Deeeep ... Breaths ...

Man, this is a challenging day. Long week, long month -- I'm at the beginning of a fairly busy trade show season and have already mounted one large show, with at least 3 more of varying sizes barreling toward me at intimidating speed.

School is back is session, which has brought a welcome order back to our days but has added to usual laundry list of additional concerns, issues, and education-related tasks along with it. And Christine has lept with both feet back into the pre-work force, registering for primary school teacher certification and an additional collegiate math class that will expand her future employment opportunities. All good stuff, things that will lead to better days ahead.

But for now? It means the all-too-familiar not enough hours in the day feeling. That feeling that no matter what I accomplish in a day I've managed to leave something undone.

Very frustrating.

To top it off, my spectacular daughter Miranda has just had a birthday, crossing the threshold into double-digits. Ten years old.

Here she is at about 5:
Whoa. But let's get to that later.

For now, let's talk birthday parties. Almost TWO DOZEN kids at the pool party today, and now we've four 9-10 year old girls over for a sleepover party.

I've been through this before so I know the "sleep" portion of the description is entirely rhetorical. I'm not realistically expecting anything resembling a good night's sleep tonight, and that's fine. I'm used to being tired most days. The weirdest moment for me was when my daughter and one of her friends wanted to shower after the pool party and I realized -- very suddenly -- that I needed to stay on an entirely different floor until they -- particularly her friend -- finished and were dressed.

It was an odd, but crystal clear and startlingly self-evident realization. These kids are gently bumping up against the early stages of young womanhood, whether I'm ready or not, and I need to start setting down some fairly rigid boundaries, even if they aren't quite aware of why they're necessary.

So, odd fatherly moment. Not shocked, exactly, but a bit saddened. It feels a bit too soon. A sensation I am sure I share with thousands upon thousands of fathers before me. Hopefully with the good ones.

Here she is when she did her Locks of Love donation about a month ago:

Hard to believe what 5 years can do.

Anyway, we're two hours of Rock Band and about 1/3 of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix through the sleepover. I'm jotting this on my iPhone, trying to finish up before I need to make popcorn for the pre-pubescents. It's about 9:30, and I'm hoping to be asleep somewhere around 1:00-ish.

And what occurs to me is just how few of these evenings I might have left. How pretty soon a storm of hormones is going to change my relationship with my daughter irrevocably. It won't necessarily be better, or worse, but it will certainly make things entirely, completely, and irreversibly different.

And I'll just need to adjust.

Anyway, happiest of birthdays to my darling daughter Miranda. A remarkable child who will undoubtedly grow into an amazing young woman.

Soon. So soon.

Mood: A Tad Melancholy
Now Playing: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Training, and Results in the Real World

So, I had an interesting experience this weekend. For the first time since I began training in Tang Soo Do, I found myself unexpectedly engaged in an altercation, and I was able to call upon my training in order to defend myself.

Now, this is not quite as dramatic and action-film-esque as it might sound, but hear me out. It's pretty cool all the same.

Among my many duties at my small startup company is responsibility for designing and maintaining our corporate website. I've done a fairly substantial amount of work on it, using my content management system or choice, Joomla, and some fairly nice templates and extensions. However, I am in marketing and not in IT -- this is significant, in that while my work lives and functions on our corporate servers I am not responsible for maintaining the servers -- or the data stored on them. That's the IT guy's job.

Anyway.

Late Friday/early Saturday, some joker hacked into the website. Messed with the templates, locked out portions of the administrative console. Big pain in the ass, really. And of course, this occurs on a holiday weekend, when the very last place I want to be is the office. Alas, you do what you gotta do. So, I talk with some folks, we quickly realize the best thing to do is restore the website from a backup ASAP, and then upgrade Joomla to close the security hole that allowed this jerk in in the first place.

However once we got ahold of our IT guy, it quickly became clear that despite the most basic assumptions we all were making -- that the web site, which is the single most accessible server in any corporation, simply because it is DESIGNED to be accessed by the public -- was in fact not being backed up. At all. And the most recent clean image of the website we appeard to have available was from nearly 5 months ago.

