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Well, congratulations, everybody! It’s the end of the month, and you’re still kickin’! Um… you ARE still kickin’ aren’t you?

Anyhoo - since it’s that time of the month again (no, silly, not that time!), here’s a roundup of just a few of the more unusual items going on out there…

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen - the time has come for another exciting edition of… OOB!

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Dept. of Insanity

If you’re insane (or maybe just a little crazy… nah, insane is the right word), then you’d probably love to try out one of these babies. Ky Michaelson, a.k.a. “Rocketman”, is an artist/stuntman/inventor who has a love of, well, all things rocket-powered.

He’s created quite a few rocket-powered vehicles, many of which have been used in various and sundry movies and TV shows. Yes, they all work (although how well they work is sorta “up for grabs”), and some of the designs literally boggle the mind (sound of mind being boggled).

Among them, the Rocket-powered toilet pictured here is most definitely my favorite (although, based on personal experience with similar seating designs, I would guess it’s probably got a rather short range - 20 minutes, max).

The amazing thing about these creations is they are literally works of art. In fact, you can view many of them at the Bloomington Art Gallery, in Bloomington, Minnesota. Next time you’re in town, drop by!

Dept. of … LOVE

From an M&M ad campaign:“What is it about the green ones?”

Yep, that’s the question, all right. Despite their tongue-in-cheek denials, M&M’S® took advantage of the long-standing rumor of aphrodisiac-like properties for their green candies (which of course those killjoys at snopes.com are still trying to disprove).

This year, the company released bags of green-only M&Ms just in time for Valentine’s Day. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see their sales figures from that week?

Dept. of Health

As a former smoker (quit cold turkey in 1978 and never looked back) I bring you this public service announcement on behalf of all smokers who have to take their smoke breaks outside in cold weather.

Apparently Philip Morris is bound and determined to capture this particular niche market by developing and marketing worldwide a new, shorter cigarette with - get this - the same amount of nicotine as the longer versions. That’s so smokers can get their full dose without having to spend as much time out in freezing weather, don’cha know. Uh-huh.

Why would PM bother, you ask? Well, it seems the Global-Warming crowd is trying to ban outdoor heaters because of their effects on climate change. Yep, much like the ones smokers crowd around now when they smoke outside in cold weather.

Nice to know they care, and are thinkin’ of you, isn’t it?

Dept. of “I Can’t Believe You’re Going to Eat That!”

If Wimpy, the hamburger-eating character is your hero, then this ought to be good news for you!

82-year-old company Katadyn, best known for mobile water sterilization and desalination equipment, has finally gone where no one has gone before (sounds like yet another commercial opp for William Shatner) and produced the world’s first cheeseburger in a can (sound of crowd cheering going “eww- yuck!”)

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, you can now enjoy that cheeseburger in even the remotest parts of the Earth! From the tallest peaks of the Himalayas to the bottom of the Marianas Trench, you can be sure of getting a fresh burger whenever and wherever you want. Sorta puts new meaning to the phrase, “I can haz cheezeburger”, doesn’t it?

‘Course, I can’t vouch for it’s quality, though…

Dept. of Self-Promotion

Did you know there’s a new installment of OOB every month? Yes indeedy! So if you’re interested in an even bigger helping of the strange, the unusual, and the just plain whacko (that is, as opposed to extraordinary whacko), you might want to check out previous editions.

Hey, it’s easy! Just click on that cute little Archives button up there at the top, then scroll down the categories list and click on OOB. In fact, I double-dog dare you! (But don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

(By the way, if you have any great suggestions for future OOB items, by all means drop me a line at rhruzek@sbcglobal.net. If I use one of your suggestions, to demonstrate my undying gratitude, I’ll mention your name and link to you.)

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

It’s the end of yet another interesting month here at the Zone (and one with an extra day in it, no less!), and it’s time for another inspiring edition of Great Quotes. So, if you find yourself searching for some encouragement, inspiration or perhaps even just a chuckle or two, you’ve come to the right place.

