Scott Bush

Though I don’t intend to change the focus of this blog from web devel­op­ment, design, mar­tial arts and lan­guage (and some occa­sional thoughts on life) to par­ent­ing or gush­ing about my daugh­ter, becom­ing a father has prompted some insights that I wanted to share.

My daugh­ter will be six days old this after­noon. Six days that seem like a year; and I mean that in the best way pos­si­ble. A year is a long time… think of what goes on in your life in a year. Now, com­press that into six days and you’ll have an idea of what it’s been like since our daugh­ter was born. If you are a par­ent yourself—especially a recent one—you know what I mean. That brings me to the first of six father­hood facts I want to share:

1. When peo­ple ask you if you’re a par­ent, they’re test­ing you. It’s not a bad test, or even a judg­men­tal one; they just want to know whether you’re in the club. The club isn’t an exclu­sive one: more peo­ple than not are mem­bers. Jack­ets and ties are not required, but mem­ber­ship does require dues: you must tithe 20–40% of your usual sleep time for the first few years of membership.
2. When peo­ple tell an expect­ing cou­ple “all your per­spec­tives on the world will change,” they are right and you can’t truly under­stand how right they are. I will pro­vide two exam­ples rel­a­tive to my inter­ests; yours will dif­fer in details but not in intent.
   • Karate — Tues­day before our baby was born, I stayed home from two hours of karate to be with my very preg­nant wife. It was impor­tant that I sup­port her and I knew that, yet I was dis­con­tent because I was miss­ing out on some­thing I love to do. But miss­ing classes since she was born both­ers me as much as miss­ing an appoint­ment for a root canal.
   • Cof­fee — A few hours upon arriv­ing home from the hos­pi­tal, after my wife and baby were set­tled, I pulled a shot of espresso. While it fin­ished pour­ing, I went to check on them. Star­ing at my baby daughter’s face occu­pied me so com­pletely that it wasn’t until an hour later that I noticed the now-cold shot sit­ting on the machine. I’d actu­ally for­got­ten about deli­cious coffee.
   • Today, I still love mar­tial arts and hope to train for a life­time. And to para­phrase Spock at the end of Star Trek II, cof­fee “is, and always will be… my friend.” But these and other pur­suits are all dis­tant sec­onds to my baby, who is now in first place.
3. Mar­keters should not be allowed to use the term “baby soft.” It’s a fact that a baby’s skin (espe­cially cheeks!) is the soft­est sub­stance on the planet—except maybe for silken tofu, but that stuff is not good. Com­par­ing toi­let paper or fab­ric soft­ener to a baby’s skin is like com­par­ing a hub­cap to a flapjack.
4. Alarm clocks should have a “new­born” set­ting. For­get beeps, never mind “ascend­ing tones,” and the wake up to radio set­ting? Puh–lease. If you want an effec­tive alarm clock, get one with a newborn’s cry. Heck, not even a real out-loud cry; just one of those tiny baby whim­per. They wake you up so fast it’s astound­ing. Sure, your head may spin and you might feel like a zom­bie (and a tired zom­bie at that) but you will be awake.
5. The Boppy is one of the great­est inven­tions ever. I never thought I’d be excited about a pil­low, but I am.
6. Mat­tresses are nice, but they are an unnec­es­sary con­ve­nience for sleep­ing. This is a corol­lary  to #4; being woken often makes you tired; being tired allows you to sleep… any­where, any­time. Besides in a reg­u­lar bed at night, I can now fall asleep within two min­utes flat on the couch or when putting my head down on the kitchen table. Even man­aged to get a few REM cycles while stand­ing in line at the phar­macy a cou­ple days ago.

There are the first six facts of father­hood I’ve learned dur­ing the first six days of my daughter’s life. I wel­come your insights, too: please add them to the comments.

While watch­ing the aud­tion por­tion of this season’s Amer­i­can Idol with my wife, see­ing all those aspir­ing singers so excited to receive the show’s “golden ticket,” I was struck by a thought: that’s the hap­pi­est they’ll ever be dur­ing their Amer­i­can Idol experience.

