Gainful Employment

This past week I started a new job, just a week shy of the eight-month anniversary of my having been "downsized" from my previous gig of nearly a decade.

The new job continues a pattern that runs through my entire employment history: Only once have I landed a job that I saw advertised and then pursued; the rest have all been the result of the phone ringing and my answering it.

It's not what you know, and, it turns out, it's not who you know, either. It's who knows you.

I am back on the religion beat, and back among my Lutheran chums. After being thrown down the stairs in my previous position, I commented that I would not be in too big a hurry to work for a religious organization again. It was true eight or nine months ago, and I'd be kidding if I didn't say I approached what is now my current position with some wariness. Once bitten, and so on.

But it was nice to be thought of, and the interview went very well (you can always tell they're going well when you get offered the job on the spot), and the old exchequer acted like it could use some positive cash flow again, so...

The week has been exhausting, as I always find the first couple of weeks in a new job to be. But the people I am working with all seem very nice--more to the point, genuinely nice, since "nice" is a pretty cheap commodity, I've discovered, and although the week was colossally hectic (everyone kept telling me it isn't usually like that; sure hope so), I never had the feeling that I was in the crosshairs, which was a pretty constant feeling in the old job.

There is, of course, a great satisfaction in gainful employment, especially in an area in which one is experiences, which one likes, and which one can do reasonably well (specifically, communication: Publications and website, mostly). But there is a deeper satisfaction, it develops, in being in a setting in which one's contribution seems to be valued, where one's co-workers appear to respect and appreciate whatever expertise and experience one may bring to the table--even though one is still a virtual stranger to them. I'm only four days into the job, yes, but I have gotten the feeling from every single one of my colleagues--the top guns as well as my fellow staffers--that they are glad to have me on board and appreciate my contribution.

I felt that occasionally, and from certain individuals, in my previous assignment, but for the most part I felt that my role was viewed as merely another interchangeable cog in the machine, just some quasi-anonymous someone pulling one of the oars. That feeling was driven home rather keenly when I was informed that my reward for nearly a decade of loyal service would be the privilege of being the first to be thrown overboard when revenue grew tight. Nothing personal, of course, but we've decided we can get along nicely without your invaluable contribution. This way to the plank...

So it is refreshing--and, I must say, surprising--to feel that my work actually counts for something, actually has value in the eyes of someone other than myself alone, and to have that sentiment expressed in attitudes and demeanor rather than in platitudes that ring hollow since they come while one is simultaneously being given the bum's rush.

Yes, I realize that I am still in that golden "honeymoon" phase. But that hardly diminishes the pleasantness of it all.

Work should be about more than just a paycheck. This feels like work that could be that. Time will tell.

In the meantime, I'm very glad that my phone rang. Glad I answered it. And glad that, despite my recent sour experience, I did not dismiss the current opportunity out of hand.

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Email: A Love-Hate Relationship?

I just got through glancing at yet another article that purports to tell me how to Get More Stuff Done, and which, as seems to be de rigueur these days, includes the advice to check e-mail only once a day.

Without question, e-mail can be a huge time-sink, but I am surprised by the number of people who still treat it as some sort of outside influence, a thief whose only purpose is to steal time. One may also waste a great deal of time on the telephone—in fact, it’s my opinion that e-mail is a more efficient way of communicating that telephone, in most instances— but I have yet to see anyone advise that telephone messages should be returned only once per day. It would be bad advice indeed to say that one should begin his or her workday by returning any messages that may be found in voicemail and then unplug the phone for the duration of the day. Seems pretty unlikely that customers, clients, co-workers, or employers would appreciate much all of the time I’m “saving” by having only one set time during the day in which I “do” telephone.

Why would anyone think that e-mail is any different?

The beauty of e-mail, in my experience, is that I can e-mail you when it’s convenient for me and you can reply when it’s convenient for you. There’s no pas de deux in which we play telephone tag while trying, perhaps in vain, to connect in real time. Talk about time-wasters!

Naturally, there’s a lot of junk and distraction to be found in e-mail, but anyone with a lick of sense quickly learns how to filter that out as he or she scans the inbox list, deleting that which clearly is unworthy and leaving for later that which may be interesting or noteworthy, but not important at the moment.

And anyone without a lick of sense will find other distractions to waste time with.

The other efficiency that e-mail offers is to allow both the sender and recipient to get to the point! For instance, I returned to my home office the other week to a phone message from an acquaintance. His message basically told me who he was and that he wished to talk to me, and his office number. No idea what he wanted to talk about, so no way to prepare for the conversation, if preparation was indicated. I returned his call and left a message; he called back and we connected. We discussed the reason for his call, and set up a time to meet. All of which could have been handled in two e-mail messages.

But that requires that one monitors his or her e-mail just as one monitors his or her phone messages. I would never return from lunch, or a meeting, or any other adventure away from my desk without checking for messages; why would I not do the same with my e-mail messages? The idea is absurd to me.

Yet I am aware of some people’s love-hate relationship with e-mail. Sometimes it has to do with a greater technophobia, but just as often it seems rooted in that attitude I referred to above, in which e-mail— perhaps the computer itself— is still viewed as some kind of “outsider” in the workplace. These people, I find, tend to put off “doing” e-mail for as long as possible, which only means that it is a bigger and more daunting chore when finally they undertake it.

Which is another reason I think the once-per-day “rule” is bad advice: It only means that the inbox will be teeming with messages the next time you check it. To visit it periodically throughout the day and weed out the debris is much more efficient.

Some time back I worked with a woman who, well, hated e-mail. It was a chore, a burden, a distraction. She viewed it as something that took her away from her work rather than a communication medium that was as much a part of her work as the telephone or a written letter. She tended to avoid “doing” e-mail, with the result indicated above: When she forced herself to look at it, she had literally hundreds of messages! Worse, many of the were messages that required action— yet another reason the once-per-day advocates are steering you wrong. Which made the process an even bigger chore, which meant she avoided it all the more, and on and on. The snowball effect.

I recall one day in which she complained— partly in jest, but of course partly in seriousness— that she had spent the entire morning “doing” e-mail. She had replied to one particular message, and then moved down the list...until she got a reply from the person she had just replied to! And she was a little put out by that. “Don’t people have anything better to do than e-mail all day?” she railed— again, only partly in jest.

To me, that attitude was and is bizarre. Would she have felt the same about a telephone exchange? Let’s say she came in to work and had voicemail from a person. She returns the call, gets his voicemail, and leaves a reply. Two minutes later the guy calls her back with a follow-up question or comment. Would she complain that people have nothing better to do than telephone all day? Seems unlikely.

