Author Archives: billtoner1960

The sad state of public discourse

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The blogging experience has so far not changed my perspective about the total breakdown of public discourse.

A blog reader “Jack”, one of three people to comment on my blog since its inception ( wow, this thing is really taking off! ), didn’t care much for my post more on Ryan’s Budget , so he drew some conclusions and checked out.  Adios.  See ‘ya, I’m outta here.

I had high hopes for Jack.  He seems like a well educated guy.  His first reply seemed sincere, unlike many of the loons I run into when debating politics.  He made a strong appeal to have an open mind about Ryan’s budget plan as a legitimate proposal that deserved consideration just like any other proposal out there.  Let the process run its course and don’t discount the guy right off the smacker just because he’s a member of the Tea Party.  Okay, fair enough.  I agree with the “let the process run its course” part of that sentiment, and I’m sure it will.

So I got busy during the week and didn’t get a chance to reply until the weekend when I penned a few snarky comments and let my favorite liberal commentators do most of the talking for me.  Limited on time, I reckoned I couldn’t say it much better than Krugman had said it himself so I took the easy way out and linked to Krugman and sprinkled the post with some of my own snarky-ness.

Jack took offense to my left leaning comments and wrote me off as a closed minded lib with poor listening skills “too deeply invested emotionally in your ideology to carry on a reasoned & logical debate.”

Dang, that’s a fast conclusion!  All of that from two blog posts about Paul Ryan’s Budget?

I think it might be time for some self evaluation here to test if this is true.

Let’s see… let’s start with the fact that I’m an Independent.  I’ve been an independent voter since the start of the first Gulf War when I noticed that card-carrying Baath Party members were getting rounded up and shot for well, being card-carrying Baath Party members.  Can’t happen in this country?  Probably not but I decided not to risk it by affiliation to either party.  I couldn’t see any benefit what-so-ever to party affiliation and besides, I like to think I’m capable of making up my own mind and don’t need a party to speak for me.

What else?  Oh,  I think Nancy Pelosi should resign for her alleged involvement in insider trading.  That’s not very partisan, is it?

I think Fox News and MSNBC are each partisan hack networks that basically offset each other, one from the right, the other from the left.  The big difference being that Fox advertises itself as “Fair and Balanced”.  Hardly.

I think there should be a review of entitlements programs each and every year, identifying and eliminating waste where-ever it’s found.  Same thing with Tax Auditors.  That should be a simple mathematical equation, right?  For every auditor hired we get money back until that number reaches the point of diminishing returns?

I think elections start too soon, cost too much, and don’t provide us with real choices.  I’d like to see real spending caps on donations similar to what Jerry Brown committed to in California, only on a national level.  I heard a good quote this time around.  “This isn’t an election, it’s an auction.”  So true.

I’m beginning to think I’ve been mis-labeled prematurely here.  But that’s is what tends to happen these days if we examine the sad state of our public discourse.

One of the reasons I started blogging was to get away from pontificating political opinions on Facebook.  In some instances, decent discussions were had, but I think most people tended to just hide the blow-hard ( me ), and as I came to realize that, I reckoned it was the wrong forum, so here I am.  ( Now I can piss people off here, instead of on Facebook ).

But I’d like to take this opportunity to share a few of the characteristics of people I’ve run across in the course of public debate.  Nothing to do with Jack, like I said, he seems like a well educated guy with different opinions than mine.  The fact that he drew a quick conclusion reminded me of so many other ‘public discussions’ gone south for various reasons.  So here’s what I run into:

  • People are sore losers.  Romney lost.  Get over it.
  • I get emotional responses like you would not believe, especially if the topic has anything to do with guns.  I can’t get half a sentence out before the other side is TYPING IN ALL CAPS ABOUT THE CONSTITUTION, even though nobody mentioned a ban on guns at any point in time.
  • There’s a propensity to “never give an inch”.  Does anyone ever say “I see your point” anymore?  I try.  I honestly do.
  • There’s a total comfort in spreading half-truths and lies.  In my opinion, Fox News is the worst offender but MSNBC is just as partisan.
  • People parrot their “News” channels like Fox.  That’s why I watch Fox.  To see if someone is just channeling O’Reilly or Hannity.   Worst of all, Glenn Beck.

Funny enough, there seems to be a strong correlation between the loudest voices and raw ignorance on both sides.  But alas we have the internet now and everyone gets their say, including @pithyopine.

If there happen to be any conservatives out there reading this, good for you for getting this far!  I congratulate you on that.

It’s risky for me to give this advice, and probably arrogant too, but that’s never stopped me before.  It’s no secret the Republican party is in a shambles.  Witness this past week’s CPAC conference where individuals like Donald Trump and Sarah Palin get air-time.  Do Republicans know that every time they give the mic to one of these Tea Party loons that the Dems throw a banquet celebration while cheering “More!  More!”

