The Fixer

This week, in my Management class, one of the discussion topics was analyzing a personal flaw and trying to figure out the root cause. Since I have many flaws to choose from, it was a little hard to pick one. Eventually I settled on something and it turns out it’s a little bigger than I thought.

You see, I’m a “Fixer”. No, I don’t pay off boxers to throw fights (though I am currently unemployed, so I’m open to the possibility). I like to fix things. Not just mechanical and electronic things, but relationships and ideas. I can’t stand the idea of something not working to its potential, and I want to analyze and figure out a way to make it better.

This “flaw” stems from my insatiable curiosity to figure out how things work. When I was a wee lad, I used to take apart my Transformers, screw by screw, and put them back together again just to see how they went from car to robot and back. Occasionally I’d have an extra screw or two, but they always functioned more or less the same as when I took them apart. Eventually I became an electronics (and later computer/networking) technician in the Air Force and put my fixer personality to good use.

Before

If you look in my garage, you’ll find many old broken electronics and gadgets that I can’t bear to throw away because I want to try and fix them one day. My favorite things are the ones out of warranty, so if it’s already broken, there’s nothing to lose trying to fix it. I’m sure my kids were disappointed when broken iPhone screens resulted in me repairing the screen on their old phones and not receiving a shiny new one instead.

Almost done

Some of it is part of my cheap nature. I’d rather fix something myself than pay someone more to do it elsewhere. Just this past month I repaired an oil leak, replaced two sets of headlights, replaced a leaking valve cover, installed a new radiator assembly and A/C core, and replaced a hood on our cars.

Some of my fixer mentality makes it difficult for me to sugar coat things. When I reviewed screenplays, I found it difficult to point out the good things because I was focused on the flaws. The fixer in me saw that something wasn’t right and I wanted to fix it. When my kids have a performance or game, I tell them great job, but I also tell them the things that need improvement. I don’t do it to be mean, I just want to fix it. My favorite phrase is "Yeah, but...".

I think this is one of the reasons I enjoyed the transition to management. I now had the ability to fix people and policies. That is certainly my favorite part about management. I want to see things improve. There are very few things that are completely hopeless. You just have to keep adjusting things until they fit.

I probably stayed in my first marriage longer than I should have because I kept trying to fix it. Even if I couldn’t fix the marriage, I wound up fixing myself in the process. It’s frustrating seeing someone unhappy, especially if I’m involved. I feel it’s my job to find the solution to their problem and fix it. Even if that means fixing myself.

This car (and company) survived the impossible.

There are countless people that give up too early on things and call it quits before all possibilities are exhausted. I just finished a biography on Elon Musk (Space X, Tesla, Solar City). Reading through it was like an alternate reality. With all the problems he faced, there was no logical way that not only Space X could be successful, but Tesla Motors as well. Yet the reality is today they both are. And that would not be possible if Musk didn’t insist on fixing something he knew was fixable.

I guess I found a fix to my “flaw”. I’m a Fixer. I make things happen.

For Sale: Me!

As I begin my transition to civilian life, I'm faced with finding a job for the first time in 21 years. Among the many other things I've learned about job searching, I've learned the importance of selling yourself. Actually, I've learned this lesson several times in life. As important of a lesson as it is, you'd think I'd remember it more often. But, like many other things in life, I get complacent and have to learn the lesson all over again. Just keep that between us, though. I am trying to present my best side here.

I used to think that selling yourself meant being arrogant and bragging a lot. It does require a bit of arrogance and bragging, but somewhere on a level between humble and an asshole.

I'm not huge on self recognition. Sure, I like getting credit for doing something, but I'm not all about the awards and stuff. Unfortunately the Air Force is all about awards and stuff. I had no problem submitting others for awards, but I never threw my own name into the hat. I just didn't feel special enough. Plus my airmen and co workers could use the recognition more than I could. This worked fine while I was in the low to mid-level ranks. Work performance dominated my annual evaluations, so all those awards were just desk decorations. Once I started competing for the higher ranks, however, being humble became a career killer.

I thought my work performance would speak for itself. This worked well when I had supervisors that worked close with me on a daily basis. When I began a job that was a special duty, I was assigned a Captain as a supervisor. She spoke with me once a year; to discuss my evaluation. My first year I was given a 4 out of 5 for the first time in 10 years (5 was the norm). Officers (her) rating on Enlisted (me) tend to be a bit more critical of our work, primarily because we do vastly different jobs. She pointed out a few things that was holding me back. I argued a few points, but agreed that I could improve. 

