Jim Hughes

It’s a dry, hot summer in Houston.  Dry, as in it has not rained in June.  Hot, as in it hit 104 several days this week.

So today, the inevitable happened.  We got a notice of Voluntary Water Conservation.

It’s voluntary, but if you don’t agree to voluntarily follow the rules, you can either have your water shut off or be fined $5000.

I know a bunch of lawyers poured over the document that was sent out to residents.  And I also understand the reasons behind the required new water usage rules.  But I’m still struggling to understand the new definition of voluntary.  Sounds more like mandatory.

As I ponder this new set of rules and definitions, and at the same time try to figure out how I’m going to keep my yard alive by watering between midnight and 6 a.m., I’m wondering what the definition of mandatory conservation might look like.

And certainly hoping it doesn’t get to that.

We left our house to go pick up Eloise’s mother from the airport as soon as the American Airlines website said the plane had left Dallas for Houston.

Five minutes later the phone rang.  It was a flight attendant making a call for my mother-in-law to let us know that they couldn’t take off due to rain in Dallas.  A few minutes later the phone rang again saying that they had been told they could take off in about 10 minutes.

So we made a detour by a local ice cream shop to kill some time.  While there I checked the status on my iPhone.  Sure enough, it had the flight “departing” on time, but arriving late, and giving a specific time — 6:33.

So we timed our arrival, pulling into the airport at 6:30.  At 6:31 the phone rang.  The flight attendant again, to tell us they were finally about to take off from DFW.  So there we were at the airport with an hour or so to kill.  We did what any rational person would do.  We found a What a Burger and had dinner.

And checked the American Airlines website again.  This time it said the flight would arrive at 7:15.  It still had the “departure” time as the original scheduled time, however — the time they left the gate.  And this time the data was right.  The plane arrived and we collected Reba.

The real culprit in this whole mess is the importance that’s placed on “On Time Departure.”  That data is tracked and published regularly to great fanfare as a measure of customer service.  If an airline has good numbers, they get praise.  If they don’t, then they get hammered.

So, no matter what’s going on, airlines do everything they can to leave the gate on time.  That counts as on-time departure.  So they get good numbers.

The problem is they leave people sitting in a crowded plane on the tarmac for hours.  Really bad customer service.  But it’s not measured, so it’s okay.  On time “departure” is what’s measured.

So what are you using as a measure of your success.  And are you getting good numbers, but at the expense of what really matters?

Sometimes volunteer positions are interesting.

One of my volunteer jobs is being chairman of the Landscape Committee in Sienna Plantation, the community we live in.  Generally it’s mostly going to a monthly meeting, driving the neighborhood choosing yard of the month candidates, and sometimes doing a little homework.

But every once in a while I get an email from another of our residents, making a suggestion or registering a complaint.  I received one today from a guy who was upset.  Seems this morning as he was leaving the subdivision, there was water on the road from the sprinkler system, and it splashed on his car which he had washed yesterday.

His rant was civil, but thoughtless.  He was obviously angry about something else that was out of his control, so taking a shot at whoever was responsible for the sprinklers putting water on the street and messing up his car was the best he could do.

While he said that he couldn’t understand why there was water on the street, really he could.  We’ve been having wind gusts of 20-25 mph this week, and water from the sprinklers gets blown from where it normally would land.  He was just angry and needed to vent his anger at someone, and since whatever it was that he was really mad about didn’t have a target he could vent to, I got the email.

Unfortunately, this is fairly normal behavior.  I suspect that you’ve done it, as have I.  It’s not something to be proud of, but rather something to work to avoid.  It’s one of those lose-lose things.

What works for you when you become angry and want to lash out at someone, anyone?

I’m sitting here writing on my new MacBook Pro.  Having a new computer has brought a flood of memories about how far computing has come in my life.

The first computer I used was a mainframe in Abilene, Texas.  It was owned by a local bank, and used to reconcile their financial information.  As college students, we got some time on it to run our programs written in Fortran IV.  The programs were input using punch cards, and the output was on striped green paper.  The computer only had 8K octal memory, so you were quite limited in what could be done.  Graphs were printed in X’s and O’s.  Along with it’s card readers and tape drives and printers, it took up a sizable room, which had to have special air conditioning.

So, I’m just wondering how many others of you can remember when:

• Input to a computer had to be from a deck of cards or paper tape.
• Printouts came in one flavor:  capital letters on green and white striped paper.
• Graphics were printed in X’s and O’s.
• Mainframes had 8K octal memories — and that was what a bank would use to reconcile accounts.
• A CDC 6600 was a super computer.  There was one in Texas, and you could send jobs to it from a teletype terminal using paper tape.
• The green screen IBM terminal use was “personal computing.”
• The TI four function calculator was Science Magazine’s product of the year (1976).
• PC’s, Apple II’s, Commodore 64’s and the TI 9400 computer were the latest things, but couldn’t talk to other computers.
• Dot matrix printers were the new revolution.
• DOS was how things worked.
• Social networking was done on a mainframe using NOTES.
• Networks would allow computers to talk to each other, but only if they were physically linked.
• WWW wasn’t graphical.
• Different email programs couldn’t talk to each other.
• Portable computers weighed 20 pounds (I had one made by Compaq).

The first five of these were true 40 years ago when I was in graduate school.  The last five are from about 20 years ago.

So, when was the first time you used a computer?  What kind was it, and what did you use it for?

Just some things running through my head this morning…

I enjoy stepping out on the back porch and hearing the children squealing and playing at the nearby school.  It’s been a very long time, but I can remember how much I enjoyed recess.  I really think we need to figure out how to have recess wherever we are, whatever we spend our days doing.  Sounds like this might turn into a blog post over at Difficult Seasons!

The house seemed quiet and empty this morning.  Son John and his dog Major have been here visiting since last Friday night, but they took off yesterday for their new home in St. Petersburg, FL, and John’s new Coast Guard post for the next three years.  Got a text from him about 9:00 this morning that they hadn’t gotten rained on (lots of stuff in back of his pickup) and only one warning from highway patrol — both good things.  We’ll miss both of them, but look forward to visiting them at their new home.

I’m struggling to keep the grass in my back yard alive due to a lack of rain.  It’s a big yard, and it seems almost impossible to keep it watered enough.  Hoping that we get some rain today, but watering anyway.  The golf course John and I played Monday (Quail Valley) seems to be having the same problem.  Reminded me of playing in West Texas — lots of roll, even on not-so-good shots.  At least that’s a good thing!

So what’s running through your head today?