I recently found myself 100% in agreement with something that Newt Gingrich said.  He said “look, we can’t just be the anti-Obama party”.

At the end of the day I think it comes down to demonstrating that the party is inclusive and promotes policies that will actually help grow the middle class.  Obama was re-elected with close to 8% unemployment.  That just doesn’t happen.  Not since FDR anyway.  Statistically speaking, all the Republicans had to do was find a reasonable candidate with a pulse and he should have won.  But they chose Romney instead.  So why did Romney lose?  In a word, money.

Romney went on the campaign trail touting the benefits of the Bush Tax cuts and how awesome they were ( despite the evidence that the job creators were indeed not creating jobs with those Tax Cuts ).  People didn’t buy it this time around.  So he defended the 1% and lost the election.  But what choice did he have?  He was funded in large part by the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson.  The poor guy was caught between a rock and a hard place.  As is the Republican party now.

I’m for whatever policies grow the middle class.  I am not a believer in trickle down economics and never will be.  I remember all too well the amount of money I gained with the first “Tax Cut” I received during Ronald Reagan’s first term.  $32.  That’s it.  Go stimulate the economy with that, will ‘ya?  C’mon!

I’m not for over taxing either.  It’s true that Kennedy lowered tax rates.  What were they at the time though?  90% for the top bracket?  Well of course that’s too high.  But the Republican’s this time around were running around like chicken little promoting the idea that the sky was falling.  Apparently capitalism fails somewhere between 36 and 39% ( okay, I stole that quote from my cousin, Jim Eady.  But it was brilliant, just the same ).

It’s my belief that Republicans stand firm with big business and big money whereas the Democrats tend to do a little better job ( not much ), of fighting for the little guy.  Hey, I only get two choices, give me a break here!   And remember, I’m an Independent!

Circling back to Public Discourse — it reminds me of this joke.

Harry from Boston was visiting Jerusalem. Each day his walk would take him past the Wailing Wall. Standing and praying at the wall each time he passed was a neighbor Sam. It didn’t matter if Harry walked by at 7AM, Noon, 4PM even later, he would always see Sam praying. Finally Harry approached Sam and asked him what he was praying for. Sam said that he only prayed for good things. He prayed that there will be peace on earth. He prayed that he will be good to his children and that his children will be good to him. 

Harry asked Sam if all that prayer was working.
Sam replied, “It’s like talking to a fucking wall!”

More on Ryan’s Budget

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I don’t profess to be an economist or anything close to it.  Without question, it’s a very complex field of study.  The best we can do is try to listen to those who are well-educated on the subject and look for political bias while doing so.

Recently, I posted a sarcastic criticism of Paul Ryan and his latest budget proposal which, as one of its tenets is a repeal of Obamacare.  From what I’d been reading, it sounded like the intent was to not just revert to a tax structure that benefits the uber-wealthy as was the case under G.W. Bush, but to take it the madness a few steps further and lower the marginal rate to 25% while paying for it with cuts to entitlements.

This blog being new, I don’t often get a lot of comments yet, but recently I had a thoughtful reply to the post challenging me to get out of the mode of simply launching criticisms at Republicans, and proffer up some of my own solutions.  Fair enough.

Not being an economist, it’s not like I’m going to sit down and study the budget line for line and come up with theories about how to fix it.  Instead I must rely on what I can learn from credible sources.  Since the original post, there have been two compelling articles that caught my attention and seem worth repeating.

The first is an article by E.J. Dionne from the Washington Post.  In a nutshell, Ryan proposes reduces the top tax bracket from 39.6% to 25% and pays for it through steep cuts to Medicare and a repeal of Obamacare.  In other words, it’s Reagan’s “trickle down” economics on steroids.  I’m not sure why this plan would see the light of day given the abysmal failure of the US to control its trillion dollar annual deficits under 12 years of testing this bizarre theory in the form of the Bush Tax cuts.  Cutting rates for the top 2% of income earners stimulated some growth in the yacht building industry, but that’s about it.  The whole premise was that the to wage earners are the “job creators”, and thusly, if we line their pockets with tax breaks, they will create jobs right and left, morning, noon, and night.

My point is, how much more data do we need?  We had 12 years of the Bush tax cuts in place and ended up with unemployment at 9% at the end of the experiment and a shrinking middle class.

Ryan’s budget is paternalistic.  He professes to know “what’s best” for the people of this country because his proposal would force many of the poor off of welfare and he reckons they will all go out and find jobs and then send him a thank-you note later on.

The process of creating a budget appears to be approaching some middle ground with the Dems, led by Patty Murray of Washington State having provided a very specific proposal for how to create true job growth and reduce the deficit at the same time.  In large part, it’s based on closing tax loop-holes for the top 1% as well as corporations who have gotten away with tax evasion for years.  Look no farther than Nike in my home state for a company that threatens to take its jobs outside the state unless it gets huge passes on the tax front.

