Isaiah 46:4

Til your old age I will be the same — I will carry you until your hair is white.  I have made you, and I will bear you; yes, I will carry and save you.

Sermon 22 - Grief Illiteracy (and series intro)

Sermon 22 - Grief Illiteracy (and series intro)

Amos 3:6

If a disaster occurs in a city, hasn’t the Lord done it?

We live in a grief illiterate society.  We cannot talk about grief.  Therefore we don't understand grief.  We can't talk about death.  Death is the last taboo.  We can talk about all kinds of other things: we can talk about sex, we can talk about drugs, we can talk about perversions, but we can't talk about death.

(There's actually a movement to develop what are called Death Cafes.  This isn't grief counseling: it's just a place, a safe space, to talk about death.  To talk about all aspects of death.  I've been to some of these Death Cafes, and they are absolutely delightful.  The people who come are thoughtful and reasonable.  Although it is not supposed to be about grief counselling, at every meeting that I have attended someone who has lost something important has shown up.  Those who attend are always interested in the person who is grieving, interested in their grief, interested in their life and their lost loved one.  Those who are bereaved obtain an awful lot of comfort from these Death Cafes, which, I may remind you once again, are not about grief counseling, or comforting grievers.  It's just supposed to be a place to talk about death.

One other interesting thing about the Death Cafes is that they make a big deal about having candy, or cookies, or some other sweet treat available for the meeting.  This, so the official website states, is to remind people of the sweetness of life.  But, I didn't intend to talk about Death Cafes in this sermon.  I'm talking about death.)

We avoid even saying the word dead.  There is the "Dead Parrot" sketch, from the Monty Python group, which, at one major part in the sketch, consists of a long list of euphemisms for dead.  All the terms that we have invented, so that we don't have to say the word "dead."

After Gloria died, a friend, who is from another culture, visited me after some considerable time during which we hadn't seen each other.  He asked after Gloria.  "She died," I said.  His, somewhat bemused, reply was, "I think you are the only person that I have ever heard, in North America, use the word 'dead'."

So, now that I have thoroughly upset you, by using the word dead so many times, what is the point that I am trying to make with this sermon?  Well, we don't understand about death.  We can't talk about it.  We don't allow those who are bereaved to talk about it.  Since Gloria died, I feel like I have lost all of my friends, because all of them are completely and absolutely terrified that I will mention Gloria, or death, or grief, or pain.  None of them will talk to me, just in case I mentioned any of those things.  We can't talk about death.

Gloria's death was not my first grief rodeo.  I lost my favorite cousin when I was age seven.  I lost my sister when I was fifteen.  She was twelve.  I remember that I didn't understand what I was supposed to be doing in terms of grieving.  I wanted to talk about Fiona, and Fiona's death.  And absolutely nobody, nobody in the church, none of my friends, nobody anywhere would talk about Fiona's death.  Or just death itself.  That is a taboo subject.

But if we don't talk about death, if we don't discuss death, if we don't think about death, then how can we understand it?  And if we don't understand death, how can we understand Jesus' death?  And his death, and resurrection, are absolutely vital to our faith.

We also, as noted, don't understand grief.  And if we don't understand grief, how can we understand God's grief, over Jesus' death?  How can we understand God's grief over *our* deaths?  Over every death, of every human being, who ever lived?  Do you think that God does not grieve our deaths?  Remember, death was not part of the original plan.  If Adam and Eve had stuck to pomegranates and grapes and figs, we wouldn't be in this mess.  Death came into the world because of sin.  Sin, at a time when, as the old joke has it, you had one job!  Don't eat the apple!

We live in a grief-illiterate society.  We don't talk about grief in our society.  We don't like to talk about grief.  We don't like to talk about death.  We don't like to talk about pain.  This is true in our society, and it is *particularly* true in our churches and Christian life.

We think that God blesses us if we do good.  We believe this, and the "Prosperity Gospel" has become almost an article of faith for many of us.  God does say that he will bless us, but he also says that he disciplines us, and teaches us, and sometimes blessings don't come in the way we think.    And, therefore, if we do not feel particularly blessed, we seem to feel we have not done well: that we have sinned.  And that that is the reason that we are not doing well, or feeling good.  So not feeling good tends to leave us with the impression, either with ourselves or with others, that we have not lived up to the Christian expectations.  We have not lived up to the Christian ideal.  We have sinned and that is why we are having problems, if we are having problems.  Therefore the indication is that we have sinned.  If we feel bad, we have sinned.  It is our own fault.

We particularly believe this about other people.  

This is rather ironic, since the church is a place where one would expect that you can come for comfort.  Yet, if we ask for comfort, the implication tends to be that we have failed.  That we have sinned, that we have not done as we ought to have done.  If we are looking for comfort, we are somehow at fault.

Therefore when we come looking for comfort in the church or in the Christian community, we may end up feeling even worse.  Because we are told that we do not have enough faith.  Or that we haven't "fully" given our lives to God, somehow.  Or that we have sinned, somehow.  This is what Job's friends told him.  This is why we have the phrase "Jobs comforters."  And they were, in fact, wrong.  Very wrong.  God told them so.  Job 42:7 - "After the Lord had spoken these things to Job, He said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “My anger is stirred up against you and your two friends, because you have not spoken about me what is right, as my servant Job has."

And every time I think of this, I can't help thinking of 2 Corinthians 1:4 - "He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God."  What pain have *we* not been comforted for, if we can't comfort others?

But this is not the only reason that we avoiding talking about death.  And grief, and pain.  And in the Christian church this is wrong.  We need to understand death.  We need to understand grief.  We need to understand pain.  We need to understand suffering.  The Christian message has death at its very centre.

Actually, multiple deaths.  There is our death, our deserved death, as a result of our sin.

Then there is the death of Jesus.  Jesus did *not* deserve death.  But died to pay the penalty for our sin, taking our deserved death on Himself, who was undeserving of death.

We need to understand death.  Yes, death is important to the Christian life. 

And we need to understand grief.  Need to grieve our own sin.  We need to grieve the death of Jesus.  We need to grieve our sin as the necessity for Jesus' death.

We need to understand grief.

Grief teaches you a number of things about the Christian life and the important concepts on which Christianity is built.

In Glen's GriefCare program, he asks those attending to fill out a loss rank and impact chart, as an exercise.  It points out that there are different types of loss, and different types of grief.  I lost my cousin, my sister, my grandparents, and parents, and friends, and Gloria.  But I also lost position and status when I moved to take up a job.  I lost respect for my father when he made an unethical business decision (ironically, supposedly in support of the church).  I lost a lot of money when I had to make a moral stand against some underhanded practices.  But in doing the exercise, I also realized how important those losses were in teaching me lessons that I needed.

When Gloria died I lost my best friend, I lost the person I most wanted to talk to at any time.  I recently came across a Biblical passage, in Proverbs, about enjoying your wife.  One version translated it as saying, "and when you wake in the morning, she will talk with you."  One of the aspects of my grief since Gloria died is that I have no one to talk to: certainly not the person that I most want to talk with.  I lost my friend and wife, but, since I had been Gloria's caregiver for about a decade, I also lost my job.  I lost my schedule.  Our daily schedule was much determined by Gloria's medications, the need to take them with or without food, and the need to have minimum times between taking some combinations of them.  When Gloria died, I lost my schedule.  I lost my reason for *any* schedule.  Interestingly, this also meant that I lost any idea of a weekly or monthly schedule, and I had to build systems to remind myself to do things like washing the bed sheets and paying the rent.

My life ended.  Really, it felt like that.  My life had ended.  I had no purpose.  I had died.  And yet I am still alive.  And what I am doing now is not rebuilding a life as much as building a completely new life.

Doesn't that sound like what we talk about in terms of Christianity?  Dying to self?

And that is only one of many lessons.

We need to understand about pain.  Pain is used to alert us to the fact that something is wrong.  That something needs to be fixed.

It is possible, of course, that we need to correct someone, and that they have sinned and that we need to identify that to, and for, them.  However, it is not as common as we seem to think that this is what we need to do.  It is much more likely that we need to comfort the afflicted, rather than correct them.  Most people are more in need of comfort than correction.  Well, unless they're sinners, of course.  But the sin is very often a sin of omission.  Such as, for example, failing to comfort someone.  Instances of necessary correction are much less frequent than we seem to think.  We would like to be the instruments of correction.  We would like to be the ones who are right.  We would like to be the ones who guide the fallen.  We would like that, because that indicates that we are smarter than they, or more holy than they, or more righteous than they, or more knowledgeable about God than they are.

But it's more likely that *we* are sinning by assuming that we know more than they do, and that what they need is correction rather than comfort.

