I’ve never been particularly “manly.” It’s not that I’m feminine; I’m just not what one would call a “man’s man.” In fact, at various points of my life, I’ve actively made choices to avoid doing the “masculine thing.” I once, for example, opted to go shopping with a group of women rather than watch the Super Bowl, even though I sorta wanted to watch the Superbowl.

Because of this, I found myself identifying (to a point) with Paul Constant in last week’s issue of The Stranger in his article “Am I Man Enough?”

Now that I have Ray, I’ve been somewhat concerned about the effect that my anti-masculine choices will have on my ability to be a strong male role model for him. I certainly don’t want him turning into a troglodyte, but the boy should have a father who knows how to nail two board together at the very least. Or whatever guys know how to do. I just don’t know.

Thankfully, Amy steered me to “The 75 Skills Every Man Should Master”, which should provide me with some guidance in determining what I need to be able to model for my son.

I was pleased to learn that I already possess a majority of the skills on the list.

I can score a baseball game (#4), swim (#11), tie a bow tie (#16), sew a button (#20), hit a jump shot in pool (#33), make three different bets in craps (#36) [which I’ve been teaching Ray lately], tie a knot (#69) [several, actually], iron a shirt (#71), and caress a woman’s neck (#73).

I don’t really know how to buy a suit (#10), throw a punch (#13), speak a foreign language (#18), cast a fishing rod (#26), or find my way out of the woods if lost (#68). I would not trust myself to chop down a tree (#14), start a fire (#51), or do anything with a car other than drive it (#35).

Of items 65-67, I can do the first (throw a baseball) and not the others (throw a football, shoot a basketball).

Numbers 3, 9, 17, 37, 39, 41, 44 are so not problems.

But #53? Uh, nope. Sorry. And #34? Ick!!

Overall, I’d say I’m about 45-30. So I have some work to do.

But I’m confident that when he’s old enough, I can coach him effectively on #22.

Hmmm. According to the Life Expectancy Calculator, I’ll live to be 95 and I currently have a “virtual age” of 17.6.

I guess that explains why my face is breaking out and I’m nervous about asking Amy to the prom…

The other night, I showed Amy’s extended family my infamous ugly baby photo (see also “Ugliest Baby Picture”). After they got over their initial shock and awe, someone asked if this was, indeed, the ugliest baby picture.

What better way to determine that than to search Google?

It turns out, as of today, I’m number 5 if you search for “world’s ugliest baby photo,” and three of the first four are jokes. The only semi-legitimate competitor is this guy (girl?) who clearly does not hold a candle to me.

So, I need your help. Go to Flickr and add my photo as a favorite. Add a link to “”World’s Ugliest Baby Picture” to your blog/website. Increase my Page Rank. Spread the ugliness! It craves to be seen!!

Ever since I took my new job, it’s been hard to explain to people what I do. I don’t run any systems, I don’t write code, I don’t manage projects — I develop relationships and partnerships with members of the community. I put people in touch with other people. I assemble the necessary people to fix complex problems.

Amy and I watched Michael Clayton the other day. In it, George Clooney plays an attorney at a prestigious New York law firm who serves as a “fixer” — or, someone who solves difficult situations through his intimate knowledge of “the system” and his network of powerful business contacts. Clayton does not do any trial work himself, and at one point a character comments that many people don’t even realize he works at the firm.

At one point while watching the film, it occurred to me that I am the “Michael Clayton” of my organization.

I’m a “fixer.”

The downside of this position — professionally speaking — is illustrated in the film when Clayton expresses concern to his boss over a pending merger with another firm. He is worried that he won’t be able to convince the new firm bosses that he’s worth keeping on so he wants to do more litigation work to have something tangible to show for himself. His boss tries to assure him that Clayton is far more valuable in his current role and would be wasted as a litigator. Clayton doesn’t seem too comforted by this.

I, too, have a bit of anxiety that my current position can’t be expressed in terms that make sense to future employers (note to coworkers: I’m not actively looking for another job). I am routinely assured by my coworkers that I’m serving a valuable role (and I believe that I do), but that role doesn’t easily translate to a job title or function that can be summed up or easily demonstrated outside of this immediate context.

Of course, I probably don’t have to worry about anyone putting a bomb in my car, so there’s some comfort in that. Oh, sorry: SPOILER ALERT.

The answer to the Friday Quiz is:

They were all born on February 9.