Another source I follow religiously, Nobel Prize winning author Paul Krugman had an article recently that exposed the cruelty and hypocrisy of the Ryan budget.  Krugman frequently points out the real data from the European austerity experiment, which has failed miserably.  Ryan’s budget would take us down this same path, completely ignoring what the experts say is a winning approach to improve job growth and get people believing in the economy again — enough to let go of some of their money.  Just like it was during the Great Depression, it’s about confidence.  This is no different.  The New Deal was all about restoring confidence and the government, as FDR knew well, had a key role in restoring confidence.  Consequently it stepped in and created public works projects and kept people in the work-force who would otherwise have been out in the cold.

As I mentioned earlier, I rely heavily on the experts is these matters and I’ll take John Maynard Keynes and Paul Krugman (Ph.D in economics) over a self proclaimed policy wonk proffering up the same old Reagan re-tread ideas that have failed us for 30 years.

Paul Ryan’s budget

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I was just wondering if Paul Ryan had knowledge of the fact that we have three branches of government including a Supreme Court.

Since the recent Ryan budget is based off of the assumption that the Affordable Health Care Act will be repealed, I was just wondering if anyone told him about justice Roberts’ historic vote.  Maybe I’ll send him a tweet, just in case he’s not informed.

The legacy of my parents

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I oftentimes take the dog on a 3-5 mile walk which gives me the opportunity to “get inside my head” as my wife says.  Mid-life has been a challenge.  Divorce.  Job Change.  Both of my parents are gone now.  Dad died in 2008 and Mom in 2011.    I think about a lot of different things, but memories of Mom and Dad and my childhood come up frequently, so I find myself taking a journey back to the 60’s and 70’s quite often.

20 years ago or so, I remember being really pissed about some of the over-sights my parents had during their tenure as parents of me.  They started the painful process of divorce when I was 15, so there wasn’t a lot of guidance available down the home stretch. And the house rules felt kind of strict growing up at the time with mandatory private school, and some higher behavioral expectations.  It’s funny how attitudes change over time though.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized and appreciated the personal sacrifices they both made in getting 4 kids raised.  Each brought something different to the table.  Clearly they had different priorities for the traits they would like to see in their kids.  Dad seemed to focus on things like self-discipline and academic achievement and relate the two.  Mom was more concerned about how her kids treated others and used the word “consideration” a lot.  Both seemed slightly obsessed with how we would “turn out”.

I was very lucky to be a part of a family that kept away from the extremes you see today.  While conservative in some areas of parenting, they were definitely open minded in other areas and got the big picture.   Dad was a strong proponent of ‘natural consequences’ and just let my bad decisions play out.  He rarely intervened with disciplinary measures after the age of 12, though there were no shortage of opportunities.  If at all possible, he’d just find a way to hold a mirror up so that I could witness my own stupidity.  Usually that was enough said.

Mom would get the most upset with me if I was inconsiderate or rude to someone.  But both were always there for me and had my best interests at heart, always, even though I didn’t agree with the methods at times.  Actually, I had very strong disagreements with the some of the methods, but that’s not what this post is about.

As I got older and became a parent myself, I realized the cool thing about Mom and Dad is that they both tried really hard to walk the talk.  Dad set a pretty good example of exercising self-discipline in his own life and Mom was a saint to others, incredibly unselfish with her time and nursing skill-set.  She was born to be a nurse, I am convinced of that.  I could go on with examples but I’ll skip that for now.

So I’m walking the dog last summer and I’m in my head as usual, and I came across this idea that I latched onto.  What’s one thing that I can put into practice to carry on the legacy of Mom and Dad?  I’m a very independent thinker and challenged  a lot of the status quo in their parenting plan, so I’m sure I was a pretty big challenge for them and didn’t turn out exactly as they had hoped.  But now that they are gone, none of that matters.  Suddenly I had a real strong desire to make sure all their hard work did not go completely to waste.  To carry on some trait they deemed important.

There’s this nature park on one of the walking routes I take called Little Woodrose Park.  It’s a fairly short little connector between two neighborhoods but it’s densely populated with trees and has a nice path.  About half way in, there’s a pretty steep hill.  This may seem a little strange on the surface, but it’s the symbolism that matters to me.  What I came of with for Dad was, I’m going to run up this hill every time I come across it.  I named it Jim Toner hill, and since last summer, every time I go through there, when I get to the hill, I let the dog loose and chase her up the hill and I run to the top without stopping and think of the old man while I’m doing it.  I’m an out of shape 53 year old grandpa, so I’m usually huffing and puffing when I get to the top.  But I do that in memory of Dad and his self-discipline message because life isn’t always easy, and we run into challenges and things that are hard.