The next year, I was supposed to be transferred to an Enlisted supervisor, but it never happened because the paperwork was never processed. So my yearly visit with my supervisor consisted of my annual evaluation again. And I received a 4 out of 5 again. (An aside: Getting a lower than 5 rating was especially insulting because I had to draft my own evaluations.) This time I was ready to fight for my 5. I argued about the markdowns on Leadership and Training because I helped others with jobs outside of my career field, and trained and mentored others. Her response was "If I had known that, I would have considered a higher score". I was livid because I was used to observant supervisors that noticed these subtleties. I felt it was the Captain's fault for not giving me a mid-term feedback and not properly observing or supervising me. After talking with my Senior Master Sergeant, I came to the realization that it was as much my fault as hers. I failed to sell myself and trumpet my achievements.

Not long after, I found myself single again and re-entering the dating game. Once again, I humbly filled out on-line profiles and quietly went on dates expecting my brilliance to speak for itself. I quickly remembered my earlier lesson and made it a point to advertise myself, and all I had to offer. I tried not to sit back and wait to be asked for my accomplishments. I sold myself, and subsequently moved past the first date on more occasions.

Selling yourself is about advertisement. When you see a commercial on TV, you get bombarded with all that's awesome about that product. If they've done their job right, you'll want to either buy, or know more about it. The same goes for you. Most people aren't going to ask what's so great about you. You need to bombard them with awesome. And not just the best stuff. You'd be surprised at how many "little" things make a huge impact. You volunteered to help a friend move last week? No big deal, right? To a date, that could be worth more than that time you met Wayne Brady in an elevator.

Obviously, there is a time and place for advertising your accomplishments. You only need to sell yourself when there's something to sell. The cashier at Walmart could care less about how you saved your company $100K. You do have to remember to keep selling yourself, though. Once you've landed your job, or the second date, it's not time to cut back on advertising. If anything, it's more important to keep selling yourself so they don't face "buyer's remorse". That means mentioning that you helped Carole in Accounting with her Excel issues. It means saying something about cleaning the toilet even though you weren't asked. You can't rely on others to notice your accomplishments while you humbly keep your mouth closed. Yes, in an ideal world, this would happen, but in a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately society, you're only as good as your last accomplishment.

Now that I'm re-entering the workforce, I'm not going to wait for people to come for me. I'm selling myself and all I have to offer. I have to remember that even though I won over and married my wife, I need to point out the things I do to remind her of why she married me. If you stop advertising, then people will eventually turn their attention to something, or someone, that is.

Drynuary

I belong to a wine tasting meetup group (meetup.com is an awesome site that brings people in your area with similar interests and/or tastes together). While I haven’t been as active as I should be, I still frequent the group page. Early December, I saw a posting for an alcohol-free January. Basically, purge your body of alcohol the month after arguably the heaviest 6 week drinking period of the year for those not living in New Orleans. I discovered that this was not unique to my meetup group. Quite a few people abstain from alcohol in January. In fact, I borrowed the term “Drynuary” from this Slate article. 

After contemplating over several glasses of wine, I decided to give it a try. There were a multitude of minor reasons why:

Weight loss

   I, like 99% of Americans, traditionally kick off the New Year by dieting. Drinking while dieting can cause various setbacks. Drinking any beer but Coors/Bud light brings in sneaky calories; especially yummy craft beers. In addition, after a few drinks, my resistance to pizza and buffalo wings lowers considerably.

Health benefits 

  We all know that after a night of heavy drinking, you’re probably going to pay for it the next day. I was curious if abstaining from alcohol would improve how I felt on a day-to-day basis.

Make sure I’m not a secret alcoholic

  I won’t lie. I like drinking. Even though I truly enjoy the taste of beer and wine, I like the buzz I get from it. Very rarely do I drink with intention of getting hammered, but I tend to lose track of how much I am drinking, especially at home. I’m pretty frugal when I shop (ask my wife), so a 30 pack of beer is considerably cheaper per once than a six-pack. When I’m out, I usually have to go through many more obstacles for each drink (bartender, triple the cost, settling the bill, drinking responsibly). At home it’s easy to grab one (or have somebody “sensuous” one), cost isn’t an issue, and you don’t have to worry about getting home.

I also enjoy a few drinks after a rough day. The phrase “you look like you need a drink” exists for a reason. Sometimes it is a little too easy to “justfy” a drink, especially when you have the previously mentioned 30-pack sitting in your fridge. I wanted to see if removing alcohol as an option would affect anything.

