On being a nitpicker

Yesterday, I posted the contents of an email from a friend. He means well, but he sends me an awful lot of these things - warning of supposed scams. I always check them out to see what I can discover. Occasionally - as I did yesterday - I ask the question of this community if I am unable to get to the bottom of things using the resources I know about. This serves the dual purpose of resolving the question and alerting me to resources that can help when it comes to mythbusting.

Once yesterday's myth had been completely busted, I sent an email back to my friend and everyone else on his distribution list, sharing the reality behind the hoax. This is not the first time I have done this.

The response, to my surprise, was howls of derision. Why did I always do this? I take myself far too seriously, it seems. Poor old X, is it absolutely necessary for me to keep bursting his bubble? How unkind of me!

So, it is acceptable for X to forward an email to a hundred people warning them of some or other bogus scam without researching the facts, but it's not alright to check the facts and reassure people that the whole thing is nonsense. I'm sorry, but for me, that's too close to saying it's okay for kids to print out great wadges of stuff from the web without even reading it, and call it research.

Do your job!

My last post about ID skills reminded me of this one from Clive Shepherd. He is (as usual) bang on the money as far as I'm concerned.

One of the most liberating things anyone ever said to me in a professional situation happened like this:

I was in a meeting with a few of the organisation's big players. They were talking about a mammoth proposal the organisation was drawing up, which would result (if we won it) in a sizeable contract worth millions and lasting a decade.

Because my boss expected that I would wind up working on the resultant contract, should we win it (we did and I did), he had asked me to join him at the meeting. I assumed I was there as an observer - after all, these players were well out of my league - so I was holding my tongue (no mean feat).

As the discussion progressed, it seemed to me that a key point was being missed. A fundamental issue overlooked.

Before my tongue actually split in two, I dared speak up. My heart was in my mouth. I said my piece and, to my astonishment, they listened. They adjusted their plans to accommodate my observation.

During the next comfort break, I apologised to my boss for overstepping the bounds of my remit. His answer, which permanently lifted a weight off my shoulders, was:

I don't pay you to keep your knowledge to yourself!

Think about it like this - How much are you being paid? If you withhold from the person who is paying you all your hard won experience and perspectives, are you not guilty of fraud or theft? After all, isn't that what they're buying? Isn't that what they pay for? We need to man up and bring our expertise to the table. It's what we're there for, after all!

Instructional designers

I came across this question in one of my LinkedIn groups this morning:

What are the 3 most sought software skills for an Instructional Designer?

This was my response:

To be honest, I would place the software skills very low on the list of priorities. You can always learn a new application. I would be far more interested in whether the person

• understands learning
• understands learners
• is skilled at building relationships with SMEs and stakeholders
• is a shining example of a self-driven, passionate learner
• is creative and original
• is able to think beyond templates and content
• knows how to create resources that engage people
• holds learners/users in higher esteem than he-who-signs-the-cheque

These are the characteristics I would consider of far greater import than "Can you use Articulate?"

What do you reckon?

Blogger's spellcheck

You've probably already realised that this is a Blogger blog. It's no big deal - it was the easiest to set up when I ventured into the world of blogging, and I've never really had any reason to change. I might switch at some point when I figure out how to put my website and my blog into the same space. Hopefully that will be after I've figured out how to customise the design, since I'm not really happy with the look of either of them, and none of the templated alternatives do the trick for me.

But I digress...

Just lately, Blogger's spellcheck appears to have taken leave of its senses. When you run a spell check before publishing, any unrecognised words are highlighted by means of yellow shading. Clicking on a shaded word generates a list of possible alternatives. Rather like Word, except you use the left mouse button, rather than the right to view the suggestions.

Lately, words are being highlighted that are perfectly fine. The list of alternatives usually starts with a duplicate of the highlighted word. At first I thought I was seeing things - you know how we have a tendency to read what we meant to type, rather than what we did type? But this has been going on for a few days now, and it genuinely is suggesting exactly the word I have typed, spelt exactly as I have spelt it. This time around, the spellcheck has taken to the word alternatives, which it suggests I spell alternatives.

Sigh.

Anyone else having a similar experience?

