Rusty's Blog

No, nothing here about heroic deeds I have done. If you think something I’ve done falls in the heroic realm of activities, you are welcome to note them, but I certainly am not looking for accolades.

No, this article is more recognition of some absolutely wonderful people who may not know that I’ve seen them do some pretty incredible things, and that I want to make sure that I’m not the only person who’s aware of it.

First up is my daughter. I may not know her as well as some others do, but I know that she recognized that she was in a very rough situation in high school, and took matters into her own hands. In her final semester of high school she had moved out of her mom’s house, had moved to a different city, and was riding an intra-city buss to get to and from school. She transfered in the middle of the semester to a school in the city she had moved to, and graduated that semester. She then turned around and married her boyfriend in the next year, started A+ certification (the school she was going to closed in the middle of the session.) and has worked at a grocery store supporting herself and her husband who is going to school to get his Bachelors degree. I have little doubt that once he is working in the field of his degree, that she will return to school. She may be a year or two behind many of her peers but she will have experiences that will give her an incredible edge in many of the subjects she will study. I would not be a bit surprised to learn that within 10 years she has an MBA and is working in management either for the chain of grocery stores she is working for now, or possibly within the technology sector.

Yes I am biased in my assessment of my daughter. She is after all my daughter. But I think what she’s done is incredible. You don’t have to agree.

I have known Anton Petersen on and off for 15 years now. Many people know him already in the Anton is Awesome fan club, and I’ve never seen a guest liaison or guest department head for a convention who does a better job of making guests feel welcome and involved in the convention they are attending. On more than one occasion he has stepped into a budding disaster and turned it into an acceptable if not positive experience for the guests attending, which is even more incredible when you consider that some of those situations have involved conventions he arrived ‘at the door’ to attend, and had no involvement with the guests department of that convention before arrival. I’m going to admit that there are times when I am concerned that he is taking on too much. Perhaps the most concerning aspect of him being involved in GPS is that I don’t expect his involvement in other conventions, will be reduced. I think it will grow significantly. We need more people like Anton. Not because he can’t do what he does, but simply because what he does should be done by more people.

Jennifer Manna is a force to be reckoned with. Outgoing, aggressive, uncompromising and both a geek and a gamer, she is someone you want on or at your side, and never as an opponent. Jen is a Feminist in the best form of the word. She fundamentally believes the principles that men and women need to recognize that our strengths are not in our appearance, but in what we ad people do, and how we treat those around us. People talk about treating everyone equally. Jen embodies that. If you are doing something stupid in her presence, she will let you know about it, or she won’t accept being in your presence.

There are many others who I would love to write up a full review on. Kat Pepmiller, Erin Lorenz, Tia Jean Starbuck, Amada Marquez, Damarra Atkins, Rin Schwartz, Peter Gamache and several other people I consider friends. Each has done things that I hope I never have to do, gone through experiences that I never will, and much more.

No one lives an easy life. We each go through some parts of our lives if not coasting, at least being aware that the experience has come at great personal expense. All of us know that times are tough. And we know that different parts of our lives are going to go through better and worse experiences, and that many of us will go through both a high point in our lives and a low point at the same time. While I note that I think of them as heroes, each is going through rough experiences at this time. From long periods of being away from her husband for my daughter, to being under employed, or experiencing medical problems, or issues with other people behaving badly in their lives. None of us are immune. All of my heroes however are some of the very best people to know, to work with, to support when I can, and to be supported by through my experience.

To my friends and heroes, thank you. May all your dreams be blessed, and the best results for all be the results of your efforts. Thank you.

…it’s not all it’s cut out to be.

Don’t get me wrong, tolerance is a start. Just remember it’s not an end.

Kind of tough starting with the ending isn’t it? Actually, that ‘ending’ is just a start. I suppose a bit of an explanation is in order.

If you ask people what the founding principles are of religion in the united states, it would be that people should tolerate other people’s religions. Or rather a lot of people feel that way. This basically means that we should allow other people to ignore what we feel is a sound principle of our own faith, and that if what they choose to do is against our own faith, we should just let it go. As an example, most of the Christian derivations consider Sunday to be a day of worship, and not of work. Jeudaism on the other hand treats Saturday that way, and Islam tends to treat Friday as the day of worship. Tolerance suggests that we should ‘let’ people of the other two faiths practice thier holy days.

The problem with this is that we tend to find that ‘letting’ people do this tends to grate at our nerves, and there is no way we can get beyond that under the auspices of Tolerance. It is a start though.

What Tolerance is intended to lead to is Learning, Understanding and Acceptance.

If you can allow people to do what their faith, or views suggest is the correct thing to do, and you recognize that there is a problem from your perspective, you can then Ask why people with those faiths or views do those things. Without Asking, you can never get to Learning why they are doing that. Christianity treats Sunday as the holy day of the week, because that is the day of the week that Christ rose from the grave. Jeudaism treats Saturday as the holy day of the week because the commandment says that we are to remember the sabath or seventh day, and keep it holy. This is in rememberance of the 7th day of the week of creation when the Lord rested. Within Islam, Friday is the holy day for a number of reasons, including Adam being created on Friday, the revelation of Islam as the religion, and the day of resurection being Friday. (slightly different meaning from Christ’s resurection, but we’re not going to go there for now.)