It occurs to me as well that “wasting” time is largely in the eye of the beholder. What you may view as my waste of time may be to me a legitimate undertaking— indeed, even a time-saving undertaking, since we all know that there are many instances in which an investment in time is required now in the hope of streamlining a process later.

Almost everyone agrees that the best way to tackle a large chore is to break it down into smaller pieces than can be handled one at a time. Why, then, would anyone advise one to let e-mail pile up until it becomes a large and onerous chore? I suggest it’s because the would-be adviser has issues with e-mail; and my advice would be to ignore that advice!

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Let It Be Said

I see that it's been a good while since I last pieced together a selection of the quotations I like to collect, which is kind of a bad thing in that I've been collecting even more than before since I've been following (and am being followed by) a bunch of folks on Twitter who are into quotations as well. So here's a small batch from my file, amassed from a variety of sources and covering a variety of subjects:

“The gov’t of the US is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion. The United States of America should have a foundation free from the influence of clergy.” —George Washington

“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.” –George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)

“I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.” —Franklin D. Roosevelt

“A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.” —Albert Einstein

“The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.” —Edith Sitwell (1887–1964)

“Literature is the language of society, as speech is the language of man.” —Louis de Bonald, philosopher and politician (1754-1840)

“Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.” —Mark Twain

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.” —Bertrand Russell

“I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.” —John Stuart Mill

“A conservative believes nothing should be done for the first time.” —Lynwood L. Giacomini

“The yearning to be heard is a yearning to escape our isolation and bridge the space that separates us.” —Michael P. Nichols

“An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied.” —Arnold Glasow

“If cash comes with fame, come fame; if cash comes without fame, come cash.” —Jack London

“A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.” —Jack London

“I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” —Mark Twain

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” –Blaise Pascal

“Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.” —Oscar Wilde

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Still Waiting for the "Smart" Part

Having had my BlackBerry Tour crash this afternoon, and then reboot with, oh, pretty much everything gone (last backup two months ago. Note to self: Do better at that), I am in the process of re-installing and re-creating the device. This requires me to input a certain amount of data, including ZIP Codes a couple of times and phone number at least once.

My "smart" phone doesn't seem to be smart enough to automatically insert numerals in fields that ask me for numeric information.

So I'm asked for my ZIP Code, which emerges as dzw0d. Actually not my ZIP Code, as it happens.

I know that apps can make that intuitive leap without my having to depress the alt key repeatedly, because I've seen 'em do it. So why don't all apps? I know there must be a reason, and I suspect they come down to time (lack of), energy (lack of), and interest (lack of).

A minor nuisance, but a nuisance nonetheless--and I've had quite enough nuisance the past couple-three days, thanks very much.

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So Everybody Else Can Just Hang it Up for the Next 79 Years

Caught this review headline at the online edition of The Guardian:

Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom: the novel of the century

From the review itself, and other buzz, it sounds like Freedom will indeed be something to read.

But “novel of the century”?

Aren’t we still a bit early in the century for anyone to be pronouncing anything as the (fill in the blank) of the century? Not wanting to get into any heavy discussion of when a century actually begins and ends (but, for the record, the current century began January 1, 2001), is it not safe to say that we have something in the neighborhood of, I dunno, three-quarters of it left to go?

And if the “novel of the century” has already been written, well, crap, what are the rest of us supposed to do? Are there any runner-up positions? Is there a literary equivalent of Miss Congeniality? Is there a bronze medal? Pewter? Shiny plastic?

Perhaps I might content myself with writing the novel of the week. Top of the bestseller list among my family and friends. (Reynolds’s Maxim: You find out who your real friends are when they’re called upon to shell out twenty-five bucks for your latest book.)

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One Product, One Vendor, Two Puzzling Ads

One of the disadvantages of having as many e-mail addresses as I have is that you tend to get a lot of duplicate mail, especially advertising.

But that can sometimes make for an interesting experience.

Witness ye this ad from Smith Micro Software, which arrived in one of my inboxes this past Friday, August 20:

Yes, I can purchase Roxio Easy VHS to DVD for just $49.99, ten dollars off the "regular" price of $59.99. In fact, I had contemplated purchasing that very product.

Now I'm not so sure.

Direct your attention, if you will, to this ad, which came to another of my multiple accounts this very afternoon:

Yes, if I respond to this offer, I can purchase Roxio Easy VHS to DVD for a mere twenty dollars more than in the other ad: $69.99...which Smith Micro still would have me believe is, yep, ten dollars off the "regular" price, which they now say is $79.99.

I have a couple-three mailboxes that I haven't checked today. If one or more of them contains a Smith Micro ad for Roxio Easy VHS to DVD, is it your guess that the "regular" price will be higher than the two "regular" prices indicated in these ads, or lower?

Doesn't exactly make a fellow want to whip out his credit card, does it?

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The One Thing Your Blog Must Do

I see a lot of postings, linked from Twitter and elsewhere, about the Five Things Your Blog Must Do or the Twelve Things Your Blog Must Contain or the Ninety-Eight-Point-Six Things that Every Blog Must Have. The ones I’ve read are not bad advice per se, but I find that every single one of them misses what I consider to be the sine qua non, the raison d’être, the single absolute imperative that simply must be reflected in your blog and in every post you make to it:

It’s Gotta
Make You Happy.

That’s it. That’s the single thing that your blog must do.

It may do other things, too—inform, entertain, infuriate, I don’t care. But, again, whatever other things it might do all point back to the prime directive: It has to please you.

Everything I read on the subject of blogging is geared toward maximizing the number of readers—or, more correctly, hits. It’s all about traffic; it’s all about counting beans, or eyeballs. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that—and let’s not kid ourselves: visits to this little blog of mine typically number in the double digits, every so often in the low triples, and I’ve never made a dime from it, so if a big fan base and/or money is your blogging goal, we may well be talking past each other here. But I have always maintained, in the books and stories I have written as well as my various fledgling online excursions, that, well, it’s all about me. If I like what I’m doing, there’s a better than even chance that someone else will, too.

But if I don’t like what I’m doing—if I’m writing for The Market or The Demographic or The Least Common Denominator—I’m convinced that that always shows through and that the reader will pick up on the cynicism of it, sooner or later (probably sooner), at which point he or she will prove to have exactly the same low level of interest in the undertaking as you have, and move along.

The great John D. MacDonald once said, “My purpose is to entertain myself first and other people secondly.” In my previous house, I had that quotation pinned over my writing desk. I consider it the single most important piece of writing advice I’ve ever encountered.

I would rather be read by a smaller number of people who enjoy what I’m doing (for the most part: they can’t all be gems) because they know that I enjoy it.