Why is that? It’s because of that moment. That moment is both a pin­na­cle of achieve­ment and the begin­ning of a new, unknown jour­ney. To be accepted by the judges and counted among the tiny per­cent­age of win­ners who make it to Hol­ly­wood is inde­scrib­able, to judge by the reac­tions of the suc­cess­ful con­tes­tants. They have won; they are sep­a­rate from the pack, dis­tin­guished now by their abil­i­ties. The hard work, count­less hours of intense prac­tice, and of course all the drama and infight­ing that makes these “real­ity” shows entertaining—all of this lies in the weeks (and if they’re lucky, months) ahead. For now, though, they exist in that moment of happiness.

That’s not to say their suc­cesses in on the show won’t eclipse the hap­pi­ness of win­ning the golden ticket. I’m sure if you asked any season’s win­ner or runner-up if they were hap­pier with their on-stage achieve­ments than they were pass­ing the audi­tion por­tion you’d hear “yes, of course!” But that achieve­ment comes with the knowl­edge of the hard work required to get there, tem­pered by the inevitable elim­i­na­tion of other con­tes­tants who’d become friends, and weighed down with other Idol tri­als that we as view­ers sim­ply can’t know. Greater and greater suc­cess comes with a cost—one cer­tainly worth paying—but a cost none the less.

In short, these Idol con­tes­tants are most happy in that moment.

The immi­nent birth of my first daugh­ter will be my moment, that moment in my life that is both pin­na­cle and mere begin­ning of hap­pi­ness. That hap­pi­ness is sure to have costs the I can’t even fathom, all of which will be well worth paying. (Though I’m sure cur­rent par­ents can tell me stories—and many have!) But our “golden ticket” moment will be her birth… but don’t expect me to jump up and down and scream; it’s not my style.

Best of all? No harsh cri­tiques from Simon Cowell.

I’ve learned a lot in my life, the vast major­ity of it far less use­ful than the lit­tle gems that are worth know­ing. (An exam­ple of the use­less stuff: the Kon­ami code. Will I ever for­get “up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, select, start”?) One of the gems that repeat­edly comes up when work­ing with clients and project stake­hold­ers is this:

The short answer is always “Yes.”

I first heard this indis­pens­able phrase from Chad Estes. He was my boss at an Inter­net start-up called Echo­space where i worked at the end of and for years fol­low­ing col­lege. We had a tech­nol­ogy called “Sin­glePage” back in 2001 that was essen­tially what AJAX is today: the abil­ity to load new data in a web­page with­out refresh­ing the entire page. Big-time stuff back then.

As a start-up, we were eager for clients. I attended a few early “pitch” meet­ings with a large com­pany (who shall go unnamed here) and they had requests for all kinds of things for the site we were propos­ing to build for them. One of our devel­op­ers lis­tened to these requests, frowned and started shak­ing his head. “No, that would require too many HTTP requests,” he said (or some­thing sim­i­lar but equally “techie”). Chad inter­vened and said that we’d look into a way to do that for them and the meet­ing con­tin­ued. In the end, we secured them as a client and built a great prod­uct for them, but after­wards Chad addressed the entire company—all eight of us—and taught us the phrase above.

“No mat­ter what a client or a poten­tial client asks for,” he said (though I admit I’m para­phras­ing; my memory’s not per­fect), “the short answer is always ‘Yes.’ We want them to see us as capa­ble, get-it-done peo­ple. Even if they ask for the impos­si­ble, we can do it.” It sounds like a recipe for dis­as­ter, as every­one has sto­ries of the boss who over-promised fea­tures on behalf of devel­op­ers who knew the impos­si­ble couldn’t be accom­plished given the con­straints. And that’s when Chad explained the corol­lary to this phrase.

“We can always tell them later that what they want will require addi­tional time, money, or resources. But before we do that, we have to build in them a sense of con­fi­dence about us. And,” he added, look­ing at me (I was a tech­ni­cal writer and client man­ager at Echo­space), “if we clearly com­mu­ni­cate the issues and con­straints, they will bet­ter under­stand what they’re ask­ing and either agree to the addi­tional time, money, or what­ever; or they’ll change their mind on their own with­out us hav­ing told them ‘no, we can’t do that.’”

