer class, wanting his students to click on a button to turn a service, such as IIS, on, tells the class to press a button. Some students complain they have no such button. He goes to help them and straightens their situation out. He then repeats his request to the class to click on the button. Students who have already clicked the button click it again, turning the service off. Then they complain when they get error messages when they do things supposing the service is on.
The Breakfast Toastmaster club meets at 7:30 am on Thursdays in a municipal building in a city. Another one, the Nightspeakers Toastmasters club, meets in the same building in the same room at 7:30 pm on Thursdays. Jan, interested in Toastmasters, calls a contact phone number and gets Kelly, who tells Jan there is a club meeting at 7:30 this Thursday and we would like to have you there. Jan meant the Breakfast club, but gets surprised when Kelly shows up at the Nightspeakers club instead.
What happened to me this week is that I signed up for a class, and I was told two months ago that I was enrolled in it. I heard nothing more on it, and then when I showed up for it, I was NOT signed up. Apparently they had fewer slots than expected, and they dropped me from it. Not hearing this, I showed up anyway, and was able to take it anyway when someone else did not show up.
Using 24-hour time would have resolved the Toastmaster problem. That's why the military adopted it, when a miscommunication could mean the difference between life and death. The problem, however, is a tradeoff between telling everything that you can aboiut a situation, using up a lot of time; perhaps some of the message does not get through because there is so many things to remember, and not telling every detail about it, in which case a problem caused by that detail turns up. It is a tough problem to solve, and I believe that communication seems to work best when as people hold as many default assumptions in common as possible.
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2002/05/25
2002/05/22
Virginia D
One of the most interesting aspects of the past few years has been the design change in the US quarter dollar. Instead of a drab face and eagle, the coins each would honor a state in the USA. There would be 50 such quarter designs, or 5 per year for 10 years. I first got interested in this about the beginning of 2000 and have been eagerly awaiting the coming of each new coin. The next one is Louisiana, which comes out at the end of the month. But the big event of the day was the Virginia D. The Virginia quarter came out in late 2000; it came out early, and huge numbers of these coins appeared; they became almost as common as eagles, it seems. However, every single one of these coins had a P on the face side of the coin, indicating that it was made at the Philadelphia mint. I had seen lots of Virginia Ps, but absolutely no Virginias made at the Denver mint; those have a D on them. Today, when I went to the cafeteria where I worked and bought an orange juice, I got as change a Virginia D quarter. Finally, after a year and a half, I have one. Now the coin I am looking for is Ohio P; their production got disrupted by a closing of the Philadelphia mint for safety reasons; I already have two Ohio D's. I expect to be hunting for these coins until early 2009, when I will encounter the first Hawaii quarter. I think this is a welcome change to our currency designs and would like to see pennies, nickels, dimes, and dollar coins go through similar changes; e.g., Presidents for dimes, monuments for nickels and so forth. And it has also got me interested in something I have never been interested before - collecting coins.
One of the most interesting aspects of the past few years has been the design change in the US quarter dollar. Instead of a drab face and eagle, the coins each would honor a state in the USA. There would be 50 such quarter designs, or 5 per year for 10 years. I first got interested in this about the beginning of 2000 and have been eagerly awaiting the coming of each new coin. The next one is Louisiana, which comes out at the end of the month. But the big event of the day was the Virginia D. The Virginia quarter came out in late 2000; it came out early, and huge numbers of these coins appeared; they became almost as common as eagles, it seems. However, every single one of these coins had a P on the face side of the coin, indicating that it was made at the Philadelphia mint. I had seen lots of Virginia Ps, but absolutely no Virginias made at the Denver mint; those have a D on them. Today, when I went to the cafeteria where I worked and bought an orange juice, I got as change a Virginia D quarter. Finally, after a year and a half, I have one. Now the coin I am looking for is Ohio P; their production got disrupted by a closing of the Philadelphia mint for safety reasons; I already have two Ohio D's. I expect to be hunting for these coins until early 2009, when I will encounter the first Hawaii quarter. I think this is a welcome change to our currency designs and would like to see pennies, nickels, dimes, and dollar coins go through similar changes; e.g., Presidents for dimes, monuments for nickels and so forth. And it has also got me interested in something I have never been interested before - collecting coins.
2002/05/21
A little poem
Today I wrote a poem, but I'm not sure of its meaning. Here it is:
There'll never be a page
As pretty as a tree,
Until the tree free flights,
And flutters as far as see.
I added five new non-words to my nonword page (jimvb.home.mindspring.com/nonword.htm), with the main one being tensplitter. Apparently the main task of life is to ignore all those tensplitters in your life and double down to your goals.