Figuring out something for Mom was a little harder, but I recently came up with what I think is something that would make her smile.  When they were married, Mom had issues with Dad being a little inconsiderate at times and not helping out as much as he could around the house.  She didn’t really have the skill-set to challenge him in the moment about it, so she let her frustrations build up over time and developed a lot of resentment.  Playing more of the Martyr.  When I got married the first time back in 1979, about the worst report she could get back from my wife would be a story about me acting like my father in this regard.  Leaving the woman to do all the work or something of this nature.  That would really make her mad if she heard a story like that and she’d be likely to give me the business about that in no uncertain terms.

So in honor of Mom, what I do is, I make sure that I’m pulling my weight around the house and then some.  If I ever have thoughts that maybe the chores are getting a little one-sided, I just keep my mouth shut and keep rinsing.  That one is for you, Mom.  I know she’d be super proud of that one and if she’s reading this now, has a big smile on her face.

So there you go, Mom and Dad.  One thing each for now.  I miss you both terribly.

Finding your level part II

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Fast forward to the late 1990’s.  I got the music bug pretty bad and had always wanted to become a really good guitar player, but alas I got married young and had a family and responsibilities therein.  But now my kids were old enough to entertain themselves for the most part and apart from a taxi-ride now and then, they were getting pretty self-sufficient so I picked up the guitar and started taking lessons.

As someone who grew up trying to learn the guitar and appreciating that it’s a real challenge, I used to drool at the guys who could shred the neck.  As luck would have it, one such individual, Erick Hailstone was playing in a band in my own home town.  Erick is not your average shredder.  He’s could share the stage with the top names in the business, he’s that good.  He is the most well-rounded, knowledgable, gifted guitar player I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.  He’s got an endless library of Jazz Standards that he can seemingly pull out of nowhere any time he wants.  If he happens to be playing with a rock band, he will absolutely blow you away with speed and tastiness of his licks.  There isn’t anything the guy cannot do as far as I know.

Watching Erick and his band at the Sweetbrier in Tualatin just made my music bug grow more intensely.  I was obsessed with learning as much as I could and getting good enough to play in a band myself.  I figured it might take 5 years or so, but I had time now and it was a priority, so I was going to do it.

A couple of years went by and I was invited to play with the company band at Xerox, “ZeeRocks”.  I didn’t think I was quite ready yet for this, but I couldn’t pass up the offer.  It turned out to be a pretty fun group to play with and a great learning experience for me.  An off-shoot of ZeeRocks was a trio we formed called The SoundWaves Band.  To start with it was Dan Brantley and myself and we featured his daughter Rena on vocals.  Rena has an awesome powerful voice and I enjoyed that band immensely.  We worked our way up from the Farmer’s Markets to the next level so-to-speak where we got to play in a Restaurant BBQ on a golf course.  Great setting.

But all the while, I’m reminded of “leveling” and playing “at my level” and no higher.  The worst thing, I reckoned, was to get up on stage where the expectations on the guitar player are high, and suck.  I knew enough about the limits of my abilities to not try it.

The SoundWaves started playing local Farmer’s Markets and those were a ton of fun.  Before the very first one, I went out to the market the weekend prior to when we were scheduled to play and “scoped the competition” some.  It was a guy playing his guitar underneath a tree, solo.  I figured we might come in with our powerful female vocalist, a keyboard player and electric guitar and rock this house, baby.  We did.  They invited us back for several more gigs.  For their $50 budget — for the band, they weren’t used to getting a vocalist like Rena to come in and blow them away.  We were actually playing “below” our level a bit, but I was enjoying every minute of it.

Several years later, Dan and Rena had to exit The SoundWaves and I tried to keep the band going with new members so that I wouldn’t lose the momentum and the gigs we had acquired.  I happened across some awesome female vocalists in Tiffany Carlson and Melanie Rae and convinced them to give this thing a go.  I also borrowed the drummer and bass player from a local band called Seymour, and we had a 5 piece that did both covers and originals and we were having a pretty good time of it.  The wheels sort of fell off after we got all primed for a series of gigs that got cut back to one gig — argggh!  But I always felt we weren’t stretching our “level” too much.  The key for me was hooking up with great singers and other musicians so that very little of the whole thing depended on just me.  I just had to nail down the rhythm guitar, play a few leads and try not to screw up the background vocals.

After The SoundWaves experience was over, Tiffany had connections with a local restaurant in Tualatin called Haydens and was asked to play.  She asked me if I wanted to join her and Melanie for a gig there.  I declined.  To appreciate why I declined, you’d have to have experienced what goes on at Haydens on a typical weekend.  There’s a duo that plays there – Tim Ellis and Jim Walker.  Ellis’ guitar playing is on par with Erick Hailstone’s.  There isn’t much Tim can’t do.  He can shred.  His timing is always perfect and he rarely makes a mistake.  His library of tunes is endless.  Pair that up with a top notch singer like Jim Walker and you’ve got entertainment.