I think you’ll agree they may even impart a bit of wisdom - along with a bit of fun! Check these out:

• The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark. - Agnes De Mille
• All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it. - H. L. Mencken
• We must walk consciously only part way towards our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success. - Thoreau
• The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action. - Frank Herbert
• Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. - John Lennon
• I was going to buy a copy of The Power of Positive Thinking, and then I thought: What good would that do? - Ronnie Shakes
• If you get to thinkin’ you’re a person of some influence, try orderin’ somebody else’s dog around. - Unknown
• A ship in port is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for. - Grace Murray Hopper
• The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Life is a long lesson in humility. - James M. Barrie
• Don’t wait for your ship to come in. Row out and meet it. - Jeanne Dininni’s Aunt
• For every person who wants to teach there are approximately thirty people who don’t want to learn–much. - W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman
• Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines. - John Benfield
• Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened. - Winston Churchill
• Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time… The wait is simply too long. - Leonard Bernstein
• The two most powerful things in existence: a kind word and a thoughtful gesture. - Ken Langone
• The best measure of a man’s honesty isn’t his income tax return. It’s the zero adjust on his bathroom scale. - Arthur C. Clarke
• If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one? - Abraham Lincoln
• Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer. - Charles Caleb Colton
• Champions take risk, and pressure is privilege. - Billy Jean King

And as food for thought, here’s a particularly powerful point to ponder from one of the best known names in Business today:

• If you can’t think of anything or anyone to say “Thank you” to - I suggest you go see a shrink. - Tom Peters

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Joanna Young is running her very first group writing project (way to go, Joanna!) based on the theme, your love affair with writing. I had no idea it would be so hard to write my entry, but at last it’s finally here. I must warn you though; it’s a bit of a long journey.

To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t have put it quite that way, although I truly do love to write. What’s weird is that I didn’t even know it until 2006, when I accidentally stumbled into the Middle Zone, never to return.

Then, in the spring of 2007, I threw caution to the winds and admitted the truth to the world - Hey, I’m a writer! And now - well, now that beast has been released, it’s pretty much something I have to do.

But here I’d like to take a bit of liberty and travel perhaps a slightly different path. (Hope it’s OK, Joanna!) The thing is, this whole writing thing was actually born of my lifelong love of reading.

Home Sweet Home

Did I ever tell you about the time I discovered gold?

Yep; I was still a young’un at the time, I guess about 8 years old, and we were living in my grandmother’s house. It was a big old two-story Victorian house nestled on about an acre of land in the Heights area of Houston.

It was a wonderful, adventurous place. There were lots of big trees on the property, including an absolutely huge sycamore tree (we used to call it a “gumball” tree because of the spiky balls that grew on it). I also remember a couple of cottonwood trees, several pear trees and three or four big pecan trees (grandma was always making pear preserves and pecan pies).

There was also a bayou nearby, for when I felt like taking a journey to the Center of the Earth (it was basically a big, overgrown ditch, but lots of fun to explore). Oh yeah - and a really friendly German Shepherd dog next door named Butch (a somewhat, er, lousy guard dog, but he could probably kill you with his wagging tail!)

What more could a kid want?

Like I said, it was my grandparent’s house, although for a time it was pretty crowded. One of my uncles and his wife lived in the upstairs bedroom (it was up a long, creaky stairway) while my mother, sister and I lived in three separate rooms downstairs. And for a year or so, my aunt lived with us, too. Yep, we were one big happy family!

Being a kid, I naturally explored that house literally from top to bottom. It was built on blocks with a crawlspace beneath, so of course I knew every inch of the underside (sometimes, when the wooden floorboards were dryer than usual, they shrank slightly. It was just enough that you could actually see up into some of the rooms! Very sneaky.)

Although I did make a couple of test digs in more than a few places around the foundations, alas, I never found gold there. No, the gold I found was in a completely unexpected place.

The Door

One boring summer afternoon, I was wandering around the house when I sorta, well, noticed something interesting in that stairway up to my uncle’s room. Now, I’d been up and down those stairs at least a hundred times, but this time I noticed a sortof bump in the wallpaper in one particular spot.

