(Thanks, Becky!)

Today was the day I was to get my hair cut.  It has been 366 days since my last cut, a sweet short-chop prior to my band’s 2009 fundraiser at Hexagon Bar.  Unfortunately, the Fantastic Sam’s that I normally infrequently visit is gone.  I didn’t know this until I stopped by there.  The old Fantastic Sam’s space, of course is surrounded on each side by two up-scale-looking hair salons.  Both looked to be WAY too fancy for my price range.  Across the street, there is now a Floyd’s Barbershop.

Floyd’s looked trendy but not too upscale – the type of place that can cut your hair nicely and not charge an arm and a leg.  I went in, and priced it out.

One thing that always scares me about hair salons is the unknown cost additions.  For example, when a stylist asks me after a haircut if I would like my hair styled, I always say, “No.”  I decline, because I don’t want to be charged an unknown amount of dollars for something.  I also usually decline any time a stylist offers me a shampoo for the same reason. From time-to-time, I will get a shampoo at the hair salon but only if the stylist doesn’t ask and only if it is clear that it is included in the cost of the haircut.

Floyd’s offers a number of haircut options, but none of them are all that descriptive.  There is Floyd’s Cut, Buzz Cut, Long Cut, Layered Cut, Bang Trim, and Neck Cleanup.   Furthermore, Layered Cut is priced at “$22+”.  WTF does that mean?  Is there a price range, or can it go up infinitely depending on how many layers you have.  Furthermore, what is a hair layer?

I suppose I should have stayed and asked a bunch of questions to gain some clarity on the matter, but I was both too shy and too nervous to do so.    Plus, I wouldn’t know what questions to ask other than the obvious one – “What do all these options mean for me?” – and I don’t suppose I would understand the answer.

How can I learn from this experience?  Today I was in a position that a lot of my website clients are put in every time they talk to me.  Most of my clients just ask me what they need in terms of a website and then sign-off on whatever it is I recommend.  There is a needed trust there, because we are speaking different languages.  They are probably nervous and don’t know the questions they need to ask.  And there is no amount of explaining I can do that will satisfy their curiosity.  Similarly, I usually just ask the hair stylist to “do something hip” and that I will be satisfied with whatever it is that she does, which is usually the case.

What I am looking for in a haircut is the same thing that people are looking for in a website – something that is amazing.  I do my best to get my clients to “amazing”, and I trust that my hair stylists try to get me there as well.  From time-to-time my hair stylist fails, and from time-to-time I get a dud.  But the same can be said of me and my fellow website designers.

We all need websites like we all need hairstylists.

What I can take away from this experience is something I have been struggling with since I started my web business a few years ago – communication can always be improved.  Different people are at different levels of understanding.  I know nothing about haircuts, as many of you know nothing about how a website is built.

I suppose I can’t blame Floyd’s for failing in its communication, just like I can’t blame myself for failing to explain things adequately.  Some people are beyond hope, and some can only understand through doing and seeing.  A select few totally get it, while most of us fall somewhere in the middle.

I am serious about this.  If the city plowed the streets correctly in the first place, there would be no problem.  I’m just sayin’.

[source]

1. Banana
2. Dresser
3. Grammar
4. Potato
5. Revive
6. Uneven

Are you peeking or have you already given up? Give it another try… Look at each word carefully. You’ll kick yourself when you discover the answer. This is so cool… If you’re stuck scroll down…
Answer: No, it is not that they all have at least 2 double letters…

scroll down…..

Answer: In all of the words listed, if you take the first letter, place it at the end of the word, and then spell the word backwards, it will be the same word. Did you figure it out?

Since President Obama announced that he planned to repeal “Don’t ask. Don’t tell.” during his State of the Union address, there has been considerable hubub from all the usual players (and even some unusual ones!).  If you have been paying attention to politicians and political bloggers, you know that everyone has an opinion about the United States’ military policy of requiring soldiers to maintain a veil of silence about their sexual orientation, provided that orientation is something other than “straight”.  Here is mine.