Consequently, the expectations on the guitar player at Haydens are sky-high.  If some locals came to see live music on a weekend expecting to see Tim Ellis and all of a sudden it was Bill Toner, wow, would they be disappointed.  I just couldn’t do it, much as I liked the idea of playing more gigs with Tiffany and Melanie.  Instead I referred them to a friend of mine, Gary Lapado, who is quite the shredder on the guitar himself.  Gary is more the right “level” for that venue, not me.  They took me up on that suggestion, used Gary, and did great.  I even went down to see them myself, ever-conscious of that little league experience and playing up a level before I was ready.

Finding your level

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Each year as we turn the calendar into March and I see Dad’s with their sons taking a little batting practice out on the wet baseball fields, getting ready for Little League tryouts, I’m reminded of a childhood memory that stuck with me.

My father was a really enthusiastic sports fan and coach.  He loved sports of all kinds, but I think he liked baseball the most due to its strategic nature.  Unless you’ve ever tried to coach at the more senior levels ( kids above 10 or 11 ), you may not appreciate how much strategy there is in baseball.  A lot of people think it’s a really boring game that moves too slowly.  But Dad was really into strategy, so baseball floated his boat more than other sports and he loved a good 1-0 shutout as much as  anything.  Dad also played high school baseball for a small, private high school in Eugene, Oregon.  He did well enough that in his own mind, he thought he had an outside chance of playing baseball his freshman year at Oregon, so he tried out.  He didn’t quite make it, but I was always impressed that, realist that he was, he thought he had an outside chance.  He must not have been any slouch on the field.

I have 3 older sisters, so when I came along, the good news for Dad was, he had a son.  The bad news was, his son wasn’t much of an athlete!  I was “okay” at sports and thanks to some extra tutoring by Dad in baseball at a young age, I even excelled a little in the minor divisions of Little League.  I think he was secretly hoping he could groom me into a catcher that could play at the High School level or beyond, but that was just never in the cards.  I did catch through age 10, but by then I’d had enough of trying to live someone else’s dream.  I wanted to pitch!

For those familiar with how Little League works, every Spring they have a tryout for their “majors” division, which is kids age 10-12.  Majors is when Little League starts to get serious.  The first thing to know is that it’s a “keeper” league, which means you stay on the team you’re drafted through your 12 year old season.  Little League fields have 60′ bases (full size field has 90′ bases) and the pitcher’s mound is set at 46″ (full size is 60′ 6″).   The problem with majors is that some of the 12 year olds have had their growth spurt and are approaching 6 ft tall, so it’s a bit like facing Randy Johnson for batters.  The best 12 year olds can throw 60 mph+ easily, and are schooled enough to throw a little junk at you, just to keep you guessing.  Most 10 year olds aren’t quite ready for that.

I’d had a really fun season as a 9 year old.  My team lost one game the entire season and I got to play a whole bunch of positions and the coaches were great about rotating players in and giving all the kids playing time.  Fresh off of this experience I was eager for the Spring tryout to see if I could get drafted onto a majors team.  I don’t recall how well I did defensively at the tryout, but I remember my turn at the plate and the coaches throwing medium-fast fastballs at me, right down the middle, and making some pretty good contact.  Apparently I made an impression because a week later I was drafted onto a majors team.  Yahoo!  There weren’t very many 10 year olds that got drafted into the majors that year and I was one of them.  Yay for me.

Then came reality.  Practices started and the team already had a 12 year old catcher.  I was dubbed “The Catcher of the Future”, which is not uncommon in majors — to draft a 10 year old and sort of groom him for his 11 and 12 year old seasons.   So my lot for the year as far as playing time was concerned was to play 2 innings in the outfield at games, but to do a lot of catching in practice… for next year.   That part was sort of okay with me anyway because it’s not like I wanted to catch the games anyway.  The fundamental problem was that 90% of the kids were older, bigger, and better than I was and it felt that way every single day.  The 2 innings of playing time usually translated into one at bat per game.  Not a lot of action out there to hold my interest.

I’m convinced keeper leagues are a bad idea.  10 year olds do not possess the ability to think long-term and do not care about next year.  Catcher of the future wasn’t a carrot for me because frankly, I wasn’t even sure I was going to sign up next year if this is how much fun it is.  About half way through the season I wanted to quit.  Dad had a pretty strict “no quitting’ rule.  Once you start something, you finish it.  So I had to tough it out.

I was on the second best team in the majors that year, Mosee Brothers.  Our arch rival team, Wards, had amassed an amazing group of pitchers led by Mike Childs and Tim Pflaum.  Both 12 year olds.  Both threw heat like you wouldn’t believe.  To make matters more interesting, Tim Pflaum was my neighbor and a really good guy and I used to hang out with Tim and his brothers playing sports in the neighborhood, so I knew him pretty well.  Tim was one of the 12 year olds who had experienced his growth spurt early, so he was a towering figure to me on the mound.