But of course that’s just me, and I have never claimed to march to any well-known drum beat.

I recommend you find your own beat and march to that. Some will follow, some not. But I think you’ll find the march more enriching.

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What to Do, What to Do...

Is it just me, or does it seem like these messages might be spam?

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Not to Be Confused with Medication Mistakes You WANT to Make

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Credit Is Due. In More Ways than One.

Since I seldom hesitate to complain about the various slings and arrows that life shoves at us (actually, that's not true: I hesitate quite a bit. But then I usually plunge on), I try also to give equal time to praise-singing. The former, I find, comes pretty easily; the latter requires more volition.

(Aside: When I was in the advertising game 20-some years ago, we used to share with clients an important bit of information: The ordinary citizen, if pleased with goods, services, or experiences, will share that news with two people, on average. If displeased, he or she will share the news with an average of eleven people. Here endeth the aside.)

Last month, before the kids jetted off to Europe, we spent upwards of an hour at a local Verizon store trying to arrange things so that the kids could call us via our son's Blackberry, which has international capabilities or whatever they called it. So the people at Verizon, after a certain amount of confabbing among themselves as to the best way to make our wishes come true, decided that we needed to sign up for some Global Something-or-Other (which required the extraction of the SIM card from our son's phone--no easy feat) and give Verizon money, and then get set up with a Skype account, and give them money. The kids then would be able to call back here via Skype, which would be cheaper per minute.

I am here reminded of the line from Disney's adaptation of The Wind in the Willows: "There was only one thing wrong with Rat's plan: It didn't work."

Every time the kids tried the Skype trick, they were informed that international calls could not be placed with Skype on the Verizon network.

So yesterday I sent e-mail to Skype's customer service informing them that, like Rat's plan, Verizon's didn't work, and inquiring about getting a refund on the Skype Credits I'd purchased.

To my surprise, I had a nice reply yesterday evening already--Sunday, mind you--apologizing for my troubles and requesting some additional information. I sent off the info this morning and--again to my surprise--received in short order another nice note from someone at Skype, again apologizing for the inconvenience and informing me that my credit card would be credited the full amount.

I imagine it says something about the state of customer "service" these days that I find it remarkable that a company

1. Does the right thing

2. Does it right away

3. Does it without having to be cajoled, threatened, or blackmailed

4. Does it in a polite, even friendly fashion

but that's precisely my experience with Skype. In a word: Wow.

Not that I wouldn't have liked it better had the Skype trick worked. I've had a peek at the next cellphone bill. Not pretty. But worth it to be able to stay in touch with the travelers.

Perhaps needless to say, I'd be more than willing to give the Skype thing another go next time I want to be in touch with someone traveling abroad, or if I find myself in that situation. Certainly I'd recommend Skype. 

Indeed, it seems I just have.

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Famous? Writers?

Via Twitter this morning I came upon a link--at Online University Reviews, which strikes me as an odd home for it--to "100 Famous Writers You Can Follow on Twitter." For some reason I was expecting a list of, you know, famous writers that I could follow on Twitter. Guys like Neil Gaiman, for instance, whom I have followed for some little time. Instead I got a list of more or less "famous" people, some of whom can legitimately be said to be writers, others who... Well, some of them aren't even people. Here's one:

16. Threadless: "This a community of t-shirt designers who often write odd, yet inspiring messages on clothing. Follow them to read the latest shirts or find out how to add your own."

Hmm. Call me a snob, but Threadless hardly meets my definition of "famous writer." Likewise (snobbishly, maybe), I am perplexed that the section of "Famous Book Writers You Can Follow on Twitter" comes sixth on the list, after "Famous Political Writers You Can Follow on Twitter," "Famous Inspirational Writers You Can Follow on Twitter," "Famous Actor/Writers You Can Follow on Twitter," and "Famous Music Writers You Can Follow on Twitter." We're up to #48 on the list of "writers" before we get to book authors!

At least book authors manage to get in there ahead of "Famous Internet Writers You Can Follow on Twitter," "Famous Screenwriters You Can Follow on Twitter," "Famous Comic Book Writers You Can Follow on Twitter," and "Famous Gossip Writers You Can Follow on Twitter," to say nothing of the oddball category "Best Collection Of Writers To Follow On Twitter" (sorry, but neither "Fox News" nor "CNN" qualifies as "a writer").

To be fair, some of the other categories feature individuals who can properly be said to be book authors--Barack Obama, Al Gore, John McCain and others who appear in the "Political Writers" list, for instance. None of those three, by the way, strikes me as a "political writer," but the point probably is open to debate.

The list is especially shaky--and sketchy--when it comes to the "Actor/Writers" and "Music Writers" sections. For instance,

27. David Henrie: This young actor is best known for his role on “The Wizards of Waverly Place.” He often responds to his fans tweets and lets them know what is going on with him.

Well, he sounds like a nice young man. The reason he appears on a list of famous writers, though, eludes me.

The list of "Music Writers" is especially off-point. Where one might expect a list of people who write about music, one instead gets a list of musicians and even bands. Not even writers of music, based on some of the descriptions:

40. Ashlee Simpson Wentz: Married to the above and a recent mother, Ashlee is best known for her hit “Pieces of Me” and her controversial performance on “Saturday Night Live.” Get baby pics, love notes to her husband, and random thoughts.

I have plenty of random thoughts of my own, thanks. For instance: What makes Ashlee Simpson Wentz a "famous writer"? Singer, sure; actress, okay; celebrity, yep. But "famous writer"? Nope.

Let's be clear: I am not commenting on the legitimacy of different kinds of writing. Well, except to say that tweeting, which I have done a certain amount of, is not "writing." I don't view screenwriters or comic-book writers as better or worse than book authors. Alan Moore, who is on the list, is indeed a famous writer; his work just happens to be in the comic book/graphic novel medium. No, what I'm commenting on is the validity of the list, which is pretty low.

I'd rather see a list of famous writers who are in fact writers--not just celebrities on Twitter.

Shoot, I'd be equally happy with a list of non-famous writers.

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Google News Has No Idea Where South Dakota Is

Which, granted, puts them in plentiful if not good company, but still:

Believe me, I am used to people assuming that South Dakota is in the south, but I have yet to encounter this strange assumption that it is in Africa...and northeastern Africa at that!

As a public service, I present this handy map that shows the location of South Dakota in relation to Sudan. However, I pulled the illustration from Google Maps, so who knows how much we can trust it.

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HuffPo Goes Provocative

I'm no prude--shoot, my CV includes a novel called The Naked Eye--but I find deliberately suggestive come-ons such as this from the Huffington Post to be a little disingenuous:

Obviously, the "teaser" could have read Teri Hatcher Without Makeup just as easily...but that would have been less of a tease.

