A Gospel according to Judas?

Dave Farquhar Christianity

I don’t know if I should be admitting I watched the segment on Primetime on ABC tonight about the alleged Gospel according to Judas. But I made a conscious effort to watch it.

You don’t get much depth in television sensationalism, er, news, not even in a 10-minute segment. So my reaction may be a bit unfair. Still, I’ll give it, for what it’s worth.First, although Christian tradition says a lot of things about Judas, the Bible itself says very little about what happened after Judas took the money. Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss. Then, at some later point–I was going to say when Judas realized Jesus was going to be killed, but that’s actually more than the Bible says–Judas was remorseful, and tried to return the money, saying he had betrayed an innocent man. The high priests told him that wsan’t their problem. The Bible then says Judas hanged himself.

That’s all it says. The Bible doesn’t say there’s a special place in Hell for Judas. He hanged himself. Done. End of story. For Judas, at least.

One of the questions the Primetime segment raised was the possibility that Judas could have been forgiven. Well, it didn’t even state it as a question–it’s a "controversy."

There is no controversy. There is one and only one difference between Judas and Peter, the disciple who denied three times that he even knew Jesus (and added profanity for emphasis the third time). Peter asked for forgiveness. Judas didn’t.

There are a couple of places in the four Gospels where Jesus makes comments such as "One of you is a devil," which we interpret as Jesus meaning Judas. From that, we can take it to mean Judas wasn’t penitent.

Now, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John aren’t exactly unbiased sources, of course. Judas killed their hero and friend (assuming Luke knew Jesus–while Christian tradition may have an answer to that question, the Bible itself doesn’t). If one of my friends played a role in the death of another friend, I wouldn’t have nice things to say about him either. Of course those four guys were bitter. And while Christianity teaches that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, the individual personalities and feelings of the writers are still present. That’s the main reason I don’t like Eugene Peterson’s The Message–you can’t tell from reading The Message that Luke was a better writer than Mark, because the only voice you hear in The Message is that of Eugene Peterson. But I digress.

Growing up in the ultraconservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, I remember virtually every year there was a service that dealt with Judas and explored that very possibility.

Betraying Christ wasn’t Judas’ biggest sin. If he hadn’t done it, someone else would have. The forgiveness was there. Judas just didn’t reach out and take it.

The other "controversy," whether Jesus asked Judas to betray him, also isn’t a controversy. It’s right there in John 13:28: "What you must do, do quickly." There is a difference between Jesus knowing beforehand that Judas would betray him, and Jesus wanting Judas to betray him. You and I both know that if my car sits outside long enough, it’s going to rust. That doesn’t mean I want it to rust.

But Jesus knew that the entire reason for His life was His death. The message of the four Gospels can be summed up in this: Since God didn’t want to live without us, He became a man and died, because to Him that was the preferable alternative.

Nothing they said in that 10-minute news segment contradicts that.

So, on to the other questions. Who wrote it? That’s difficult to say. Judas didn’t live all that long. But the book is only 13 pages long. I suppose Judas could have written it before he hanged himself. I can think of two times when something really traumatic has happened to me and I wrote down the whole story right after it happened. It didn’t take me very long to do it. And one of them probably was about 13 pages long in its first draft.

The segment dismissed the possibility of it being a forgery, based on the obscure language it was written in, and the age of the papyrus. But being written in a language Judas might have known, and being approximately the same age as the oldest known Biblical manuscripts doesn’t prove Judas wrote it. It could just as easily be an old forgery, intended to embarass someone.

I can just imagine if someone were to unearth my library in 2000 years. Not every statement in every book on my bookshelf is true. But when you find an old book in isolation with little else to compare to it, it can be difficult to know whether what you’ve found is that day’s equivalent of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, or the Weekly World News.

And "Lost Gospels" aren’t exactly new. The Gospel of Peter and the Gospel of Thomas are two examples that have been with us since very close to the beginning of Christianity. What happened to them? They aren’t in the Bible because they weren’t considered reliable by the people who saw what happened.

A Gospel of Judas, hastily written in the hours between the time he betrayed Jesus and the time of his death, would certainly qualify. The Gospels of Matthew and John were carefully considered, after the fact, and undoubtedly the conversations and recollections of the other 10 surviving disciples colored what ultimately went into those books. Mark and Luke weren’t disciples, so they weren’t even there to see firsthand much of what is in their accounts; the books were assembled from eyewitness accounts. Mark was a good friend of Peter, while the introduction to the book of Luke suggests it might have been a commissioned work.

