Scott Bush

You’ve prob­a­bly seen the infomer­cial for the Snug­gie, “the blan­ket that has sleeves.” (If you’re one of the lucky ones who hasn’t, you can watch it on YouTube, or visit the offi­cial Snug­gie site.) It’s a ridicu­lous con­trap­tion that pre­vi­ously had been known as a shawl: essen­tially a blan­ket that you put your arms through.

I never thought peo­ple actu­ally bought these things. To my great sur­prise, I came across the dis­carded box in which the infa­mous blanket-thing arrives. Amaz­ing. Not only did some­one buy one, they had it deliv­ered to their work­place? I work at the Uni­ver­sity of Wash­ing­ton and now I must walk the halls know­ing that some­one among my co-workers—perhaps more than one—cozies up with a Snug­gie at night. Scary.

3÷15÷09 UPDATE: a few weeks after I saw this Snug­gie box, my wife and I ran the 2009 St. Pat’s Dash. There we were, wait­ing for our wave to start and we noticed three guys of to my left. “They’re wear­ing blan­kets,” Crys­tal whis­pered to me. I saw the binder clips cinch­ing up the backs of the blan­kets… and then I noticed the arm holes. “They’re SNUGGIES!” I exclaimed back. I sim­ply had to know, so I went and asked. “Yep, sure are” they said, and promptly invited me to take a photo. So I did! Peo­ple really do buy Snug­gies I guess.

A year or so ago I posted about my new wal­let, which was the best. present. ever. That may still hold true, but it doesn’t hold up. Duct-tape wal­lets sim­ply do have a shelf life. Luck­ily, I now have a replace­ment that’s nearly as cool as the orig­i­nal. It fea­tures another of my favorite things (like Apple): the emblem of the Japan­ese flag.

Thanks again to my multi-talented sister-in-law who whipped up this gem “just because.” Thanks Heather!

Today was my last day as an offi­cial employee of the largest home­builder in the North­west. Unlike some of my col­leagues in mid– and late 2008, I left of my own accord and accepted a posi­tion else­where. It was a long day of good­byes, meet­ings, paper­work, last-minute tasks, and a lot of misty eyes. I cleaned up my desk, wrote good­bye mes­sages, set my e-mail auto-responder, and recorded an “extended away” mes­sage on my voicemail.

With a look back at my now bar­ren cube, I turned to leave. Then I remem­bered: my keycard.

When I took the job with the home­builder, the hous­ing boom in the area had just crested and was start­ing to slow. But things were hus­tling as we sold a few dozen homes a week. I’d come from a small educational-reform non-profit with a dozen employ­ees. The con­trast was quite dis­tinct, sym­bol­ized by the key­card. Plenty of cubi­cle dwellers walked around with the ubiq­ui­tous white cards affixed to a retractable cord stuck to their belts (some pre­fer the more dis­crete in-wallet approach). Now I was one of them. I really liked swip­ing it to open doors and access floors from the ele­va­tor. It all seemed so big, so mod­ern. And it fit well with the big build­ing, the many peo­ple rush­ing about the office. There was action and I was a part of it.

A lot can change in short time. From dozens a week to a dozen, then a hand­ful, and some­times none. The credit crunch, mort­gage melt­down, hous­ing slump; call it what you will, but things were get­ting rough. Mem­bers of our team left for other posi­tions and their posi­tions went unfilled. Some were let go in down­siz­ings by the com­pany. Belts were tight­ened. We worked hard, tried dif­fer­ent approaches.

Tonight, stand­ing alone at 7:30 in the cir­cle of cubi­cles my team affec­tion­ately referred to as “the bullpen,” my arms laden with accou­trement from my two years, I real­ized my key­card was still swing­ing from my pocket. That’s when it hit me: one chap­ter of my career was clos­ing, another to begin a scant twelve hours later. A full day’s worth–really, two week’s worth–of com­pli­ments, admon­ish­ments to stay in touch, hand­shakes, hugs, and even a few half-joking threats of chain­ing me to my desk all hit me at once. Yes, I (along with my wife) had made the deci­sion to switch indus­tries after assess­ing all the infor­ma­tion I could and weighed pro vs. con. It is the right deci­sion; but why then was it so hard?

I put down the box and unclipped my key­card. Such a small thing, really. I won’t have one at my new job. Will I miss it? Prob­a­bly not. Will I miss what it rep­re­sents: The mem­o­ries of two years of friend­ship, chal­lenges encoun­tered and resolved, skills dis­cov­ered and learned, inside jokes, cof­fee runs, and cama­raderie? Undoubtedly.

