Thursday, January 8, 2009

Modern Quill

Modern Quill

Unconventional wisdom

Posted: 07 Jan 2009 11:47 PM CST

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There’s an old story that goes thusly: a man suffers from disabilitating headaches. He doesn’t respond to painkillers, nor migraine medication, nor even caffeine. After countless trips to expensive specialists, a doctor finds the solution: he has a build-up of pressure in his lower spine, which is transferred to his head.

The man feels wonderful after his operation. He’s ready to return to work and decides to visit the tailor to update his wardrobe. As soon as he tells the tailor that he’s shopping for a new suit, the tailor asks, “How much are you looking to invest?”

Tailor at work.

Tailor at work by Kent Wang, 2006

“It doesn’t matter,” the man admitted, “I owe a quarter million dollars to different doctors and hospitals.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” the tailor said. “44 long, twenty-three inch sleeve?”

“Yes, I think so,” the man said. “That’s impressive.”

The tailor nodded sagely and said, “If you’d like a new shirt, I reccommend a 34-inch sleeve with a 16-inch neck. If you’d like dress shoes, I’m sure you take a ten. A wide ten.”

“You’re amazing,” the man said, but the tailor shrugged it off. “I’m not that good. I still need to measure your seat and inseam.”

The man laughed. “What about my underwear?”

Without missing a beat, the tailor said, “34 inch waist.”

“Way off,” the man said, clicking his tongue. “I’ve been wearing 30″ by 32″s for years.”

“Very funny,” the tailor said, “You’re a 34.”

“No, really.”

The tailor sighed and slapped his measuring tape against his thigh. “Sir, that’s impossibe. You’d know if you were a 30. If you shoehorned yourself into a 30″ waist, all the pressure would press directly against your spine and you’d have one hell of a headache.”

⁂

I’m a big fan of unconventional wisdom. On the MBTI I come out as an INTP personality, which I’ve confirmed. I’ll never be a 43 Folders Getting Things Done type of person. Forget GTD, I’m all about FIO: Figure It Out. I like devising, revising, and unravelling systems.  (GTD people are probably TJs instead of TPs) One small confirmation I had was Christmas with my 6-year old nephew, trying to build his Spykee robot (the Spykee Micro, we’re not made of money). To my nephew’s dismay, one of my first steps was to disregard the directions entirely.

One issue that I’ve been trying to figure out was the problem of window ice. The scenario goes like this: a big ice storm moves into my portion of southern New Hampshire at noon, and will leave by nine. Naturally, I have to work 1-8 (no calling in with bad weather. I work at a grocery store, and the customers will ALWAYS find a way to shop). So I use my remote starter (I’m so spoiled, the car’s last owner installed it) and let my car warm up. So my car is toasty when I drive to work. But that car stays toasty for quite a while later. Any snow that lands on the windshield flash-melts. Then, the snow on top of that half-melts . . . Long story short, ever notice that it’s easier to clean a windshield that was cold when the snow started than one that was warmed, cooled, and then snowed on some more?

My solution is less than perfect, but I ran Trial #1: Attack of the Clones today. I turned off the heat, and rolled down the windows to try to chill the windshield, still running the wipers. When it got cold enough-judged by how late I was willing to be for my shift. Then, I rolled up the windows (important step) and got out of the car, and sprinkled snow on my windshield.

The result: counter-intuitively, that portion of my windshield was easiest to clean off. It froze into a giant block of ice that I broke with one or two swift jabs with the scraper. The rest of my windshield was hellish to scrape off. Instead of one big piece, the rest of the windshield was covered with a million tiny pieces of ice roughly the size of one snowflake each.

In conclusion, I have no idea why I wanted to write a blog about this. This is going to make my content-targetted Google Ads space really interesting.
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