I am Suspicious...

I am suspicious...of gas that is less than $2.00/gallon.

How long do you think my car will run on it?

Gone—but not Forgotten!

I don't consider myself to be one of those people who buys brand name items for the sake of the brand name. When I find a product I really like, however, I do expect the store in which I found the product to carry it permanently. I have an internal system which stamps my own brand of approval on certain products, very similar to the well-known "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval." And I am very loyal to those products until the day when, inevitably, it disappears from the shelf! Just what is up with that?

Unfortunately, it seems my entire life has been plagued with great products disappearing. When I was a mere young child, Mom would get this cereal for us called "Fortified Oat Flakes." And those were the best flakes in the world. They were a little pricier than bran flakes, and they didn't give us the silverware that eating 200 boxes of bran flakes did (Mom got about twenty place settings of that bran flake silverware, and so you can imagine we got bran-flaked out!). So when we did get to eat Fortified Oat Flakes—My! What a treat! And then they stopped making it for a very long period of time. Probably five or six years later, Post (?) brought those oat flakes back for a period of time, and we loved them just as much. And then they disappeared again and haven't been seen since! How tragic! Other things from my childhood that have disappeared include Bonkers (candy) and good Vitamin C's (the ones you get now just aren't the same).

This is just one example of high-quality products disappearing from local inventories. There was my favorite scent of deodorant, for example—now gone. After months of Sharon's favorite deodorant being gone, she finally found it—in a salvage grocery store! Martha White lemon poppy seed muffins---yummy! Bowling Green has it, but it's not to be found in Franklin! And it's the same story with Blueberry Morning. My favorite razor (Gillette Agility)—gone! They've recently either stopped making, or at least stopped carrying, the narrow, full-sized Goody's hair combs (are you kidding me?). Then there was Great Value (Wal-Mart brand) sparkling lemonade ($.50 per liter) that was so delicious and is now gone—probably to make room for the nasty GV crackers. The Great Value cheese pizza was one of the best frozen pizzas in the freezer aisle. It too is gone. For a while baking parchment paper (a wonderful product) was missing. (It has recently made a reappearance, and I have stocked up!)

Remember pentels?! The ones with the twist-eraser but WITHOUT the grip—gone. The supposed "upgrade" is a sad, sad mistake. And then there are the shoes… I was much too poor to afford a pair of Eastlands when they were very much the rage, and by the time I became of monetary means sufficient to make a $60 purchase---gone. Oh, sure there are the kind that have 3 in. soles, but they just aren't the same. (Lucky for me, the Franklins came back as a limited edition, and so I do now own a pair—a pair for which I must wear band-aids so my heels aren't torn up.)

And the newly-revamped fabric department at my local Wal-Mart—what a JOKE! If you can find a zipper and thread in there, count yourself lucky.

And herein lies the tragedy of my tale. I currently have a very, very sore throat—the kind that requires a full head movement every time I swallow. The kind where you have white pus pockets on your tonsils. The kind where the doc takes a look and says, "oh my!" The kind where Mom makes chicken soup and Dad says she must donate the whole pot to the cause of getting better. The kind where I am inclined to gag every once in a while as my throat closes up due to no lozenge in my mouth. The kind that wakes you up in the middle of the night. And THERE IS NO CEPASTAT on the shelves of any drug store anywhere!! Oh, there is Cepacol alright---BUT IT'S NOT THE SAME. There are Chloraseptic lozenges—which I bought today and could not even finish the first one (Free Cycle it is). My Halls Breezers (a fairly new product) are there to provide some taste relief at least, but my favorite flavor of last year—Tropical Chill—GONE!

So let me extol the virtues of Cepastat. Cepastat is only the number one sore throat lozenge, as far as I am concerned. It deadens the throat, and the taste is not bad at all. And the stores are selling Chloraseptic Disgust in its place??? Thank goodness for the Internet. I have found that Cepastat is, in fact, still being made. It's probably being sold in stores somewhere too. But not anywhere around here!! And so I have ordered three boxes of Cepastat from PlanetRX.com. I was too cheap, however, to expedite the shipping, and so it should make it just in time for next year's sore throat.