It Begins

Winter Lager goodness

  My Drynuary began promptly at midnight on New Years (or New Years morning if you want to be technical). I made sure to purge the house of any beers or open bottles of wine, save for the hard liquor (easy to resist for me) and a single bottle of Sam Adams Winter Lager that would be my first drink when it was over. Okay, I really just forgot about it because it was stuffed in the back of the fridge behind a salad, but I’m sure I subconsciously left it there for this reason.

  The month started pretty easy because were busy and the Broncos had a first round bye, so I didn’t care about football that weekend (more on that later). There was a momentary lapse when I was waiting in line at to purchase snow tubing tickets. The line was literally (not figuratively) an hour long, and halfway through someone brought the guy behind me a bottle of beer from the food stand. I was going to ask him to get me one, but I remembered that I wasn’t doing that anymore. In hindsight, it would have deadened the price shock of the tickets.

  I love karaoke, and headed out the first Tuesday of January to warm up my pipes for my America’s Got Talent audition in February (really! Feb 7 at 0800 in SF). I normally don’t require drinking to get up and sing karaoke, but I usually drink when I do. It would have been nice to have a beer while on stage that night.

  The next week was the first of three challenges. Well, four if you count my wife gleefully drinking wine in front of me.

  We went out for Salsa dancing and hanging out with friends. I’m not a big fan of dancing and usually have a drink or ten to take the edge off. I made it through the night with only a sip of alcohol, but that was to confirm that the disastrous drink the clueless bartender concocted was indeed “nasty”.

  

It's better than no beer at all...

Next, that weekend was the Divisional round of the AFC Playoffs. Like karaoke, my body usually associates beer with football. It felt odd watching the Saturday games without it. Sunday was the Broncos vs the Colts. I figured out an ingenious workaround; alcohol-free beer. I grabbed a 6-pack of O’Doul’s and poured me a pint while I watched the game. The O’Doul’s were okay, but nothing special, much like the Broncos team that lost to the Colts that day. I think I’m partially to blame for the loss. The football gods were outraged that I tried to find a loophole and subsequently caused Peyton Manning to suck.

  Finally, that night, my wife’s month-long burlesque class culminated in a spectacular on-stage performance downtown. We went out afterwards for sushi, then karaoke to celebrate. It was tempting to order something during and after the show, but I stuck with a coke. I did have a tiny sip of a hazelnut stout I bought for the wife, but that was just to see what it tasted like (confirmed: yummy).

  Week 3 was relatively void of temptation. There was one evening where I was a little stressed out about various things, and would have loved to have a glass of wine, but it was other-wise uneventful. I didn’t even bother with the non-alcoholic beer for the AFC/NFC Championship games, which probably was why Green Bay lost.

Definitely worth falling off the wagon for.

  I had intended on ending Drynuary a little early on the 24th. I needed to pick up wine from my wine club, and it would be criminal to drive all the way down to Scott Harvey winery and not do a tasting. Additionally, I felt I had proved my point, and I didn’t notice any difference since I started abstaining. Instead, Drynuary ended on January 19 at 6:18 PM. A friend of mine was heading up Karaoke at a

new location and a group of us went out for support. The bar sales were being watched during this trial run, so I decided to support her ended the experiment with a couple of pints of Great White beer.

Conclusions

Even though it ended short of its goal, I gained a lot of valuable information from my experiment. I had no noticeable weight loss. I experienced zero health benefits. I didn’t feel any better or worse, nor was I more or less tired during the day. I confirmed that I was not an alcoholic.  While I occasionally desired a drink, I was fine without it.

My wallet did benefit from Drynuary, but not quite as much as you’d think. At many places, a diet coke is almost as much as a glass of beer (and I think that’s a disservice to designated drivers everywhere).

I did notice that there were several situations where I’ve conditioned myself to associate with alcohol, particularly going out, karaoke, and football.

I’m proud of myself for doing it, despite it accomplishing very little. I would have liked to stuck it out until the Super Bowl (Feb 1), but I felt there was no further reason to continue. All in all, giving up caffeine for a week was far harder than giving up alcohol for three.  That was not a pretty sight…

This House is not a Home

  Life in the military is filled with moving. In my 21 year (and counting) career, I’ve moved to 14 different houses. In the past two years, we’ve moved four times, and are prepping for a 5^th. Not all of these moves were initiated by the military, but the majority of them were influenced by it at one point or another.