Nor am I entertaining in the least the notion that the line break after PICS: Teri Hatcher Naked is at all coincidental.

Interestingly, the item itself carries the far less innuendo-laden headline
Teri Hatcher Goes Makeup Free To Prove No Botox & No Surgery.

Still, more than a little tacky.

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The Boycott and Me

Here's a nice drawing of Charles Cunningham Boycott, which, Wikipedia assures me, is in the public domain:

I am in mind of Captain Boycott these days since his name is much in the news. Well, not so much his name as the activity that his name has come to represent: the boycott, of course, the idea of which gets flung up with astonishing regularity whenever someone is unhappy with someone or something.

Most recently, of course, it's Target that we're being called upon to boycott. A few weeks ago it was BP. And Arizona. Walmart is pretty well ensconced on the boycott list. I'm sure there are dozens of others at the moment that I'm unaware of.

Well, I've signed a couple of petitions calling on Target to quit supporting the right-wing Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, who opposes gay marriage. I think corporations should stay out of elections, and I particularly think that corporations who don't--now that the Supreme Court has granted corporations "personhood" and allowed them to make unlimited contributions to buy elections--should be made to realize that some people are paying attention, and that we will make our decisions as consumers based in part on their decisions as corporations.

Certainly, news of the $150,000 Target contribution to Emmer's campaign has made me unenthusiastic about spending money at Target, which once was one of my favorite retailers. But boycott? Hmm.

In my youth, I was quick to boycott anything and anyone. Poor service? Boycott 'em! Lousy product? Boycott 'em! Odious social or political position? You guessed it.

Truth to tell, I never quite understood the difference between my self-righteous boycotts and simply no longer frequenting a restaurant or otherwise doing business with a given entity, but boycott sounds pretty damn impressive, I guess.

Now the problem I have with boycotts is trying to figure out who's really going to get hurt.

And I conclude that it's almost never the people whom I intend to hurt.

Let's take Target. It would be very easy for me to quit spending money there; in fact, my household's visits to Target had declined to practically nil until the corporation opened a store on "our" side of town a few months back. We've been frequenting it fairly often since then, but it would be pretty easy to drop back. They have nothing that we can't get elsewhere, and for probably about the same price.

Obviously no one at Target will notice one way or the other if I cut them off. Which is why we're all supposed to boycott them. And, to be sure, they would notice if significant numbers of Target shoppers stayed away in droves.

But what would be the most immediate effect? Upon noting a decline in sales, would the board of directors resign? Would the CEO be replaced? Would there be massive layoffs in the executive suite at Target Corp.?

Seems unlikely. Seems more likely that a bunch of minimum-wage clerks at various Target stores would be canned. Or, worst case, stores would be closed and they'd all get canned.

Not quite sure how my getting some high-school kid working part-time at Target thrown overboard translates into my bold and noble stand against the faceless corporation.

Ditto with BP. Early on, the call went up to boycott BP. Certainly my sentiments were in that direction, but there was the practical consideration: How the hell do I do that? In my environs, BP is represented by a local convenience store with a handful of locations around town. Easy enough to boycott them--not that they'd notice, since I seldom gas up there anyhow. But, again, the question is who's getting hurt? BP? Not much. The local store owner? Yeah, a little. What's his reaction apt to be? Dissociate from BP? Probably not. More likely that he will, yes, throw some part-time employee over the edge.

But I am still left with the fact that I am severely disappointed in Target, sorely ticked off at BP, and just generally leery of Walmart. What do I do?

As in every corner of existence, it's a question of balance. As is my wont with Walmart (I counted awhile back, and discovered that I have shopped at Walmart a grand total of five times in my life), I will think twice about parting with money at Target--and most of the time I imagine I will find an alternate route. But I don't know that "never" will be a big part of the vocabulary.

I would prefer that the bad publicity about their support of a candidate who expressly opposes fundamental rights for gay people will cause someone at Target HQ to wise up. It could happen--even if experience indicates that the more likely response is to dig in heels and weather the storm.

And then of course you always have the chip-on-shoulder contingent, which always can be counted on to say something bright like, "I don't like gays so I'm gonna shop at Target all the time now." Those people I'd like to find a way to boycott.

Back to the Bat Cave!

Looking back, I see that it's just over a year since my last encounter with Myotis lucifugus, aka the little brown bat, which, Wikipedia assures me, is "one of the most common bats of North America." Certainly it's getting to be pretty common around our house. This is our third confirmed encounter with M. lucifugus; we likely had a member of the species in the attic a few years ago, but left the attic door closed in the hope--apparently realized--that whatever was up there would find his way back out again. (See last year's adventure, "Waking with the...Bats?")

Today's encounter was strange, and mysterious. As befits bats, I suppose. My wife came upstairs as I was working late this afternoon to inform me that she had done a load of laundry and that as the water drained from the laundry sink (it's an old house, 90-some years old, and the basement floor drain is too small to handle the output of a draining washing machine, so we have the washing machine drain into a laundry sink whence gravity takes it away at a pace that prevents backing up into the laundry room) she could see "someone" in the water--someone small, with round little ears, who may or may not still be among the living.

I investigated, and found a waterlogged little bat in the corner of the near-empty sink.

As previously expressed, I actually find the critters kind of cute. Outside. After all, that's where they best can do their insect-devouring thing, which I appreciate. So I scooped this little guy up into a small box that my wife provided, the better to take him out to a shady corner of the yard, where he either would recover from his ordeal or, you know, not. He did scrabble around a bit in the box as I headed outside, so he had some life in him at least. And he nudged himself around a little when I tipped him out under some leafy bushes, so perhaps all is not lost for the little guy. I did my Francis of Assisi bit; the rest is up to him.

Having left my Blackberry on the desk upstairs, I was unable to grab a picture of the small intruder. So I'll recycle the one I found online when I last wrote about the critters:

We are left with the small mystery of what the little bloke was doing in the basement. Previous episodes saw them gaining entry through the attic, which is logical. Last year's encounter, in our first-floor bedroom, seemed likely to have been facilitated by an ill-fitting window screen. But the basement. To be sure, the little brown bat is pretty darn little and can slip through an impossibly tiny-looking crack, so maybe this adventurous fellow wormed into the basement and couldn't find his way back out again. Or maybe he came in via the chimney. Or the furnace exhaust pipe. It's possible that he made his way from the attic to the basement, but I suspect we--the human beings who occupy the house, or the felines--would have been aware of his travels in that case.

And yet, who knows? All kinds of stuff can go on in your own house while you're sound asleep.