We played Wards 3 times that season.  I knew it had to happen eventually, I had to go to bat against Tim Pflaum.  God help me.  I was shaking in the on-deck circle trying to think of a last-minute winning strategy as I watch him fan the guy in front of me with 60 mph fastballs.  “Batter-up!”, here we go.  I had decided that my strategy would be to not swing and hope that Tim would walk me.  Tim probably walked about 4 batters all season, but I didn’t know or care, I wanted a walk.  “Strike One” said the ump as the first fastball went by, right down the middle of the plate.  I don’t remember seeing it go by.  No time to change strategies now, I’m still hoping for a ball.  “Strike Two” said the ump on the next pitch.  Same location, same result.  Damnit, I better change my strategy.  Okay, I’m swinging on the next pitch.  That way I won’t get yelled at for not getting the bat off the shoulders.  So I got ready, looked old Tim in the eye and waited for the next fastball and even though I knew I probably wouldn’t be able to see it, I might get lucky and make contact.  Tim loaded up the pitch in his mitt, reached back and here it came.  I swung the bat with all my might and I’m sure I may have even grunted a bit.  A little later, the pitch, commonly referred to as a “hanging curveball”, looked as if it was coming straight for me, then cut downward across the plate and into the catcher’s mitt.  I was out in front of the pitch by a full 2 seconds.  “Steeeee-rike Three!”

Holding back the tears, I put on a happy face and jogged on back into the dugout.

Wards had remained undefeated during that season, but late in the second half, they lost to a team called United Homes which was a shocker.  That wasn’t supposed to happen.  So Mosee Brothers and Wards ended up tied in the second half with one loss each, forcing a playoff.  Great, a second game!  That’s the last thing I wanted.

They playoff game was a packed house at Meadowland Little League.  The stands were completely full and there was tension in the air.  I was penciled in for 2 innings in left field.  By this time, my goal was to just get through the game without incident.  Please, no balls hit to me.  Please.   As my luck would have it, with a runner on third, there was a short kid at the plate and I just had this awful feeling he was going to hit one to me.  I don’t know how I knew it, I just did.  I thought that maybe if I moved in and played shallow left, he’d have a better chance of hitting it over my head and then I wouldn’t get blamed for not catching it.  I was nervous as hell that a ball would come to me and I’d drop it.  So I moved in.  The coaches noticed and waved me back to play deeper, so I did.  Sure enough, the batter lined one to left field, right at me.  I mis-played it by coming in for it instead of going back a little and it went over my head.  The coaches were mad and I was embarrassed in front of a huge crowd.  Wards took the lead and won the game.  My dad said the runner on third would have scored even if I had caught it, so I felt a little better about not being solely responsible for the loss.  But yeah, the coaching at that level was pretty good in the sense that these guys knew baseball.  Some had played at the college level and beyond.  They knew the game and you can sure tell coaches who know the game vs. not when watching little league just by watching the kids.

Fast forward a few years to the Spring of my 8th grade year when I turned 14.  I decided to go out for baseball again just to see what I could do.  The Sr. League was 13-15 year olds with 90′ bases, same as Major League Baseball.  I remember trying to throw runners out at second base from behind the plate and it seeming like it was all I could do just to get the ball down there let alone beat the runner.

The powers that be in Little League had decided to take a novel approach in structuring the league.  They decided to separate division out into two levels – Sr. Majors and Sr. Minors, sort of like they do today with other sports where they’ll have a “competitive” group and a “recreational” group.   I tried out and since I’d been out of the game for a while and hadn’t played — and I was no specimen as far as athletes go, still pretty short and slow, I was drafted onto a Sr. Minors team.  I was a little surprised and disappointed at first, but as the season went on, I couldn’t have been happier about it.

I remember being tapped on the shoulder to pitch and play shortstop quite a bit.  And I remember hitting well.  I was on base all the time (even stole a few bases which I’m sure shocked my old man). And I got to play shortstop and loved every minute of it.  I wasn’t that bad at it, actually.  I threw a lot of guys out and I was decent with the glove.  On the mound, I found my groove that year.  I had developed a little bit of junk to throw.  Just enough to keep the batters off-balance a bit and I had quite a few strikeouts that year.  Compared to the other pitchers in Sr. Minors, I was probably one of the harder throwers.  That was a FUN season and a great experience for me.  Once again I loved baseball and had enjoyed a lot of success “out there”.

My 15 year old season, I tried out again and this time was shocked that I was left down in Sr. Minors.  I thought this was an incredible injustice of some sort, but whatever.  They had a rule back then that 15 year olds could not pitch in Sr. Minors.  That just added insult to injury.  But just a couple of games into the season I got a “call up” to the bigs.  A Sr. Majors team lost a player and I got the call.  Yeah, I can pitch again!  Woo-hoo!  Obviously these guys wanted me for my pitching prowess, right?  They’d heard about all those strikeouts I had in Sr. Minors, I’m just sure of it!