It looks fuzzy as I set it on my desk; I wipe my eyes and it’s in focus again. Quickly, I pick up the box before another tear comes.

Each time I prac­tice kata Sanchin I real­ize how much is con­tained in such a “sim­ple” kata. (Yes, all kata can be ana­lyzed for deeper tech­niques, but to me, this defines Sanchin.) It’s just a dou­ble chest block, fol­lowed by a reverse punch and another chest block to bring the arms up together again. Do that three times on alter­nat­ing sides, turn around and do it four more times, turn around once more and do it four more times. Fin­ish off with some breath­ing and two hook blocks. SIm­ple, right? No, no, no. Sanchin has so many lay­ers that onions look at Sanchin and cry from jeal­ously. (Okay, bad analogy…)

We’re for­tu­nate enough to have Hiroo Ito Sen­sei teach at our dojo often and ben­e­fit from his incred­i­ble skills. Tonight I was for­tu­nate enough to work with Ito Sen­sei and a few students—including my own sensei—much more advanced than myself. We worked on a few tech­niques from Sanchin, any of which could fill volumes.

The kata’s open­ing motion, the dou­ble chest block (pic­tured on the cover of Kris Wilder Sensei’s excel­lent book, shown here) had always been some­thing I paid lit­tle atten­tion to. Breath­ing in, expand­ing my belly, tuck­ing my hips under as I stepped for­ward, get­ting the place­ment and angle of my lead foot correct—these were things I thought about, not the hands com­ing up and form­ing the defin­i­tive V-shape. Tonight I learned just how impor­tant that is. We focused on that motion, learn­ing to keep Sanchin pos­ture and using the open­ing block to deflect an incom­ing punch. Not bash­ing it away, but reach­ing out softly to meet it and guid­ing it in toward, but past the body. The rest of the block includes step­ping in toward your attacker and tak­ing their bal­ance by con­nect­ing your block­ing arm with your upper body, hips, legs, and ulti­mately the ground and using it to push them aside. Words don’t do it jus­tice; if you’ve not prac­ticed Sanchin you can get a bet­ter sense of what I’m describ­ing by watch­ing some on YouTube.

This is why I love mar­tial arts. The never-ending quest to under­stand that which is so sim­ple, yet so com­pli­cated; so intri­cate, yet so obvi­ous. That, and I real­ize how lucky I am to train with ded­i­cated stu­dents and amaz­ing senseis.

Dis­claimer: I don’t really like print­ers. Print­ing to me is the pur­vey of big machines with trained pro­fes­sion­als who know about dot gain, ink spread, par­ent sheets, four-color process and other printer terms. I’m no fan of the lit­tle ink-jets that cost $99 to buy but $75 to replace the ink in every three months.

But reg­u­lar print­ers do have a place, espe­cially in an office set­ting. Unfor­tu­nately, the hor­ri­bly designed inter­faces for most print dialogs are a large part of why many office work­ers pull their hair out when they have to print: “Why is this double-sided!?” or “My god, why won’t it print DOUBLE SIDED!”

Case in point: the tab order in this dia­log box. It’s bad enough that you have to enter a sec­ond dia­log just to accom­plish some­thing sim­ple like printer your job duplex (double-sided). Adding insult to injury: once you’re there, this dia­log con­fus­ingly presents the “Fin­ish­ing” tab first (I’ve cir­cled it in red), yet the “Basics” tab (cir­cled in green)–containing the options most users would need–is last.

Per­haps I’m not as worked up as this guy is about the inter­face issues that abound in Adobe’s Cre­ative Suite 4, but it does bother me. Print­ing is a very (too?) com­mon for most com­puter users. So the inter­face to con­trol those print­ers should be excel­lent. Some of you may argue, “this looks like a dia­log for a fancy office laser printer. Con­sumer printer dri­vers are bet­ter.” Well, that may be. But from an IT stand­point, poorly-designed inter­faces for commonly-used func­tions like print­ing can be very costly. For exam­ple, users might waste twice as much paper as nec­es­sary because set­ting up duplex print­ing is too hard. Or they have to call the help desk or ask their col­leagues for help. These may not seem like much, but repeated mul­ti­ple times a day across an enter­prise can add up.

So, printer ven­dors: please pay a lit­tle more atten­tion to your inter­faces. Peo­ple notice.