What could it be? Were the walls about to come apart? Was the house about to collapse in a big pile of dust and rubble? Would any of us survive? (I also had something of an imagination. But more about that later.)

Anyway, after examining it closely, I discovered the bump was actually a door that had been wallpapered over! Now that got my attention!

I imagined all sorts of wonderful things hidden behind that door; stuff that had been forgotten for a hundred years or more (although the house wasn’t nearly that old - but let’s not let facts cloud the issue). Hey - what if there was an actual skeleton in there - or even a treasure trove of gold and jewels! My excitement grew.

The next day, I secured an old razor blade from my grandfather’s bathroom, and made my way up the stairs. It took a while, but I carefully cut a slit in the wallpaper, slowly revealing the door’s outline; about three feet wide and four feet tall. That fact alone gave me pause. What would I find back there - a family of midgets? A herd of tiny elephants? About a billion bats?

Despite the admittedly weird images, I borrowed my grandpa’s flashlight and prepared to be amazed. It took nearly all my strength to push it open, creaking and scraping horrendously - it was a tight-fitting door - but finally, an entire new world was revealed, just for me alone!

The revealed space was rather large (at least, to little ol’ me). The walls were actually the roof’s framing, and there was a single window overlooking the back yard; I could see one of our pear trees’ branches through the dirty glass.

After climbing inside, I found myself surrounded by about twenty or thirty old cardboard boxes - some of them stacked up three and four deep, and covered by years of accumulated dust. There was that peculiar musty smell you find in long-closed spaces: partly mold, partly dust; mostly time. I could hear a few muffled sounds from outside, but inside the air was still, and quiet enough to hear my own heartbeat.

An Unexpected Treasure

I cautiously pulled open one of the boxes near me. Books - well, magazines to be exact. Small ones, about the size of the Reader’s Digest we always had on our living room coffee table. Alas, no gold. I tried another one, only to find more magazines. Then another, and another - and finally the truth dawned on me like a big, wet blanket: this was just old stuff!

I’m tellin’ ya; it’s almost impossible to describe the crushing sense of disappointment I felt. What a letdown! After all that, to find nothing but a bunch of old magazines. Phooey!

But then something… happened. Honestly, I didn’t recognize the significance at the time, but in truth, what I did next changed my life, well, pretty much forever.

See, all I did was pick up a magazine and look at the cover (sound of an epiphany).

There was some sort of, well, space ship on it. I looked again. Yep, that’s what it was all right. I pulled out a few more, and found an amazing collection of fantastic scenes depicting aliens landscapes, space explorers, and assorted strange beings. What the heck was this?

What happened was this. I encountered the amazing, mind-expanding phenomenon of science fiction, and just like that, I had struck gold!

For the rest of that summer I spent as much time as possible up in that attic.

The first thing I did was open every single box and get all the magazines out where I could see them. When I realized they were dated (they were serials - monthly magazines - from the ‘40s and ‘50s), I spent several days getting them into correct order. Then, and only then, could I pick up the oldest one and begin.

I read every one, cover to cover.

Back to the Future

The fact is, that day literally changed my life.

After that, I began reading voraciously. I particularly liked science fiction, because it exercised my imagination in ways very few other genres could. I realized that speculating about what was beyond my experience was something to be cherished and valued.

Along the way, I also discovered the interesting principle that visualizing the future was a good way to actually make something happen!

It’s also positively influenced my life in other ways, too. Among other things, I became a great speller, build up an innate sense of grammar (admittedly, I depart from it a time or two here at the Zone, but at least I know it!), and developed a true love of story-telling. With practice, I expect to become a great one someday.

Eventually, all those years of continuously taking stories in - began to sortof come out. Oh, sure; it was touch and go for quite a long while, there. But finally, I took a full-blast, headlong dive right into the Middle Zone, and the rest, as they say, is history.

So anyway, like I said; it was a long and somewhat tortuous journey (about 1,500 words - almost a new record!) - but I make no apologies. Ya might as well expect the unexpected here in the Zone.

But that’s why I absolutely love to write. All my life, I’ve seen what others can do; now it’s time to see what’s hiding way down there inside me.