So I suit up for my first game and I get to the field to find out I’m scheduled for 2 innings in right field.  What?  Is this going to be like my 10 year old season again?  What is this?  Oh man, send me back, send me back!

Like Yogi Berra once said, it’s like Deja Vu all over again because in the very first game, a batter hit a fly ball to me in right field and I when I say “right to me”, I mean “right to me”.  I dropped it.

That long jog back to the dugout was too much for me to handle, I think.  What else is there to do this summer?  Swim?  Ride my bike?  Get a paper route again?  Take guitar lessons?  Go golfing?  Anything?  Anything but play 2 innings in the outfield for these guys,

Finding your right level makes all the difference.  I personally believe it’s better to be star of the show in the minors vs. riding the pines in the bigs.  That’s just my view from personal experience.  I have a close friend who has a son who was a highly recruited high school football player at Tualatin.  Really nice kid and dad.  He could have gone to Linfield and started for 4 years.  Instead, he went for big time college football at Oregon St. and worked his way up through the scout team.  But at Division I college football, if you want to be a starting lineman, you have to be 260# or more and the competition is fierce.

To his credit, he got put in during a home game when the Beavers were far enough ahead for a series or two if I have the story right.  But that was it as far as glory.  It’s a lot better than I could have ever hoped to do, but I wonder now if he wouldn’t have had a better overall experience going to the smaller school and getting more playing time.

I think the same thing can be applied to life in other areas such as work as well.  I’ve worked at places where I felt like the dumbest engineer in the building and I’ve also worked at places where they treated me like some sort of rock star.  I have to say I like rock star better.

Footnote[1]:  The coaches from Wards drafted the All-Star team and about 1/2 the players came from their own team.  I think the entire infield was from Wards plus two of the pitchers.  They did well.  They won the district tournament and State, advanced to the regionals in San Bernardino California and eventually lost there.  But I think they were just one tournament away from going to the really big show, The Little League World Series in Williamsport, PA.   In some ways this makes me feel a little better.  The league was pretty stacked with talent that year so I was playing against some top quality kids.

Footnote[2]: I’m also grateful for the “no quitting” rule from my father.  That’s a good rule for parents to have.  Finish what you start.  Life isn’t always about success.  Tough experiences can be our teacher too.

Footnote[3]: During Dad’s junior baseball season at St. Mary’s High School in Eugene… The team only played 3 games that year, and two of them were a part of a double-header.  Week after week of rainouts.  He recalled sitting in class, watching outside as the rain poured and then hearing the announcement about the cancelled game.  Such is the problem with trying to have a baseball season in the Pacific Northwest when the season starts in March.

FM frustrates me to no end

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Sometimes software programmers get too cute.  Every time I turn around, they exercise a technique called “Information Hiding” where supposedly all those nitty-gritty details that you don’t need to worry about are tucked away in a far away method that you either don’t have access to or will take a week to discover.  The problem is, when I’m debugging, I want access to everything.  I don’t want to have to go read up on your little API and sort through 60 methods to find the one I’m interested and how to use it before I can continue my debugging session.  I want to be able to “see” what’s happening on the other side when I invoke a method.  Such is the case with Java.

I’m using an Open Source Continuous Integration Build tool called Jenkins to deploy some WAR files to Tomcat containers.  All I need to do is setup Jenkins to pull in a dynamic list.  To get my list in true dynamic fashion I have to go through 3 layers of programming interfaces before I can actually think in terms of one of the simplest data structures, a List.

Jenkins employs something called “Scriptler” which is a fancy name for calling a “Groovy” script. Groovy is a dynamic language that is basically a layer on top of Java with some additional features.   Oh, and there are other Java plugins involved just to throw in a few more variables about what could be different between systems.

The problem I’m having is that on Apache Tomcat, with a specific version of Java under the hood, I can get my list to display properly in Jenkins.  For some reason under SpringSource Tomcat, it doesn’t want to work.  This line:

def line = new File(prefix + appServerType + “/” + envType + “/jvms_by_server”).readLines()

On Apache, “line” results in an array of lines snarfed in from my file “jvms_by_server”:

  • mxp1   server1.mycompany.com
  • mxp2   server2.mycompany.com
  • etc.

On SpringSource, “line” results in [big-long-line-of-all-tye-lines-in-my-file-as-a-single-element]

So it doesn’t display right.

In both situations I’m passing the exact same array back to the caller, up through Java, Groovy, Scriptler, and finally back to Jenkins — none of which I can “see”.  So how do you explain how it works?  In Software-speak, we call that “Fucking Magic”, aka FM.

I have no way to trace the flow of execution because everything is just a little too cute.

I miss strcat, strlen, strcmp, and strcpy and being able to visualize every character in an array from main() to the lowest level subroutine with good old fashioned gdb.  Got an extra “\n” in there?  Chop off your char *ptr by a character and be done with it already!