Hotel key cards

Someone sent me this this morning. The information purports to originate from the Metropolitan Police. I have tried doing a search on it and have found umpteen other identical posts, each making the same claim. I have yet to find something official from the Metropolitan Police, and their own site seems to have no such article.

I wondered whether anyone else had more insight into the situation, since I know a great many of us travel often and stay in hotels around the world.

HOTEL KEY CARDS

Ever wonder what is on your magnetic key card?

Answer:
a. Customer's name
B. Customer's partial home address
c. Hotel room number
d. Check-in date and out dates
e.Customer's credit card number and expiration date!

When you turn them in to the front desk your personal information is there for any employee to access by simply scanning the card in the hotel scanner. An employee can take a hand full of cards home and using a scanning device, access the information onto a laptop computer and go shopping at your expense.

Simply put, hotels do not erase the information on these cards until an employee reissues the card to the next hotel guest. At that time, the new guest's information is electronically 'overwritten' on the card and the previous guest's information is erased in the overwriting process.

But until the card is rewritten for the next guest, it usually is kept in a drawer at the front desk with YOUR INFORMATION ON IT!

The bottom line is: Keep the cards, take them home with you, or destroy them. NEVER leave them behind in the room or room wastebasket, and NEVER turn them into the front desk when you check out of a room. They will not charge you for the card (it's illegal) and you'll be sure you are not leaving a lot of valuable personal information on it that could be easily lifted off with any simple scanning device card reader.

For the same reason, if you arrive at the airport and discover you still have the card key in your pocket, do not toss it in an airport trash basket. Take it home and destroy it by cutting it up, especially through the electronic information strip!

If you have a small magnet, pass it across the magnetic strip several times. Then try it in the door, it will not work. It erases everything on the card.

Information courtesy of: Metropolitan Police Service.

So, what do you reckon? Is this another wild conspiracy theory?

pic of the day - beware, cats on guard

Here you see my two girls diligently guarding the house and protecting us from marauding cushion thieves!

They are litter sisters, and have never really been apart. However, unlike my Mom's cats, which came from shelters some years apart, my girls show no affection for one another. They don't curl up together, or groom each other. Daisy (on the left) is a bit of a princess. Molly is more adventurous.

Since the arrival of Jessie, the girls have taken refuge in the conservatory and dining room. Molly does go out of the window to explore the wider world from time to time, but this requires jumping, which Daisy does not do! So Daisy looks after the cushions. She makes sure that they are covered in just the right amount of fur. Unfortunately, one of her staff members (aka moi) keeps removing the fur, so she has to start all over again.

Sigh. It's a tough life!

yesterday's pic of the day - rose hip (aka nypon)

Something else that ripens at this time of the year are the rose hips, which my husband calls nypon (I wish I could provide a phonetic version, but there isjust no equivalent sound in the English language for that 'y' - it's somewhere between 'oo' and 'ee'). The Swedes use them to make a sauce (or, more correctly translated, a soup) called nyponsoppa, which they serve over their desserts. My husband's family eats it with something called ris a l a Malta.

My verdict?

Bo-oring!

To me, it's a vaguely sweet, but otherwise utterly tasteless concoction. If I must eat ris a la Malta, I sprinkle it liberally with ground cardamom or cinnamon.

Oh, and you can probably buy ready made nyponsoppa at your local Ikea.

LPoD - Women's cricket

As a sports lover, I have been delighted at the growing success of the England women's cricket team. And, with the hard-fought, longstanding Ashes just around the corner, tension is mounting! I would say that the ladies' team stands a better chance of winning the Ashes than their male counterparts.

If you're more familiar with baseball, Wikipedia has a nice comparison of the two sports.

My one and only attempt to play cricket was during my school days. It was part of a fundraiser to help the local hospital buy a dialysis machine, so that a lad from the boys' school would no longer have to travel to a neighbouring town for treatment three times a week. We staged a sponsored boys'-school-versus-girls'-school match in every sport on offer at the two schools. When I went out to bat for the girls' team, I was very confident. Huge restrictions had been placed on the boys and I was a dab hand at rounders, so this was going to be easy. Ha! One moment, the bowler was running up to bowl. The next, I was making squeaking noises behind the wicketkeeper, and he, somehow, had my bat! Not my finest moment.