I have yet to hear a convincing argument in favor of “Don’t ask. Don’t tell.”  Admittedly, I don’t know all that much about military morale, which is what Senator Jon Kyl was citing as his line of defense yesterday on NPR.  BUT, I find it hard to believe that a military that can convince its members that killing is alright cannot convince its members that a woman loving another woman is not.  Unfortunately, Senator Kyl did not elaborate on how being gay is bad for morale.

Another argument in favor of “Don’t ask. Don’t tell.” that I have heard is that being gay is immoral.  I know that there are religions that teach that being gay is a sin.  But don’t those same religions also teach that murder is a sin?  If we can gray the line, religiously, between murder and killing (as we do with our military pursuits), certainly we can blur the line between being gay and loving another human being, if only to achieve our military goals.

At the end of the day, I am always impressed with what I perceive to be a raw fear of change by many people on this policy.  The same people that are supporting it now were vehemently against its institution in 1993.

Do people really believe deep in their hearts that allowing lesbians to serve openly in the military is a bad thing.  Surely they understand that there are already lesbians serving.  Don’t they?  All this policy would do is allow lesbians to tell their friends about it.

The distressed woman wailed, “Are you sure?”   “Yes, I am sure. The duck is dead,” replied the vet.   “How can you be so sure?” she protested. “I mean you haven’t done any testing on him or anything. He might just be in a coma or something.”

The vet rolled his eyes, turned around and left the room.   He returned a few minutes later with a black Labrador Retriever.

As the duck’s owner looked on in amazement, the dog stood on his hind legs, put his front paws on the examination table and sniffed the duck from top to bottom. He then looked up at the vet with sad eyes and shook his head. The vet patted the dog on the head and took it out of the room.

A few minutes later he returned with a cat. The cat jumped on the table and also delicately sniffed the bird from head to foot. The cat sat back on its haunches, shook its head, meowed softly and strolled out of the room.

The vet looked at the woman and said, “I’m sorry, but as I said, this is most definitely, 100% certifiably, a dead duck.”   The vet turned to his computer terminal, hit a few keys and produced a bill, which he handed to the woman.

The duck’s owner, still in shock, took the bill. “$250?” she cried, “$250 just to tell me my duck is dead?”

The vet shrugged, “I’m sorry. If you had just taken my word for it, the bill would have been $20, but with the Lab Report and the Cat scan, it’s now $250.”

(Thanks, Lars!)

My wife and I were watching ” Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” while we were in bed. I turned to her and said, “Do you want to have sex?”

“No,” she answered.

I then said, “Is that your final answer?”

She didn’t even look at me this time, simply saying, “Yes.”

So I said, “Then I’d like to phone a friend.”

And then the fight started…..

******************************************

Saturday morning I got up early, quietly dressed, made my lunch, and slipped quietly into the garage. I hooked up the boat up to the van, and proceeded to back out into a torrential downpour. The wind was blowing 50 mph, so I pulled back into the garage, turned on the radio, and discovered that the weather would be bad all day.

I went back into the house, quietly undressed, and slipped back into bed. I cuddled up to my wife’s back, now with a different anticipation, and whispered, “The weather out there is terrible.”

My loving wife of 5 years replied, “Can you believe my stupid husband is out fishing in that?”

And that’s how the fight started…

******************************************

I rear-ended a car this morning. So, there we were alongside the road and slowly the other driver got out of his car. You know how sometimes you just get soooo stressed and little things just seem funny? Yeah, well I couldn’t believe it…. He was a DWARF!!! He stormed over to my car, looked up at me, and shouted, “I AM NOT HAPPY!!!”

So, I looked down at him and said, “Well, then which one are you?”

And then the fight started……

*****************************************

My wife was hinting about what she wanted for our upcoming anniversary.. She said, ‘I want something shiny that goes from 0 to 150 in about 3 seconds.’

