moya never brings the business bro a problem without a solution

One of the stupidest managerial truisms is “don’t bring me a problem without a solution”. The only thing this will lead to is problems being swept under the rug. If your organization has ten problems and your team can only come up with five solutions, would you prefer to hear about all ten problems or just the five that the team can solve?

I’d rather solve some problems and know there is work to do rather than live in blissful ignorance and suddenly get blindsided by an ‘unknown’ problem but, hey, some have called me crazy before so who knows, maybe I’m wrong about this one, too. (And this doesn't even get to the possibility that you might be able to solve one or two of those unsolvable issues yourself, hotshot manager...)

Of course, there are some areas where this idea should probably be the standard. I think my computer’s spelling and grammar check is one example. Sometimes, I write a word or phrase and that stupid squiggly line appears underneath it. I click on it and get…

Nothing!

No suggestions, no improvements, no help of any kind, just a big red or green mess underlining My Best Effort, a taunt, thumbing its nose at me, pointing out that it’s so incorrect, an example of such blatantly and hopelessly butchered English, that there is no way to fix it, no way this computer, this powerful machine, which has enough processing power to play the entire Joshua Tree album at 2x speed, over and over again, shuffling the order each time, until my neighbor knocks on my door at 3AM and tells me to shut up, he hates U2, no way this computer is able to come up with one suggestion for how to fix my spelling or grammar error, one little idea to add an ‘e’ or a silent ‘c’, to maybe reverse the fragment, possibly, did Moya go through this, did his entire work get underlined, as he went on and on, writing his life sentence, serving his life sentence, trying to cram his entire thought into one expression, without breaking the rules of grammar, the rules that must be known to identify a broken example, for how can spell check know it is wrong just because it isn’t right, what if it is a new idea, a new construction, to rise up in the next dictionary like the newest skyscraper, like the high-rise that blocks the sun, who does this computer think it is, to tell a creator that he is wrong, to draw a line on the horizon and say stop, there should be no line on the horizon, no lines, for there are so many lines under my words, under my letters, as if the natural condition of letters is not to be misspelled, that arranging letters into a word is the work of the writer, how dare this red line tell me I’m unfit for the task, the red tape of creativity, there should be a line under every correct word, so unnatural it is for words to be correct, unnatural like great wealth, like we explain poverty instead of wealth, like we have lines for poverty and poverty lines, why explain poverty, it requires no explanation, does food fall fully prepared from trees, does spell check point at the raw meat any say cook this, it is wealth that needs explaining, how can money grow on some trees, on some Joshua trees, these should have the red lines underneath, like the subways that takes us where we must go, oh Moya, how can so much function correctly when the natural state is chaos and misspellings and red line delays…

this is twenty percent inflation, it is

Around a year ago, Hubway sent me one of its regular monthly email updates. There was a little news, a list of events accessible via the bike share system, and some tips for winter riding. Included in all this was a note about the 'new bikes' in the system. Intrigued, I opened the article and read further.

A couple of paragraphs into it, however, and I’d realized the 'new bikes' being described were actually the same bikes I’d been riding around for close to a year. A year!

How do I know this for sure? Well, reader, I know that the bikes I'd been riding for about a year have a different gearshift than the old models. They also have a unique front basket design and a longer seat pole targeted at taller riders. Most noticeably, these bikes have a blinking red light above the back wheel that makes it an ideal choice for nighttime cycling. These features that I knew all about from a year of riding the bikes were the exact features Hubway boasted about in its email update!

To this day, I don’t know what prompted Hubway to send out an over-excited article pretending these old bikes were actually new. Was I the only one not fooled by this nonsense?

Hubway isn’t the only company that tried to pull the wool over my eyes last year. I noticed last fall that Subway was doing the same type of thing. Their ad campaign that touted The Great Deal of one large sandwich for six dollars (but at select times only) did not impress me, reader. I remember the good old days when five dollars was Subway’s deal - and those good old days were like, what, two years ago?

A six-dollar meatball sub isn’t a good deal; it’s inflation, and at twenty-percent, that's a whole lot of it, especially in an economy where inflation has been pretty low lately.

Footnotes / well, an endnote

0. Moya's thoughts on Subway...

Subway’s recent marketing campaign, a great deal, great, great, six dollars for a sub, why six, why is this so great, seems like I’m being reminded all day of this, one way or another, the great Subway and the six-dollar deal, wonderful, really wonderful, for six dollars I get some bread and a rubber chicken, for six dollars, what a joke, I got this for five dollars last week, it is too bad, Moya, too bad indeed, for us old men, who can sip our whiskeys and remember the truth, too bad I’m so old that I remember when five dollars was the deal, five dollars, now for five dollars you might get a slice of bread and a napkin, five dollars, those were the days, they had a song for that deal, five five five dollar footlong, oh who would sing now, for six dollars, sing for six dollars, like anyone would, and there's Subway all the time, pretending like nothing has ever happened, always pretending…

leftovers... the arognauts (marshmallow index rant)