The English women's captain, Claire Taylor, by contrast is a consummate sportsperson - the first woman ever to have been named one of Wisden's five cricketers of the year. There have even been whispers that she may be considered for selection for the men's national team. Of course, they are just rumours at the moment. While she was the leading run-scorer in England's victory in the Women's World Cup, facing up to the pace generated by male first class cricketers is - for now, at least - a very different prospect from that of their female counterparts, and she would be up against stiff competition for her fielding role of wicketkeeper. But let that not detract from her achievements in the women's game.

As if to balance out all this sporting prowess, she is also a skilled violinist with an orchestra in her home town of Reading.

Women wear pretty much the same kit as the men, and questions abound about jockstraps, boxes and breast protection. I have researched the matter on the web and am none the wiser. The previous women's captain, Clare Connor, is on record as saying women wear no protective gear in these areas... and she spoke from the position of one who had been painfully hit in the groin. But that was in 2003. During a (men's) match in 2007, one of the commentators said "I saw Rachel Heyhoe-Flint asked this question once by a really smirking TV pundit," says Tom Adam. "She wiped the smirk right off his face by answering, absolutely dead-pan, 'Yes, we wear boxes, we call them "man hole covers".'

Charming.

On a more uplifting note, female cricketers have, for the past few years been able to wear kit designed for them, rather than having to make do with men's trousers and the like. And, in 2008, Adidas came on board with specially designed kit for the national women's teams.

Learn more about the women's game here.

LPoD - brains and seahorses

When we visited Spain a couple of Easters back, we stayed in a hotel called Hippocampo. I was tickled at how similar that sounded to the part of the brain called 'hippocampus'. Since I spoke no Spanish and noticed several other hotels and apartment blocks with the same word in the name, I assumed it was the surname of the owner of the chain or the holding company or something along those lines.

It gradually dawned on me that the seahorses which appeared everywhere were no coincidence. I looked up the word seahorse in the phrase book and confirmed my suspicions. Hippocampo = seahorse.

Now that I knew this, I was tickled that an area of the brain should have a name that sounded like the Spanish for seahorse.

Today I discovered - well duh! - that the hippocampus is so called because of its resemblance to a seahorse.

Doh!

Sunday's pic of the day - sloe

Now that the summer is really here, and we're enjoying wonderful warm weather, all sorts of berries are ripening.

This is sloe... I think. Sometimes used to make sloe gin. Also used as a metaphor for beautiful eyes (although why this should be the case, eludes me).

As you can see, it is one of many sloe bushes, but it is the only one with leaves in that colour. All the other bushes have green leaves. Perhaps it is simply a different variety. Perhaps it is an anomaly. It may even be diseased. But I find the colour contrast between the leaves and the berries interesting.

pic of the day - cherries

They may be undersized, but they're the right colour and they taste good!

There are two cherry trees on the pavement near our house. A little girl found me photographing them and eating a few and said I should be careful, because they might be poisonous. I assured her that they were perfectly safe and showed her how to choose the best ones. She asked me how I could be sure a dog hadn't peed on them. We discussed the logisitical unlikelihood of this. Her little brother came and joined us. As I left, they were trotting home with their hands full of their spoils. Their mother was waiting for them in the doorway and I heard the little girl announce that "That lady says they aren't poisonous. She says they're cherries."

Uh oh.

Perhaps the mother has known all along that they are cherries, but didn't want her kids eating any old cherries off any old tree. This is a fairly common stance. I might just have lost myself a few points with the neighbours!

On being rich

I've had a rough couple of months during which I have had no income. Of course, my husband has continued to earn his (very decent) salary, but our overheads were always based on two incomes and the loss of one put things like our house and our car in jeopardy. It was scary there for a while.

Not for the first time in our lives, we found ourselves on the receiving end of the kindness of friends. Bags of groceries, gifts of money and invitations for meals. It has been hard to accept these gifts, to be honest. I felt like a burden. I also felt embarrassed, because I knew there were people who are far worse off than we are. One friend pointed out we have always been the sort of people who consider it a privilege to do that sort of thing for other people, so we should realise that those who were helping us were seeing it in the same way. It was a lesson in humility.