Today I wrote a poem, but I'm not sure of its meaning. Here it is:
There'll never be a page
As pretty as a tree,
Until the tree free flights,
And flutters as far as see.
I added five new non-words to my nonword page (jimvb.home.mindspring.com/nonword.htm), with the main one being tensplitter. Apparently the main task of life is to ignore all those tensplitters in your life and double down to your goals.
2002/05/19
Conference Memories
I attended a Toastmaster District Conference this weekend. So many interesting events happened there that it became overwhelming; a lot of things I would like to blog seem to have been lost.
Some of the names of new Toastmaster clubs are interesting, especially the new clubs that have formed in the past year. Some of these are Motivators without Calculators, 10X and Mighty Mouths (reminding me of Mighty Mouse, which I saw when I was young - a cross between Mickey Mouse and Superman).
Some interesting aphorisms from Virgie Binford over the weekend: You cannot lead where you do not know. You cannot teach what you don't know. You cannot give where you don't have. You cannot share experiences that you have not had. You cannot return to where you have not been. In other words, if you don't have it, you can't give or share it with others. Perhaps these could be stated more positively; for example, You need to know in order to lead. To give or share with others, you need to have.
Themes. This year's theme was "The Power of One". It reminds me of "The Army of One". In any case, 1 to any power is still 1. My philosophy is "Just Add One", so that makes 1+1 = 2. Now 2 to the 100th power is an enormous number. This year's theme is "Walk the Talk". That reminds me of a Neil Diamond song where the lyrics are "Money talks, but it don't sing and dance and it can't walk." It is the same theme as Virgie's. If you are going to talk about doing it or having it, you need to do it and have it; else you don't show yourself as being sincere. Money is not sincere; in fact, it is downright hypocritical.
If I were the District Governor, my theme would be "Toastmasters is a Fire." Starting a Toastmasters club or keeping one going is like trying to keep a fireplace fire burning. You need the fuel of members, the air of a good educational program, and the heat of enthusiasm to keep a Toastmasters club going. Take one away and it folds or becomes merely a social club. Indeed, Toastmasters is like a fire.
A number of errors have come up recently. Many of these are caused by word processors so that the erroneous letter string constitutes a word. For example in the past you may get steepl instead of steel. Nowadays, you get steal instead, so that "steel pipes" becomes "steal pipes" and means foul play where none had been intended. Yesterday I saw this version of the golden rule: You should threat others as you would have them treat you. A Freudian slip on the part of the computer?
I attended a Toastmaster District Conference this weekend. So many interesting events happened there that it became overwhelming; a lot of things I would like to blog seem to have been lost.
Some of the names of new Toastmaster clubs are interesting, especially the new clubs that have formed in the past year. Some of these are Motivators without Calculators, 10X and Mighty Mouths (reminding me of Mighty Mouse, which I saw when I was young - a cross between Mickey Mouse and Superman).
Some interesting aphorisms from Virgie Binford over the weekend: You cannot lead where you do not know. You cannot teach what you don't know. You cannot give where you don't have. You cannot share experiences that you have not had. You cannot return to where you have not been. In other words, if you don't have it, you can't give or share it with others. Perhaps these could be stated more positively; for example, You need to know in order to lead. To give or share with others, you need to have.
Themes. This year's theme was "The Power of One". It reminds me of "The Army of One". In any case, 1 to any power is still 1. My philosophy is "Just Add One", so that makes 1+1 = 2. Now 2 to the 100th power is an enormous number. This year's theme is "Walk the Talk". That reminds me of a Neil Diamond song where the lyrics are "Money talks, but it don't sing and dance and it can't walk." It is the same theme as Virgie's. If you are going to talk about doing it or having it, you need to do it and have it; else you don't show yourself as being sincere. Money is not sincere; in fact, it is downright hypocritical.
If I were the District Governor, my theme would be "Toastmasters is a Fire." Starting a Toastmasters club or keeping one going is like trying to keep a fireplace fire burning. You need the fuel of members, the air of a good educational program, and the heat of enthusiasm to keep a Toastmasters club going. Take one away and it folds or becomes merely a social club. Indeed, Toastmasters is like a fire.
A number of errors have come up recently. Many of these are caused by word processors so that the erroneous letter string constitutes a word. For example in the past you may get steepl instead of steel. Nowadays, you get steal instead, so that "steel pipes" becomes "steal pipes" and means foul play where none had been intended. Yesterday I saw this version of the golden rule: You should threat others as you would have them treat you. A Freudian slip on the part of the computer?
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