This doesn’t make a possible Gospel of Judas an uninteresting work, nor does it necessarily make it unimportant. And without having read the upcoming books or the big feature in National Geographic, I don’t have enough to say much about it. But from what little I have to go on, even if this book is exactly what it claims to be, I don’t see that it shakes Christianity at all.

The most important thing it brings up is what the news segment didn’t say, of course. If forgiveness was available to Judas, and if God had a plan for Judas, both are true for you and me as well.

Stock up on compact fluorescent lighting

Dave Farquhar Saving money ,

Compact fluorescent (CF) bulbs are on sale at Kmart this week. I bought a bunch.

I’ve been gradually replacing the light bulbs in my house with CFs as they burn out. CFs cost enough that I wasn’t comfortable throwing out 30 perfectly good bulbs and buying all CFs in one hit, especially not at 2002 prices.

I’m glad I took that strategy, because today’s CFs are better and they’re cheaper.Here’s the idea with CFs: a 23-watt CF gives off about as much light as a 100-watt traditional incandescent bulb. But it consumes 77 watts less power. So the 23-watt CF will save you, theoretically, about $40 in energy costs over its lifetime. Plus CFs generally last about 7 years in regular use, so you save the cost of replacing bulbs too. So that $6 light bulb could end up saving you almost 50 bucks.

With energy costs escalating, that savings estimate might actually be a bit low. Also, it doesn’t factor in the heat. If you have 15 100-watt bulbs going in your house, it’s like running a space heater in the summer time. Your air conditioner has to make up the difference. So 15 23-watt CFs generate 77% less heat.

The other thing I’ve noticed now that I’m not living alone anymore is that light bulbs burn out a lot more often. Particularly those vanity globe lights in the bathroom. CF vanity globes last almost three times as long, use less power, and they only cost 50 cents more. My bathrooms had 25-watt bulbs in them All I can find are 11-watt CFs, which are roughly equivalent to 40W. So I’ve been using half as many bulbs, leaving burned-out bulbs in place so the fixtures don’t look funny. The light from eight of those CFs might be blinding.

New CFs light up more quickly than the ones I was buying in 2002, and I think they give off more light now too. The equivalence on the package used to be pretty optimistic; an old 23-watt CF didn’t give off quite as much light as a 100-watt bulb. Today’s bulbs seem to give off comparable light, or sometimes even a bit more.

The light from a CF is still noticeably more blue than incandescent light. My mother in law likes it better. I’m not sure if I like it better or not. But I’ve been mixing CFs with traditional bulbs to tone it down, so I still get quite a bit of savings without dealing with weird light.

And while that 7-year lifespan claim may seem optimistic, I can say this: I’ve been buying CFs for 3 1/2 years now, and I haven’t had to replace one yet. Last year, during those lean times when money was short and I couldn’t really think about the long term, I was buying regular light bulbs again, and some of those have burned out already.

The biggest problem with them is that the dimmer switches in a couple of the rooms make CFs sing. I need to take the dimmer switches out and replace them with regular light switches if I want to use CFs in those rooms.

CFs aren’t the future: I believe the future is LED light bulbs. You can’t buy those at your local Kmart just yet. But white LEDs aren’t cheap enough yet that I would consider them practical. A 2.5W LED bulb gives out comparable light to a 40W incandescent and has a life expectancy of about 17 years, but it costs $30. The equivalent of 60 watts costs about $60. For $10, I’d consider the 2.5W for some applications, but not for $30.

Maybe the technology will be ready when my CFs start burning out. I hope so.

Well, at least this year the Royals showed up to play

Dave Farquhar Baseball , ,

I enjoy reading Rob & Rany on the Royals, but I just can’t feel as negative as they do about the team. I know signing 5-6 free agents who are basically average players isn’t going to make them win the World Series, and I know the Royals lost 3-1 to the Tigers yesterday. But I’m encouraged.

They did the little things.First of all, Scott Elarton, the ace pitcher who would be a #4 starter on a contending team, kept the Royals in the game. He gave up two home runs, yes, but they were banjo shots, and one traveled an underwhelming 333 feet (the wall is 330 feet away). In other words, that one doesn’t go out of every park.

And those two home runs were the only runs he gave up. If any other pitcher pitching for any other team goes 5.2 innings and gives up two runs, he’s done his job. Seven hits and three walks against three strikeouts in 5.2 innings isn’t Walter Johnson, but it’s a big improvement over Jose Lima.