We need to understand about pain.  Pain is necessary to life.  Pain is used to alert us to the fact that something is wrong.  That something needs to be repaired.  That something needs to be fixed.  That something needs to be healed.  That's *another* reason that we need to comfort more than we need to correct.  We may need to correct someone.  Someone's pain may be because of their own sin or their own choices.  But we need to comfort them enough, to heal them enough, to give them the strength to make better choices.  To identify and acknowledge their own sin.  That takes strength.  It takes energy.  And those who are in pain may not have the energy to make those necessary changes.  We need to give them comfort so that they can come to the point of making the changes that they need to make.  If they are sinning, they are broken.  If they are broken, they need our help, not our condemnation.

Yes, sometimes pain is to alert us to the fact that something is wrong.  But not always.  Unfortunately, sometimes pain simply happens.  Sometimes pain is random.  Sometimes pain is meaningless.  If you have shingles, what sin did you commit?  What lifestyle choice did you make that resulted in shingles?  It's not a matter of sin.  It just happened.  If it happened and it causes pain for you, it is not alerting you to the fact that anything is wrong.  Other than the fact that your nerves are infected.

And, of course, the alert that shingles gives you is out of all proportion to our abilities to correct it.  So, why do we have this type of pain?  Well, maybe it's just presenting those of us who do *not* have the pain with an opportunity to help the sufferers.  Maybe this is what we are supposed to do.  And maybe, in *not* comforting those who are afflicted, we are, in fact, sinning because God wants us to comfort the afflicted, and we aren't.

In fact, many people in our churches are afraid of hearing that *anyone* is in difficulty or discomfort.  It is contrary to our beliefs in what we assume is God's provision for us, and may even threaten our faith.  If someone is facing a serious difficulty, through no fault of their own, that is not easily overcome with a few Bible verses or cliches, and if this person has not sinned and yet is in discomfort or in trouble, this threatens belief in the prosperity gospel.  And in our belief that God will bless us if we do good things and don't do bad things. 

In one of the movies on my list for the Jesus Film Festival, there is a very interesting take on the temptation of Christ.  The Tempter suggests that Jesus turn stones into bread in order to feed those who are starving.  As well as the standard Biblical reference, the film script has Jesus respond that people are hungry because of the hearts of stone of other men.  I think it's not only poetic, but a very important point.

We need to understand death.  We need to understand grief.  We need to understand pain.  We need to understand how it affects us.  And that means that we need to acknowledge it when it does happen.  We need to learn lessons from grief.  The lessons about dying to ourselves.  The lessons about the need to comfort others. 

There is a trueism that you should learn from other people's mistakes, because you're never going to live long enough to make all of them yourself.  What I want to tell you is related to, but slightly different from that.  I'm grieving.  I am suffering and in pain because of the loss of my wife.  I am learning about grief.  I am also a systems analyst.  So if I am going to grieve, I am going to learn everything possible about grief.  I have been studying grief.

My grief is not because I have made a mistake.  But I have suffered a loss.  It wasn't my fault.  But it is painful, and I'm suffering.

Learn from my grief, in this series of sermons.  I want you to benefit from my pain.  I am suffering.  There is nothing I can do about that.  (We'll talk about that point.  Yes, you may think you can argue about it.  We'll discuss that later.)  There is nothing I can do about my pain.  But what I *can* do is possibly reduce the total suffering on earth by providing you with the benefit of my experience and my study.  These sermons are the result of a lot of pain and suffering on my part, and a lot of work, research and study.  Learn from them.  Benefit from them.  Take the lessons and apply them.  Help yourselves and help others.  I am in pain, but if you learn from my pain, you will hopefully reduce the total suffering on earth.  You will provide love to your neighbours.

You may even understand God a bit better. 

Grief series

Sermon 22 - Grief Illiteracy

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/03/sermon-22-grief-illiteracy-and-series.html

Sermon 4 - Grief and Dying to Self

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/01/sermon-4-grief-and-dying-to-self.html

Sermon 7 - faith and works, and intuitive vs instrumental grief

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/02/sermon-7-faith-and-works-and-intuitive.html

Sermon 10 - Why Job

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/03/sermon-10-why.html

Sermons: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/09/sermons.html

Proverbs 26:20

No wood?  Fire goes out.

And where there is no gossip, 

contention ceases.

MGG - 5.02 - HWYD - dead patients

I dealt with various staff, and various supervisory staff, in my time nursing.  I worked on one particularly difficult ward, where the head nurse was very difficult to live with, or to work for.  At one point she took one of the shift sheets, and marked on it all the sick days that people had taken.  This indicated two things quite clearly.  The first was that, yes, people were taking sick days to extend their weekends and break times.  The fact that she did it also indicated why they were doing that.

It wasn't a great place to work.  She wasn't a good person to work for.  We tried, in small ways, to keep our own spirits up, and keep up with the work.  Other factors impinged on us as well.  When I had started working, there was half an hour overlap between the shifts, so that we could report to the incoming shift on the status of the patients, and any particular difficulties that they might face on their shift.  However, this meant that staff were being paid for non-nursing time.  The powers-that-be decided that this was a waste of money, and so created a system where the supervisor for the shift would record, on a tape recorder, the report about the patients, and that the incoming shift supervisor would listen to that report in order to determine any changes.  Our hours for the shifts were reduced, accordingly, to a strict eight hour period.

I, of course, with my unfortunate sense of inappropriate humor, saw an opportunity.  On one evening shift, I waited until the shift supervisor had recorded her report, and then rolled the tape back allowing myself time to create my own report, prior to hers.  Using the collection of euphemisms from the Monty Python dead parrot sketch, I killed off the entire ward.

When I came on shift the next evening, the head nurse tore a strip off me.  She let me know, and no uncertain terms, that nobody had found this funny, that it had upset everyone very greatly, and it was completely inappropriate to our work.  I felt terrible.  I had no intention of upsetting my coworkers.  I felt badly all shift, and stayed on until some of this night shift workers started to show up.  I went to one of the orderlies and explained that I was sorry, that I had intended it as a joke, and that I was very sorry to have upset everyone.  "What are you talking about?" he asked.  "We just about died laughing."  Okay, that wasn't what I had been told, so I waited for the shift supervisor to come on.  I explained to her that I was very sorry, that it was supposed to have been a joke, that it was I was sorry that it had not been funny.

"We absolutely howled!" she said.  "When I first started listening to it, and the first person was said to have died, I was sorry about that.  And then the second person?  I thought that was really awful that two people died on the shift.  And then there was a third! By the time you reported on the fourth person, I was beginning to understand what was happening. I called everyone in to listen to your report. We all loved it!"

Okay, I was feeling a bit better.  She went on.

"We called the night float orderly.  He loved it!"  Okay, I could understand that: he did tend to have a sense of humor.  "We called the night float nurse. She loved it!"  Okay, I was a bit surprised at that.  The night float nurse had never impressed me with her sense of humor.  "We called Bradley!"  "You didn't!" I said.  "You're going to get me fired!"

I suppose I need to explain about Bradley.  She was the night nursing supervisor.  As far as we knew, she had had her sense of humor surgically removed.  As far as we could tell Bradley never actually touched the ground when she walked, since that might make noise that would give her away.  She would hover, floating soundlessly down the hallways.  She *lived* to find nursing staff sleeping on the job.  I wasn't kidding about the danger of being fired.

"Are you kidding?" she said.  "Bradley loved it!  It's the only time I have ever seen her laugh at anything!"

So, it would seem, the only person who didn't find it hilarious was that one head nurse.

As I said, when I was young, I always wanted to be a doctor.  By this point, in my career, and my college career, I realized that I was never going to be able to get into medical school without an awful lot of money to go to one of the foreign schools that specialized in training people who wanted to be a doctor, but couldn't get into Canadian or American medical schools.  I didn't, and never would, have that kind of money.  I did enjoy working as a nurse, even in that, heavily extended care, setting.  And I enjoyed taking industrial first aid training, subsequently, and working as an industrial first aid attendant.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/03/mgg-51-so-how-was-your-day-at-workhwyd.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/04/mgg-503-hwyd-racists.html

Psalm 43:5

Why am I discouraged?  Why is my heart so sad?  I will put my hope in God!  I will praise him again—my Savior and my God!

Third Avenue Arts Walk

Third Avenue contains a lot of the murals that are supposedly famous in Port Alberni.  Is also home to a large homeless and displaced population, and so is often considered a dangerous part of town.  In addition there are an awful lot of people who talk about the homeless situation in Port Alberni, but have very little understanding of the reality of it.