Moya, MOYA, just the man, sit, Moya, sit and have a whiskey, Moya, I have a game for you, watch this, now sit, here, sit, and look, look here, at this whiskey, Moya, I have a game for you, you can have this whiskey, for free, right now, if you’d like, drink up Moya, up, up, drink, but if you sit and stare at this whiskey for fifteen minutes, this is the game Moya, sit and stare, in fifteen minutes I’ll buy you another, two whiskeys, Moya, if you can wait fifteen minutes, and if you do this, Moya, I know you’ll pass the SAT II in European History, because the SAT II requires willpower, and this whiskey test requires willpower, and if you pass it now, you obviously have willpower, the beauty of it Moya, the lab is life, no, sometimes I wonder, just remember to sober up first, Moya, two whiskeys, but sometimes I wonder, no not now, in fifteen minutes, were you listening, Moya, to the game, anyway sometimes I wonder, I wonder what it’s like to study for decades, test after test, just to get a degree, and a degree, and three degrees, and you come up with a test like this, a ridiculous test, proof of nothing, proof of proof, ninety proof, marshmallow proof, it’s all fluff, I say, I thought of it today while reading about The Marshmallow Experiment, what a wonderful thing, Moya, this test, a modern-day torture technique, child abuse by the well-dressed academic, they torture these five-year olds, these five-year olds were removed, were taken, from recess and playtime and normal psychological development, placed by these academics in rooms, intimidating rooms, with cold metal furniture and even colder expressions, told to make eye contact with a jet-puffed marshmallow, look at the whiskey Moya, look at it, right in front of you, just like the kids and the marshmallows, look at it, placed directly in front of them, the kids told to eat, eat up, anytime they wished, eat the marshmallow if they so wished, consequence free, and they were probably starving kids Moya, kids are always hungry, right, and if they lasted fifteen minutes, if they sat for fifteen minutes, an eternity, without eating, without touching the marshmallow, they would be rewarded with a second marshmallow, which they could eat, ridiculous, Moya, sit through an eternity for a marshmallow, and this test is supposed to demonstrate willpower, supposed to prove willpower, when all it proves is materialism, it must be taught, taught at age five, if you wait you get double the goods, you learn this as a kid now, and diabetes, you get that too, with your marshmallow, and the researchers scribble this data down, and look at it, and years later, look at it again, after these same kids were tortured again, by Napoleons and dynamite, the SAT II, European history, sit still and study, kids, sit Moya, study the mistakes of tomorrow, today, Europe never changes, Moya, and so it is for these kids, they never change, look at the whiskey Moya, look at it, good, wait another minute more and I’ll buy you another, how will you pass the test, you must sit still, Moya, if you can’t sit still and look at a still whiskey, Moya, sit, use your special skill, your willpower, win at life for once, you drunk, you fool, no willpower, some have it from age five, apparently, ask your local academics, they know it, they know it, a kid who can say no to a marshmallow, it’s willpower, like a muscle, never mind the kid who might be poor or hungry, never mind the kid’s relationship with food, never mind the kids who only know having marshmallows taken away, a life of the empty fridge, a life of being told no, being told the family no longer qualifies, the empty fridge doesn’t qualify them for assistance, so better eat now, kid, before it gets taken away, never mind that kid, Moya, every call is last call, he’s five and knows more than you Moya, see here, up it goes, Moya, you should have drank it while you had it, drink up next time, Moya, unless you want to look at this empty glass, oh sit, sit back down, Moya, don’t worry, don’t be a child, Moya, you’re in the control group, he’s in the control group, oh fine, off you go, run another study, never mind that a kid without time to wait for a marshmallow probably can’t wait to study, either, or wait for a whiskey, because they can’t be late for the after-school work shift, come back, Moya, come sit and stare, Moya, show your willpower, some proof indeed, just a second more, Moya, and I’ll buy you two more…

leftovers: peeling back the layers - with moya...

Sit, Moya, sit, honestly son, did you think a runner would give up running, just for a little injury, oh Moya, have a whiskey, runners run, they run out until they run out, this is why it is called running, why they are called runners, honestly, did you think a little knee pain or hip strain or existential crisis would do it, the only bigger fool than the runner is the reader, the reader who thought one injury should do it, one injury is sufficient evidence, judge and jury indeed, ruling on the verdict, cease, cease, to cease running, the injury says, I say it takes a hundred injuries before one stops running, perhaps even death, otherwise a runner isn't a runner, a runner must run, and always run, on and on and on, what else is there to do, Moya, even I don't spend the entire day talking, even I don't spend the entire day drinking, drinking these whiskeys, I have my hobbies too, Moya, I find things to do in this city, in the middle of this city where people save up all year, all life, their dollars and pounds and euros, save save save, depriving themselves of simple pleasures and joys like this whiskey, do you not like your whiskey, Moya, drink up, drink up, save up, save up, all year, to come here, as the tourist books say, look at all the things to do in Boston, come ride the duck boat, come walk the river, come and sit with me, sit here with a whiskey or sit on the platform and wait for the 'T', late again, Moya, always late, but for me, I wake up, nice and early, I wake up and review my reading or write these blog posts or pack a lunch and wonder to myself, I wonder if my watch is broken, Moya, I wonder how it could only be ten AM, but I don't just go buy a new watch, I don't just throw it all away, maybe I'm wrong, maybe I need to do better, and that's the problem, Moya, that's why a runner runs, because why throw it all away, why after just one injury or two, what if the runner is wrong, not injured at all, then what, then what else is there to do, even in this town with so much to do, about which many bookshelves are filled with tourist guides, about Boston, come to Boston, and yet even the busiest resident must run at least once per weekend, Moya, otherwise what else would you do, what else is there, Moya, to do except run, a little bit, looking for something better to do with my spare time, I don't even know what time it is Moya, what time is it, maybe time to find something better to do with my time...