So, I was a bit upset. And when I questioned him about the lack of updates he game me a nonsense answer, claiming that due to the way the server was placed on our network it was impossible to back it up. Which, is, well, absurd. Easy to backup? Perhaps not. But impossible? That's ridiculous.

And I called him on it. Didn't get nasty, just said "There's NO WAY to do it? I find that hard to believe." And then I headed to work to try to recreate 5 months of work without any notes whatsoever.

Half an hour later, our IT guy shows up, and he is smokin' at the ears. Slams his bag on the floor by his desk, shouts over the wall to me that he can get me a version of the website from the end of last month, and "Would that be better?" (emphasis for the sneering tone). I say, "Well, yeah. A lot better."

And then he starts shouting at me. Literally shouting at the top of his lungs "I don't like being called a f-in' liar. Are you calling me a liar?"

I was a bit surprised, and said -- loudly, as I had to shout over him -- "No, I didn't call you a liar. I think you made an excuse and we have to fix this problem so it can't happen again and I really can't believe there's no way to do it. Other companies seem to have a way -- so should we." Well, then he gets really nasty -- "OK, OK, let me explain the basics of networking 101 to you so you can understand OK? I'll take it slow"

And when I tell you this guy is literally screaming this at me, I am not exaggerating. At this point, I'm just sort of looking at him. I haven't left my chair. He's literally screaming at me from about 10 feet away. And he's shouting and fuming and fulminating and bloviating.

And I sat and waited for him to finish.

Then, a co-worker who was in the building interceded, basically sent IT man back to his desk to cool the hell down. And I just turned my chair around and went back to work. A few minutes later IT dude came over, calmer, and apologized. "I really crossed the line there." "Yes, yes you did." "I should never have yelled at you like that." "No, no you shouldn't have." "I was just really upset about the site being hacked." "I am, too. I don't want to be here on a weekend any more than you do. Please get the more recent version of the website restored so we can both try to salvage what's left of the day."

He came back and apologized about 5 more times. Got the webiste online, and left.

So, where was the training in this story? Well, 3 years ago, the story would have involved me screaming back, standing up, slamming my fists into tables, and then literally shaking and almost crying for several minutes when things settled down because I had lsot control of myself. I might have punched a wall, or thrown something. I probably wouldn't have punched the IT guy -- I've always been good at directing my anger at inanimate objects instead of people, no matter how much they may seem to deserve it at the time -- but if I'd gotten physical it might have prompted him to throw a punch, and then things would have gotten really ugly. I'm twice his size, and I'm strong as an ox when I'm mad.

Instead, I sat and thought about him as he yelled at me. I realized he was backed into a corner, angry and embarrassed at being exposed for failing to keep the servers adequately backed up and he was blowing smoke, trying to push the blame away from himself. And he felt that I had put him in the position -- when obviously, he did it himself. I was just paying part of the price for his error. And when he was done yelling, and walked away, I sat and thought about how upset he was, and how he's probably worried about his job, and how silly he's going to feel when he settles down, and how I hope it's soon, because I want to get this work done already and go home.

And after he apologized, we shook hands, and I got to work. 3 hours later I went home. I don't think my heart rate ever went above 80 during the entire confrontation.

So, I think I've seen my first true glimpse of pyang ahn. Of peaceful confidence. I never felt threatened, simply because I knew that for all his anger and rage he was simply not a real threat to me. I was prepared for him to attack, relaxed and certain that if he did try to come at me I was in control of the situation and could bring it to a swift conclusion without getting all that hurt in the process. Instead, I took a more placid and passive approach, allowed him to vent the rage he felt, and when he was done he could see clearly, could see his error, and we could progress forward.

Sa Bom Nim often says that the best self defense is no self defense, the best Tang Soo Do is the Tang Soo Do you don't have to use. And I saw the wisdom of this firsthand for the first time that afternoon.

And man, it was a good day.

Mood: Very tired
Now Playing: The Mavericks, "The Mavericks"

Worketty Work/Sum Beh Nim/41 Approaches

I've spent the better part of the past 2 weeks completely buried at work. The Director of Marketing I've worked under at my current job was let go a couple of Mondays ago, and as a result I've been scrambling to take control of the things he was in the middle of, or had been responsible for, etc.