February 9 has to be one of the most inauspicious days of the 365.25 we enjoy each year. In addition to Ms. Miranda, Mr. Veeck, and President Harrison, I could have listed newscaster Roger Mudd, singer Ernest Tubb, and Franz Xaver Gabelsberger, the inventor of stenography.

Had I been born but a day earlier, I would have shared my day with such august and celebrated personalities as Jules Verne, Jack Lemmon, Jimmy Dean, and Lana Turner.

A day later, and Bertolt Brecht, Lon Chaney, Jr., and the great Jimmy Durante would have shared my birthday.

But, alas, today is the day.

All hail me, and today’s saint, Saint Apollonia, the patron saint of dentists and dental technicians.

If there’s one thing I hate worse than getting “quantified” by some personality test, it’s the personality test getting me right.

Over the years, I’ve reluctantly acknowledged that the Meyers-Briggs/Kiersey Temperament Sorter test pretty much nails me. As an ENTP, I do tend to think of myself as “verbally as well as cerebrally quick,” and it’s true that I “generally love to argue.” I have been known to “cut corners without regard to the rules if it’s expedient” and I am indeed “capable of bonding very closely and, initially, suddenly, with their loved ones.” Fine. You Jungians get me.

I recently had to take an “Emotional Quotient Inventory,” and while most of the results were annoyingly accurate (grrrr), I was really quite surprised by one of them.

Continue reading "Emotional Inventory" »

After I first started working in higher education nearly fourteen years ago I started hearing stuff about this person called “The Provost.” I was completely unfamiliar with the term, and it was not really clear to me what this “Provost” person did at a University But “The Provost” was always discussed with great reverence and awe, so I decided very early on in my career that I wanted to be a Provost.

I mainly just liked the name.

I grew to learn that the Provost is the Chief Academic Officer at a University. Minimally, all the Deans report to the Provost. At some schools, the Provost is also in charge of the budget and a variety of other areas. Provosts are, in fact, a Very Big Deal, and are generally recruited from a pool of well-respected academics with 100-page CV’s and the power to bend steel beams with their minds.

Suffice to say, I realized that I probably won’t ever be a Provost.

However, I just scored a position that’s probably the closest to a Provosture that I’ll ever get: a job as Associate Vice Provost with the University of Washington’s Office of Information Management. It has the word “Provost” right there in the title!

Continue reading "My New Job" »

I just got done reading two books that involved doppelgängers — The Great Impersonation by E. Phillips Oppenheim and The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk. In the former, the doubles are separated for the whole novel except for the first chapter; in the latter, they are engaged in a master/slave relationship throughout the work.

As a narrative trope, the doppelgänger is a great way to represent personal or internal conflict, or to represent contradictions inherent in a social strata. Think of The Prince and the Pauper, Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, and any number of other tales involving identity swapping and confusion. I thoroughly enjoyed The Great Impersonation. It is a rare novel that keeps the reader engaged even though the denouement is projected well ahead of time. The doppelgänger conceit is played out fairly straightforwardly and mostly to benefit the story, not an overarching theme. I can’t say that I liked The White Castle, however. I really liked Pamuk’s My Name is Red, but this novel was just … well, slow. Almost completely still, in fact. It felt flat and was surprisingly repetitive. The master/slave dichotomy has been done much better.

I’ve only ever had two possible “celebrity doppelgängers” identified for me — famous people that others seem to think look like me. This revelation requires an extreme suppression of my ego, but here are the actors who — others have claimed — could play my “double” in the film version of my life:

Continue reading "Doppelgängers" »

Hearing about someone else’s dream has got to be the most boring thing ever. I’ve already wasted Major Readers’ time recounting my loose tooth dreams. At the risk of turning everyone away for good, here’s another one.

I dream so rarely that these recurring ones sort of freak me out. I am highly skeptical of generalized dream analysis based on any sort of archetypes, but I figure that, for me, these must be significant.

So, I’m back in college, taking classes and, apparently, working at the same time. The semester is nearly over, and it occurs to me that I’ve completely forgotten to attend any classes or do the work, and the date for dropping courses without penalty has long passed. In a nutshell, I’m screwed.

I am greatly troubled by this. I know that I often rely on things “just working out” since, for me, they nearly always do. But I think I’m sort of unconsciously waiting for the other show to drop. I mean, I’ve been pretty fortunate/lucky throughout my life in work, health, finances, family, relationships (with a notable exception), and now as a parent (see “My Smart Kid”). A part of me is lurking somewhere, deeply embedded in my brain, wondering “Just when is life going to catch up with me?”

When am I going to face a real no-win situation?

When will the deadline just not be extended for me no matter how hard I plead?