However  he may have ended up there, I suspect that he was in the sink and not in the washing machine. For one thing, if he had somehow managed to get into the washing machine, I imagine the various wash-rinse-spin cycles would probably have done him in. And, tiny as he is, I think he might still have been too big for the drain outlet. So I'm guessing he either was in the sink and got caught in the deluge or, since my wife did not notice him there as she was loading the machine, he might have climbed up into the curved pipe that carries water from the washing machine to the sink, in which case he'd've been rudely flushed out of the pipe as soon as the machine started to drain, and obviously unable to fly or climb away.

Poor guy. I hope he lives. Mostly so he can tell his fellow bats to stay the heck out of the house!

---

The Limits of Good Advice

Readers of these virtual pages know that I am fond of quotations. I collect same, and share them with others (see here and here for proof); lately I observe that many of the tweets I receive on Twitter are quotations, too. (Sometimes the same ones, posted over and over again by the same people. Come on, guys. Just because there are tools to automate your tweets doesn't mean you have to use them.)

To be sure, not every quotation is worth sharing. I get an awful lot of them that seem to me more suited to a greeting card than anything else. And I get an awful lot that don't quite hang together. Here, for instance, is one that I grabbed off of Twitter a few minutes ago:

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. —Harold R. McAlindon

A little research indicates that this quotation also has been attributed to Emerson, among others.

Regardless of its ownership, it strikes me as a quotation that sounds better than it really is. I mean, yes, of course, the blaze-your-own-trail angle is much beloved by quotation-crafters, and with good reason. And yet, if you look at the McAlindon quotation closely, you see where it unravels: Quite simply, if everyone followed the advice, it wouldn't matter how many trails you left because no one would be following any established trails.

The moral of the story, if there is one: The world needs followers, too.

---

Bringing Grandpa Back to Life

Ha-ha, not really, of course. I mean, I'm good, but there are limits. I think.

Some weeks ago I came upon an old (circa 1954) snapshot of my paternal grandfather, Paul B. Reynolds. Since it was in an envelope with a letter he had sent to my dad stationed in Japan just after the Korean conflict, and since said letter reposed with scores of others in a box beneath Dad's workbench, where it probably had resided for the past 40 or 50 years, I was surprised at how faded and yellowed the snapshot was:

Clear enough for me to make out that it's the old gent, gone now nearly 23 years, and I know that it was taken at the gas station he owned on Saddle Creek Road in Omaha, Nebraska (Paul's "66" Service, which he subsequently sold, opening a small-engine shop on Center Street in the early 1960s), but not a very satisfying family relic. It may be that Dad had had it on display in a sunny location at Camp Eta Jima before putting it back in its envelope. Or it may just be that the chemicals are breaking down after half a century, without any help from the sun. In any event, I wished it could be better, and I wanted to share it with my brother. So I scanned it and slung it into Photoshop, and after a little bit of digital jiggery-poke here's what I walked away with:

A bit improved, I think, and far less likely to disintegrate before my eyes. Not a lot of detail, especially in the face, but despite what you see on the various crime and spy shows on TV, you really can't conjure up details that aren't in the original.

In my memory, my grandfather is always wearing either dark-green tweed work clothes like those he wears in this photo, or similar beige work duds. But never a cap like the one he's holding. Just the beat up old pith helmet he used to wear when he was working in his yard, but that's another story for another day.

---

I Write Like...

Well, this was eye-opening.

In a roundabout fashion (from Twitter to the LA Times and then to the site in question) I came upon the website I Write Like, which invites one to enter a few paragraphs of writing, which then are analyzed and from which a proclamation is made.

I pasted in the first three paragraphs of my sixth novel, Drive-By, and was rewarded with this:

I write like
Stephen King

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Interesting, since I've read very little of King's work. I don't dislike him, I've just never gotten into him much. I picked up The Shining ages ago when it was all the rage, and never finished it. It just didn't grab me.

Hope that doesn't mean I'm not interested in my own work...

Just for kicks, I copied four paragraphs from the beginning of a later chapter in Drive-By (chapter 31, if you must know), ran them through I Write Like, and got this bit of information:

I write like
Dan Brown

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Also very intriguing, since I have read less of Brown's stuff than I have of King's! Evidently I write like writers I've never really read, which should defuse any potential plagiarism suits.

Just for kicks (as if the exercise had any other point) I grabbed another selection from the midpoint of the same book (chapter 22) and ran it through the grinder. Dan Brown again.

I might have to start reading this guy.

Maybe I can figure out why his stuff sells in the bazillions while mine sells in the thousands.

---

Back to the Cave

In the course of my seemingly interminable archeological excavations at my parents' basement, I recently unearthed a forgotten treasure that I am now listening to: Batman Theme & 11 Hefti Bat Songs, the sort-of original soundtrack from the Batman television series of the mid-1960s, composed and conducted by Neal Hefti.

Not only had I forgotten the album, I had forgotten how good it is.

Looking past the camp titles of some of the cuts--"Holy Diploma, Batman--Straight A's"; "My Fine Feathered Finks"--and concentrating on the music itself, one discovers a pleasant, blues-infused jazz album that is simultaneously a product of its time and completely listenable-to today.

Even the much maligned and much parodied "Batman Theme" itself is surprisingly complex and pleasantly smooth. In its long form on the album, sans the biff! and pow! sound effects that punctuated the much shorter TV-opening version, the theme is a tight, bluesy number, and somehow the vocal repetition of the word "Batman" is less comic-bookish than in the short version, and even has an edge of danger to it.

It's not often one pulls out something from his childhood and finds it as good as he remembered. It's virtually unprecedented that he revisits something from those days and finds it better than he remembered.

When Patience Was a Virtue

Here's today's entry from Delancyplace, "a brief daily email with an excerpt or quote we view as interesting or noteworthy, offered with commentary to provide context." Subscribe here.

I'm not a Sports Illustrated fan, but I cut my teeth, professionally speaking, in the magazine world, so accounts such as the following always interest me. What struck me most, however, is the fact that Sports Illustrated, although successful from the start ("Circulation exceeded five hundred thousand in every issue in 1954, rose to six hundred thousand the following year..."), did not turn a profit until a decade later.

I repeat: A decade later.

It is inconceivable that a magazine publisher today would be willing to wait ten years for his or her investment to begin to pay out. Even if he or she had deep enough pockets to do so.

When I was in the magazine business, the standard litany was that a start-up would take three to five years to break even...with luck. And most publishers were pretty impatient with that time span. I can't even imagine what expectations are today. Chances are they want to see a profit from issue number one. (Well, who wouldn't?)