In the meantime, I am offering my services as a retail product consultant even as I wonder which one of my current favorites will be the next to join the ranks of the "Gone but not forgotten" club.

What products do you miss?

Three States of the World

“There are three states of the world,” Dr. W said at the beginning of class on Thursday night. “You can take your test now, you can take it in thirty minutes, or you can take it on Monday.”

Over the past several years, I have taken many, many tests from Dr. W (~15), and I have at least three of his classes in the grad program. His tests are admittedly a terror to prepare for and take, but he is an absolute saint when it comes to flexibility in taking them. If you’re not ready to take the test when it is time for it, he will let you take it at an alternate day or time, AND he does not penalize you for it with points lost or by giving you a harder test if you wait. He has been known to allow five or six alternate times up to two weeks after a test was originally scheduled.  

“The point is not to stress you out,” he has said on many occasions. “The point is to have you learn this stuff.” Only once in all his classes did I ever postpone a test that got the best of me (he did a double-take that time), and that was last semester for the finance exam before the final. My classmates routinely took him up on alternate exam times, and there were times when three or fewer of us took the test on time.
 
What makes his tests so hard is that it is by and large brute memorization of concepts you really don’t understand. He gives you study questions consisting anywhere from 50-80 (if we’re lucky) essay questions that vary by difficulty. We have to prepare for all eighty of them, but then we are only tested on 12-14 of them. Each question usually has several “sub-questions” contained within, and so it is not just the one question you’re answering—it’s multiple questions. Here is an example:

#9. What is the difference between a tractable and intractable problem? What is the difference between an algorithm and a heuristic? What makes a model robust?

We all agreed that this particular test was one of his hardest tests to prepare for to date, and was the one we were least equipped to handle in a long time. I would rate the difficulty of it right up there with my finance final. There are a couple of us who have two of his classes right now, and we had just been through the memorization routine with first test on Tuesday night of the same week. As soon as the test was over, we had to start in on memorizing the material for the exam on Thursday night.
 
So when Emily begged for thirty more minutes of study time, he graciously let us have it. That was the first time he allowed us to use up class time for studying, but it was a “state of the world” for which I was extremely grateful. Ten minutes before class started, I discovered I had overlooked a sheet of questions he had given us at the end of the last class. So I had an additional 6-7 questions to learn in a very short time.
 
You hate his tests, but you just can’t help but love the guy himself. He does anything he can for you. As Dr. W often says, “The goal is to graduate people with skills,” and he does what it takes to ensure just that. I just wish I liked the process a little better.

No Mojo Left

I am trying to work on homework. Despite the new light I recently bought for my desk, I feel like I can't see anything. I have lost all motivation ("mojo," in college-speak), and waves of despair wash over me afresh as I contemplate exactly how much work I have to do before this semester can be considered finished.

When my professor told us during Class One that we were to read our textbook and write thirty chapter summaries, I knew it would take a lot of time. I approached it as I usually do—grit my teeth and try to get it over and done with sooner rather than later. My strategy was to do five chapters per week so that I can get finished with enough time left to do the 15-20 page research paper that is required for the same class. At the end of the eighth chapter summary (22 left), I can see how much time goes into it, and I fear I cannot finish this within a year—much less within six weeks.

I asked my classmate Dave, who has yet to complete his first chapter summary, how he plans to finish it all. "Well Kris," he said, "I very likely will do a shoddier job on it than you will."

I honestly don't know how to do shoddy jobs. I'm not a perfectionist, by any means, but neither do I want to hand anything in that is anything less than what I consider to be my best (or at least a good) effort. It really stinks sometimes (like now).