Encouraging sign #2: They caught the ball. Mark Grudzielanek and Doug Mientkiewicz, signed primarily to steady the Royals’ league-worst defense, both made plays that nobody since Frank White and Wally Joyner make. When those guys catch the ball, and teach young and impressionable Angel Berroa and Mark Teahan how to catch the ball, it helps the pitchers when singles that would have turned into rallies become outs.

Encouraging sign #3: The Royals scored one run because three guys did their job. David DeJesus led off the 4th inning and legged out a single into a double. Mark Grudzielanek, who keeps getting criticized for going 0-for-4, grounded out to first base, moving DeJesus over. When the leadoff man gets on, moving the runner over is your job. I don’t care if Grudzielanek doesn’t get a hit all year, if he moves DeJesus over every time, he’s the best #2 hitter the Royals have had in several years. Then Mike Sweeney hit a weak grounder to the pitcher. Sweeney’s job was to hit a single to drive him home and keep the inning going, or at the very least, hit a fly ball deep enough that DeJesus could tag up; he did neither. Then Reggie Sanders, signed almost exclusively to protect Sweeney in the lineup, came up and singled, reminding the world that the Royals don’t have someone with the offensive prowess of Garth Brooks (the country singer) hitting behind Sweeney anymore.

Encouraging sign #4: Nobody in the Royals lineup yesterday makes Royals fans wish Garth Brooks would have made the team when he was in spring training a couple of years back. Yes, the lineup is full of average players, but the biggest problem with the Royals the last few years is that average would have been a big improvement. When you have trouble finding someone who can hit .200 to play left field, which is supposed to be an offensive position, you have big problems. They’ve solved that.

Encouraging sign #5: The league is under pressure to actually make sure baseball players aren’t injesting substances that would be illegal for you and I to take. No more steroids and no more speed. Fifteen years ago, guys like the Royals signed aren’t average players. They’re slightly above average. This lineup isn’t much worse than the lineup the Royals trotted out in 1985. Mike Sweeney isn’t as good as George Brett, but Reggie Sanders and Angel Berroa are a lot better than Steve Balboni and Buddy Biancalana.

I’m not under any grand delusion that the Royals are going to win it all this year. I’m also not under any grand delusion that Sanders and Grudzielanek and Mientkiewicz and Elarton and Mark Redman are going to be productive players for years to come. What they are is short-term solutions. Last year, the Royals fielded their Triple-A team, and they led the league in losses. This year, their Double-A and Triple-A teams are stocked with players who belong there.

In the meantime, the young guys are learning from Mientkiewicz, Sanders, and Grudzielanek how guys who’ve played on championship teams play ball. Grudzielanek is already showing Berroa and Teahan how to shift for opposing batters. In the ’70s, the Royals didn’t just throw George Brett, Frank White, and U.L. Washington out there and tell them to learn how to field. They kept the veteran presence of Cookie Rojas and Freddie Patek out there until Brett was reasonably steady at third and then they brought up White and Washington one at a time.

The Royals aren’t doing exactly what they did in the ’70s, but this year, finally, there’s a method to their madness.

How to get a Commodore 64 for $20

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , , , , ,

In 2006, Radio Shack sold a Hummer racing game based on Jeri Ellsworth’s C64-on-a-chip design.

A number of people spent time figuring out how to turn the Radio Shack game into a full-blown C64. There is a FAQ available.One cool thing about these is that it’s very easy to add a PS/2 keyboard to them. Having a C-64 with an IBM Model M keyboard sure sounds nice…

I also found a forum dedicated to this and other Commodore-related topics.

Ah, memories…

Choosing quality over quantity

Dave Farquhar Society

I saw a story on Slashdot today about Snapper pulling out of Wal-Mart. While Snapper’s competitors were angling to be the brand of choice at various big-box stores, Snapper decided they couldn’t do things the Wal-Mart way and pulled out.I don’t want to spoil the story, but basically Snapper makes premium mowers intended to last a lifetime. Their lowest-cost model costs three times as much as the lowest-cost model at Wal-Mart, but a $349 mower that runs for a couple of decades is a bigger bargain than a $99 mower that only lasts a couple of years.

Wal-Mart wanted Snapper to outsource its manufacturing, and just slap its name on something that was made cheaply overseas. Snapper decided to take a gamble, tell a company responsible for 20 percent of its sales to get lost because it was only breaking even, and concentrate its efforts on its independent dealer network, and hope to make up the difference by becoming more efficient.

I like the story’s description of the way the company builds things. They assemble their mowers very rapidly, but they test each one before they ship it out, and if it doesn’t start right or run right, they pull it aside and make it right before it goes into the box.

Whoever said they don’t make ’em like they used to wasn’t talking about these guys, in other words.