Ten years. One wonders if any magazines launched in 2010 will even be around in 2020. Let alone making money.

---

In today's excerpt - Sports Illustrated. Time, Inc. founder Henry Luce  launched the new magazine in 1954, an era in which the biggest change in American life was the rapid growth of leisure and entertainment. The writing was superb - William Faulkner wrote an account of the 1955 Kentucky Derby - but it did not produce a profit until its tenth year:

"By the spring of 1953 Luce was once again in what [employee John Shaw] Billings called 'an empire-building mood,' which usually meant launching a new magazine. And even though Luce had never been very much interested in sports or wilderness activities himself, he began to imagine a "sporting- magazine" that would capture what he believed was a growing market for leisure, and thus for sports. ...  Some of his colleagues were aghast at the idea, convinced that a sports magazine would degrade the Time Inc. brand by focusing on trivial and consumer-driven activities. ... Other colleagues were similarly dubious about the project, and many of them told Luce bluntly that he was making a dangerous error. He was not impervious to these criticisms, and at times he wavered in his commitment. ...

"Throughout the development stage of the magazine, the working title was 'Sport.' There was, however, already a magazine using that name, which had offered to sell itself to Time Inc. for $ 250,000, more than Luce was willing to pay. In May, with the publication date approaching, Harry Phillips, the Time Inc. publisher of the as yet unnamed magazine, ran into a friend in a restaurant who offered an alternative. The friend owned the title of a defunct magazine, Sports Illustrated. Everyone involved was immediately enthusiastic, and the company purchased the name for five thousand dollars. ...

"From the start Luce expected Sports Illustrated to be unprecedented. It would not be a 'fan' magazine, filled with gossip, adulation, and over-the-top language. It would not compete with the daily newspaper coverage of sports. It would not focus too much on what had happened in the previous week. ... It would look at sports not just as fun but, Luce wrote, as something that was 'deeply inherent ... in the human spirit.' ...

"The first issue of Sports Illustrated was published on August 16, 1954, a few days after issues actually appeared on newsstands. It sold out quickly. ... The first story in this first issue, 'The Duel of the Four-Minute Men,' chronicled the classic rivalry between Roger Bannister and John Landy, the first two men to run a four-minute mile. It also illustrated how unconventional a sports magazine it intended to be. 'The art of running the mile consists, in essence, of reaching the threshold of unconsciousness at the instant of breasting the tape,' the Sports Illustrated writer Paul O'Neil began:

" 'It is not an easy process ... for the body rebels against such agonizing usage and must be disciplined by the spirit and the mind. ... Few events in sport offer so ultimate a test of human courage and human will and human ability to dare and endure for the simple sake of struggle.'

"This elegant and sophisticated language was a sign of what Sports Illustrated aspired to be, and often accomplished-a magazine that would elevate the world of sports from being 'just a game' to being a powerful metaphor for the human condition. ... On February 21, 1955, the magazine ran a cover of a smiling young woman in an unrevealing swimsuit (part of a feature on sports fashion) - an augury of one of the magazine's most popular and sometimes controversial features of later decades.

"Luce took particular pride in the quality of the writers he could attract to Sports Illustrated. The revered New Yorker writer A. J. Liebling submitted an elegant essay on Stillman's Gymnasium in New York City, where many notable boxers were trained. Wallace Stegner wrote an elegy to Yosemite National Park. Budd Schulberg wrote a sympathetic story about an aging prizefighter who was finally making it big. John Steinbeck insisted he could not write for Sports Illustrated because 'my interests are too scattered and too unorthodox.' But he wrote a long letter on his eclectic interest in sports that the magazine published anyway. And William Faulkner wrote an extraordinary (and predictably unorthodox) account of the 1955 Kentucky Derby. ...


"Circulation exceeded five hundred thousand in every issue in 1954, rose to six hundred thousand the following year, and climbed steadily through most of its history (to more than three million a week in 2009). It quickly established itself as by far the most famous and influential sports magazine ever published in the United States. ... Not until 1964, however, ten years after its first issue, did Sports Illustrated produce its first profit."

Author: Alan Brinkley
Title: The Publisher
Publisher: Knopf
Date: Copyright 2010 by Alan Brinkley
Pages: 397-405

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Climbing to Nowhere?

Has anybody reading this (either one of you) had any experience with Climber.com? If so, does it seem as pointless to you as it does me?

Disclosure: Some months back I signed up for the limited, free version of Climber.com. Maybe the stuff you have to pay for is more useful, or pertinent. But my observation to date, from the regular Job Alert Newsletters it sends me, is that it's pretty off-point.

For instance, the Job Alert Newsletter for July 1 lists among the "Freshest Jobs on the Net" (!) "targeted" for me based on the information that I provided when I filled out my profile, "Managing Editor Jobs in SOUTH DAKOTA (16 New)." Wow--sixteen new Managing Editor positions right here in South Dakota. Who knew? Well, I was a magazine managing editor in a past life, so obviously the category is spot on.

So I click through to the "fresh" listings. There's a bunch of them, all right...but only one is actually in South Dakota. And on the other end of the state at that, but it's nothing to complain about since the newsletter promised positions in this state, not my town. But the other listings...here's one in Houston. Here's one in Minneapolis. Here's a "self-funded" job in Des Moines. Here's one in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. Oh, and there's only seven listed, not sixteen.

Not all that helpful, really.

But more helpful than another, somewhat enigmatic listing, "Mac Jobs in SOUTH DAKOTA (15 New)." No idea what a Mac Job is, but I suppose it has to do with my being a Macintosh computer owner of long standing. Could be fun. So I click through..

Your search - Mac - did not match any jobs.

Um, okay. Then what's the deal with the "Mac Jobs in SOUTH DAKOTA (15 New)" you were telling me about in the Job Alert Newsletter? Further, what's the deal with the helpful "suggestion" you offer:

Suggestions:

• - Make sure all words are spelled correctly.

• - Try different keywords.

• - Try more general keywords.

Yes, nothing brightens your day like being given suggestions to improve "your" search when in fact it was their search that didn't work.

So it is that Climber.com doesn't strike me as any sort of useful tool. If the idea is to get me to pay money to see the good stuff, then perhaps they should take a leaf from Classmates.com and NamesDatabase.com, which are forever telling me that people have searched for me and they'll tell me who those people are if I give them money. Climber.com doesn't tell me it's found my dream job and will share the info with me in return for cash; it tells me it's found a suitable (indeed, "fresh") job, then gives it the lie when I go to check on it. Some kind of strange, sick ongoing April Fool's joke, perhaps?

Back to the original query, then: Anyone had any experience with Climber.com? If so, was it a useful experience? Or am I right in my belief that I might as well pull the plug on it?