When will I finally be revealed for the fraud that I must suspect I truly am?

Of course, it could just be all that cheese I ate yesterday.

Amy and I watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas the other night as part of our (read: her) Johnny Depp Film Festival. Luckily for me, this was one of the movies in which Johnny, playing “Raoul Duke” (really Hunter S. Thompson), isn’t all that attractive or appealing. I don’t know how I’m ever going to measure up after we watch Chocolat in a few weeks.

Anyway, Johnny/Hunter and his friend/attorney Dr. Gonzo (Benicio Del Toro) spend the entire film strung out on any number of illicit substances they carry with them in a suitcase — mescaline, ether, cocaine, acid, and good old-fashioned tequila. Not a moment is spent sober and no one gets any sleep. They rampage through Las Vegas in a drug-addled stupor and leave destruction is their wake.

I can’t say I enjoyed the movie. I tend to like Terry Gilliam as a director, and the film is visually stunning. Johnny Depp is, as usual (with the exception of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) excellent. I think the subject matter just got to me. I really can’t relate to the degree of self-destruction and loss of personal control that the characters experience.

Continue reading "Altered States" »

I’ve used the moniker “majorsteel” now for nearly a decade for purposes both mundane and nefarious.

OK, maybe not so nefarious.

I typically used it for computer accounts where its lower-case and space-less qualities made sense. Now that I have imposed full pseudonymity upon this blog, I’ve been using it more and more in contexts where I need separate first and last names.

So, am I “majorsteel” or “Major Steel”? Is “Major” my title? If so, what’s my first name? What am I a Major of, anyway?

It turns out there was a real “Major Steel” — Major P. C. Steel, a British officer who fought during WWII (or “the Big One,” as we like to call it). He is pictured at right, and you can read about his company’s experience on D-Day at WarChronicle.com. Sadly, Major Steel didn’t make it, but he was remembered fondly:

The battalion suffered a great loss in Major Steel, who was killed by a machine-gun bullet while up with his forward platoons in Lebisey. He was not only a very good officer, greatly respected by the men, but of more than normal intelligence and culture and a fine swimmer, runner and golfer.

I only wish that I am remembered as having “more than normal intelligence and culture.” I certainly won’t be remembered for my golf game.

A “Major Steel” also makes an appearance in the UK comic series “Lion.” He’s not listed as a major [sic] character anywhere, but a site called 26pigs.com has a reference to him.

I would dearly love to own the majorsteel.com domain once and for all. But someone — Jerry Zodin of Bellaire, Texas, to be precise — registered it before me.

There’s no web presence at majorsteel.com. Mr. Zodin — who, according to a Google search, is (or was) in the steel business — doesn’t use it for his email address (which is broken). It’s a dormant domain, locked by its registrar, and off limits to me, the one, true, Major Steel.

Or majorsteel. Whatever.

I rarely remember my dreams, and when I do they’re usually banal. Amy loves to bring up the time I dreamt about eating a very tasty sandwich. It was memorably delicious. And I ate it. That was it.

My only recurring dream, an example of which I experienced last night, involves my having a loose front tooth. In the dream, I am quite worried about both the cause — why is this happening? — and the effect — I will look disfigured; it will cost a lot of money to fix. People advise me to leave it alone, but I can’t stop wiggling it. I don’t recall, however, that it has ever fallen out.

It turns out that the loose-tooth dream topic isn’t entirely uncommon. I usually don’t put too much truck in dream interpretation since I don’t subscribe to the notion of archetypes or the subconscious. Searching for the “meaning” of this kind of dream has further cemented my belief that a dream analysis is either (a) a bunch of hooey, or (b) so unique to an individual that it cannot be abstracted to a general theory (likely both). As in astrology and biblical “scholarship,” dream analysis leaves the practitioner a comfortable margin of error, as can be seen by these highly divergent interpretations of the “loose tooth dream”:

Continue reading "Loose Tooth Dream" »

A couple months ago, Ray came down with the flu, and Amy followed shortly thereafter. Luckily, it wasn’t a stomach bug; they both just felt achy and tired and feverish. But it still sucked for them. And since I was generally in charge of ferrying snot-covered tissues to the garbage and wiping mucous from Ray’s gushing nose, I figured it was just a matter of time before I succumbed to the crud myself.

But it never happened.

Amy asked me if I could remember the last time I was sick with anything more than a sniffley cold. I stopped to think, and the only answer I could come up with was “1996,” which is when I contracted walking pneumonia on the first day of a trip to San Francisco. She has, therefore, never had to deal with me being ill.