While planning walks for other groups, I noted that one needed to be careful in the Third Avenue area in terms of which groups I took there.  However, as well as being a potential problem, this also presents an opportunity. 

I propose that we have an Arts Walk event, specifically on Third Avenue, roughly between Bute And Mar.

This would not be strictly confined to Third Avenue because there are some artworks that should be covered on Fourth and on Second, but would cover an area with an awful lot of artwork, *and* the major "problem" areas in Port Alberni.

I do not want to propose that people be taken on a tour of the homeless population as such, or the darker areas of town.  However, by holding tours of public art (of which there are numerous examples along Third Avenue), people will encounter the homeless anyway, and be exposed to how they exist on the streets.

Civic and activist groups could use the walks to make the broader Port Alberni community more aware of the issues and realities of the situation.  Groups involved, with criminality, re-entry to society, the disadvantaged, and outreach to those communities could use the Arts Walks as awareness and possibly fundraising tools.  It might be used for fundraising or to raise public support and expansion of the tiny homes project.

This could be used by Community Policing to familiarise businesses residents, and local politicians with the reality of the problem, and could be used to raise awareness both of safety issues and of the realities of the homeless population in Port Alberni.  They could also be involved in Arts Walks sponsored by other organisations, by participating in uniform.

It could also be used by the churches (and possibly particularly Grace Point), as an outreach, or an introduction to an outreach to the community, or for fundraising for that community.  Salvation Army already has a significant presence in the area, but this could be used by the Salvation Army for awareness type activities and for fundraising.

Job 7:17; Psalm 8:4; Psalm 144:3

What is man, that You should exalt him, and that You should set Your heart on him?

What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You attend to him?

Lord, what is man that you notice him, the son of man that you consider him?

MGG - 5.01 - So, How Was *Your* Day At Work?/HWYD - nursing

I am reading yet another article about how we hide away embarrassing or "different" people.  The author is, predictably, bemoaning how we remove these people from society.  I am taken back fifty years.

When I was in university, I managed to get into a training program as a hospital nursing orderly, in a hospital.  The hospital was a federal institution, part of the Department of Veterans Affairs.  That was how they came to have a program for nursing orderlies, since they primarily dealt with veterans, who were primarily male, and also veterans from the existing service, and from the RCMP.  The hospital, as one would expect when dealing with veterans, had an elderly population, and many wards were dedicated to geriatric care.

Orderlies, in those institutions that had them, were often simply porters.  In this hospital we were trained as practical nurses.  Practical nurses were not yet licensed, and we performed identical functions.  Anything the practical nurses were trained to do, we were expected to do.  So, these days, I tend to tell people, and I think reasonably accurately so, that I worked my way through university working as a practical nurse.  That was the training we were given, and that was the function we performed.

As noted, there was a very large geriatric population in the hospital.  Some were considered to be extended care: this was defined by not being able to get oneself out of bed.  If you needed assistance getting out of bed, and getting dressed, you were extended care.  Intermediate care meant that you could get yourself up, and dressed.  The reasons that these people were in the hospital varied, but were, when I started work at that hospital, basically decided by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

There were acute care beds in the hospital, and eventually, I worked on some of them.  But, initially, practical nurses, and nursing orderlies, were needed for the geriatric wards.  That was where I got my training, that was where I got my start.

Those of us working on the geriatric wards were quite well aware that we were taking care of old folks.  We knew a fair amount about their situation.  We knew who had family, and who didn't.  We knew who had family come to visit, and who didn't.  We knew that these people were here to stay.  We got to know them, their personalities, their quirks, their wants, their oddities, and we were their friends.  Sometimes we were their family.  There was one resident who always called me by his son's name.  I don't know if I looked like his son.  I never met his son.  I always answered cheerily, and he never pursued the issue.  I don't know whether he thought that I was his son, or simply derived some comfort and familiarity by calling someone his son's name.

All of us who worked at the hospital realized that we were a poor substitute for family.  All of us, myself included, knew that it must be terrible to be stuck here, in our hospital, with us, and not be able to be at home with family.  We didn't necessarily know why they couldn't be at home with family, but all the staff felt that it must be much better that way than the way it was.

After I had worked there for a little more than a year, I took a couple of months off, and went traveling in England, Scotland, and Wales.  My family came from the British Isles, and my parents had spent some time, when I was a baby, doing an exchange year teaching.  So, there was family, and there were family friends.  I visited some of them as I was traveling around.

I stayed with one family for a couple of days.  This particular family was in our extended family tree.  On the third day, as we were finishing breakfast, and I was getting ready to leave, I was asking if I wanted to see Dad.

Not being particularly close to these family relations, I didn't know Dad was still alive.  I certainly didn't know that Dad lived in the house.  I certainly haven't seen any evidence of Dad in the previous two days.  But, certainly, I said, I'd love to see Dad. 

We went up to the top of the house.  The third story.  I hadn't known there *was* a third story.  I had thought that perhaps this was attic space.  Well, it was a little bit larger than attic space, and certainly had a higher ceiling.  It even had a window.  Dad was lying in a bed.  There wasn't even a chair in the room.  So, obviously Dad spent his days in that bed.  The window was high in the roof line.  Dad couldn't have seen anything out of that window other than sky, clouds, possibly the sun at certain seasons and times of day, and possibly a very nearby bird, albeit very briefly.

In that instant I knew that I had been wrong all the previous year.  Being at home was not necessarily a blessing.  I'm sure the family loved Dad.  I'm sure that they did their best for Dad.  But obviously there was very little contact with Dad, other than to bring him meals, and to deal with toilet issues.  We certainly did that in the hospital, but we did an awful lot more, and had an awful lot more contact, with each patient, each day, than Dad got.

When I came back to work, every conversation, from then on, turning on what a shame it was that our patients couldn't live at home with their families, I replied that there were worse places to live than in our hospital.  That there were worst cases of isolation then in our hospital where the only people who interacted with you were paid to do so.  I'm not sure whether that was when I started my retort, to those who were embarrassed that I had to change them, and the entire bed, when they had had a loose bowel movement in the bed, "Don't worry about it: I'm paid to do this. If this didn't happen I wouldn't have a job."  I presented it as a joke, and a lot of the old guys got a good giggle out of it.

Some families have the time, money, patience, and skills necessary to care for the elderly.  Most do not.  Our society does not talk about death, it does not talk about grief, and it does not talk about aging, at least not the extreme aging, where faculties start to become impaired.  Therefore, very, very few understand the requirements of the aging, or the disabled, and their wants, and their needs.  Even fewer can handle the constant demands, small scale though they may be, with sometimes distasteful bodily processes.  To have that combination of time, resources, skills, and character, is vanishingly rare.  So, it's not reasonable to expect, as most of our governments, and particularly conservative oriented governments, tend to expect, that families can take care of their elderly right up to the point of death.  It's very rare, and it leads to very possibly unpleasant situations.  I know that poorly managed care facilities lead to unpleasant situations as well.  I don't want to battle about which is the lesser, or greater, of two evils, or unpleasantnesses.  But to think that all families are able to care for their elderly as they age into extreme age is to live in a dream world.

At one corner of the property where my house is, a seniors facility is being built.  The girls have joked that when I get too old to live on my own, they'll just ship me to that corner of the property.  They think they're joking.  I am absolutely fine with that, and I'm not joking.  Yes, there are situations where staff who should never be working in this field are given charge of the poor and vulnerable.  We need to watch out for those situations, and we need to check that they occur as seldom as possible.  But I know that the people who work in these facilities are primarily good, decent people, who try their best.  They may be hampered by budgets or by uncaring management, but they are trying their best.  They are the friends of those whose friends have all died, and they are the surrogate family, for those whose family can no longer, for whatever reason, care for them.  I'm quite fine to end my days in their company.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/03/mgg-500-so-how-was-your-day-at-workhwyd.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/03/mgg-502-hwyd-dead-patients.html

Isaiah 38:15

What shall I say?  For He has spoken to me, and He Himself has done it; I will wander aimlessly all my years because of the bitterness of my soul.

Pedestrian-hostile

 

Not only is Port Alberni not pedestrian-friendly, but, at times, it seems to be actively pedestrian-hostile.  The other day I was walking down the street, because, as usual, there was no sidewalk.  I was walking towards the side of the road, but, I admit, not quite in the gutter.  A lady driving down the street not only did not drive around me, but actually turned the car to aim directly at me, apparently for the sole purpose of being able to jam on the brakes at the last minute and shake her head at me.

Micah 6:8

He hath shown thee, O man, what is good: and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly before thy God?

MGG - 5.00 - So, How Was *Your* Day At Work?/HWYD - interviews

So, how was *your* day at work?