You Can Check Out Any Time You Like

Some small progress has been made by my attempt to roll my money out of the pension fund of my erstwhile employer and into something more secure (he said hopefully). But nobody's making it easy. Which, I suspect, is the point.

I shared recently my futile attempt to access my ELCA Board of Pensions account online (Another Good Way to Alienate Customers!). I followed that time-waster with a call the next day to Customer Service, which also, initially, took me down a blind alley: Foolishly, since I wanted my pension account information, I chose the option for pension account information from the automated menu. This took me to the aural equivalent of the same Through the Looking-Glass experience as I had encountered online the day before, namely, the request for SSN and nonexistent PIN with no other options--certainly no opportunity to speak to a human being.

Hang up. Call again. Choose something different.

By and by I am talking to a person, and a nice one at that. He can't help me, but he switches me over immediately to the person who can. And, by golly, she does help me! I get the info I needed, and she pledges to send me a PIN--after informing me that it's possible that a PIN was never sent to me in the first place seven or eight years ago, which would make my searching for it the previous afternoon even more futile. But anyhow. The ELCA Board of Pensions should know that Brian and Corina are doing their best to rescue clients' opinion of their customer service, even as their own web interface undermines it.

Almost makes me feel bad for pulling my money out. Almost. The NPR story that spurred my decision to hit the exit reminds me that I have a choice: I can pull my money out or, potentially, have it pulled out from under me.

Also, e-mail I had from a Service Center Representative makes me less inclined to stick around. Another good way to alienate customers: Blame them for your poorly designed system. When I sent "feedback" after my loop-de-loop experience with the website on Sunday, I received back a sort-of apology but with a smarmy "if it were a system with a low security threshold it would not serve our requirements or your expectations" attached. Well, my expectation is that when your goddamn system gives me options for retrieving a forgotten PIN, your goddamn system will in fact provide the promised assistance and not send me off into a continuous loop. (There is a Forgot Your PIN? link, which presents two options, Answer Challenge Question and Mail a PIN Reminder. I tried both. And both times I received the same unhelpful message: The information you entered to log into the system does not match our records. Please Log In again now. Which is of course impossible without the PIN. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence that your pension fund doesn't recognize your Social Security Number, does it?) And my expectation is that, when your goddamn system doesn't work, you won't try to shove the blame back on me! Better your goddamn system provide no "help" links at all than links that provide no help.

Oh, he also tried to get away with some balderdash about the system telling me that my information didn't match its records because it was locking me out after too many attempts to log in. Which is not just balderdash, but Grade A Balderdash of the First Order, since the system told me it didn't know my SSN on my first attempt to access it. So just fucking apologize for wasting my time and have your people redesign the interface so that it works properly instead of blaming the customer when it doesn't work.

Okay, so I no longer feel bad about taking my money away from them.

Or, at least, trying to take my money elsewhere. Trying, it develops, is about the best I can hope for.

Next day I meet with my financial adviser, who has some, well, advice as to what I might do with my ELCA pension money. I decide on a course of action, and he starts me on the paperwork while he calls the Board of Pensions to get things started on their end. And we discover, after a little while, that it's not going to be as straightforward as we'd anticipated.

Big surprise.

Turns out ELCA policy says that one may withdraw no more than the greater of $10,000 or 10% of his or her account per annum. Except that there is a one-time allowance of $20,000 or 20%.

Which means that, if the market continues to perform as well or better than it currently is, it will be several years before I can get all of "my" money out!

Astonishing. And yet, somehow, not.

Of course, my adviser asked the Board of Pensions rep why this was so. And the answer: "It's policy." Afterward, I apologized for not prepping him on the fact that we would be dealing with a churchy organization, for whom "We've always done it that way" is considered a valid answer to any inquiry.

Actually, I understand the policy. National Public Radio runs a report on church organizations' pension funds being exempt from the protections of the Investment Company Act of 1940, the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, or state securities laws and the next thing you know people start to wonder if they're comfortable having their retirement loot in a fund that might simply go away at the whim of those running the fund. And the next thing you know, you have perhaps thousands of people withdrawing their money, all of it, right now. And the fund collapses.

I get that. But in my instance--my position was eliminated due to an extreme budget shortfall caused by mad Christians withholding giving because some other congregation somewhere else might call a gay pastor (see previous posts on that subject here and here)--you'd think that maybe there would be an exception. To be thrown under the wheels because of a bad reaction to ELCA policy and then told that I can't even take my little pension account someplace else because of some other policy smacks more than a little of adding insult to injury.

Or rather adding more injury to injury.

The insult part was blaming me for their crappy web system.

Why I'm Not Boycotting BP

I've received a fair amount of e-mail lately--form letters from various organizations that have me on their mailing lists; "real" messages from real people that I really know; and messages from presumably real people whom I know only via the interwebs--encouraging me to boycott BP.

In my youth, I was pretty well inclined to boycott businesses and products that seemed particularly odious. And to this day there are plenty that I tend to avoid--Walmart at the top of the list; big surprise--but I wouldn't go so far as to call it a boycott.

And right out of the box I rejected the idea of boycotting BP.

Why?

Innocent bystanders.

Look, I'm as nauseated as anyone about what's going on in the Gulf of Mexico, about the people who were killed when the Deepwater Horizon exploded, about BP's ineptitude and its putting profits ahead of people. And if I had a really good way to hurt BP, believe me, I'd use it.

But in practice "boycott BP" really means "boycott service stations and convenience stores that carry the BP brand." And that would injure the "innocent bystanders"--the kid working the cash register for slightly more than minimum wage, maybe--way more than it would hurt BP.

Besides, the amount of business I run through the local BP-affiliated convenience stores is practically nil already. I would have to start shopping and fueling there exclusively for the next six months in order for anyone to notice the blip when I then withdrew my business. Not worth it.

My sentiments are not rooted entirely in nobility, mind. There's a visceral component as well. I was jettisoned from my position of nearly a decade with the local office of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (see my previous posts, Said, and Done and What Passes for Christianity) when too many people in too many congregations, mad at the national ELCA organization because it voted last summer to move toward doing away with bigotry against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people, decided to express their anger by withholding funding from the national body. Unfortunately this has the effect of withholding funding from the local synod as well (for some non-givers this effect was unintentional; for some, not), and the ensuing decline in receipts led to the elimination of two positions (including mine) and the near-elimination of a third.

Innocent bystanders, caught in the crossfire of unthinking and uncaring people.

Well, having been on the receiving end of that kind of thinking--if "thinking" is the word I want--I'm not in a real hurry to practice it. Actions have consequences, and not always the consequences we intend or expect.