I had this decade-long streak in mind when my friend Holly visited last weekend and brought with her (possibly) some cruise-ship-incubated vomit/diarrhea virus that had her kneeling before the porcelain throne for an entire night. Holly has probably more detail than you want to know about it over at Self-Portrait As (one of the McLo.net Empire of Blogs). Unfortunately, this prevented her from staying with us, as had been the plan, and meant that she did not get to spend time with Ray, whom she hasn’t seen in two years. But, I did brave the pathogens and hung out with Holly for a few hours Monday afternoon and, so far, I have shown no signs of feeling like evacuating my stomach.

I thought maybe I’d make up a T-shirt that reads: “I Spent the Afternoon with Holly and I Don’t Feel Like Puking!”

I was playing around with a few online retirement calculators today trying to determine if I can still retire when I’m 55 as has always been my plan. One asked about how many years of income did I expect to need after retirement? I thought, “Isn’t that just a roundabout way of asking ‘When do you think you’ll die?’” And, if so, how the hell do I know?

Well, thanks to DeathForecast.com, now I do know.

I share my pal Holly’s stated disdain for yet habitual acquiescence to “online tests that purport to tell you who you are”. Her blog recently featured two of them, which I felt compelled to take. I learned that Holly is a bit quirkier than I am, and that we both have enviable levels of self-esteem.

Your Quirk Factor: 65%

You’re so quirky, it’s hard for you to tell the difference between quirky and normal. No doubt about it, there’s little about you that’s “normal” or “average.”

You Have Low Self Esteem 0% of the Time

Which can be translated to mean, you have high self-esteem and a healthy sense of self worth. You believe in yourself, and you know how to be the real you. You love yourself, imperfections and all.

Last month, I mentioned that I had been nominated for an award at work. I later learned the award came with a big, fat check for a cool grand.

I didn’t win it.

But, you know, it’s an honor to be nominated, blah, blah, blah….

:-)

I just learned that I’ve been nominated for a “Community of Innovators” award where I work. How ‘bout them apples!?

Each year, the College of Engineering honors its outstanding staff, teaching assistants, and faculty who make innovative and meaningful contributions to our community.

The ceremony is April 20; I’ll post an update then.

I’m all a-twitter. Seriously.

Neil: Surprise!

Mike: Neil it’s very rare that you interest me but today you have. Why do you keep coming in here carrying a cake and saying “Surprise?”

Neil: It’s my birthday.

Mike: Now you knew that already and we don’t care, so where’s the surprise?

The Young Ones - “Summer Holiday”

So, yes, it’s my birthday today.

Here’s what I want for a birthday present. I want everyone who reads this to post a comment. I don’t care if it’s anonymous; I don’t care if it just says “Hey!”; I don’t care if you don’t know who I am and you found this site by searching for “ugliest baby picture” or, as my site statistics inexplicably reveal, “historical pioneer hazerd photos.”

My stats show that my site averages 25 unique visits per day. I want to see how close to reality that really is. (Thanks to Oscar Madison for this idea)

And if you really want me to be your BFF, you’ll sign up for a subscription (over there to the left) so I can justify the hours of work I put into getting that damn thing to work!

I am a 36-year old father of one fine lad (Ray), partner to one fine woman (Amy), and the director of a university IT shop in Seattle.

I have a Master’s Degree in Film Studies (University of Iowa, 1996), which means I’m also supposed to know a lot of esoteric stuff about movies. My favorite one is Blade Runner, followed closely thereafter by Lawrence of Arabia.

I once had something I wrote published in an actual book.

I am an ENTP, an Innovator/Thinker and an Abstract Random.

I am a rabid atheist and do not believe it is possible for god(s) to exist.

According to the World RPS Society, my style of play is “Logical.”

I prefer gin martinis to vodka ones.

Baseball and Formula 1 auto racing are the only sports I feel it’s necessary to follow.

I grew up just outside Detroit, which explains my rough, street-wise demeanor.

I played second base for the Madtown M’s in Madison, WI, and have a lifetime batting average of .146.

I believe that coffee and dairy products should never mix.

I once shook David Bowie’s hand.

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If I see something or think of something that I think is worthy of being indexed by Google and that won’t cause me, my family, or my employer embarrassment, or result in a civil suit being filed against me, I just may post it on this blog.

If I have the time.

The information in this weblog is provided “as is” with no warranties, and confers no rights. This weblog does not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my employer. It is solely my opinion. Inappropriate comments will be deleted at the authors discretion.