Caddickisms

How do you get Desitin diaper rash cream out of carpets, sheets, clothes, blankets, or any other cloth item? If my experience so far is accurate, you can’t.

Somebody please, prove me wrong. Add a comment here with the solution.

I’ve tried using diaper wipes. That’s successful to a point, but not totally. On the carpet we tried shampooing after first using diaper wipes, and then blotting with soap and water. We still have spots on the carpet. That frustrated me for a good week, until I finally accepted that I couldn’t do anything about it.

See, a while back my wife and I were relaxing in the morning while our kids played elsewhere. Eventually I (or maybe it was my wife) went in to see what the 2-year old was doing and found her covered from the waist down with diaper rash cream, which was also all over the carpet, the closet doors, and the side of the changing table.

Hours of cleaning later, we are left with the aforementioned spots, and the knowledge that we can’t leave our 2-year old alone with the Desitin tube.

Fast forward to tonight, a month or two after the previous incident. We’re downstairs getting ready to watch a movie - something we’ve been looking forward to for a while. My wife says it sound like one of the kids is trying to come downstairs. I think she’s nuts. I didn’t hear anything, and it’s been almost an hour since the kids were put to bed, plus they were tired from trick-or-treating. But I’ve learned that she hears more things than I do, usually, so I went upstairs to check. I was right. No one was coming downstairs. But as I stood and listened, the 2-year old’s door opened and she started to come out. Okay, so my wife did hear something (good thing I didn’t tell her I thought she was nuts). So I picked my daughter up and put her back in bed.

In the dark, as I gave her a kiss and pulled the covers up, I felt the thick slime on my hands. “What the heck?” I thought. It took me a couple seconds before the realization and feeling of dread hit. When I threw the lights on my fear was confirmed. There on the bottom of the bed was the now almost empty tube of Desitin, wrapped in the bedsheet, the cream spread over the sheet and the two hand-knitted blankets we had received as gifts. Globs of the stuff, some sitting on, and some ground in to the blankets’ weaves. Obviously, we had forgotten to put the cream away tonight. Amazingly, I didn’t detect any of the goop on my daughter. She must have protected herself with the sheet as she squeezed the life out of the tube.

It may be relevant for you to know that I hate creams. Diaper creams, hand creams, face creams, first aid creams… about the only creams I like are ice cream and whipped cream. I just hate how they feel and smell. Slimy, slippery, and sticky, all at the same time - the filmy residue, impossible to completely remove. I honestly can’t understand why people choose to use them when they have other options. They are an “only when necessary” evil for me.

So I’m sure you can imagine the fun I’ve had over the last hour trying in vain to remove as much of the cream as possible from these blankets.

I hate creams.

I’m almost willing to toss the sheet. I’d really like to save these blankets, though. So what do you say? Any ideas?

Seriously. I’m begging. I know this will eventually come up again. I’ll take any idea. Leave a comment. Please.

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Well, apparently you guys are really interested in my death. The last post, I want to end my life, but I’m too lazy, has been the top of the page views list for 3 days running.

Sadly, that has never happened with one of my new posts before. Usually the random searches outperform anything new (which is a sad statement about the popularity of this blog, but oh well).

So, to celebrate, I’m planning to “kill” myself every week or so. We’ll see how that goes.

Thanks for proving that death sells!

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I’ve got a swirl of thoughts going on in my head at the moment. This one’s gonna ramble. Hopefully it comes out making some kind of sense.

I want to end my life. Well, part of it anyway. I would prefer to continue breathing, let’s just get that straight right away.

I want to excise the part of myself that wants “stuff.” Wanting stuff is the pursuit of temporary pleasure. As soon as I get something I want, I feel better for a little while, then I want “stuff 2.0.” All that stuff costs money. That means I have to work, because I haven’t figured out how to get paid for doing nothing yet. That takes time from other tasks I have to do. Time is finite, so I have to figure out how to get those other tasks done faster, which means either paying someone else to do it for me, or buying some other “stuff” that helps me get it done faster. But that means I need more money, so I can pay for that, which means I have to work more.