Certainly I won't go out of my way to start fueling at BP stations in my community. But nor will I boycott them.

Then if the kid behind the counter loses his job, at least my conscience will be clear.

Another Good Way to Alienate Customers!

I have now spent nearly three hours over the course of two days attempting to access my pension account from my former employment. What a colossal waste of time--some of it my fault, but much of it the fault of an astonishingly badly designed system.

My quest began last week, when I contacted my financial advisor and asked him to be thinking of what I might do with the small amount I have in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America pension plan. From the moment I was informed that I was to be cast out of my nine-year position with the ELCA's South Dakota Synod, I knew that I would not keep my money in their pension fund for long. A report on National Public Radio the week before last, indicating that religious organizations are exempt from federal laws that protect workers' pensions, which can and does result in workers, as usual, getting the short end of the stick when their church-affiliated employer decides to terminate the plan, reminded me that I have a few pennies entrusted to a religious organization and that I might be better off getting them into a secular account quickly.

In preparation for my meeting with my financial guy, I had the brilliant idea of printing out my most recent account information, rather than rely on the latest quarterly report.

And the fun began.

I went online to log in to my Board of Pensions account. I haven't done this very often--maybe twice--so the first hurdle I encountered was not knowing my password. I set up the account so long ago that I didn't have it in my password database. I made a few likely guesses, to no avail. The website does of course provide a "forgot my password" link...but there's a catch: I not only needed my password, but also the e-mail address I used to set up the account!

Do you have any idea how many e-mail addresses I have?

Further, since my former employer used the e-mail system at Augustana College, and the college changed its e-mail format--and since the synod subsequently set up its own e-mail address scheme--I had no fewer than seven e-mail possibilities from the office alone! And the Board of Pension's website is not set up to deal with that possibility.

So I hit the "contact us" link, explained the issue, and waited for a reply.

I didn't have to wait long, so points for them, but the reply wasn't that helpful. It boiled down to speculating that if I hadn't accessed my account for an unspecified while (true that) the system might no longer remember me. The suggestion was to try entering as if I were a new user and set up a new account.

But in the meantime, I found a note on which I had recorded my password! No e-mail address, alas, but with the password I should be able to work out the e-mail address.

I made a list of likely addresses. Eleven of them.

The system liked the sixth one on my list. Of course, I had to re-enter my password twice with each attempt. But I'm lucky the system didn't lock me out after a couple-three shots.

Okay, so now I'm in. And here's a handy button I can click on to Access My Retirement Account. Perfect!

Yeah, well, "perfect" might be overstating it.

First I get the screen that tells me You are about to leave this site. This is almost never a good sign. The screen tells me also

To access your online retirement account you will be required to sign in at our record keeper, ACS HR Solutions.

To sign in, use the PIN you received in the mail. If you do not remember your PIN, please select Continue and use the Forgot Your PIN? feature in the login box. You will receive a PIN in the mail. Please remember your sign-in information for future visits.

Already I know that this will not end well.

But I bravely depress the friendly green Continue button anyhow. And down the rabbit hole I go!

The entrance page is straightforward enough: A bunch of small type about the retirement funds, including information that only inclines me to accelerate my departure:

Neither the ELCA Board of Pensions nor its funds are subject to registration, regulation or reporting under the Investment Company Act of 1940, the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 or state securities laws. Members, therefore, will not be afforded the protections of those provisions of those laws and related regulations.

Yikes! Okay what else? Ah, yes: Here's the log-in box. I need my Social Security Number, which I know, and, as promised, a PIN, which I don't. I don't dispute that at some point in the distant, foggy past the board mailed me a PIN. But I certainly don't remember it, and it seems a waste of time to go hunting for it when, I have been assured, there is a "Forgot Your PIN? feature in the login box."

And there is! So I click Forgot Your PIN?. And get a screen telling me that I need to enter my SSN first, and then click on Answer Challenge Question or Mail a PIN Reminder. Okay, that makes sense. I do so. And click Answer Challenge Question. This is looking promising.

Hahahahah! Foolish human! I am rewarded with a screen that says

The information you entered to log into the system does not match our records.

Which does not inspire much confidence. I like the idea that my pension fund remembers who I am. If nothing else, their records should include my Social Security Number, no? So at this point I realize that I was right to experience misgivings as soon as I was told that I'd be shuttled off to a third-party site, and that my initial instinct--viz., This will not end well--was accurate.

And then, to add insult, the screen that tells me they don't know who I am concludes with this advice:

Please Log In again now.

Uh-huh. You know, the only reason a person would be reading this message at all is that he or she could not log in in the first place, yes? So the suggestion is not only pointless but downright cruel.

And yet...

So I click the Log In link and have another go at it. This time I enter my SSN and click the Mail a PIN Reminder button. I mean, better than nothing, right? I'll get the PIN in a couple-three days, access my account, print out current numbers for my financial guy, and make an appointment with him to see what great ideas he has about putting the money in a safer place.

Except that the Mail a PIN Reminder button takes me right back to the "does not match our records" screen.

So what we have here, folks, is a "help" feature that is 100% unhelpful. It can't help you with a forgotten PIN, it can't issue you a "challenge question," it can't mail you a reminder, it can't do a blessed thing except waste your time, for it doesn't know who you are even when you give it your SSN repeatedly.

And we also have a certain growing misgiving about the management of the ELCA pension fund, if the "record keeper" doesn't seem to have a record of me.

Which, given what I know about religious organizations' exemption from pension-fund protection laws, makes me feel a little anxious.

Naturally the board's 800 number is answered only during business hours, so I'll have to wait another day to see about getting the information I need.

Oh, and I did dig through the filing cabinet and found all the information from when I signed up with the fund nearly a decade ago. No sign of any PIN, however. So we wait.

Now you may be inclined to say, "Hey, Ace, it's not the Board of Pension's fault you couldn't remember what e-mail address you signed up with all those years ago." And you will be entirely correct. You may be further inclined to say, "It's not ACS HR Solutions's fault that you can't find your PIN." And again you will encounter no argument from me.

But it is somebody's fault that the retirement-account system is badly organized and provides no help to customers who need it. I would say that that is a responsibility shared by ELCA Board of Pensions and ACS HR Solutions. And I would say that it's worse to promise online assistance that doesn't exist than to simply tell the user that he or she must call the 800 number during business hours to receive assistance.

As a lover of irony, however, I must chuckle at the fact that I entered this little exercise in futility as part of my intention to sever my connection with the ELCA Board of Pensions, so it's not like I can threaten to take my business elsewhere as a result of their goofy online account system.