Now that I know that’s how Snapper builds things, I think when the time comes for me to buy a new lawnmower, I’d be stupid not to buy one of theirs. I had no idea anyone was still making lawnmowers in the United States.

I hope I’m not the only one who thinks that way.

Making stuff the old-fashioned way

Dave Farquhar General

There are people on eBay who buy up old DIY magazines and books, cut out the individual articles that tell you how to make stuff, and flog them for $3 or $4 apiece. It seems like those magazine articles told you how to make just about anything.

But what if you get outbid? What if you don’t want to pay $4 to read a 4-page article? And what if you can’t find the article at the library? (Conveniently they don’t tell you where the article came from.)

I’ve got a web site for you.Visit vintageprojects.com. You’ll find a little bit of everything there. Woodworking projects. How to build go-carts and scooters. Even how to build tools so you can build ever more sophisticated stuff.

Give it a look.

And in the meantime, if you ever run across a stash of old ’50s DIY mags, you’ll recognize it as a business opportunity.

Incidentally, I found that link on retrothing.com, which is a really cool blog about old stuff in general.

Taking one for the team

Dave Farquhar Baseball , , , ,

The press is divided: Alfonso Soriano is Terrell Owens. Alfonso Soriano isn’t Terrell Owens. No matter. There is one thing that matters.

Alfonso Soriano is an employee of the Washington Nationals Baseball Club and is under contract until the end of next year. Alfonso Soriano wants to play second base. His employer wants him to play left field.

If you aren’t a professional athlete, the case is clear: You do what your employer tells you. Period. Why is it different if you make $10 million a year?The argument against the move goes like this: Once a player reaches a certain level of accomplishment, there’s an unwritten rule that you don’t ask him to change positions. The argument is that Soriano has reached that level of accomplishment.

It’s true that Soriano is a very accomplished hitter. In five full seasons, he’s hit 30 homers and stolen 30 bases three times. Only Barry Bonds and Bobby Bonds have done it more times. It’s rare for someone to do it once. In his second full season in the majors, he fell one home run short of 40/40, which is something only men have done: Jose Canseco, Barry Bonds, and Alex Rodriguez. Looking at that list, it’s hard to do without steroids. For that matter, it’s hard to do with steroids.

But those are Soriano’s offensive accomplishments. On the field, he’s anything but an accomplished gloveman. His career fielding percentage at second base is .971. Soriano is no Ryne Sandberg. Since the Nationals have a capable gloveman at second base in Jose Vidro, they want to hide Soriano’s glove in left field to get his bat into the lineup.

Soriano’s objection is that next year is his free agent year, and there’s a better market for second basemen with 30-homer power than there is for left fielders with 30-homer power.

So let’s get this straight: He wants the Nationals to play him at second base this year so another team will potentially pay him more money next year.

I’m not surprised the Nationals aren’t sympathetic.

Besides, there’s a predecent for moving back to second base if another team wants him there. Craig Biggio moved from catcher to second base when the Astros needed a second baseman. A decade later, he moved to center field so the Astros could sign Jeff Kent, a power hitter who can’t play any other position well. A few months later, Biggio moved from center field to left so his team could trade for Carlos Beltran, arguably the best center fielder in the game. The next season, Biggio moved back to second base.

Nomar Garciaparra signed with the Dodgers as a first baseman despite never having played the position in his life. But the Dodgers already had two shortstops so Garciaparra signed as a first baseman. He wanted to be in LA, and the Dodgers wanted his bat. Problem solved. In theory at least.

So if any team is interested in Soriano’s oven mitt-like glovework at second base–and there are a few teams who have the money to pay him, and no better options at the position–nothing stops them from asking Soriano to move back there. And there’s little question that there’ll be teams interested in Soriano as a designated hitter too.

There would have been, anyway. Certainly there’s still a market for Soriano, since anybody can use someone who can hit 30 homers and steal 30 bases. But you want someone who’s interested in winning ballgames, not just in collecting a paycheck.

Some years ago, the New York Yankees were looking for a left fielder with a lot of power. They set their sights on Jim Edmonds, who was the center fielder for the Anaheim Angels at the time. There was some question whether Edmonds would be willing to play left field, since most people considered him a better center fielder than the Yankees’ Bernie Williams.

Edmonds said he’d rather play center. But he said what was most important to him was winning a World Series. "I’ll play third base for them if that’s what it takes to win a Series," he said.

Well, the Yankees and Angels couldn’t work out a deal, and Edmonds ended up playing center field in St. Louis instead. But that’s the attitude you want to see.