Nothing new there. You see where I’m going. It’s the same cyclical problem everyone has on one level or another.

I want to drop out of that cycle. I could. I know I could. For example, I could sell my current house and move someplace smaller and cheaper. It’s an option. Other people have survived with much less than I have. I won’t though. I like it here. It’s too hard to give up what I have now.

That makes me think of how hard it is for a rich man to enter heaven. When approached by a rich man wanting to know what he must do to gain eternal life, Jesus said he should sell all his possessions and give it away to the poor. In other words, he had to stop coveting “stuff.” (if you’re wondering, the passage is Matthew 19:16-30). There was a time when I thought I’d have no problem with that. That was before I had this much stuff. Intellectually, I knew what the story meant, but now I feel the guy’s pain. It’s hard. In fact, not only do I not want to give up stuff… I want more stuff.

That gets me to thinking about church. I used to be much more involved in church activities. Part of me feels like I’m not involved enough now, but I am in the choir and a small group, and I’m not sure I’m willing to commit more time right now.

And then there’s the heart of the matter: the choir connection that at some level probably kick-started this post much earlier today (well, yesterday, at this point as I write this after 3am). A friend of mine from choir has cancer. It’s apparently progressing very quickly, and hospice has recently been mentioned. I haven’t seen him since early this summer, before he was diagnosed. He and his wife are very active in our church. He’s a very nice, happy, intelligent, funny, godly, loving man. He’s one of the first people to offer help in any circumstance and has been a source of support when my family was going through some tough stuff over the last 5 years. I have an immense amount of respect for him, and it pains me greatly that he’s going through this, as does the knowledge that he may not be around for much longer.

Thinking about that and other reminders of mortality coincided with another friend of mine reflecting on “Hurt” as performed by Johnny Cash. He noted that the video for that song shows Cash “sitting there looking back on all that he had accomplished and realizing that, save a few precious things (his faith, his wife, his kids), it was all meaningless.”  “Stuff” isn’t in that list. I imagine my choir friend is having some of those same thoughts.

I need to end this life as it currently exists, and refocus. The way I want to live and the way I’m living are not lining up as well as I’d hope. I’ve got a lot of inertia, though, and I’m lazy. It’s hard to get started.

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New York Times columnist David Pogue has had two extremely good posts lately. One is aimed squarely at general computer users, and both are of great use to technical writers.

In the generally focused Tech Tips for Basic Computer Users, he points out things that all us geeks think everybody knows about computers. There are a fair amount that I didn’t know, however, so the list’s worth a look (though the article is so popular that it may have overloaded NYT’s comment system - the page took a really long time to load).

Here are two examples:

1. Pressing ALT and the Tab key together in Windows will cycle you through all of your open programs. I’m frequently amazed when people don’t know that simple time-saver.
2. Pressing ALT and F4 together will close the current window. So if you do it now, it will close this browser.

Takeaway for technical writers: Don’t assume your readers know these shortcuts. Be specific in how to perform required tasks.

The other article is good for any business writer, really, but it’s especially well suited to technical writers.

It’s really easy, as a writer, to slip into jargon. We’re comfortable with the specialized language and the meanings of all these words that confuse regular people. If you’re responsible for communicating with someone who doesn’t live and breathe in your corner of the world, though, you’ve got to be careful to use plain language.

Here’s an excerpt from Pogue’s article:

* Display. “Display” can be a noun (”a display of fireworks”). It can also be a verb that takes a direct object (”He displayed emotion”). It is not, however, a verb without a direct object, except in magazines like PC World: “Shows filmed in high-definition end up displaying in letterbox format.”

Displaying what in letterbox format? Fireworks? Emotions?

The word this writer was looking for is “appearing.”

[...]

* Enable. Who on earth says, “Enable the GPS function”? Only user-manual writers and computer-book authors. Say “Turn on GPS” instead.

[...]

* Functionality. WOW, do I despise this pretentious word. Five syllables–ooh, what a knowledgeable person you must be!

It means “feature.” Say “feature.”