(photo of door: Into, by Dreamer7112)

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

As a follow-up to my last post, I have a few questions for you.

When you attempt to communicate, are you quite sure that what people hear is exactly what you meant to say? What if a word you use doesn’t mean the same to the other person as it means to you? What if you accidentally use the wrong word? What happens to the message?

Quite a few years ago, the future Mrs. MZM and I made a commitment to go on a church mission trip to San Paolo, Brazil. During the initial orientation meeting (it’s where we first met, actually) we were advised about a basic Portuguese language class being offered for those of us who planned to go.

Now, it wasn’t required, mind you, since there were to be interpreters assigned to each of our groups. But we knew that learning at least a little Portuguese would make it easier to communicate, so it seemed like a good idea. Besides, at least attempting the language might even open a few doors. (It’s quite true, and something I’ve practiced in every country I’ve ever had the privilege to visit.)

Anyway, we spent several weeks learning stock phrases that might come in handy. Besides the all-important, “Excuse me; where’s the bathroom?” we learned many more, including “How are you?”, “Howdy; I’m a Texan from Texas,” and especially, “I speak very little Portuguese. Do you speak English?”

Essentially, we learned how to break the ice with total strangers (which, alas, is something I’m still trying to learn). Our interpreters would be there to handle most of it, but it was fun to at least get things started.

Occasionally, though, our crash course in Portuguese, er, let us down, if you know what I mean. Every now and then, when we thought we were saying one thing, we were actually saying something completely different. This happened far too often, and occasionally led to some hilarious incidents.

One day, several of us, including our Senior Pastor, Brother John (who had just arrived from our church in Houston), were visiting the Flower Market, a huge open-sided building where flowers of every description were bought and sold for seemingly ridiculous prices. (I remember buying an entire spray of orchids for about $5!) We spent most of the day walking about, enjoying the sights, and attempting to practice our really bad Portuguese to anyone who would listen.

I watched as my new friend (and future Mrs. MZM) began a conversation with this one fellow. It was going quite well, actually - at least until she decided to introduce him to our Pastor. She called Brother John over, and as they shook hands, she solemnly informed the man this was our “pecador grande” - whereupon the man and our interpreter both burst out laughing!

After a few moments, the interpreter said a few words to our new friend, then turned to us and said, “I’m sorry, but instead of introducing your Pastor as “a great preacher“, you just said he was “a great sinner!” (Hey, in her defense, the two words do sound similar: pecador = sinner; pregador = preacher.)

Well, we all just about fell down laughing. Brother John took it in stride, of course, laughingly (via our interpreter this time!) assuring the man, “Well, I may be a sinner, but I try not to think of myself as a particularly great one!”

So, the big question is, has this ever happened to you?

(photo: Old man (with many hands) teaching Finnish sign language“, by gak)

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

“I know that you believe that you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure that you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”

- A statement most often attributed to Robert McCloskey, U.S. State Department spokesperson at one of his regular noon briefings during the worst days of the Vietnam War.

The other day I was sitting in our weekly status meeting with about six or seven of the other consultants in my, um, “area of expertise”. (Like doctors, in the consulting world, it’s called a “practice”. Which sorta begs the question: when do we quit practicing and actually, er, get on with it?)

Now, it’s no exaggeration to say this is a pretty smart bunch. Having just joined the practice myself, whenever we get together I try to listen closely so I can learn as much as I can. You know; the ol’ “fly on the wall” bit. It’s a tried-and-true learning technique.

So like I said; I’m sittin’ there, listening to the conversation and taking mental notes. About the, um, only problem was, I had no idea what they were talking about! I mean, some of the terms I understood. And I knew they were talking about a chemical process that had to do with several of our current projects. I got that part, at least.

But as to the specific details of the conversation, well, I felt a lot like ol’ Ginger up there in that hilarious Far Side cartoon. I was reduced to just listening for my name.

Can You Run That By Me Again?

A while back, at a job-networking mixer, I remember once asking some fellow what he did for a living. He responded with a lot of technical jargon that had to do with network configurations, programming languages, and assorted other “computer stuff”. I looked at him and said, “You know, what I just heard was, “Blah, blah, blah, blah!”

