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In the business world, there is an old saying that there are three options for whatever you’re buying: price, quality, or speed – and you can choose only two.

A good example of this has been any retail item.  You can buy a certain item at a retail store, and you have chosen speed and quality.  You can buy the same item from a mail order or internet retailer and have it shipped to you, and you have chosen quality and price.  The store item is available immediately but for a higher price than the mailed item.  The mailed item will take a couple of days for shipping but will cost less.

The same concept applies to any business program, in particular regarding employees working on a project.  If a project needs to be done quickly, you’ll have to pay more by either paying employees overtime or hiring more people.  If it needs to be done quickly but you don’t pay more, then people will cut corners and do only certain items, sacrificing quality.  And if the project needs to have high quality and low price, then it will take a long time.

There are some articles that indicate that by improving quality, or by improving speed, you can reduce costs.  That is true, but it is true for a long-range purpose not individual projects.  Let’s say you bid on a project and you say that it will cost X and take two weeks to complete.  If the customer says that two weeks isn’t fast enough and he wants one week, you’re not going to be able to improve your processes enough to meet that demand.  What those other articles are talking about is long-term process improvement such that your initial quotes are improving.  But if you quote something accurately, changing one part of the “quality-speed-cost triangle” will affect one or both of the other parts.

If you are a manager, please pay attention to that concept.  Don’t demand immediate results from too few employees and then be surprised if problems appear later because of poor quality.

“each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work.”
– 1 Corinthians 3:13

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There was a presidential debate last night.  Not that the debate was presidential, but it was a debate between two candidates for president. I think debates are useless.  I came to that conclusion after the vice-presidential debate.  Not that the debate was vice-presidential, but… ohnevermind.

First of all, you can’t trust what a candidate says while campaigning.  Sure, sometimes he will be telling the truth, but the promises may be tailored to a specific group of voters and not represent in general what the candidate believes or will do.

And secondly, how is a debate supposed to represent anything that will be done in office?  It’s not like a president ever has to debate someone.  That’s not in the job description of vice-president either.  I know, you’re supposed to be able to compare the candidates because of the debate.  But it would be more realistic, more representative of a president, if they were to hold press conferences.  Competing press conferences maybe.  Presidents have to deal with that, but they don’t ever have anyone next to them disagreeing with them and saying the bad things they have done or plan to do.

What you hear during a debate is pretty similar to the political ads that run during the 100 other days of campaigning.  So don’t look to the debates or campaigns if you are trying to decide who gets your vote – look at the candidate’s track record.  Look at the history of votes, decisions, accomplishments, scandals, etc.  That will tell you how he will be as a president.

Apologies to Lenore Skenazy for the title. The best way for kids to have good self-esteem is to earn it.  How do they earn it if their parents don’t let them do things on their own?  Give kids the independence to try things.  If they grow up expecting their parents to always help them out and protect them from everything, then they will end up being adults who will expect the government to bail them out of any financial problems they get themselves into.  We wouldn’t want that now, would we?

“And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope;”
– Romans 5:3-4

A couple of weeks ago, we went to a local orchard to pick raspberries and apples.  There is not much in food-land that is better than fresh raspberries.  Good fresh blueberries may come close, but raspberries are the winner.

Afterward, while my wife was paying for things at the orchard store, I took the kids to the playground.  They went first to a kid-sized wooden train – the type that they can climb in and play on but it doesn’t go anywhere.  I thought it looked like a good place for pictures, so I asked the kids to look at me and smile.  The oldest child was not cooperating – he was holding his hand and making an unhappy face.  So I asked him what was wrong and he said “Owie” (or is that spelled “owee”?).  That’s all he would say, repeatedly.

I noticed things flying around him, so I told both of them to get out of the train and come over by me.  The hurt child asked me what they were, so I looked and said they were wasps.  At that point, he realized that he had been stung by a wasp and he started crying in earnest.  So picture time was over as soon as it had started, kind of like the season for the (insert name of losing team here).

My wife had bought cider and doughnuts at the orchard store, so when we walked over to her, each child had a cup of cider and a doughnut waiting for him.  That helped calm everyone down.  She asked why all the fuss, so I explained what happened, and she went back into the store to get some ice.

While she was in there, she told the workers what had happened.  Not long after she brought the ice back, we saw one worker drive by in a Gator-type vehicle, carrying a can of Raid.  Then another worker walked by, carrying a can of wasp spray.  There were a few people doing nothing but taking care of wasps, it looked like.  So that seemed like good customer service response at least.

“Then God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, {and} fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them”; and it was so.”
– Genesis 1:11

The same co-worker who appeared in Tuesday’s post also mentioned something else, completely unrelated and on another day.

Did you know there are glow-in-the-dark tattoos? And blacklight (UV) tattoos? I had no idea until my co-worker said that a friend of his had a glow-in-the-dark tattoo. I forget what subject we were discussing and how we got onto tattoos. It’s a skull, I think, made of regular ink but the eyes are filled with the glowing ink. So they appear empty during the day or in lit rooms, but they glow when it’s, umm, dark.

I was going to link to some websites, but most places that show examples of tattoos are not completely family-friendly. So I’ll let the curious reader find those sites himself. But I will say that one of the more interesting examples of a blacklight tattoo was someone who had bones (i.e. skeleton) drawn along his arm and hand and fingers, with the correct bones at the appropriate places. During the day, no one would really notice his arms. But when he would go under a blacklight (say for laser tag), then his arms would appear like an X-ray.

I didn’t see one of these, but I’m thinking the Cheshire Cat would be a good candidate for one of these inks. It seems that the blacklilght ink is fine, but glow-in-the-dark inks can be radioactive and are not recommended. There are ways other than tattoos to have your hands glow.

“So when Aaron and all the sons of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him.”
– Exodus 34:30

I mentioned to a co-worker that I was leaving work to go pick up my child from school.  I also mentioned that they card you now, when you pick up a child from school.  You have to show photo ID and the name on the ID must match a name that has already been provided to the school as an approved picker-upper.

He said that was much improved from his days in school and it’s a lot safer, not having just anyone be able to come in and take a child.  I reminded him of the statistics though, that most abductions are by someone who is known to the child, not by strangers.

His response was that to improve child safety, schools should release children only to people they don’t know.  Statistically, that would be safer.

I had no response, other than to tacitly agree.  That’s the problem with statistics.

“A stranger they simply will not follow, but will flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers.”
– John 10:5

Here are some random events from the past couple months of our lives:

Our younger child woke up early, about an hour before anybody else wanted to be awake.  I told him “Hey, you’re supposed to be asleep.”
His response: “But I’m not!”

“Is the sun setting?” my younger asked at 7:00 P.M.
“No,” I replied, “the sun sets in two hours.”
Ten seconds later: “Is it two hours yet?”
“No, because the sun isn’t setting.”

I brought glasses of chocolate milk to dinner, at the request of both children.  The younger one looked at the glass of milk and exclaimed “It’s beautiful!”

The kids were not behaving well with their drinks at lunch.  From the other room, I heard my wife say “No! You don’t put that in your glass.  Only straws can go in your glasses.”  And the older child added “and ice cubes too“.

One of our children was using the bathroom.  When he came out, I asked him if he flushed the potty and washed his hands.  He said he’d be right back.  I heard water running and then, when he came back, he said as he reached for me with not-quite-dry hands “Don’t smell my hands” before I had a chance to ask him anything.  So I, being the insightful parent that I am, immediately smelled his hands and told him to go back and wash with soap.  This next time when he came back, he told me to smell his hands.  And this time they smelled like soap.

“and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
– John 8:32