Harry's Ruminations

"For seven years...." "For SEVEN years...." "FOR SEVEN years, Harold...." Just as a child knows when his full given name comes from his flustered parent's mouth, a husband knows when his wife starts naming the time they've been married, he's in trouble. Well, honey, for SEVEN YEARS tomorrow... ...you've stood by me. ...you've watched me break, and grow, and break again. ...you've watched me struggle, and doubt, and blame, and generally resist any form of responsibility or accountability. ...you've watched addictions and off-kilter brain chemistry steal me away from you. And for SEVEN YEARS, you've remained.  And you've loved me, even when that 'love' is telling me no and getting me help and screaming right back at me louder until I'll listen.   You've born me two beautiful girls, both in the most difficult way possible, sacrificing your body's long-term well-bein...

My last 36 hours. In 4-5pm daily meeting on Monday (that's a #win by itself), the manager in charge ejaculates a "well, shit!" in the middle of the meeting.  Turns out a 7am all-managers meeting was scheduled the next day by the CEO.  "That's never good," he noted.  #obviouslynot Tuesday, 6am, I saw this tweet .  It was real, and it was not spectactular; seventeen hundred worldwide jobs evaporated, including 350 in Lexington.  Gory details here . I came into work to a morgue.  First and second line managers were going around talking to individuals and my "talking to" seemed ambiguously in the future.  I checked on a couple guys from church and both seemed  safe, and my small group was praying for my job.  There was the appropriate level of gallows humor, but it just felt different than times we've done this in the past. By ~11am we had an "all building" meeting scheduled in our main conference room downstairs, lead by my boss. ...

I sat in this very seat a month ago a broken man, a failure. I intended  to send my pastor a quick note asking him to pray for me.  What actually happened was time disappeared, and what'd been pent up for months spewed out of my heart, down my touch-typing to an email that Scott said was too long to even attempt reading on his smartphone. The subject line:  "I'm broken..." And I was.  Uncertainty and doubt clouded me, truth and lies were my constant companions.  I put so much crap on myself that I was paralyzed to do anything about it.  I was angry and entitled, all the time.  That very week, I'd exploded at one of my colleagues in a meeting (mom taught me a great phrase for this: "Tearing your ass"), then done the same things to my kids multiple times.   I just couldn't stand...anybody. Within, I just felt shame, shame that I'd let my past transgressions leak back into my life, that I wasn't strong enough to shy away from them, that ...

"This is definitely the kind of seizure you want your kid to have." What?! She was an ER resident with an icy, direct gaze and a no-frills haircut.  At that moment, I couldn't remember her name because I was busy trying to get my wife to drink something as she held our daughter, who, an hour before, had just had a grand mal  seizure in our downstairs bathtub.  An hour or so later, our other two kids were at a friend's house, my car had a Check Engine Light because I flogged it so hard getting to UK Hospital, and we were both trying to process what happened. * * * Scalett Fever .  Those two words hit me like a ton of bricks the previous day when Whitney came home from Georgetown Pediatrics.  Immediately my mind sprang to two movie scenes:  One from Oh God! You Devil  with George Burns where the mom pleads with God to not let her baby die because its fever was so high.  Another was some dead-people movie where a kid gets thrown into an icy b...

http://www.wired.com/business/2012/07/ff_stevejobs I work in technology.  I'm writing this on a second generation Macbook Air.  My family owns or has owned: 2 ipod classics, 3 ipod nano's, 1 Intel iMac, 3 iPhones (1 3G, 1 iphone 4, 1 4s).  I'm not a fanboi, but I'm in the neighborhood. That disclosed, let me be very clear in my position:  Fuck Steve Jobs. Not because of what he did--he did great things (Apple, NeXT, Pixar, Apple...again), nor for his tyrannical management.  I raise the cyber middle finger to Jobs because people conflate the two.  They conclude that to do great things, you must be a tyrant, and that's just wrong.  In fact, the collateral damage of Jobs may take more than a decade to undo, just because people misunderstand who he was. I find little to respect in Jobs the man or Jobs the leader.  He bred fear and distrust in his subordinates.  He surrounded himself with people afraid of him, and destroyed people for fun....

After a great date night last night--long, in-depth conversations and understanding--I awoke this morning feeling like crap. I'll spare you the details, but the quote of the morning was, "Great.  You apparently have Cholera."  Given the symptoms, I couldn't disagree. So, I slept 'til about noon, with Whitney insisting I stay hydrated, then I watched a few episodes of 'Glee' on Amazon Prime (okay, the first 6 eps of the first season). The girls went out to Evans Orchard for the late afternoon.  Naturally, amid our drought, today was a day for spotty downpours, so they didn't get to have much fun, but the did return with three movies: "Happy Feet 2," "Ghostrider 2," and "This Means War." Happy Feet 2 was a plotless mess. This Means War surprised in its punchy simplicity and appeal to both male and female audiences :-)  We both liked it.  Honestly, it's the only time I've seen Chelsea Handler in a still or m...

Just wanted to jot down a few notes so I'd remember this week: Sunday I heard a great sermon at church, then took Maria and Grace down to see Mom & Dad.  We had a nice little visit, then drove back through 1 hour of solid downpour.  It didn't rain at all in Georgetown, though. Monday I had a quasi-regular day at work and then spent 2.5 hours with my pastor thereafter. Tuesday I had a somewhat regular day at work, though my "Driving Change" group--Dave Ellison and Patricia Ritchie--were back in town so we had some practice and preliminary work to do. Wednesday was Driving Change, all day, and a webchat with Cebu from 7->7:30 am.  I was late showing up for the first presentation and was behind most of the day.  At lunchtime, we got to sit with our CEO Paul Rooke and my Division Vice President, Marty Canning, to discuss how to move change through Lexmark. Thursday was the big presentation day.  I woke up nauseated and threw up twice...couldn't tell if...