Luckily, he laughed. But I think he got my point.

[Note: It was one of those “moments of insanity” I’ve mentioned before. (It’s true: Hello. I’m Bob, and I’m a smart-aleck.) Usually it’s kept well under control, but sometimes… well, all I can say is, fortunately it doesn’t happen often enough to get me seriously hurt. Nevertheless, don’t try this at home!]

On another occasion (same event; different day), I asked to see the resume of a fellow Doc I had just met. After briefly studying all five densely-typed pages, I had to ask him, “OK; but what the heck do you do?” He knew exactly what I meant. Together we were able to rewrite it so it was a bit more readable to those of us who weren’t in his highly specialized area of expertise.

See, many times we get caught up in our own areas of expertise (or maybe we’re just showing off - but that’s a subject for another post), and the language or the terms we use begin to take on more and more specialized meanings.

Communication 101

C’mon, admit it. I’ve done it; you’ve done it; you’ve heard others do it too. So what’s the problem?

Oh, no problem, really. Unless, of course, it begins to exclude others from the conversation. That’s where we might begin to get into trouble. Why? Because nobody likes to be excluded!

See, there’s three parts to every communication. (Actually, there are more, but let’s just focus on these three right now.)

• Words - units of language that carry meaning
• Meaning - content carried by the words
• Context - discourse that surrounds a language unit and helps to determine its interpretation

The thing is, the meaning and context of what we say is just as important as the words we choose to say them with. So when we talk to people; when we write, when we send an email - when we communicate - well, let’s just say we need to be sure we have all three.

Otherwise, it might be just “Blah, blah, blah, blah.”

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(Note: Click on the photos for larger views.)

You know, we hear an awful lot about teams, teamwork, and how the power of teams can sometimes even be greater than the sum of its parts. But my questions are these: How do you know when your team is effective? And so what? What’s the power of an effective team?

So rather than present yet another list of tips (2,973 tips to simplify your team-building) or illustrate lessons learned (What I learned when my team abandoned me in the wilderness) or even to tell you how to build one (How NOT to build a team). Naah (sound of buzzer); why don’t we just muse a bit today. (Hey, it’s what we do here, right?)

Well, (and I’m sure you knew this was coming) I remember this time…

Too many years ago than I like to remember, I attended summer school at Texas A&M University. I’m tellin’ ya, they used to have the most spectacular weather I’ve ever seen. (Hmm… come to think of it, I suppose they, er, still do!)

Periodic summer thunderstorms that rolled through the area were practically legendary in their intensity. Particularly impressive were the lighting storms, and it wasn’t unusual to see magnificent lightning displays - and yet not get a single drop of rain.

I remember one time especially well. Oh, it wasn’t one of those brilliant flash/crashing thunder kinds of storms, though (although we had plenty of those!) No, this one was a different sort altogether.

It was a dark and stormy night (well, it was!) and the air was surprisingly still. At about 10 p.m., the temperature was a bit sultry, but without being too unpleasant. An unbroken ceiling of cloud had curtained the sky that afternoon, and was now hovering low like a big, soft weight; campus lights reflected gently from their bellies in a softly pink glow. The still, quiet evening had a subtle, almost surreal feeling to it.

Plenty of lighting decorated the clouds that night, but strangely, not a hint of thunder. No, it was all distant, partially-hidden flashbulbs popping, as if Heaven’s own paparazzi were doing their thing somewhere above the cloud deck.

For much of the evening it was mostly random flashes; sometimes close together, occasionally spread from horizon to horizon. But every now and then they lit up entire sections of the sky at once, momentarily turning the clouds into bright, grey-white cotton candy.

In fact, the display was so spectacular, people started coming out of their dorms and setting up chairs and blankets, just to watch the show. For about an hour or so, it was flash…FLASH… flashflash…flash…FLASHflash…; God entertained us with an amazing display of light, dark, and silence.