I’ll add my own pet peeve here: Utilize. I want to scream every time I see this word. It’s another example of trying to sound smarter. It’s “use”. There is absolutely no difference in meaning. “Use” is much simpler and more common. That’s a good thing. Use it.

Oh, and while I’m talking about writing skills, here’s another tip for everyone, and it applies to speaking as well: be careful with clichés. If you’re not 100% sure you know it, don’t use it (or better yet - GASP - look it up!). Example: it’s not “for all intensive purposes,” it’s “for all intents and purposes.” “Intensive purposes” doesn’t even make sense. Think about what you’re saying. Most of the time, that will help.

Okay, I’m off to utilize the functionality of the TV remote control to enable the screen to display. For all intensive purposes, that should wrap up my night.

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To continue in the vein of dissatisfaction with training, let’s take a look at the experience this high school student in Singapore is having with e-Learning (found via Corporate eLearning Strategies and Development):

But what was most disappointing was that they expected us to learn fresh, new topics like Maxima and Minima on the dot, and the lessons weren’t even constructed by our teachers, but by this Dr. Brain series that was created by some polytechnic whose name I have completely forgotton.

I mean, COME ON! You’re expecting us to complete an entire assesment (or more) just by being educated by a talking flash movie?? What if we have a question to ask?

Now, there could be a whole host of reasons why this experience was difficult for this kid, but who can blame him for wanting to ask questions? It is frustrating to try to learn new concepts, skills, and tools with no interaction. To be effective, self-paced training has to be designed exceedingly well, and even then there still needs to be the option to follow-up with a subject matter expert, because it’s impossible to accurately predict everyone’s questions.

For all I know, this “e-learning day” experience had all sorts of support - chat rooms, email, discussion boards, phone mentoring, whatever. Maybe this guy just didn’t take advantage of it. Or maybe it wasn’t there, but the teachers figured they’d provide that support the next day when they returned to their classrooms. Whatever the case here, the reality in the corporate world is that frequently employees are sent to take online training with little to no human support from a subject matter expert. And that’s a shame. With the tools I mentioned above, there’s no reason to leave someone hanging and alone. We need to do a better job.

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There are a lot of challenges that instructional designers and trainers face in developing and delivering courses in a corporate environment. For instance, usually there is barely time to get the material together, let alone organize it well and produce well-designed practices and assessments that are both challenging and valid. Then there’s frequently the problem of having to develop for people at different comprehension levels, without losing the novices or boring the advanced students. On top of that, you’ve got the political angles of business owners who want their employees to spend the absolute minimum time possible in a course (they’re usually shooting for an hour or less, especially for online courses) and who frequently see training as a waste of time anyway - just a formality that needs to be checked off the “personal development” section of employee reviews.

As a result of these and many other pressures, what you end up with is an instructional designer doing their best to meet the business demands of a short development time and short delivery time, and in the process having to forgo an engaging, effective delivery for a lowest common denominator approach that presents the material in a linear, lecture (or straight text, online) format with very little for the student to do to practice the materials. Frequently the “assessments” are also dumbed-down to the point of being just a few simple True/False questions. And thus we have training that meets the business owners’ expectation - a waste of time that provides a check mark.

So to me, it’s both thrilling and frustrating to read things like this part of an interview with J. Mark Bertrand, author of Rethinking Worldview: Learning to Think, Live, and Speak in This World.

CPYU: What are some of the toughest challenges that you have faced when teaching teenagers today? Have you noticed any changes since you started teaching teens?

JMB: I don’t talk to teens any differently than I would an adult audience. I made a decision when I started that I’d never talk down to my students. I’d let the hard questions stay hard—in fact, I’d make them harder if need be. It seems to have worked. Teens are much more sophisticated than they are experienced. Before they’ll listen to your experience, they have to believe in your sophistication. You have to prove it isn’t ignorance that motivates you, but knowledge.

The most challenging aspect of teens is what they have in common with the rest of us. As comfortable middle-class North Americans, we enter a classroom expecting to be pandered to. We look at knowledge the way a consumer views a product. We expect to be entertained, emotionally engaged, and ultimately affirmed in their starting assumptions.