It’s great advice. Though some might argue it’s dis­hon­est, I dis­agree. It’s a mat­ter of per­cep­tion: any fea­ture or tool can be built (espe­cially on the web); it’s just a mat­ter of pri­or­ity and resources. Say­ing “yes” to a request isn’t dishonest—it’s smart. It lets you con­tinue the dia­log with the client, refine what they’re ask­ing for, and be up front about the require­ments to bring that fea­ture to reality.

I’ve used the phrase dozens and dozens of times in my career, and I don’t antic­i­pate it becom­ing any less use­ful in the future. As long as it’s used with integrity and hon­esty, it can only serve you well.

So do you think you can start using this phrase when deal­ing with your clients and col­leagues? (…you should have already said “Yes” by now.)

It’s Thanks­giv­ing, a time for food, fam­ily, and friends. Unfor­tu­nately, Thanksgiving—or rather, the Fri­day after—has become syn­ony­mous with the start of the hol­i­day shop­ping orgy. While it’s pos­si­ble to argue the mer­its or draw­backs of hol­i­day con­sumerism, one thing is not up for debate: no sale is worth dying over.

If you don’t remem­ber Black Fri­day 2008, here’s a refresher: Jdimy­tai Damour, a 34-year-old Wal-Mart employee in New York, was tram­pled to death at about 5am by a crowd of bargain-crazed shop­pers. Unbe­liev­able. Think about that for a moment: tram­pled to death at a Wal-Mart. Keep that in mind if you’re stand­ing in line at 4am tomor­row, both for your own safety and that of those around you. It’s the sea­son for hap­pi­ness and gen­eros­ity, not greed and dis­re­gard for your fel­low man.

Be safe out there, shop­pers. As for me? I’ll be asleep until 8am, and then stay­ing as far away from the crazi­ness as pos­si­ble. And if just can’t live with­out the deals, remem­ber: you can always shop online!

Once when I was a teenager, a friend offered to let me read a man­u­script writ­ten by his dad’s friend. “Oooh, cool—a real man­u­script!” I thought. The word man­u­script was ripe with pos­si­bil­ity of pub­lish­ing and fame and to read one con­ferred upon the reader a priv­i­lege, a ticket to the insider’s club.  So I was excited when my friend handed me a three-ring binder stuffed with pages filled with double-spaced Courier text. “This is the real deal!” I thought, and dove in that night. Just one prob­lem: it sucked. Turned out there was a rea­son why the author was let­ting anyone—including the teenaged friends of his friend’s son—read the thing: it was doubt­ful any­one else ever would.

Jacket design for “Redemption”

About a year ago, a friend asked if I’d read and edit his brother’s man­u­script. I was hon­ored and intrigued, but mem­o­ries of my first man­u­script expe­ri­ence almost stopped me from agree­ing. I’m sure glad I did, because Darin Rice’s The Redemp­tion of Kurt Cobain restored the cool fac­tor in read­ing man­u­scripts. This is one story that should see the light of day (and not just due to its excel­lent first-round editing).

The story is an intrigu­ing one that defies cat­e­go­riza­tion. One way to frame it is by what it’s not: a biog­ra­phy of Kurt Cobain. The for­mer NIr­vana lead singer plays a cen­tral role in the story, yet is never actu­ally named, other than the title. Sounds weird, but it makes per­fect sense in the story’s con­text because it takes place after Cobain com­mits sui­cide. Now you’re intrigued, aren’t you? You should be. The plot weaves strands of pol­i­tics, phi­los­o­phy, sus­tain­abil­ity, par­ent­ing, a bit of humor, and of course rock and roll into a sur­pris­ingly read­able fab­ric. It’s clear that Rice knows a thing or six about music, which is evi­denced by thought­ful selec­tions of pop­u­lar song lyrics that begin each chap­ter. I found it enter­tain­ing to return to the open­ing lyri­cal pas­sage after read­ing the chap­ter to see how his choice fore­shad­owed what would occur in those pages.