Part of the impetus to try to produce this memoir is Gloria's death.  But part of it is the requests that I have had, over the years, to produce a memoir as one of the old guard in the security field.  As noted, I have trouble considering myself in any sense important that way, but I suppose, if I am supposed to be dispensing career advice, that I should talk about my jobs.

As I've said, I am from Vancouver.  That makes me a rarity in Vancouver.  On one of my job interviews, in order to make some small talk and make you feel at ease, the interviewers asked where are you from?  Vancouver, I said.  No, no, they said, where were you born?

Vancouver.

I should probably add some of my job interview stories here, because I've got a lot of them.  Having had so many different jobs, and having had jobs for such short periods, I have been through an awful lot of job interviews.  Most people do not know how to conduct job interviews.  I learned from the best: that's the Canadian federal government.  You have to write down the questions that you were going to ask, in advance, and include the answers that you expect, and what the answers would indicate, either positive or negative, about the candidate.  An awful lot of people think that it's overkill, but it's a really terrific system.  It's an awful lot better than the techniques used by an awful lot of human resources, and recruiter, specialists.  I have seen all the tricks, I have seen all the trends, I have seen all the processes that people think are shortcuts to hiring the right person.  There are no shortcuts.

I remember one job where it was important that I had first aid qualifications.  This was a group interview: I was facing fifteen interviewers.  One of them asked me what I would do if someone had suffered a serious burn.  So, in order to answer, I asked whether he was talking about first, second, or third degree burns, over what extent of the body.  I asked how long it would take an ambulance to get to the work site, I asked what the first aid supplies were at the work site, and a number of other factors.  I was only trying to clarify his question, in order to answer it appropriately.  However, after I had listed all of my questions, he sat there blinking for several seconds, and then said, "Well, I guess you know what you're talking about."  Obviously he didn't.

Another time I was applying for a system analyst position, and they asked me to take a computer knowledge test.  They put me in a room by myself, with paper and pencil, and then produced the question sheet.  It was photocopied from a computer magazine, and was simply a Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet trivia quiz.  I didn't even bother filling it out, I just left.

Then there was the time that I got to the interview, and was asked to wait.  While waiting I could hear some discussion going on, and because it was clear enough, and loud enough, I realized that they were discussing what questions they wanted to ask the candidates for my position.  You don't necessarily want the people that you are interviewing to overhear you discussing what questions you're going to ask them and what you expect to find out from those questions.

With all of this experience in being the interviewee, at one point I wrote a series of articles on how to hire technical people.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/03/mgg-46-atwt-teaching-on-six-continents.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/03/mgg-51-so-how-was-your-day-at-workhwyd.html

Proverbs 14:9

A fool is too arrogant to make amends; upright men know what reconciliation means.

Too busy?

I am busy.  I am *very* busy.  I have an awful lot on my calendar.  I have quite a number of volunteer activities.

I'm not just involved in the churches (good thing), but also with Community Policing, Emergency Support Services, the hospice society, the trail maintenance crew, the Sunshine Club (the "old folks" activities in town; I'm already on the Board), Lazy Ass Hikers, the Jesus Film Festival, Reconciliaction, and a variety of minor side projects, such as security seminars, arts walks/seminars, a speaker's bureau/club, a computer club, grief guys, an experimental CISSP seminar, grief bibliographies,  and writing sermons.

I am probably *too* busy. 

Part of the busy-ness is deliberate.  Part of the busyness is activities that are aspects of cognitive behavioural therapy for depression.  Being busy gets you up (as in, out of bed).  Being busy gets you out of the house.  Being busy forces, you to do something rather than Just simply lying in bed.  Being busy is also a distraction: you are not focused on how miserable and depressed you are.  So being busy is a good thing in terms of my depression and mental health.

Yes, being busy has its limits.  You can be *too* busy.  As Number One Daughter puts it, I am probably under "self-induced freneticism."

At the moment, it is a bit of a balancing act.  I am trying to keep busy enough to get out and get exercise because I walk everywhere and that makes the people at the mental health clinic happy.  But there's also the attempt to balance the necessary activity and distraction and keep it from overwhelming me so that I can't get some of the other stuff done.

I am behind in accounts, although only marginally.  I am not exactly behind in taxes, but I haven't yet had time to get all the bits and pieces together.  I am behind in transcribing some of the writing and pieces I am trying to produce.  I am trying to use time most effectively.  I am dictating this to "Live Transcribe" while I am walking to a Community Policing shift.  When I get to the Public Safety office, I will connect to their wifi, copy all of this text, stick it in an email, and send it to myself.  Later on, I will edit this, because "Live Transcribe" is *really* not all that great at ensuring that what gets said makes any sense, or has the right punctuation and capitalisation in it.  So, at some future date, I will need to find the time to pick up the message out of the email, and edit it for posting.  Sometime thereafter I'll stick it in the blog.

So, even this is keeping myself busy, to a certain extent.

But I've had an executive meeting with the Sunshine Club this morning, during which I was asked to make an appointment for my only free morning this week, in order to look at the Sunshine Club's backup system, which is apparently having some kind of problem.  I am, as mentioned, walking to my Community Policing shift.  I haven't finished editting a bunch of stuff that I dictated over the weekend.  And I have some other things to do, like fold the laundry that I washed on Saturday.  And, to take a look at my pile of mail and random papers that I just tend to throw on a corner of the desk, and haven't gotten to for a while.  (I suppose that's my in-basket.)  So I need to clean up my in-basket and make sure I'm not missing anything important, but I need to get the time for that.  Tomorrow I have the aforementioned meeting about the Sunshine Club backup system, then I have to go to the Public Safety office.  Not for another Community Policing shift, but to review, with the boss, the fraud and security presentation that he's going to be giving on Wednesday, and wants me there for backup.

A while after that there *is* a Community Policing shift.  And so it goes.  I don't have an awful lot of free space in my calendar right now.

I don't think that's a serious problem at the moment.  I don't think that I'm in danger of missing appointments, or missing doing things that I need to do.  But I am a little behind.  And I did promise the Lazy Ass Hikers group leader that I would suggest another art walk, since the first one was a success.  And I promised the Sunshine Club that I would send an announcement for the upcoming Super Sale in to the paper for the "What's On" column.  So, I need to work on that as well.

Some of the things that I have booked into my calendar I have booked in to reserve that time and make sure I don't book something else on top of it.  But those events may not happen.  For example, later, in the week, I've got another couple of community policing shifts on Friday and Saturday.  At the moment, nobody else has signed up for those shifts, and we never go out alone.  The one on Friday we could cover if anybody else signed up, since we'd be covered by someone in the office.  The one on Saturday, however, will only go ahead if a Captain with a key for the building and a code or the alarm system signs up, and if we have a minimum of four people in total.  So either of those shifts could fail to happen.  If they fail to happen, then I've got more time to work on some of the leftover work that is sitting in my email.

I've also booked two spots on Thursday and Friday mornings, because Thursday and Friday mornings tend to be the time that the trail maintenance crew goes out.  Although last week the long range forecast indicated that Thursday and Friday would be sunny this week, a more recent forecast has indicated rain, in which case we wouldn't be going out.  So, again, those might be open times that I can use to work on some of this stuff sitting waiting patiently in my email.

So, as I say, I'm not quite panicked about not getting things done.  But I am realising that some things are being delayed and I'm wondering if I should leave more spaces, open in the week, for getting work done.

But, as I say, it's a balancing act.

If I leave too many open spaces, then I have blocks of time with nothing to do.  But "nothing to do" is a flexible concept.  I should probably watch some of the movies that I have been recording off the television channels that are part of my communications package (but which I very seldom watch).  I've got quite a few movies in there.  And I'm sure that there's a week's worth of watching time.  So maybe I should back off and open some more gaps in my calendar, knowing that, even if I don't have work to do, I can sit in front of the TV.  Which I tend to reserve for the evenings when I'm tired anyways.  But there's no reason that I couldn't watch TV during the day.  After all, the shows are recorded and I can watch them anytime I want. 

It's a concern, and I'm gonna have to work on my time management.  But not in the way most people think of it.

I've also got to find time to shop tomorrow in order to get a really good deal on a bag of apples, and to get a bag of carrots which are on sale this week ...

Psalm 31:10

My life is ending,

sadness, crying, my troubles

use up my bones' strength.