But, even though I have learned this morning that a new contract is winging its way to me, the lesson wasn't over yet. Anol Bhattacharya (who twitters as SoulSoup) tweeted a link to this site this morning.

It is sobering to see that 99% of the world's population is poorer than we are - even when I don't earn a penny. We are truly privileged.

If you ever travel to Cape Town by air, almost on arrival, you will be reminded of how privileged you are: right next to the Cape Town airport is a squatter camp where people live in shanty houses made of bits of wood, corrugated iron and other scraps.

It gives you a sense of perspective about the air conditioning not working in your hired car!

Image by GNJOR on Photobucket

So there!

It's official. Facebook users are better employees. It's been researched and everything.

But seriously, the article makes for interesting reading. Check it out.

Learning about bereavement

Last night, a group of us had a discussion around the topic of bereavement and grief. It transpired that several of us had lost our fathers. The different circumstances of each of our lives meant that we each handled it very differently.

Not all the fathers in question had died, either.

One woman's father had been in prison for a time. She doesn't know why. Her parents refuse to discuss it, saying that he has paid the price for what he did and that it is a closed chapter in his life. While he was in prison, the family had to cope with the fact of his absence and with the stigma of being the family of a convict.

One young Latvian woman's father was abducted ('stolen' is the word she used) nine years ago. The family hasn't seen him since, but they all believe that he is alive and will be restored to him. I'm not sure who 'stole' him. Her English gave out on her. She initially wanted to use the term 'military', but then said that that wasn't quite right. She spoke without bitterness and with quiet certainty. Somehow, I think that kind of loss may be worse than death, because there can never be closure... unless, of course, she is right and he does come home one day.

One guy's Dad died last year after a long illness. Because he has been struggling with the debilitating impact of unemployment on his life for two years, he has felt unable to deal with the loss, and has shelved it for now. He did recently get a job, but was forced to quit after just one week, when depression set in. Granted the job was a very stressful and emotionally draining one, but I wonder to what extent the removal of the unemployment worries meant that the grief floodgates were finally - and very briefly - able to open.

My own Dad died when I was in my thirties and married with children of my own. In a way, I lost him long, long before he died. I hadn't seen him for 7 years at the time of his death, and prior to that, I had probably spent 6 months in his company over the space of 30 years. He chose not to feature in our lives. We spoke on the phone 3 times a year: his birthday, my birthday and Fathers' Day. Because I barely knew him, I was surprised to find myself grieving his loss, I was also deeply, deeply hurt that no mention was made of my sister and me at the funeral. The officiator hadn't even been told of our existence and half the mourners didn't know who we were. They passed us by completely in the receiving line, as if our grief didn't matter... which only made it worse.

My husband's doting father died when he was nineteen and busy with his basic military training. He was just getting to know his Dad as a man, and the loss was keen. Because he never saw the body, and because his Dad was a notorious prankster (how many church elders have you met who greet people with one of those buzzer things concealed in their hands?), it was years before my husband was able to accept that his Dad wasn't coming back. That he wasn't going to bounce in one day and declare "Got you!" For years, he held on to possessions of his father's. Getting rid of them would be tantamount to admitting he was gone, and it was a long time before he felt ready to do that.

We each deal with things in our own way. One way is not more valid than another.

pic of the day - poppies

I took this photo at a farm near our house. The farmer and his wife returned home while I was taking it and didn't look impressed. Pity. I would have thought they would take it as a compliment.
This is a close up of some of the blooms.

And this was the display on my car's console at the time. Woohoo! 38 degrees! Glorious!

pic of the day - stuck!

The train I took into London today got a flat tyre or something about 10 minutes outside of Euston. There we sat, for over an hour, with no air conditioner and totally sealed windows and doors. The guy in the white shirt in the background was literally wringing wet by the time the rescue train arrived, with it's mercifully working air conditioner... and LOOS! The lady in the foreground was travelling with several female relatives to Wimbledon. One of the relatives had an aerosol can of some or other cooling spray which they all kept using liberally, spreading who-knows-what into what little air there was. The elderly lady next to me came over all faint and I had to get her out of her seat and into the general area where she could feel a little less claustrophobic.