Last semester, my finance professor told me that he thought my financial analysis paper is the best one he has ever received—even better than any from his graduate students. I was very surprised because I felt I only did what I interpreted the instructions to have told me to do. I estimated that I probably put an accumulated 24 hours into my paper—whereas one of my classmates was bragging that she "slapped [hers] together in an hour."

How do you just slap something together in an hour?

The problem often comes in that I take the instructions I am given… quite literally. And I do everything it says to do (and probably a little more). My classmates, on the other hand, seemingly put about half of the energy into whatever the instructions would indicate. And they often get full credit for doing so. How inequitable is that?

I have to say, however, I have been seeing a general decline in the quality of my work with each summary that I am painstakingly cranking out. That is progress, in my opinion, and I am rather proud of it.

The Water Closet (WC)

So we went to Rafferty's (restaurant) last night, as one will periodically do on a Saturday night. You might [understandably] question why I am posting a photo of Rafferty's restroom instead of the beautiful salad I had, and I am, of course, happy to explain. Sharon first discovered its virtues, and since we have discussed this topic from all angles at one time or another, I had to investigate personally. And yes, this little restroom stall, in my opinion, is an example from which many architects and design experts can take lessons.

• First of all, it would be helpful to note that it is not the size of a restroom stall that is important. No—it is largely in the placement of the "tools," (i.e., location, location, location).
  
• Notice that the toilet is exactly centered in this little space. It isn't closer to one side than it is the other.
  
• Furthermore, there is adequate space on both sides. No cold stall wall to cuddle with "during business hours."
  
• It is not overly spacious—neither is it too small. It is simply not necessary to have one toilet dedicated to a space that is large enough to accommodate "snow angels" or the local little league baseball game, all the while lines are forming on the outside, and the one existing toilet is slammed up against the wall. Our restroom at church, for example, has two stalls which allow the doors to rest gently against your knees while the third stall is large enough to run small laps. Poor, poor design.
  
• Additionally, the location of the paper supplies in this little palace is elevated (Wow! What a concept!) instead of being level with or lower than the seat itself. No awkward positions or contortions are necessary to reach up inside of a TP dispenser to try to catch the unseen tail end of the roll.
  
• Notice too that the walls of the stall are from floor to ceiling and are made of a sensible, washable tile! This is a highly desirable feature as I can go about my business without fearing that my shoes are the item of scorn from any neighbors.
  

I have ranted about public restroom etiquette before, and to be certain, I have Opinions on this matter. But I firmly believe that to make the public restroom experience one of TOTAL satisfaction, one should go beyond restroom etiquette and recognize that restroom design is an integral part of just such an experience.

So yay for Rafferty's! On this one, you got it right.

Note: In my perfectly designed restroom of the future, you will be sure to find my friend, the Dyson Airblade. I was first introduced to this little guy in the Time Warner Building in NYC a year ago. It features a quiet motor, a 12-second dry time, and an awesome hand-drying experience. I priced this machine this past summer during my internship, and unfortunately, it will be quite some time before I will be of the economic status to afford one. But one can dream, right?

This is Mari Beth and Cindy—enjoying the Dyson Airblade.

Grad School

Grad school is hard! And I don't like it much. There is soooo much homework, and the writing is endless. In one class alone, I have to write a 15-20 page research paper in addition to thirty (30) chapter summaries in an 832-page book. I mean, these professors actually expect us to read our textbooks! How novel is that?

The classes I am taking this semester are as follows: Managed Care, Healthcare Organization & Management, Human Resources, Decision-Making, and an Informatics computer lab (taking up three weekends).

"I hate my homework life," I told Sharon earlier this evening. She thinks she has it just as bad, but I'm not so sure.

My Little Nephew

My little nephew Evan was born a month ago on 8/8/08. His early claim to fame was that he was 8 lb. 8 oz.

Mom and Dad went out to VA to see him this weekend. Sharon and I want to go soon, but things keep happening to keep us from going. I don’t know if it will work out for us to go before Christmas or not. Sigh.