MGG - 4.6 - ATWT - teaching on six continents

Shortly after this particular point, about the time that Gloria and I got married (and I'll tell you that story later as well), I noticed, on the Internet, some discussion of some new programs that were being called computer viruses.  I got very interested in them.  I didn't know you could make an operating system do that!  I started collecting all the messages that I could find about these computer viruses.  Eventually, on one of the discussion groups, somebody recalled a particular message that spoke about a particular topic about which we he was particularly interested.  Did anyone happen to keep a copy?  As it happened, I had seen it and I had kept a copy.  As well as sending him a copy of the message, I let it be known that I was keeping copies of this traffic and this subject.  Immediately I began to receive requests to make this material available . I did not have an FTP site available to me.  The World Wide Web had not yet been invented (that wouldn't happen for another four years).  I couldn't afford the time that it would take, at the low modem speed which is all I could afford at the time, to upload these messages and email them to the people who wanted them.  Various people made suggestions and we fell back on the postal mail system.  If people wanted copies of the material, they could send me a sufficient number of floppy disks, a return mailer, and an international postal money order for the amount of the postage to send it back to them.  I copied the material onto the discs, headed out to the post office, and sent it back to them.  This went on for some years.

I did, shortly after I started researching computer viruses, see a message doing the rounds.  It was from a group of people who wanted to create an exam.  This exam was to assess those who claimed they knew what they were talking about when they were talking about security.  The test would attempt to examine their knowledge, their background, their experience, their judgment, their critical thinking, in regard to information security.

As noted, although I was interested in this project (*very* interested), I had been made aware that many people thought that computer viral programs were not part of security.  In fact, when I proposed, to one security conference, that I give a presentation on computer viral programs, I was told, flat out, that that was of no interest to the conference and the attendees.  When I questioned this, I was told that computer viruses did not affect mainframe computers.  (Obviously, at this point, the organizers of the conference felt that only mainframe computers were important, despite the fact that increasing numbers of users were accessing the mainframes via personal computers and microcomputers, and microcomputers allowed them to do things that they couldn't get done on the mainframe.)  I challenged this assertion.  I quoted chapter and verse, on a number of computer viral programs that had, in fact, been used on, and penetrated, mainframe computers.  There was rather along silence on the phone.  However, the conference organizer then reiterated his position that a presentation on computer viruses was of no interest to the conference.

So, having it well and truly demonstrated that I was not welcome in the camps of information security, I did not, in fact, submit any material to the people sending out these emails.  They went on to create (ISC)^2 and the CISSP, and I went on to do other things.

I did a lot of data communications consulting.  I did a lot of management consulting.  I did a lot of security consulting.  In fact, eventually, I did so much security consulting, that I felt that I should sit this exam, to see if, in fact, I did know what I was talking about when I was talking about security.  (I should also note that, by this time, I had done an awful lot of reviewing of information security books.  This was because of DECUS Canada, and the fact that I was producing a newsletter, for the security special interest group.  When I asked what people wanted to see in the newsletter, everybody replied book reviews.  I couldn't find any, so I did my own.  DECUS Canada was very helpful in this regard.)

I studied, terrified, because I had relatively little mainframe experience.  I remembered that earlier conference.  I studied as much as I could.  Obviously I wasn't studying the right stuff, because everything I studied was familiar to me.  I was absolutely certain that I was not going to fail the exam.

On the day of the exam, I found the exam rather easy.  If these were the questions I was being marked on, I was pretty sure I was going to pass.  The only question was, would I make a high enough mark to impress the senior instructor, who had the power to allow me to become an instructor for the CISSP seminars.

It turns out that researching computer viruses gives you a very solid grounding in all of the domains of information security.  I had it down cold.  It probably didn't hurt that the books that were used to formulate, and verify, the questions on the exam, we're almost all books that I had reviewed.  (Two of them were books I had *written*.)  I knew all of this material.  I passed the exam.  And I passed the exam with a high enough mark (nobody is ever actually told what their mark is: the CISSP is a criterion based exam) that the senior instructor did allow me into the instructor corps.

Now remember, if I hadn't gotten fired, I wouldn't have gone back to Vancouver, and gone to UTAC.  If I hadn't gone to UTAC, I wouldn't have started doing computer seminars for the unemployed teachers.  If I hadn't started doing computer seminars for UTAC, I wouldn't have gotten computer accounts at UBC and SFU, on their computers that were connected to the Internet.  If I hadn't been on the Internet, I wouldn't have started doing research into computer viral programs.  If I hadn't been doing research into computer viral programs, I probably wouldn't have been as interested in security, and I probably wouldn't have volunteered for the newsletter for the security special interest group, and therefore started reviewing a whole bunch of security books.  All of that, because I got fired from teaching.

Anyway, I was in the (ISC)^2 CISSP instructor corps.  And, of course, there weren't many CISSP seminars being given in Vancouver.  (Still aren't, for that matter.)  So, I was teaching in the States.  And in Britain.  And in Lagos, Nigeria.  (Twice. I think they were trying to kill me.)  And even sometimes in Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, Regina, and Calgary.  Eventually I taught the seminar on six continents.

Now, this took time.  It wasn't too long after I got fired, that I got on to the Internet.  But it was probably another four years before I started to see postings about computer viruses, and started researching them.  When I started researching them, it was a while before I started doing information security consulting.  And it was thirteen years after I started researching viruses, before I took the CISSP exam.  It was fairly soon after I took the exam that I started facilitating the seminars.  But it was a while before I started teaching them all over the world.  And it wasn't until I started explaining to people that I had taught on six continents, that I realized what had happened.  I got fired from teaching, so I got to teach on six continents.  All over the world.  In one of the most interesting subjects that I know.

I got fired from teaching in a small town, so I have had an absolutely wonderful time teaching.  Everywhere.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/03/mgg-45-atwt-data-communications.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/03/mgg-500-so-how-was-your-day-at-workhwyd.html

Job 6:14,15,17

Anyone who withholds kindness from a friend

    forsakes the fear of the Almighty.

But my brothers are as undependable as intermittent streams,

    as the streams that overflow

[...]

but that stop flowing in the dry season,

    and in the heat vanish from their channels.

Health care in Port Alberni

I went to my doctor a couple of weeks ago to get some prescriptions renewed.  I went to the pharmacy to get the pills.  The cholesterol medication and the stomach medication had been filled, but not the blood pressure medication.

So, I contacted the doctor's office.  The receptionist said that the blood pressure medication had been renewed.  It was, in fact, faxed over to the pharmacy on the same sheet with the other medications.  So I'm heading back to the pharmacy, in high dudgeon.  Which has raised my blood pressure.

These guys are going to be the death of me.

Oh ... wait ...

Joel 2:25

I will restore to you the years that the locusts have eaten

MGG - 4.5 - ATWT - data communications

I'm going to skip ahead a bit, here, and tell you about my Masters program elsewhere.

I got a job with the Government Telecommunications Agency.  The GTA, up until I got there, had been consisting of advisors who knew telephony, and likely radio communications.  About the time that I got there, the GTA started offering its clients, offices, and agencies in the federal government, email services.  The GTA did not provide these services, they just resold them, or bundled them, and had the telecommunications providers provide them to government clients.

Therefore, questions began to come in about data services.  And anytime anyone mentioned data, the response was "Just a minute. Rob!"

The GTA sent me on a data communications course.  I learned a lot from it.  Nothing about the Internet of course: the communications course was taught by somebody who was an old IBM hand.  We learned lots about the different IBM communications protocols.  There was mention of this new system called Open Systems Interconnection, or OSI.  But there weren't a lot of details, and there were no details on this thing called TCP/IP.

My data communications, and online, seminars, got bigger and more detailed.  I didn't teach the IBM communications protocols, but I did push the idea of this new concept, called packet switching.  I pointed out that packet switching allowed unimaginably expanded efficiencies in comparison to bullet board systems, online downloading, and telephony.

(I frequently said that when you got your bill from BC Tel, as it then was, 50% of the money that you were paying BC Tel did not go to providing communications services, but to actually generating that bill.  In one such seminar someone stood up at the back and called out that he worked for BC Tel and that I had the number incorrect.  I thanked him and said that he knew more about it than I did so what was the real number? 90%)

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/03/mgg-44-atwt-internet-although-it-wasnt.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/03/mgg-46-atwt-teaching-on-six-continents.html

Ephesians 2:10

Now we can do good.

Long ago God prepared these 

works for us to do.

The OCP and Unintended Benefits

Today I have been to the Community Representative Team, for the Official Community Plan.  Or, the CRT for the OCP.  (We political types love acronyms, because it makes it so much harder for anybody else to understand what we're talking about.  Or doing.)

An official community plan is a fairly complex animal.  We have to consider the effects of climate change, because of legislation mandated by the provincial government.  But, of course, there is a reason for it, aside from just, "because we have to."  It does help you to plan for the future, for the growth of the town, and plan the best way to deal with that growth without generating too much greenhouse gas.