So, yeah, it's been a busy 12-14 days. We've got a trade show coming up in about 3 weeks that he'd been taking point on (I was responsible for the next two, but he said he had a lot done and it would be easier to just finish running this one. I think the real reason had more to do with his history with the primary organizer of the event, but whatever), and unfortunately, when he was let go it became apparent that whatever planning he'd done had been done in his head, as no actual planning, design, reservations, or projects seem to have been undertaken. And with deadlines for early reservations expiring this week I had to move quickly to get things squared away in order to save our lil' company some much needed cash.

I think I'm on the other side of THAT particular nightmare now -- all advance orders have been placed, and I can now get on with the task of planning that actual booth layout, courting and coddling partners, playing kiss ass with vendors to try to get some special treatment, and so forth. With any luck I'll get this thing in shape and slam-dunk it, thereby HOPEFULLY setting myself up for something of a promotion sometime in the near-future, when we get a little more funding.

It's all very complicated. And not a little bit exhausting.

-=-

Got my second stripe in class a couple of Tuesdays ago. By all accounts my test was terrific and I knocked it out of the park. Which is nice. I have to admit it's a bit odd having other students bow to me as a senior student -- Sum Beh Nim -- now (in our dojang, the students bow to the senior 1st gup on the mat after bowing to the instructor and the senior dan). I thoguht I'd get a thrill out of it, but instead I feel a bit awkward. But still, it's fun. If anything it's helping to push me to put out extra effort during class, to work harder on my own performance and to take the role of senior student more seriously. It tends to put me in the mind of watching my juniors a bit more closely, and of trying to lend guidance when I can without being cocky about it.

It's a tricky role -- we've all known the guy who thinks he knows everything and wants to just keep pointing out your flaws so that he looks terrific in contrast. I really don't want to be that guy. I think the trick is to continually remember my kyum son, my humility. When I spot something in a junior that needs change or improvement, I try to make sure I explain how I used to do this same technique completely differently, and how and when I realized thaere was a different or better way to approach it. That more often than not I made the exact same mistakes they may be making for weeks and months before I gained insight into how or why it should be different.

I've never felt I'm anything special in Tang Soo Do -- quite the opposite, actually. I feel like I have very little natural ability, and whatever gains I've made have been due to working twice as hard (at least ...) as the people that seem to just "get it" naturally. As a result of these efforts I think I have developed some solid skills as a technician, if not any particular affinity or grace. I tend to know when thigns are technically right or wrong, and I tend to be able to articulate these things pretty well, but I firmly believe thatany student who commits to the art and puts the time I've put in would be just as apt, just as capable, just as accomplished. I'm nothing special. I just bust my ass more than some others.

I try to make sure I communicate this and keep this in mind when I work with my juniors, in the hopes that it will be apparent to the people I work with that I'm just trying to help, and I don't expect anyone to think that I'm anything all that special at all. That the things I try to show people are the results of hard work, distilled to a few things I can get right more often than not. I like to think I don't dispense pearls of wisdom so much as drops of sweat. And if you've worked out with me, you'll know that I sweat a lot -- if only all of that sweat was true knowledge.

-=-

So, Sunday will mark 41 years. No big observations this year. My job is great, my family is beyond fantastic, we are all healthy and doing well. We have a fantastic new house, one that I still occasionally wake up in and think "How the HELL did I wind up here?" I'm not walking around in a personal Nirvana or anything -- I spend a lot of time feeling spread far thinner than I'd prefer, money is tight thanks to our fabulous Bush-engineered economic meltdown, and I've seen more than a couple of friends fall by the wayside this past year: that last one continues to sting more than I expected it would, but there's literally nothing to be done about it. Are there things I change if I could? Sure. But all in all, this has been a terrific 41st year on the planet.

So, Happy 41st Birthday to me.

Mood: Full (big birthday lunch)
Now Playing: Assorted Artists, "Big Blue Ball"