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It is funny how some words enter the English language. I think you know that Kung Fu is often thought of as a member of the martial arts. Upon closer study, the real meaning means “time spent” and that in turn is why the martial arts it often represents is called that: it takes a lot of time to learn this technique.

So, it is perhaps not a surprise that a firm who wants to market a device that reflects a lot of time and effort might use the phrase Kung Fu to reflect that. Innocent enough. Beware though what happens when you connect this to other thoughts.

Susan and I are remodeling a house and were concerned about putting electrical outlets in our brand new cabinets that would deface the beautiful wood finish. So, quite naturally, I went online to see if I could find a modern outlet design that would be less conspicuous. Here is the link to the Amazon advertisement we noticed offered one.

This design looked very clever and I ordered one. It came today and as I opened the box I became a bit alarmed at what I saw. See the picture to the right. My first reaction was that I had clearly ordered something other than what I thought. No … it was the pop up electric socket device and it was exactly the one pictured on www.amazon.com.

Now when I reread the advertisement, I can hear the foreign voice at work here. Translation is not the same as transcreation. Some things might work perfectly well in Chinese or Japanese, but lose or even gain something in translation.

You might like to know that Esso Oil company changed its name decades ago when they went international because Esso in Japanese meant broken down car. KungFuKing Socket seems to follow the same communication path.

So, be careful as you consider multiple languages on your web presentation or customer communication.

Or turn them off for you … or blink in any color you want for you!

The title of this blog comes from Thomas Edward “Tom” Bodett, an American author, voice actor, and radio host. Since 1986, he has been the spokesman for the hotel chain Motel 6, whose commercials end with the phrase, “I’m Tom Bodett for Motel 6, and we’ll leave the light on for you.”  Needless to say, he is a favorite among many electric utilities for that vote of support.

Well, things are changing dramatically this year.  Check out the way technology has changed the age old Christmas lights!

Read the WSJ article here.
What a world we live in.  Think about how all this is changing expectations!  Sure, there are a lot of people who are not tech junkies.  But, the world all around us is in a mad dash to become more personal and more controllable.

These same customers do not expect to pay less for this capability.  They expect to pay a premium for convenience.
Perhaps it is high time that we open a new conversation within our staff meetings and even our regulatory proceedings.  Might we not want to begin the migration towards premium products and services that our customers will gladly pay higher prices for?

 
I think the timing is perfect for this and this kind of thinking is certain to be considered “tidings of joy” to your senior leadership teams.

Thanksgiving is such a happy time of year for most of us, visiting friends and family, good food, and the beginning of the dreaded Christmas rush. We are reminded to be thankful, and that never goes out of style. We at Apogee are certainly thankful to each of you for your friendship and encouragement.

 
What struck me this year was how wrong the story of Thanksgiving I was told actually was. I never knew the full story about how we treated the Native Americans back then. Sure, I have been alerted to some of the unexpected consequences of Columbus’s expeditions spreading disease to the Americas.

 
But, as you read the “rest of the story” about this period of time in our history, you can’t help but see parallels to our modern times as others interact and battle for what they see as rights for their religious freedom and treat the establishment so cruelly. You have to also really wonder how balance can be maintained in such a diverse world with seemingly irreconcilable differences so prevalent.

 
If you google the question I asked to open this blog, you will see much of the backstory to Thanksgiving that we were not told and it reminds us about how what we call history is summarized quite eloquently in the lyrics in the Broadway play Wicked about history:

A man’s called a traitor or liberator. A rich man’s a thief or philanthropist.
Is one a crusader or ruthless invader? It’s all in which label is able to persist.
There are precious few at ease with moral ambiguities, so we act as though they don’t exist.

 
Perhaps there is a deeper message here and someone we should be truly thankful for at this time. Squanto could have been vindictive given the way the world treated him at the time. Ironically, he used his gift of speaking English to negotiate a peace with those Pilgrims much to the chagrin of the elders of his people. He was truly an ambassador of peace in a situation that rightfully looked like the makings of a war. We need more people like Squanto in our society.