Once you have learned why people of another faith follow specific practices, it becomes a matter of recognition and acceptance that while they may not be important reasons for you to follow those practices, they are important to the people who practice that faith.

Just about everyone in the office starts work at 9 am. Bob regularly shows up at 10:30, and works till an hour and a half after everyone else goes home. This bothers a number of his co-workers, but his manager, and thiers, seems to just take it in stride. His co-workers ‘Tolerate’ Bob’s behaviour, because they see that their manager continues to allow it. On the other hand his manager has noted two things. If Bob works those hours, he oddly enough gets more done in that time than anyone else on his staff. Also Bob is in training for the upcomming olympic trials. By the time Bob shows up at work, he’s already spent 3 hours working out and getting cleaned up for work. When Bob gets off work at 6:30, his first stop is the local gym where he puts in another 2 hours before he goes home and spends the next 3 hours working on his graduate degree program. His co-workers may ‘tolerate’ Bob’s behaviour, but at this rate Bob’s not going to be working with them for long. His boss understands and accepts the behaviour, because he is aware of the even larger picture around what Bob is doing.

School’s and govornment offices are investigating a 4 day work-week in some cities. 20 years ago, the idea was proposed, but there was no way that it was going to happen. The lifestyle we had at the time did not encourage that sort of flexibility. Some of the things that have changed since then include more 2 parents working. Higher price of gassoline, and food. Working from 8 am till 6 pm may seem like a long stretch, but if you can save 20% of your commuting budget, might it be worth the redistribution of work? How about if it saves more like 25%? At the moment a lot of bus companies charge a different rate after 6:00 pm than they do from 3:30 to 6:00pm. This may not be a lot of help to people who may have to pay a little bit more at the parking garage for the added 2 hours, but they also end up without those hours at all (as well as any time spent going to and from the office from the parking garage) for the 5th day that they won’t be working. One school district found that just the savings in fuel costs for reducing the school week by 1 day pays for a class that they would otherwise have to eliminate. It also has an impact on the cost of school lunches for the district.

In a time where we are all looking for ways to save money, these can be very important reasons to investigate those alternatives. However in large portions of the business sector, the 5 day 8 hour work week, with an added 8 hours of overtime on Saturday presuming you would like to continue working here, is so ingrained into their work ethic that you can forget about seeing them change anytime soon. It will happen though.

So remember, start with Tollerance, but it isn’t the end. Recognize that you are missing something, and learn what it is that will convert Tolerance into Acceptance, and Appreciation.

I think that there are probably a lot more of your friends who know other friends of yours, than you realize. Consider your work and say one avocation of yours. I can easily pick from work and two avocations, but if we start with just one, it is a bit simpler to explain.

At work I am part of a team of about 20 people, some in the city I work in, some in a couple of others. I also work with people from other teams on a shift overlap related basis, So if I simply include the people in the city I work in, I am part of a team of about 30 people that I work amoung with some regularity.

One of my avocations is helping to run a science fiction convention. This last year the convention attracted some 2500 people. Of those some 250 were part of the dedicated volunteer team helping to keep things moving. Of that I work directly with some 40, and somewhat less directly with another 40, or about 80 total.

So that is something on the close order of 110 people who I can state overlap directly with me. None of the people I work with are a member of the set of people I work the convention with. I have absolutely no doubt however that there are people in each of the groups who know people in the other groups. Sure there are a lot of people in each group who do not know each other. But that’s not at all difficult to find in most cases.

I am not counting third level aquaintences at this point. One of the people I work with regularly at the convention is married to a stewardess. Since I work with people who have a need to fly from time to time, it is amost certain that she has met one or more of the people I work with. Likewise I have a friend that I see ocasionally at work, but don’t work directly with, who has been involved with running the convention in the past, so obviously he knows quite a few of those people as well.

Why is it that we tend to know people that may completely unbeknownst to us know each other? I think it has a lot to do with what kind of people we are. Whether you work in Marketing, and socialize in a church that has no-one from your company in it, or you work as a publisher and spend your free time at bar’s or even dances, there is some aspect of your work life that tends to be a part of your avocations. In my case I fully acknoledge that I am a geek. Some may say Nerd, and I don’t have any need to argue with them.

In any case both what I do for work, and being part of running a science fiction convention, tend to involve interacting with other geeks. That being said, both sets of ‘friends’ are part of a larger set, geeks. You can undoubtedly find similar set overlaps between the people you consider friends at work, and friends at play.

It can also be fun to find out who amoung the various sets of people you know, do know each other. Some of those relationships may be entirely unexpected.

Enjoy.