The driveway is about a quarter
 of the house in Guam

   In all of these moves, I’ve lived in homes just about every shape and size. From a tiny 2 bedroom apartment to an almost tinier 3 bedroom “house” in Guam, to the giant house we currently dwell in. With all these places to live, I’ve learned quite a bit of what I do and don’t want in a home. The old saying is “home is where you hang your hat”, but I tend to disagree. Most things I want in a home are flexible, but there is one thing I long for. A place that is truly “home”.

   When you join the military, one of the first things they tell you is “I hope you like travel”. This is quite true. There are some minor exceptions, but you are virtually guaranteed to retire with several bases under your belt (seven for this Airman). This creates a bit of a nomadic nature for you and your families. It’s hard to put down roots when you know that you can be moving at any time. True, the military features some minimum time at each base, but once you pass that, moving orders can drop any day. This creates a whole multitude of challenges for military families, but I’m focusing on the place where you hang your hat.

   Some brave souls buy a home and gamble that they’ll be at the base long enough to not suffer a loss when they sell it, but most rent. Our family in particular has been to a lot of “overseas” locations (though still in the States; Alaska, Guam, and Hawaii), so we didn’t have many opportunities to buy a home. We considered in Hawaii, but thankfully we didn’t because it was just before the housing crash.

   When you rent a house, it already doesn’t quite feel like home because you can’t do a whole lot with it. Every ding and dent that adds character and history to an owned home just removes money from your security deposit. Even if you get the landlord’s blessing to paint and decorate, you’re hesitant because it hardly seems to be worth the effort if you’re going to move anyway. Many moves I’ve lefty many things packed because I didn’t want to bother.

   My current base is guaranteed to be my last due to my time in service, but I’m still renting. When I arrived, I wasn’t sure if we were going to stay in the area. Then I met my now wife, and we needed to move quickly to accommodate our suddenly bigger family. My job status was in limbo thanks to budget cuts, so we rented our current (huge) home. Unfortunately it hasn’t turned out so well.

Yes, they do test missiles here

   There is an awesome 80’s movie called “The Money Pit” starring Tom Hanks and Shelly Long. If they ever shot a sequel, they could use this one. The owners apparently were very interested in do-it-yourself projects. Unfortunately, they could have used some quality control. The toilet downstairs leaks (from the bottom). The garage door openers don’t work. The pretty fake stone on the steps of the stairs have claimed many toes in the middle of the night. The dishwasher is lopsided. The stone sink collapsed due to minimal support underneath. The granite island is not only too heavy for the original island base, it’s too big and consequently, the fridge can’t be removed. There are exposed seams and unfinished spots all over the house.  All the little quirks mentioned above are bearable things The overall house still looks nice. We haven’t been electrocuted (yet), and the roof has held up well to all the rain. Plus it has a pool!

   Thankfully, we didn’t buy it like the couple in the movie, but it has nearly broken us up at various points due to one very glaring fault.  It’s very noisy.

   With kids, you’d expect any house to be a little noisy; especially teenagers. This one, however, is far worse because of the construction. The front room acts as a funnel of sound into the main bedroom. The kitchen and den is directly underneath the main bedroom as well. In the den, the ceiling has speakers installed for surround sound. This seemed like an awesome feature when we moved in. The first time the kids watched something while we were upstairs, it was like the tv was in our room.

My Speaker solution

   I decided to see if I could use the existing wiring on the ceiling speakers and mount my own speakers on the wall so it wasn’t in direct contact with the ceiling. When I popped the first speaker off, I immediately saw the problem. There was no insulation between floors, so the space between floors was basically a giant speaker box. If we owned this house, I’d just put up insulation, but since it isn’t ours, I’m not spending my money to fix it.

   The lack of insulation also helps explain why it seems like everyone slams counter doors and dishes. Our theory was confirmed when we stayed at a small house in Los Angeles, and we couldn’t hear a thing when the kids were downstairs.

   Besides the noise, the house is just too darn big. I know that sounds like a nice problem to have, and it’s certainly better than being too small, but it has its drawbacks. One of the biggest is increased electricity cost, especially during the summer.

   Another drawback is that the larger the house, the more junk you accumulate. I always thought a larger house would appear cleaner, but that’s not the case. We have a huge bedroom, which again, I didn’t think would be a problem. We looked at another home with a much smaller bedroom, and it felt much cozier and comfortable. I do like having a large living room, but for the most part, bigger is not always better.

   So, armed with all this information we are preparing to search for a new house. We want to buy something and make it our own. We want a home. Hopefully we’ve learned enough lessons to find exactly what we want. Hopefully, this is our last move for a long time