I Want To Tell You

George Harrison really doesn't get a lot of credit as far as the Beatles go... well, apart from being the reason the Beatles were deported from Germany, at least. "I Want to Tell You" finally rose to the top for today's blog title after considering a number of rain related titles.

Yesterday was the third consecutive day that I tried to cut the grass, as well as the third consecutive day that we experienced rain, and storms, so my first choice was Eurythmics' "Here Comes the Rain Again," which was appropriate. Then, another Harrison song, "Rain" came to mind. I had almost decided to use CCR's "Who'll Stop the Rain?" when Duran Duran's "Hold Back the Rain" came to mind. Sheesh! What's a blogger to do? The thing that made the decision for me was this: I didn't start out to write about the rain, but it's pretty much what got today's post going.

I woke up unnaturally early on Tuesday morning, fifteen minutes before my 0730 alarm. I did all of the usual morning stuff, and by 0800 had my first cup of tea in hand. The weather was threatening rain, but I figured that as long as the rain was light, I would cut the grass. Rain came (but there wasn't much actual precipitation), thunder came, and then it was clear. The weather went through a few cycles like this. After my fifth cup of tea (~1300CST), I had decided I'd had enough. It was relatively dry and the grass was taunting me. I changed into my grass cutting gear and headed out.

As we had been rained out the previous day, I knew the gas tank was full. I proceeded to pull on the starter handle; I was rewarded with the handle coming off the string! I made a bigger knot which actually survived a few pulls before coming off again. Jennifer must have been watching, because she came out of the house. In the most measured and polite voice that I could muster under the circumstances, I handed the green plastic handle to her and said, "Fix it. Please." I then went to the fence and pulled down some of the ubiquitous wild morning glories.

After a few minutes she had reattached the handle and given the motor a few unsuccessful cranks. Undaunted, she went into the garage and got out Ye Olde Sparkplug Socket and removed Ye Olde Sparkplug. It was somewhat fouled, so I got a paper towel, dipped it in some gasoline, and gave it a good cleaning. She replaced Ye Olde Sparkplug, reattached the wire, and it started on the second crank. Then, I proceeded to cut the grass. The grass was higher than we usually allow it to grow, so it took around forty-five minutes to cut. It was also incredibly humid: by the time I was done, there was sweat on top of my perspiration.

I put the mower away, went inside and cleaned up. I made myself a delicious concoction of spicy seafood ramen, Progresso Tomato Basil soup and cheddar cheese and started this blog entry. I infrequently go to work in the "front half" (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday) of the week, but I text or email every day to see if I'm needed. I was pleasantly surprised when the asked me to come in.

And then it rained some more. Now, about twenty-four hours later, we have flooding, flood warnings, flash flood warnings and more rain is forecast.

Whew! After all of that, what I Want To Tell You is this: I found a couple of pieces in cyberspace that I wanted to share. The first one claims that "80% is the new 100%" and other one through a finely detailed chain of events example effectively refutes the first. I think the author of the first piece might have been speaking from his own experience about growing into a more effective manager, but in the world I live in, 80% almost NEVER cuts it. In my world, when I am proofreading something which has an expiration of July 17, 2013 11:59, that isn't good enough- because sometimes my world is based in internet time, 24/7, and 11:59 not only needs to be followed by A.M. or P.M., but the time zone also needs to be specified. I could go on and on and on, but I think you get the idea.

Lastly, Jennifer and I were at the library today, pretty much intending just to drop a few things off. However, I thought we'd go up to the fourth floor to see if we could see any of the flooding. This time, there was no water. We went to the New Books shelf, and a title caught my eye. With great excitement, I grabbed R For Dummies before anyone else could! I had actually been looking for something like this for the past several months! I showed it to Jennifer, and she naturally said, "What's R?" I took a breath, gathered my thoughts and gave her the best answer I could think of: "R is the freeware version of S." I got the deer-in-the-headlights look. I eventually was able to explain that R is a language used to graphically represent statistics. It's easy enough to understand, but it's not always that easy to explain.  At this point reality came crashing through the R-induced fog, and Jennifer remembered that Mr. T needed a new book to read. I had a thought that he might enjoy a nice biography of Nikolai Tesla, so I went off in search of that while she browsed the electronic catalog. Surprisingly, every one of the Tesla books missing from the shelves, so I went to check the electronic catalog to confirm this. They were indeed all checked out, the catalog confirmed, but I found a few other interesting titles. I went into the stacks and grabbed The Physics Book. It is a softcover book approximately 500 pages in length, and the pages are equally divided between text and pictures or illustrations. It covers milestones, persons and generally presents the history of physics in a very readable format. Another book that caught my eye but I did not check out was Physics for Entertainment. It was written in 1913 and apparently was a best-seller in the 1930's at one time. Curious, curious title.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

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