Per­haps another way to intro­duce the story is to cite a bit from Rice’s own summary:

The Redemp­tion of Kurt Cobain is decid­edly polit­i­cal, unde­ni­ably rock and roll, and at its heart about the bond between fathers and daugh­ters. Set in Wash­ing­ton State and Wash­ing­ton DC in the months pre­ced­ing a mod­ern pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, Redemp­tion sets the stage to both ask and answer: “If Cobain had another chance at life, would he take it? Could this rock icon, armed with wis­dom from the after­world, find a way back to Earth to trans­form not only him­self but our nation?

Inspired by the epic plot and con­ver­gent char­ac­ters of The Stand and the oth­er­worldly con­tem­pla­tion of The Lovely Bones, Redemp­tion is unique and unex­pected.  A con­tem­po­rary mar­riage of physics, phi­los­o­phy, music and mat­ter, it embraces the notion of spir­its in search of another Earthly chance.  As human frail­ties are exposed and con­fronted within the back­drop of a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, Redemp­tion builds sus­pense and com­bines lit­er­ary and com­mer­cial ele­ments as it taps the pow­er­ful and often hid­den cit­i­zen activist and rock star in all of us.

Even the author’s own descrip­tion doesn’t fully cap­ture the essence of the story; that’s a tes­ta­ment to the unique­ness of the sub­ject mat­ter. The best way I can rec­om­mend it is this: read­ing it on the bus to and from work, I never fell asleep. That may not sound like high praise, but I fall asleep on the bus read­ing every­thing, so it means a lot that I couldn’t wait to find out what was going to hap­pen next.

Rice is decid­ing how best to pro­ceed with the work: shop­ping for an agent, dis­cussing the intri­ca­cies of get­ting approval for the use of each chapter’s lyri­cal pas­sage, oh and the small mat­ter of titling a novel after a famous rock star in our liti­gious soci­ety. I can safely say that the book stands on its own with­out those pas­sages or Cobain’s name in its title although both do bring an ele­ment of real­ism to the work. But the asso­ci­a­tion with Cobain is a double-edged sword. On one hand, his instantly-recognizable name could help bring atten­tion to the work. On the other hand, if you aren’t a fan of grunge music in gen­eral or Cobain specif­i­cally, you might not bother pick­ing it up off the shelf at all. And it bears repeat­ing here that while the story uses Cobain’s (after)life as a frame­work, it has so much more to offer than the name alone implies. And therein lies part of the prob­lem find­ing a pub­lisher for the book: it’s a genre-bender. Is it a ghost story? Sorta. A polit­i­cal thriller? Oh yes (one of the main char­ac­ters is a sen­a­tor run­ning for the Pres­i­dency), but not in the typ­i­cal way. Music biog­ra­phy? Mmmm yeah, if you read between the lines a bit. A self-help book on good par­ent­ing? Uh… not really but it’s got a lit­tle of that, too. You see the prob­lem, if an excel­lent story that defies label­ing is truly a “problem.”

If this intro­duc­tion has piqued your inter­est, you can check out a bit more at Rice’s Face­book page for the work. And I will post here again when it’s published.

Edit­ing this man­u­script has taught me one thing for sure, though. If Darin Rice wants me to read another of his man­u­scripts, the answer is “yes.” Well, unless it comes in a three-ring binder.

Roughly a year ago I wrote a post titled “Mar­tial arts: the first year,” in which I dis­cussed what I’d learned and accom­plished after a year of train­ing. It seemed like a good idea then so why not do it again?

If I asso­ciate my first year of train­ing with rapid improve­ment, I’d have to clas­sify my sec­ond as improve­ment at a much more mea­sured pace. That’s to be expected, I think; when­ever start­ing some­thing new, one tends to improve quickly. Con­tin­u­ing on after that rush of new expe­ri­ences is where the ded­i­ca­tion lies in the mar­tial arts (and in craft­ing, play­ing gui­tar, singing—anything that requires much prac­tice to improve once a min­i­mal level of com­pe­tence is achieved). (more…)