I bought her a bathroom scale.

And then the fight started …

******************************************
When I got home last night, my wife demanded that I take her some place expensive… so, I took her to a petrol station.

And then the fight started…

******************************************
After retiring, I went to the Social Security office to apply for Social Security. The woman behind the counter asked me for my driver’s License to verify my age. I looked in my pockets and realized I had left my wallet at home. I told the woman that I was very sorry, but I would have to go home and come back later.

The woman said, ‘Unbutton your shirt’. So I opened my shirt revealing my curly silver hair. She said, ‘That silver hair on your chest is proof enough for me’ and she processed my Social Security application.

When I got home, I excitedly told my wife about my experience at the Social Security office.

She said, ‘You should have dropped your pants. You might have gotten disability, too.’

And then the fight started…

******************************************
My wife and I were sitting at a table at my school reunion, and I kept staring at a drunken lady swigging her drink as she sat alone at a nearby table.

My wife asked, ‘Do you know her?’

‘Yes,’ I sighed, ‘She’s my old girlfriend. I understand she took to drinking right after we split up those many years ago, and I hear she hasn’t been sober since.’

‘My God!’ says my wife, ‘who would think a person could go on celebrating that long?’

And then the fight started…

******************************************
I took my wife to a restaurant. The waiter, for some reason took my order first. “I’ll have the steak, medium rare, please.”

He said, “Aren’t you worried about the mad cow?”"

Nah, she can order for herself.”

And then the fight started…

******************************************

A woman was standing nude, looking in the bedroom mirror. She was not happy with what she saw and said to her husband, “I feel horrible; I look old, fat and ugly. I really need you to pay me a compliment.’

The husband replied, ‘Your eyesight’s damn near perfect.’

And then the fight started

I think the vast differences in compensation between victims of the September 11 casualty and those who die serving our country in Uniform are profound. No one is really talking about it either, because you just don’t criticize anything having to do with September 11. Well,I can’t let the numbers pass by because it says something really disturbing about the entitlement mentality of this country. If you lost a family member in the September 11 attack, you’re going to get an average of $1,185,000. The range is a minimum guarantee of $250,000, all the way up to $4.7 million. If you are a surviving family member of an American soldier killed in action, the first check you get is a $6,000 direct death benefit, half of which is taxable.

Next, you get $1,750 for burial costs. If you are the surviving spouse, you get $833 a month until you remarry. And there’s a payment of $211 per month for each child under 18. When the child hits 18, those payments come to a
screeching halt.

Keep in mind that some of the people who are getting an average of $1.185 million up to $4.7million are complaining
that it’s not enough. Their deaths were tragic, but for most, they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Soldiers put themselves in harms way FOR ALL OF US, and they and their families know the dangers. (Actually, soldiers are put in harms way by politicians and commanding officers.)

We also learned over the weekend that some of the victims from the Oklahoma City bombing have started an organization asking for the same deal that the September 11 families are getting. In addition to that, some of the families of those bombed in the embassies are now asking for compensation as well.

You see where this is going, don’t you? Folks, this is part and parcel of over 50 years of entitlement politics in this country. It’s just really sad. Every time a pay raise comes up for the military, they usually receive next to nothing of a raise. Now the green machine is in combat in the Middle East while their families have to survive on food stamps and live in low-rent housing. Make sense?

However, our own US Congress voted themselves a raise. Many of you don’t know that they only have to be in Congress one time to receive a pension that is more than $15,000 per month. And most are now equal to being millionaires plus. They do not receiveSocial Security on retirement because they didn’t have to pay into the system. If some of the military people stay in for 20 years and get out as an E-7, they may receive a pension of $1,000 per month, and the very people who placed them in harm’s way receives a pension of $15,000 per month.

I would like to see our elected officials pick up a weapon and join ranks before they start cutting out benefits and lowering pay for oursons and daughters who are now fighting.

(Thanks, Lisa)