Everything he’s saying here is valid for most adults. They do generally enter a classroom (or an online course) expecting to spend some time being somewhat entertained, but ultimately not come out with any new information. I don’t think that’s what they hope for, deep down, but that’s what they’ve generally gotten (and not just from training sources, but from everywhere - media, church, school, books…), and they’ve learned to expect it. They’ve learned that they will be spoon-fed, and not challenged.

Since we all grew up watching television instead of reading and talking about books, many [of] the discursive skills that go hand in hand with literacy are on the wane. Teens might actually have it a little better than their parents, since the Internet has at least fostered an abridged form of literacy, but being able to read a passage and immediately get the gist of it seems to be a specialized skill these days, which is troubling in a text-oriented community like the church.

I’d add that that applies equally well to online training developers. An example has to be incredibly simplified in many cases just to ensure that the point gets across, but the trouble is that it gets so watered down that it is divorced from reality and loses its relevance.

As someone involved the corporate training business, I would love to follow this author’s lead and present challenging, thought-provoking learning opportunities for our employees. The deck is severely stacked against a corporate training department in doing that, but it is a battle worth fighting. Judging from all the point-and-click, read-and-respond training I’ve seen (and, unfortunately, developed) out there we seem, as an industry, to be losing that battle. Many of us have given up the fight, and are now little more than order-takers - not because we want to be, but because we’ve been so beaten down.

And that’s possibly the most frustrating thing about working in corporate training - knowing we can do it better, but not being allowed.

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Gizmo’s - Drag, Click & Snap Windows and Taskbar Buttons into Position | Gizmo’s Tech Support Alert

I have been looking for a utility that will let me rearrange those stupid Windows Taskbar buttons. I like to keep my email client as the first program on my taskbar. Sometimes it crashes (these things happen) and I have to reopen it, but to get it back to the beginning of the line again, I had to close all my other programs and then reopen them in the order I wanted. If I’m running a couple of browsers with 18+ tabs each (not that unusual), that’s a huge pain in the neck.

Finally, Taskbar Shuffle comes to the rescue! My thanks to the contributor over at Gizmo’s site, who listed that software and three other Taskbar and Windows management tools.

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I’ve always loved drums. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t “drumming.” I put that in quotes because I’ve rarely actually had a drum at my disposal. I’ve beat rhythms out with wooden spoons, sticks, pencils, pens, toilet paper tubes, pipe insulation, toy drumsticks, my hands… anything at my disposal. (I actually had to stop doing it so much in my car; the head of my gear shift came off once while driving because I had loosened the screws by beating on it.)

So, can you guess who my favorite Muppet was?

Yep. Animal was the quintessential drummer in my young eyes. Totally uninhibited and always wanting to let loose with everything he had. Then one day another drummer was on the Muppet Show as the guest star. And he had a drum battle with Animal! Best. Show. Ever. (Yes, even better than the Star Wars episode.)

Anybody who could leave Animal wide-eyed with his jaw on the floor was worth some attention, in my book. I asked my Dad about him and learned that Buddy Rich was a drummer from the Big Bands era, and was possibly the best drummer alive. I don’t think there’s been anyone since who’s taken the lead in that race.

Here he is in a 1978 solo in The Hague. This isn’t even his best work, IMO, but it’s one of the rare clips I’ve found that has a wider range of “tricks” in it.

The only other drummer I’d put in the same breath with Buddy Rich is Gene Krupa, another great from the Big Band era. Gene was the drummer for Benny Goodman and is the beat behind one of the best swing numbers of all time, Sing, Sing, Sing:

Krupa and Rich got together for their own “drum battle” on Sammy Davis Jr.’s show in the 1966. Nice stuff. It shows the difference in their styles, as well. Krupa has those cross-overs nailed, but I think Buddy is a bit cleaner.

There are some far-and-away excellent drummers today, but those two are the gold standard in my book.

And in case you’re wondering… no, I don’t play the drums myself. I did, long ago, and was pretty good for my age - at least in my school, but due to stupidity it didn’t last. That’s a story for another time, though.

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