Screw FM, I want me some good old fashioned C code so I can see what the hell I’m doing!

Are the French Lazy? Or smart?

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The following is a guest blog from Robby Toner.

The first thing that went through my head when I read what the CEO of Titan Tire Corporation said about the French and their work ethic was “yep, that’s exactly why the rest of the world thinks we’re such ignorant assholes.”  It’s because we are.  The thing is, it’s not even what Maurice Taylor is saying that’s the issue, it’s how he’s saying it.  He doesn’t qualify his words or make any attempt to show some type of compassion or understanding about French culture before he leads into his objective argument.  He simply tosses cultural differences aside as if his technical college never forced him to take one of those silly “arts and humanities” classes to round out their degrees.

The French aren’t interested in your arguments about work ethic and 40 hour work weeks.  They’ve been there, they know what that reality is like, and they’ve chosen a different path.  What I’d really be interested in is how much Maurice Taylor could be persuaded that the French have got this one right by spending a little time in their country and working by their rules.  I spent nine months in France teaching English to elementary children.  I didn’t work much, about 20 hours per week or so, a bit less than even the French standard (the French work week is actually 35 hours).  The mindset is different there.  They give you extra time for lunch, and people fill up the tables outside local cafes and restaurants since they have adequate time for a sit down meal.  It’s a remarkable act of community engagement that breaks up the work day.

The French believe that you should work to live, not live to work.  That doesn’t mean you can’t be passionate about what you do and make an impact in fewer hours, it just means a slightly different idea of exactly how many hours with and away your family is reasonable.  Once the entire economy is forced to obey by these rules, it levels the playing field in all domestic markets and the population enjoys extra time off.  Is this at a loss in production?  The numbers show no, and that that might be changing, but even if it does, who cares?  Why are we so obsessed with working?  Are we really meant to work ourselves into a state where our bodies no longer function ideally and then see what we’ve got left in us?  Forget that.

You can say what you want about the French, but they’re healthier, more educated, more visited, and more devoted to the things in life that really matter than we are.  I find that humbling, and I think it’s sad that our immediate reaction involves cynicism and cultural ignorance.

My favorite part is when people think that the French are doing all of these things at a huge expense to their debt ratio.  Here’s a list of the top countries’ debt to GDP ratioshttp://www.economicshelp.org/blog/774/economics/list-of-national-debt-by-country/

… look who’s higher up than France?  AMERICA.  The French are doing more with less, their country is less in debt than ours is yet they are afforded more time off and more access to quality healthcare and services than just about any other place.

Instead of criticizing the French way of life maybe Maurice Taylor should be asking for tips on how relieve stress of his employees and maintain profitability.  This is America, though, and we don’t ask for help, we lend it.

Desperately need more PIE charts for clarity

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Republicans have a huge problem.  They desperately want to be the party of fiscal restraint, but have no idea how to get there without losing even more of their dwindling piece of the electorate pie.  The latest tactic employed by more senior members of Congress is to publicly go on the warpath for programs that really don’t make any sort of a dent in the budget what-so-ever, just so they can be on the record as “wanting cuts”.  They are also not shy about “wanting cuts” to entitlements yet refuse to get specific about which ones.  Doing so would risk being held accountable by seniors and the poor during the next election cycle.

Case in point.  Eric Cantor recently lamented on twitter a $4M spend on IRS TV.  Mitt Romney went way out on the limb with 100 times this amount, $445M for killing Big Bird and PBS.

Here’s where we need Ross Perot to step in with some PIE charts and explain to the American people what these suggestions actually mean.

Image

Even Mitt’s commitment to defund PBS  amounts to 0.014% of the 17 Trillion dollar federal budget.  Maybe that’s what it is.  Trillion is just too big of a unit to comprehend.  Million, Billion, Trillion.  What’s the diff?

I can’t even show the impact of this on the above chart because it would not be visible to the naked eye.

As the PIE chart shows, 60% of the budget goes towards Medicare, Social Security, and Labor, and 18% to the Pentagon.  This is where the real meat is.

The dilemma they have is getting specific about the meaty parts.  That’s tricky business.  The usual tactic is to offer up vague proposals for spending cuts and then point the finger at the other guy for not having a specific proposal.  Both sides engage in this.

I think the American people would be okay with the labor spend if we could actually have something to show for it.  Where’s our Mt. Rushmore?  Where’s our Timberline Lodge?  Where’s our Hoover dam?  I’m not seeing it or anything close to it.  I understand Obama inherited a leaky ship and QE I and II were just about trying to keep the ship from sinking.  But still, we don’t have much of anything to show for it and that’s unsettling and opens up the door for massive criticism about where did the money go?

I just wanted to take time out this morning and thank Eric and Mitt for their detailed suggestions and then see if I could put them in perspective with an actual PIE chart.  Turns out it’s not possible.