It's complicated task.  You have to consider a variety of factors.  You have to talk about growth, and make costs reasonable enough so that new businesses will want to invest in your town.  At the same time, you need to have enough tax base to pay for amenities that will attract people, so that the businesses will have a base to which to market.

And there are a number of factors that you need to consider.  You need to consider the infrastructural needs of various businesses.  You need to consider the infrastructural needs of businesses which you want to preferentially attract.  And, in connection with greenhouse gas emissions, you have to balance the desire for individual homes, and the costs of providing housing, with the energy costs of various types of housing, and the transportation costs of people getting around.

A factor in town design is for a social community plan emphasizing multifamily, or multi-unit, dwellings, rather than single houses.  And provision of amenities, and services, in those denser areas, so that the people who live there do not need to drive to get groceries, or a cup of coffee from a coffee shop.

One of the topics was concerning the factor of safety of the population.  You want to have enough housing that the homeless are not seen as a threat.  But, of course, being housed has a cost.  And safety from strangers is not the only issue of safety that is of concern to people who may wish to move to your town.  There is also the issue of safety in regard to the availability of medical services.  We, like many other areas, have an aging demographic, as well as finding it difficult to compete in attracting medical personnel.  And the fact that one of the major problems that society needs to address right now, as well as climate change, is that of the obesity crisis. Far too many people carry far too much weight, and therefore have problems with medical conditions such as heart problems high blood pressure or diabetes.

I must admit that I have both high blood pressure and diabetes.  And I am overweight.  Mind you, I am not as overweight as I used to be.  I was on three blood pressure medications, and three diabetes medications.  I am now off all of the diabetes medications, and have only one blood pressure medication that I'm still taking.  I have lost a lot of weight.  How?

Walking.  Well, and some fairly drastic dieting, but the walking helped an awful lot.  And I'm certain that the weight loss alone was not enough to make the changes that and improvements in my health that have happened.

With regard to walking, I am the only pedestrian in Port Alberni.  Pretty much everybody else drives everywhere in the city.  Even though Port Alberni is a very small town.  (I'm not talking about population: I'm talking about size.  Physical size.  The extent of the town site.  I consider anything within Port Alberni to be with him walking distance.)

I would say that the answer to a lot of this stuff is to get people walking, and out of their cars.  

So, I have a suggestion.  Fix the sidewalks.  Most of the sidewalks here in Port Alberni are older than I am, and broken.  For people of my age it's dangerous to walk on the sidewalks, particularly with the aversion to street lights that Port Alberni seems to have.

Port Alberni also has installed wheelchair ramps, but without much thought.  Most of them seem to be much later additions to Port Alberni's very wide streets, and placement is not very useful.  The snow is not plowed around any of the wheelchair ramps, and, in fact, the unplowed areas of the streets extend quite a ways from the sidewalks.  So, even if anybody shovels their sidewalk, it's impossible to get from the sidewalk across an intersection: you have very wide swaths of snow, probably piled up snow because of the plowing of the driving lanes.

And the sidewalks, well, nobody has made any provision for the fact that it rains here in Port Alberni.  There are two sidewalks along major thoroughfares that are completely impassable for most of the winter, because water from surrounding fields flows over them, and no provision has ever been made to provide for drainage.  Some of the puddles get quite deep.  It is not a pedestrian friendly city.

But it could be.  And encouraging people to walk, by making the sidewalks more useful, would address both the issues of greenhouse gas emissions, from the huge pickup trucks that everybody seems to favor driving around here, and the obesity crisis, and general fitness and levels of activity.

I'm not going to say that fixing the sidewalks would solve all of the problems.  But it would address some.  And, isn't it better to kill two birds with one stone?

The same is true for us in security.  We always have to look at cost benefit analysis. 

We need to get the best and most benefit, out of using our finances and resources, by directing them to best effect.  We need to look at all the consequences.  Sometimes we think we're providing a benefit, and the unintended consequences become a problem.  But sometimes, if we put a bit of thought into it, the attempted benefit can address a number of different areas.  It's worthwhile attempting to ensure that that is so.

Isaiah 1:17

Learn to do good! Seek justice, relieve the oppressed, defend orphans, plead for the widow.

MGG - 4.4 - ATWT - the Internet (although it wasn't called that, yet ...)

There was, at that time, a group called the BC Computer Education Committee.  This was a group made up of representatives from the various universities and colleges in British Columbia.  All those attending had an interest in computers in education: either teaching about computers, or teaching with computers, using computers to teach other subjects.  The BCCEC offered the BCTF a spot on the committee.  The BCTF didn't know anything about computers and education.  But they did know that somewhere in the basement, with UTAC, somebody was teaching computer seminars.  So the BCTF offered UTAC the spot.  And UTAC offered it to me.

I very much enjoyed my time with the BC Computer Education Committee.  I learned a lot.  I might have contributed the occasional thing.  But one thing that it did for me, was that it gave me an account on the UBC mainframe computer, and later on the SFU mainframe computer.  Both of these computers were connected to the Internet, even though they weren't calling it the Internet at this point.  I got on to the Internet, before it was called the Internet, when they were only about a thousand people there.

But a thousand people from all over the world.  People who were studying very important and interesting subjects.  People who were quite willing to assist an unregarded, fired teacher, from a backwater on the west coast of North America, to find out how to use the various functions, and which sites were the most valuable in terms of obtaining resources.

I was immediately hooked.  I loved the Internet, even before it was called that, and I love it still.  I love it so much that it causes me almost physical pain when I find out that someone has been abusing the Internet in such a way as to damage it, and to create problems for its users.  For me, the Internet was very close to Utopia.

I took every opportunity that I could to get on to my accounts at the universities, and to explore the Internet.  I also started to explore bulletin board systems, available locally.  Fidonet, the system that tied bulletin board systems together, also had some email connections to the greater Internet.  I contributed to this in some small measure, by downloading some of the moderated mailing lists from the internet, and uploading them to local Fidonet-connected bulletin boards.  Those bulletin boards were then able to distribute those pieces of information, as text files, two other Fidonet systems.

Remember, I wouldn't have gone to UTAC, if I hadn't been fired from teaching.  If I hadn't been volunteering, and teaching seminars, at UTAC, I wouldn't have been offered the seat on the BC Computer Education Committee.  And I wouldn't have gotten on to the Internet, at least, not that early.

I started giving other seminars.  At computer trade shows, and user group meetings, I gave seminars on getting online.  I spoke about Fidonet, bulletin board systems, and the Internet.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/03/mgg-43-atwt-volunteering.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/03/mgg-45-atwt-data-communications.html

Proverbs 13:12

Hope delayed makes the heart sick; longing fulfilled is a tree of life.

Review of Staples and ASUS laptop

I bought a new ASUS ExpertBook B5 (B5404) computer from Staples.  I was told that I would not regret buying from Staples, since Staples was a very large company and stood behind, and supported, the products they sold.

Yeah, right.

I deeply regret buying from Staples. 

As soon as I got the laptop, I started to notice difficulties with regard to charging and/or the battery.  The battery, even in "hibernate" mode, would not hold a charge for long.  It seemed to drop very precipitously, and from a full charge within three or four days the battery would be completely dead.

This was not the only problem as when the battery was drained, the charger, when plugged in, on occasion would not start the computer and would not charge the battery.  However, this didn't always happen.  So, it was a sporadic problem, and intermittent faults are always the most troublesome to determine.

I took the laptop back to Staples. 

They plugged it in.  And it worked.  So they saw no problem.

So I took it home again. 

I continued to work with it, as I could.  It works well enough as a computer.  But lack of holding of a charge on the battery and seemingly faulty indicators of how much the battery had charged (and how much time was left on it) continued.  I reported the problems to Staples via their online review system.  Twice.  Both times they responded, but neither time did they specifically address any of the issues. 

So, a couple of weeks later, I took the computer back to Staples.  I took it to the problem desk, and someone had a look at it.  He looked at the status reports contained on the computer, in regard to the battery and power.  It was interesting to note that the history that was displayed to him was not consistent with the status as reported to me earlier. 

He took no other actions.  He suggested no other actions.  He said that as far as he was concerned, it was working.

So I'm stuck with a laptop with some kind of intermittent problem in it, which no one seems willing to address.

I regret buying anything from Staples, and I certainly can't recommend Staples.  I've had laptops built by ASUS before and I haven't had particular problems with them.  This particular one seems to be a lemon.  And nobody seems to be willing to fix it, or, indeed, even to look at what the possible problem might be.  It seems like a one-off situation but it certainly does not recommend ASUS as a manufacturer.