You know you live in a “Big Bang Theory” sort of family when you have discussions like the following. Susan’s makeup mirror light burned out so we needed to replace it. We took the lamp out of the fixture and went to Lowe’s trying to find a replacement.

As we headed into the store, I recounted to our son Stephen that we needed to replace the lamp and that common language would call that a light bulb. However, as my lovely wife has taught me, it is not a bulb, it is a lamp. The device that holds the lamp is a fixture and that may be a part of a larger display device … but the thing that had burned out is a lamp.

Well, go ahead and try to find a replacement lamp at Lowe’s and you are going to be directed to the place they sell fixtures …

All this prompted me to check on the famous biblical phrase from Psalm 119 in the Old Testament which seems to also differentiate between the word lamp and light. So, I went back to the Hebrew and here is what I found. The Hebrew does indeed capture the difference. The lamp is the device (e.g., a candle) while the result of the device working is to provide light on the path so you can see.

So, what is the point here? Psalm 119 is all about success in life and it is full of beautiful thoughts. Much of the Hebrew is poetic and loses a lot when translated into English, no less the King James Version that people quote. We don’t speak that form of English anywhere any longer … thank God!

But, we do talk technical talk to each other and the average customer does not understand much of what we are saying. They don’t know what a kWh is nor do they frankly care very much either. Edison felt so strongly about this that he insisted the industry would have to sell light … the result that customers wanted. Maybe we are too smart for our own good. It really isn’t dumbing things down. Rather, it is helping customers understand what they should do and where they can buy things that work and help.

This of course can create funny misunderstandings. I have been told of a church pastor contacting a utility to get a temporary electric service for their new church building. The utility asked for the service plan and the pastor said there would be bible study at 10 and worship at 11.

This also reminds me of a prior life when I set care standards in hospitals. We had to write out instructions for housekeeping staff about cleanliness standards. Removing feces might be technically correct, but it simply would not cut the mustard in practice. You had to call a spade a spade, even though it might sound a bit crude.

It does make me cringe to talk about buying light bulbs … after all … I live with someone who knows the difference. But, when in Rome …

We still ask each other “did you reboot” your computer when we are asked how to fix a MS Windows operating system problem. That seems to be the “universal fix” when everything else fails. And, it often does. But, did you know where the word comes from? Once again, from Wikipedia:

Boot is short for bootstrap or bootstrap load which derives from the phrase to pull oneself up by one’s bootstraps. The usage calls attention to the requirement that, if most software is loaded onto a computer by other software already running on the computer, some mechanism must exist to load the initial software onto the computer.

Early computers used a variety of ad-hoc methods to get a small program into memory to solve this problem. The invention of read-only memory (ROM) of various types solved this paradox by allowing computers to be shipped with a startup program that could not be erased.

Before zippers made getting into tall boots less of a chore, this type of footwear had leather attachments by which the wearer would pull them on. Some boots still do. The image here for the phrase “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” is to raise yourself off the ground by pulling on your bootstraps. This is obviously impossible.

Well then, is suggesting to a person that they should pull themselves up by their bootstraps meant to discourage them since it is impossible? No, the message is really meant to imply that achieving your goals will require as much hard work as levitating yourself would take. But, is there still a bit of sarcasm in that?

The more I think about it, it reminds me of the Olympic level wind surfer I met years ago. I have always admired that sport and given I am an avid sailor, I wanted to learn. I told him that I had tried to learn to wind surf several times but had failed miserably at it. He told me the key was that I had to be prepared to fall a 1,000 times. If I was, and kept that perspective, I would learn … and it wouldn’t take nearly that many falls.

I was not and to this day still cannot wind surf. Good life lesson … kind of like the mental model of pulling yourself up by your boot straps.