Gradually I noticed something interesting. As the evening wore on, it seemed that larger and larger sections of the sky would light up at once. At first, it was just one small section over here; then over there. Eventually almost a quarter of the sky was flashing at one time. It was truly phenomenal, as if lightning bolts all across the sky were learning to synchronize themselves.

Finally, there was this one moment… this one spectacular moment when, as if on cue, the entire sky silently and brilliantly lit up all at once - FLASH!!! Wow!

It was absolutely breathtaking! There were surprised and appreciative reactions of wonder and amazement from most of the other nearby students as well (who by now numbered in the hundreds). A few even started clapping! I’ll never forget that night as long as I live.

And you know what? That’s exactly what happens when a team really starts clicking!

I remember seeing a TV documentary about lightning, and they showed videos of a nighttime storm over the U.S. as viewed from the Space Shuttle. Incredible! One of the more interesting phenomena (it’s still not clearly understood) is how each lightning bolt has a tendency to trigger others throughout the cloud.

But what’s amazing is that sooner or later there may be a moment when the whole storm seems to “hit it” at exactly the right moment, and WHAM! you get a brilliant display of light over a tremendous area.

And that’s the power of an effective team!

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

Y’know; lately I can’t seem to get the word can’t out of my mind (not even when I use my best Sam Kinnison impression: Get out! Get out! Get Oooouuuuuttttt!)

For instance, when I was a kid, I heard it all the time (”Hey, you can’t do that; you’re just a kid!) As a teenager, it was practically non-stop (”You can’t do that; you’re just a teenager!”) So by the time I was finally an adult (18 or 21 years, depending on the state you live in - and the State of Insanity doesn’t count), I’d heard it so many times I thought it was my middle name!

As a child in grade school, I used to play imaginary games of space exploration and adventure. My friends, when they discovered that, used to tell me, “You can’t do that! Nobody goes to space!” ‘Course, in 1961, Yuri Gagarin proved them all wrong.

I also made little toy models of moon rockets, lunar exploration vehicles, and habitats because I wanted to go live on the moon. My friends said, “You can’t do that! Nobody goes to the moon!” But in 1969, somebody did.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. The process of growing up necessitates the testing our environment, searching for boundaries. Hey, we all did it.

But sometimes I think all those can’t’s (?), if there’s enough of ‘em, eventually get to the point where they solidify in our brains like - well, like those little particles of sediment in the ocean. Given time, they make their way into the deepest, darkest places, piling thicker and thicker; turning into a thick layer of goo that eventually solidifies into rock-hardness for time immemorial.

So I guess it’s only natural for you to hear the word can’t when it comes to doing something outside of your normal experience. I mean, it’s what you’ve heard all your life, right?

Allow me to introduce you to Team Hoyt.

We heard Dick Hoyt speak for the first time at our Ignite (Eek! He mentioned it again!) convention last weekend. During his talk, they showed their DVD “It’s only a Mountain”, and I’m tellin’ ya; it was absolutely riveting!

Dick’s son Rick was severely handicapped due to an accident at birth, and he’s pretty much confined to a wheelchair for life. Now, I’ll bet here’s a couple of guys who’ve heard the word can’t all their lives! But, amazingly enough, it hasn’t stopped them from making an impact on the world.

Together, these guys have participated in, let’s see - at last count it was 938 track & field events, including (among a host of other events):

• 65 marathons, including 25 Boston Marathons
• 224 Triathalons
• Biked/ran across the U.S. (3,745 miles in 45 consecutive days)

In addition to that, they now travel the world, creating awareness of the issues the disabled face every day, while actively helping the disabled to participate in activities that would otherwise be inaccessible to them.

Rick communicates with the world through a special computer interface that prints his thoughts on the screen. It’s slow, of course, but it reveals an uncommonly sharp mind, hidden inside the misshapen body.

The video ended with a few of Rick’s computer-generated words summing up his experiences. In the foreground, you can see his computer screen displaying the letter “C”. As he continues to talk, the letter “A” appears. Finally, the last letter becomes visible:

C…. A…. N….

I couldn’t have said it better!

(top photo: Absolutely Nothing is Allowed here, by Vickie and Chuck Rogers - Best Friends)

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