As I have mentioned before, do not annoy grieving widowers.  They are already angry at the world, and, if you give them a motivation to be angry with you, specifically, they have an awful lot of time to inventory, in detail, all the failures of your customer service.

A response from Staples:

> We do apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Oh, really?

> Please reach out to our technical support services at 1 (877) 258-0369 for further assistance.

Why would I waste more time on your technical support, when it has been so abysmal so far?

> For the inconvenience caused, we would like to offer you 10% off on your next online order, with total credit not exceeding $200.

Why would I order anything else from you, when this order has been so fraught?

Further:

Staples head office didn't like the fact that I posted a not-terribly-flattering review on them.  So they asked me to send them my phone number.  Which I did.  I gave them my home number and my cell number.

Somebody from the local Staples store phoned me.  Didn't get me, of course.  Beyond his name (first name only), he wasn't very informative.  He didn't say anything about what Staples could or would do, or if they wanted me to do something, other than come back to the store.  Which would make for the third time.  And there was no promise that the third time would yield any better results than the first two.

He left this message on my voicemail, as he had called when I was out.  He said to call back.  He didn't even leave the store's number.

When I did call back (having looked up the store's phone number), the person that I was able to talk to had absolutely no idea what the issue was about (and, quite obviously, neither did he care).

I left them my email address for further communication.  So far I haven't heard anything back from them.

Eventually, the computer simply stopped working, and made a perfect emulation of a brick.  So, I took it back to the store.

They plugged it in, and it worked perfectly.  I have no idea why.  *They* have no idea why.  They tried to blame it on the power at my house.

They finally agreed to give me “store credit” on a replacement laptop.  They didn’t, of course, have the one that I originally bought, so they sold me a more expensive model.

At the moment I am trying to migrate from another ASUS laptop that I have, and the ASUS Switch program seems to be doing absolutely nothing ...

Psalm 22:2

My God, I call out by day, but you do not answer. I call out by night, but there is no relief for me.

MGG - 4.3 - ATWT - volunteering

By this time, the teachers union, the BC Teachers Federation, had realized that a number of teachers were likely going to lose their jobs.  (They probably still didn't realize how many.)  The BCTF had created the Unemployed Teachers Action Centre, or UTAC. I went to UTAC.  I took them up on various aspects of getting another job, such as having a resume counselor look at your resume. (He told me that my two resumes were each about 98% correct.  I asked how to make them 100% correct. He said that wasn't possible: after a while you reach a point of delivering diminishing returns, when changing one thing to make an improvement means reducing the attractiveness of something else.)

I also volunteered.  I have always volunteered, since at least my early teen years, and probably since childhood.  It was something that my parents modeled, in terms of volunteering for church work.  I just extended it.

In terms of career advice, I give you volunteering.  As you will frequently be told, in career counseling workshops and seminars, you will never be paid for everything that you do.  A corollary is that you will be paid for a lot of things that you don't do, or at least that you don't put an awful lot of work into.

Volunteering comes under the category of not being paid for things that you do.  But volunteering can pay off.  Not all of it, of course.  And you won't know what the important things are until possibly well down the road.  Volunteering gives you experience.  Real world experience in real world situations.  You get to do things that you wouldn't be allowed to do in an ordinary job; or, at least, you would be directed and supervised in a regular job, and you wouldn't necessarily be allowed to try certain things.  So, yes, you get experience.  In addition, you make contacts.  Real world contacts.  Not necessarily ones that will be immediately profitable in your next job, but you will make contacts, and these contacts may be far higher up the career food chain then you would be allowed to create in a regular job.  In a regular job your boss, and his boss, want to keep you from the people at the top.  After all, they are protecting their jobs.  From you.  They don't want you making contacts with the C-suite.  But when volunteering, that doesn't really apply.  Your immediate supervisor, in a volunteer position, probably is completely outside of your career path.  They don't care who you talk to.  They aren't threatened by who you make contact with.  They have different concerns, mostly to do with the pecking order, and food chain, of the volunteer organization itself.  But you may actually be working with people who have C-suite positions, in your own career path.  So, make those contacts.  Work with those people.  Do good work.  Show what you can do.  Those people may not be hiring right now, and they may never hire you for the companies in which they are currently working.  But sometime in your career path you may both be working for the same company.  If you show them diligence, hard work, and creativity, and what you do with the volunteer organization right now, they will remember.

As I say, you may never encounter them again.  But take every opportunity.  Always do your best work.  Always be aware that you never have a second chance to make a first impression.  The contacts that you make now may come back to assist you at some later point in your career.  And, if you do a bad job (or nothing), that bad job may come back to bite you later in your career.

I highly recommend volunteering as a career strategy.  You get to actually do something useful, which is helpful for your own mental balance.  You learn new things, and get to do a lot of things which they don't let you practice in real employment.  You make contacts.  Volunteering is about helping others, yes, but you always get a lot out of it yourself.

Since I was already interested in computers in education, I had been studying what computers could, in fact, do for you.  Therefore, I was well versed in the general functions of computers, and had learned not only programming, but word processing (with a variety of different word processors), spreadsheets, and databases.  I prepared a workshop to give to unemployed teachers, so that they would be able to use these computer skills in finding other jobs.  I gave this workshop very frequently.  I modified it, and gave it for other groups as well.  I gave it regularly for UTAC, and met a number of teachers, from different school districts, and different situations, who had been fired.  One of them was one of my former colleagues from Kitimat.  We caught up on what had been happening in Kitimat.  He said that nobody had cared very much when I got fired.  They didn't realize that it was only the beginning.  They didn't realize how many of them we're under threat.  He apologized that they hadn't done more for me right at the beginning.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/03/mgg-42-all-things-work-together-atwt.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/03/mgg-44-atwt-internet-although-it-wasnt.html

Ezekiel 34:4

You don’t strengthen the weak, heal the sick, bind up the injured, bring back the strays, or seek out the lost; but instead you use force to rule them with injustice.

Review of "Live Transcribe and Notifications"

I have been experimenting with different speech recognition and dictation systems.  At one point I reviewed a Dragon dictation system.  More recently a friend recommended Otter.  I found Otter to be quite accurate, but the free version was too annoying to use for anything in particular.  It certainly wasn't useful for dictation.  I have used and reviewed Gboard.  It is not particularly accurate, and I definitely have to do an awful lot of editing once I have done the dictation.  But I have found it useful for doing dictation and the results have been worth the effort.

A limitation with both Otter and Gboard is that you have to be connected to the host company's servers, generally through the Internet.  Both systems have a simple front end interface, but all of the processing for speech recognition and transcribing is done at the back end.  That's where the heavy processing happens.  And so you need the connection. 

Now I have purchased a new phone, and it came with "Live Transcribe and Notifications," so I have a new system to try out.  And it promises that you can do dictation offline.  So I'm giving it a try.

In my first (offline) trial, I have found that it is not particularly smart, nor is it particularly accurate.  "And it has an annoying habit of Ending a sentence With a period. Whenever you Pause In the dictation, You have to keep speaking at a normal Rate And you cannot pause In order to get a An accurate result. The. Fragments I've sentences that it will take down And turn into text. May give you And idea of what you were talking about."  Actually, the more annoying part is that, even if it doesn't throw in a period, it will capitalize a word, as if you were *starting* a new sentence.  You have to do an awful lot of editing to "decapitalize" a lot of words in the text.

I will have to give it a try in terms of how much editing I need to do, and how much work is necessary to turn the transcribed material into useful text.  However, that shouldn't be a particularly unworkable problem, since you can, of course, just simply dictate multiple times or make additional statements, or say additional words in order to clarify what you were talking about if it gets anything wrong.  It does frequently make mistakes in taking down the words.  Often the words that you said will appear on the screen.  But, if you pause, it will decide that it was mistaken, and it may change the (correct) word to something else.  So having been an accurate transcription in the first place, it sometimes corrects itself and introduces a new error.  It's an interesting result. 

My little brother has recently asked about transcription services.  The enterprise that he works for is very concerned about security.  They have been using Zoom, and using the Zoom transcription service.  However, they have become concerned about the fact that the transcription service, operated by, and on, the Zoom platform, means that Zoom has access to the contents of their conversations and meetings.  (Personally, I think that Zoom's promotion of end-to-end encryption on the system is unlikely.  I strongly suspect that their encryption is only link encryption between Zoom and the individual users.  So I suspect that Zoom *does* have access to conversations and meetings held on Zoom, regardless of whether you use the transcription service or not.)  So they're looking at different options for transcribing, their meetings, and my little brother asked me for recommendations in this regard.  This particular program does seem suitable.  The offline transcription does Have some problems with accuracy.  But this transcription app does seem to be designed for meetings and for multiple speakers.  (And even background sounds.  That's what the "Notifications" part of the title is about.  It gives you notifications of sounds of birds, traffic, wind, and so forth.)  It is quite possible that this particular app could be something that they will want to use in this regard. 

