Books 2, 3, and 4

Our book group book for January was The Swerve, the account of Poggio Bracciolini discovering a manuscript copy of On the Nature of Things by Lucretius in 1417. The details of ancient Rome, the destruction of the library of Alexandria, and Renaissance Florence and Rome were interesting, and yet my overall reaction to the book was only pleasant enjoyment. I am glad that we own a copy, since I think I will want to look up certain anecdotes later. The book also contains illustrations, including an example of Poggio's amazingly beautiful handwriting, which became the basis for our modern roman typeface. I find it ironic that a book in which Epicureanism plays a significant role was so physically unpleasant for me to read. The cover had an almost soapy film to it that made me not want to hold the book.

Michael, on the other hand, read it in a day and a half.

My exercise book was The Handmaid's Tale, a book I had heard mentioned so often I was half convinced I had read it before. I hadn't, and I found it engrossing. I was glad when it was time to get on the elliptical so I could find out if the unnamed handmaid was going to escape Gilead.

I also finished Happier at Home. I like to read something in January that inspires me to live a better life. I share many of the same challenges as the author: a tendency to not show my love for my family as I'd like to, a sometimes excessive interest in my work, and difficulty staying present in the now. Although I didn't always like what I saw in the mirror this book held up, I'm grateful for the insights I gained.

Jargon part two

It was another week full of meetings. Not all weeks are like this; we're just in the meeting-heavy section of the cycle. I had five meetings on Wednesday alone, and there were at least three times this week when I had to choose which of two conflicting meetings to attend.

And as it turned out, I chose wrong at least two of the three times. One missed meeting apparently involved an intense argument, according to water-cooler talk the next day. "The most entertaining call ever." And another missed meeting resulted in a developer sending me an instant message: "Are you on a different call? I can't believe you're not objecting to this."

Fortunately, most of my meetings this week were valuable discussions resulting in good decisions.

However, they also reminded me of a word I missed in my net-net post: ask.

"Ask?" you say. "Ask isn't jargon."

Oh, but it is in this sentence, "So the ask is, what do you need from the other team to be able to implement this feature?"

Question. The word you are looking for is question.

The net net is, I need to decouple from the jargon

My employer (who, please note, is staying nameless on my blog) is notorious for its use of jargon and acronyms. If there were an award for this sort of thing, the military might beat us, but it would be a close race.

When I first joined the company, there was one coworker in particular whom I literally could not understand because her speech was so infused with company jargon and acronyms. Two years later, I fear I have become the person new employees can't understand.

Lately, I've caught myself using leverage, impact, and circle back. I've even gone so far as to tell Michael that he is just going to have to learn what a GA is, because I'm not going to stop saying it. ("Just call it a release!" he says.)

So you know the jargon is bad when I still notice it.

The two terms that drove me crazy this week:

Decoupled--if you are talking about train cars, go ahead and use decoupled. But two software suites that were going to be released on the same day and now are going to be released on different dates have not been decoupled. The release dates have been separated or split. (To keep the blog honest, I should tell you that I am pretty sure I said, "They are considering decoupling the releases" in a meeting this week. This is what makes jargon so insidious. Even when it makes your brain shudder, it comes out of your mouth anyway.)

Net net--this one drives me even crazier than decoupled, and it seems to be all the rage among product management these days. What is wrong with the bottom line? Or the point? Or the takeaway? At least I understand where those terms came from.

If you hear me say "the net net is" just shoot me. Please.

No wonder there's a draft

Today I got off a conference call to find Michael eager to show me something.

Come stand on this chair and look at that wall and tell me what you see.

Up I climbed, turned to the wall, and froze in shock. "Daylight. I see daylight."

Cracks of daylight, to be precise. Running right in between every board in the wood paneling.

We've known since the first chill of autumn in 2011 that this corner of the house was drafty. As I pieced together the series of additions that resulted in the current house, I had decided that this particular area had clearly originated as a lean-to, and that it was inadequately insulated when it was incorporated into the main living space.

Inadequately insulated is one thing. No insulation is another. And from the cracks of daylight, it is clear that wall has no insulation.

We live in northern New England. It was -1 last Thursday at 1:00 in the afternoon. ("Fahrenheit?" My co-worker in California asked me. Yes, Fahrenheit.)

And I can see daylight through the wall.

This leaves us with three questions:

1. How did we not not notice this before now?

2. How did our home inspector not notice this?

And finally.

3. What on earth were they thinking?!

Book 1: Moby Dick

When EM announced in disgust that he had to read Moby Dick for his American Lit class, I decided it was time for me to knuckle down and read it myself.

I expected to hate it.

Michael expected me to hate it, and braced himself for more ranting. (I ranted to him all the way through Les Miserables and The Brothers Karamozov, so there was some basis for his assumption.)

Imagine my surprise on discovering that I like Moby Dick. Ishmael is a delightful and funny narrator, the look at whaling life is interesting, and the last three chapters are gripping.

To give you a taste of Ishmael's wry voice:

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. (chapter 49)

I had heard that Melville's information about whales is famously erroneous, but having read the book, I don't think we are meant to take Ishmael's science or history as reliable. No way, for example, are we supposed to believe that the narwhale uses his horn to fold pamphlets (chapter 32) or that St. George fought a whale instead of dragon (chapter 82) or that the whale's spout is mist caused by deep thinking (chapter 85).

The only drawback to the book is that it is about the killing of whales, which is more sickening, not less, the more you know about it.

The reading of Moby Dick became somewhat of a family affair. In addition to Michael being forced to listen to passages I found particularly amusing, LW got interested when I pulled out his illustrated book on whales. (I thought Ishmael was exaggerating his description of how ugly the right whale's head was compared to the sperm whale's, so I wanted to see pictures of both whales. I was forced to admit Ishmael was telling the truth.)

And so I offer up LW's contribution to this blog post: a whale, hunter, and harpoon made of sculpy clay. As you can see, he hasn't yet gotten scale down.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that EM does not share my love of Moby Dick and has begun to question my sanity.