I made my appointment by the skin of my teeth. I must have looked a fright... and probably didn't smell too good, either!

Blow me down if the tube I took back to Euston after my appointment, didn't also come to a halt between stations. This time because the driver of the train ahead of us took ill in the heat and a replacement had to be found. It wasn't quite an hour that time, but apparently it was necessary to carry out a series of emergency stops in quick succession thereafter 'for safety reasons'. When you're hot and sticky and irritable, the last thing you want is to be thrown towards the front of your carriage at about mach 1 several times.

Sigh. It's good to be home!

Apportioning blame

Currently, the British Lions are on a rugby tour of South Africa. On Saturday, they lost rather controversially in the dying moments of the match. Of course, I am pleased with my team's win. I would have thought that was a given. I completely understand that Lions fans are not happy about the loss. To my surprise, however, some of that anger has been directed at me. Now I quite obviously had nothing to do with any aspect of the game. I didn't even get to watch the live broadcast, but had to rely on a recording dropped off by a friend. Nevertheless, it seems I am called upon to shoulder some of the responsibility for what is seen as an injustice, simply by virtue of my nationality.

This got me to thinking about the things for which we are called upon to carry the blame and the extent to which this is reasonable.

For example, for close on a decade, it has been possible to send the parents of a truant UK school child to prison.

I have always found it inconsistent that this is the case in a country which makes provision for a girl to undergo an abortion without her parents' knowledge.

How is it that we are called upon to know whether or not our children are at school, but be ignorant of whether or not they are sexually active, pregant and taking this enormous step? I would imagine that an abortion is traumatic enough, without having to go through it without (at least) your Mom's moral support.

Now it seems we can be fined or even be sent to prison if our children become unruly at school. Not only must we see to it that they go to school. We must see to it that they behave when they get there.

Note: On a personal level, my husband and I have worked and continue to work very hard at teaching our sons to be productive, considerate members of society. We have even (thus far, anyway) had some measure of success. But it's the principle that bothers me.

In the light of the extent to which an increasing number of parents feel that they are 'not allowed to' do this or that in respect of their children, this seems to me to be another imbalance.

I can't help feeling that there needs to be a bit more joined up thinking, here. Either parents are to be expected to shoulder responsibility in respect of their children - in which case, they should be empowered to do so - or, if the state wishes to dictate to parents how to discipline, feed and even set their children down to sleep, then it can't hold them responsible when the wheels come off.

Telling a story

Thanks to Cheryl Cooper for posting this on Facebook and drawing it to my attention. This was taken from the Ukraine's version of the 'Got Talent' TV show. UK entrants are never given that long, but this story is quite rivetingly told. Watch the beautiful young woman who tells the story, too - she's dancing. Performing. Her face and body show the passion of the story she tells with hands in the sand. Quite extraordinary!



Later edit:
Wes Fryer shares the interpretation of this story by a friend who is fluent in Russian.

The video is from the Ukrainian TV Show – Ukraine has Talent. It is called a Requiem in the Sand by Ksenia Simonova. The girl starts by drawing a village and two people on a bench. Then the announcer uses the actual radio announcement of the German attack on the USSR on 22 Jun 41. It is followed by a Russian song about a quiet night during the war. It is followed by an instrumental score and then another Soviet song about soldiers that died for the Motherland. The final instrumental score shows a girl looking through the window and seeing a shadow of her sailor husband. The child puts his hand on the window and she writes "you are always close by."

So much sadder than I had realised. I thought the husband had unexpectedly returned home at the end of the war. Now I realise the wife sees the husband in the child's face every day.

Welcome to the blogosphere

I recently wrote an article on blogging for Training Zone magazine. In it, I promised readers who were started blogging that I would give their blogs a mention here. So I am making good on that promise.

Isobel Tynan blogs over at Lifetravelling, where she looks at "creativity, innovation and learning and development". Please swing by and encourage her with a response to one of her posts or a link to a blog covering a similar issue.

pic of the day - the icing on the cake

Tonight our ladies' group was shown how to some clever things with icing. This is my effort. I was rather pleased with it, actually. I had expected to be about as good at it as I was at arranging flowers! It's quite fun doing these really girlie things from time to time.