Job 5:7

but man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.

MGG - 4.2 - All Things Work Together ATWT - why fired?

My firing was rather interesting.  I was interrupted during the teaching day by the principal and vice principal, and told that I was being fired, and that the vice principal would be taking over my class that day.  Because I had been interrupted during teaching, and hauled out into the hallway for this interview, while the interview was going on my class got rather noisy.  So I interrupted the interview, stepped back into the class, and told them to be quiet, which they did.  The principal told me that my classroom management had never been in question.  This is an interesting comment since, whatever lofty statements anybody may make about the requirement of the educational system to alleviate ignorance, what is really important, in any assessment of any teacher, is primarily classroom management.

The next day I had the more formal interview with the Director of Instruction.  He made the point that I really wasn't a bad teacher, and this was not necessarily the end of my career, and that if I should, at any time, take additional training, to let the school district know, and my reference from them would be amended to reflect the fact.  This is interesting on two counts.  On the one hand it does indicate that both the administration, and the school district, realized that my firing was not really for cause.  I was being offered a sop to get me to go quietly.  At the same time, it was a complete fabrication.  I did take subsequent educational training; I got my master's degree; and informed the school district of this fact.  There was absolutely no response from the school district and my assessment remained unchanged.

It's fairly easy to create a situation where a teacher will fail, and you *have* to fire him or her.  I don't need to go through the details.

Oddly, although I had been under enormous stress, and had been put on lithium for depression, my immediate reaction was one of overwhelming relief.  The nightmare was over.  I didn't have to suffer this torture anymore.  I packed up and left.

I still didn't think that I was finished with teaching in public school.  I already had a plan to go and take my master's degree.  I, probably foolishly, and naively, believed them about getting more training, and having my teaching report amended.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/03/mgg-41-all-things-work-together-atwt.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/03/mgg-43-atwt-volunteering.html

Ecclesiastes 1:18

The more you know, the more you hurt; the more you understand, the more you suffer.

MGG - 2.4a - Teaching - spelling

I should probably, at this point, note that it was actually Gloria who identified what was the high point of my educational career.

It happened in the same year as, and actually must have been only days before, I got fired.  I suppose I need to start by talking about English.

I hate English.  Not the English language; I love the English language.  How can you not love a language that has a vocabulary so much greater than any other?  The ability to delineate shades and variations of meaning has no comparison in any other language.  I even love the fact that English is a difficult language to learn, and to spell, because it is a bastard hybridization of a variety of other languages.  And if English doesn't have a word for it, we will steal one, or make one up.  I love English, I love tracing some of the origins of English words, I love knowing the Latin and Greek roots of English terms, I love the subtle variations, and the ability to make puns in English.  I love English, and Gloria loved English just as much as I do: possibly even more.

But I hate the way that English is taught.  I have hated every English course I ever took.  It didn't matter what it was called: language, spelling, writing, creative writing, humanities, English.  Whatever it was called, I hated it.  It was taught in such a subjective and superficial manner.  I hated every English course there was in primary school, I hated every English course there was in the elementary grades, I hated every English course in high school.  I hated English 101, which was the last English course that I was required to take in university.  I hated them all.

So, I suppose that it's a little bit ironic that I turned out to be a writer.

In any case while, I was an elementary school teacher I had to teach English.  I had to teach the various parts of English.  I had to teach spelling.

Despite my hatred of the English courses that I had been forced to take, and possibly even because of that hatred, I don't think that I did a bad job in the courses that I had to teach.  I always made sure that any assignments had very objective marking and fulfillment criteria.  This was not hard to accomplish in the area of spelling.  After all, you had a list of words, and there were certain ways that those words were correctly spelled, and of course the variety of ways that they could be incorrectly spelled.  We went through drills, we went through practices, we went through various rules that might help in ensuring that one could spell English words correctly, and knew how English words were traditionally spelled, and any rules that might assist in understanding how the words were to be correctly spelled, and then we had a test every Friday.  There was a speller; a book listing words appropriate to the grade level of the students being taught.  Spelling was not difficult to teach.  And spelling was not difficult to mark: we had the test every Friday and students generally marked each other's work.  I had a chart, pinned to a cork board on the wall, and recorded the marks that everybody got each week.  Anybody who got 100% got a star, instead of just the number.

Week by week the number of stars increased.  Not just the total number but the number recorded in each week.  As the year went on, students studied harder and harder to ensure that they would pass the spelling test on Friday and that they would get a star.  The columns of the grid got more and more stars on them as the weeks went by.  Eventually there were more stars than numbers being recorded.  Eventually, around about February or March, everybody had had a star, and was regularly getting stars on the weekly spelling test.  All except two.

Eventually it was happening that 100% spelling tests on the Friday was the norm.  Except for two students.  And an interesting thing happened in the class.  The students took it upon themselves to help their two fellows.  There were apparently homework sessions that were being held outside of class time.  Students who were good at spelling were drilling these two students who still had not been able to achieve 100% spelling tests during the year.  During the in-class practice time students would surround these two desks and give tips and pointers and drill these two students, helping them to improve their spelling.  And then it was down to one.

That last week, with one student yet to get a perfect score in spelling, the entire class rallied around him.  In spare moments they quizzed him on spelling.  As previously, they did homework with him, practicing spelling, outside of school hours.  And, on Friday, when we marked the tests, you could feel the tension in the class as student after student recorded 100% correct spelling test scores.  Including that one last student.

As it happens, he was the smallest student in the class.  I broke the cardinal rule of modern-day teaching: don't touch the students!  I picked him up, gave him the star, lifted him up, and let him put it on the board himself.  The entire class cheered.

Ecclesiastes 1:2

Meaningless! Everything is meaningless! says the Teacher.  Everything is completely meaningless!  Nothing has any meaning.

Meaningless!  All is

meaningless!  Completely void

of any meaning.

Reconciliaction

The Reconciliaction meetings are always a privilege to go to.  I keep on using the word privilege, and I may be overusing that word, but I can't think of another.

The Reconciliaction meetings are, as far as I have been able to determine, unique.  At least in Canada.

Reconciliaction is a safe space.  This is absolutely true.  The material that is presented here is very personal, and it's must be difficult for those who present their stories to do so.  This is especially important in view of the number of people who talk about safe spaces, these days, but don't provide them.  I am thinking particularly one of the stories today told of gossip about a situation, and also remembering a situation this past week where someone stressed the importance of a particular situation being a "safe space," while simultaneously demonstrating that that particular situation was not safe at all, and that sharing of any kind of personal information could be very problematic.

The Reconciliaction people also mention about it being a sacred space.  It is a sacred space.  It is made sacred by the offerings of those who offer, well, themselves.  Their own very deeply personal and vulnerable stories.  It is sacred, and is kept sacred by the fact that those who participate realize the sacredness, and the importance of maintaining the safety, of the space.

Reconciliaction has recently implemented the Nuu-chah-nulth cultural concept of "Witness."  This is not different than a "settler" concept, but is more extended.  As a teacher, I appreciate the strength of the concept.  It is also interesting to note that the Biblical concept of "witness" and testimony is much stronger than ours, and is closer to the Nuu-chah-nulth idea.  I was hesitant to accept the honour of being a witness.  I do not feel particularly able in this regard, and the responsibility of being a witness, the concept of being a witness, is one that I take seriously.

We have heard today of the particular difficulties of specific situations that haven't been very often mentioned.  As one participant mentioned, it takes time to build the trust necessary to reveal the deepest, and most sensitive parts of our lives.

In addition, we have heard of the particular difficulties of those who have been abused by their fellow survivors, and those they should have been able to trust.  We have also heard of the different types of grief, and this is very important to talk about in our grief-illiterate society.

There was also mention of the importance of our descendants, and the changes that they make in their lives simply by their existence.

I would also like to mention one thing that touched me today, and that was a mention of the word "asylum."  This particular mention noted that asylum has many negative connotations.  This addresses the fact that our own thoughtlessness, and cruelty, has implications for our entire society, and may create many problems for our entire society.  It is important to reflect on how our lack of thought for how our actions, beliefs, and policies may affect others.  This is particularly poignant because the word "asylum" originally meant a safe space.

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/03/reconciliaction.html

https://www.facebook.com/rslade/posts/pfbid0zbwzVd4qz3fnkPHAUJ3Gf1AuzB1ADnJ1XghH5es4Hkp3AXD28TrnJQ7jJnm6r3fwl