Some people argue that the Nationals should have discussed all this with Soriano before they traded for him. The Texas Rangers wouldn’t allow the Nationals to talk to him. For good reason–the Rangers wanted to move him to the outfield, and he wouldn’t move. The Yankees had wanted to move him to the outfield too, and his refusal to move was part of the reason the Yankees traded him to Texas. The only worse-kept secret in baseball was Barry Bonds and his steroids.

So the Nationals made a bad trade. Shame on them.

But shame on Soriano even more.

Frequent your local produce market

Dave Farquhar Saving money

There’s a tiny produce market in a former Amoco gas station about a mile from where I live. I’ve driven past it for years without ever so much as stopping in to see what they had.

I wasted a lot of money that way.I read in the excellent book Eat Healthy For $50 a Week that produce markets sell fruits and vegetables for less than grocery stores. Finally last weekend, my wife and I checked out that assertion.

What we found was that the selection wasn’t nearly as great as the produce section of a large grocery store–at least not in March–but the prices were good. They were never any higher than the grocery store, and often the prices were much lower. We got a head of lettuce for 25 cents, for instance. Prices vary. Lettuce was 25 cents on Sunday, and it was 98 cents today. I’m guessing on Sunday he was trying to sell down his inventory, so he cut the price. A bag of apples that usually costs a couple of dollars at the grocery store was a dollar.

It’s probably best to stop at a produce market a few times a week to get a feel for the best day to buy different things. But since I eat a couple of pounds of apples a week, that stand could easily save us a dollar or two a week. That’s $50 or $100 a year. Not exactly chump change. And that’s on a single item.

The other good thing about produce markets is they’re generally locally owned, so you’re supporting your neighbor, and while not everything sold there is going to be locally grown, you can bet anything that’s in season locally will be. Supporting your local economy is always a good thing.

Incidentally, that book has lots of other good ideas in it. My wife and I probably spend more than $50 a week on food, but the ideas in the book probably have saved us $10 a week, minimum, since we read it. That’s $500 a year. That’s half a house payment.

How to get my job (2006 edition)

Dave Farquhar Personal , , , , , , , , , ,

It seems like every year or two, somebody asks me how to get my job. Given the way the last year or so has gone, I can’t believe anyone’s asking me that question, but it’s been coming back up again. I’ve made some mistakes in my career–obviously–but since I’m still in the field, I must have done a few things right too.

I guess it makes sense to trace my career and see what I would do differently.1984: Yes, it all started when I was 10. I’d wanted a computer for as long as I could remember, and that year, Mom and Dad finally bought one. I spent as much time messing with that old Commodore as I could. And when I wasn’t messing with that Commodore, I was reading about it. It was an obsession. It bordered on unhealthy. Or maybe it was unhealthy.

In high school, if you’d offered me a choice between a date with the best-looking girl in the school or a new Amiga 1200 or 3000, I might very well have taken the computer. Sure, I was interested in girls, but the computer wouldn’t break up with me, right?

I bring this up for one reason: If you’re wanting to get into the field for money, find something else to do. Go into sales or something. If you don’t absolutely love this stuff, you won’t last, so there’s no point in wasting your time.

1994: I started my career in sales. When polite company isn’t around, I say I whored myself out for a large consumer electronics chain. That might be a bit more accurate. In a way it was a good move. A lot of IT people my age started their careers the way I did. It’s better than fast food, at least in regards that IT recruiters use it as a scouting ground. Work there and do well, and it’s just a matter of time before recruiters will want to talk to you.

What I did right: I started filling in for the store’s technician, who frequently had problems showing up for work.

What I’d do differently: First, I’d find out who the best salesperson was, and really learn how to sell. I’ve worked with IT management people who couldn’t figure out how to make their computer play solitaire, but they know a little bit about selling, so their jobs are safe, even though they had no qualifications.

The other thing I’d do differently is to get A+ certification. It’s not strictly necessary to get a better job, but it opens more doors. A lot of jobs require A+ certification just because some idiot in HR (and yes, most of them are idiots) decided it’s a good idea.

1995: I caught a break because I knew both Macintosh and IBM hardware, I knew OS/2, and I had connections at the journalism school at the University of Missouri. A professor mentioned the job opening to me and handed me a phone number. After class I called the number. The guy on the other end asked me what I knew how to do. I told him, he told me he’d pay me $7 an hour, and asked when I could start.

It was supposed to be a temporary gig. But it turned out I knew how to do a lot more than just the grunt work that needed to be done, so they found money to keep me. And when I was about to graduate, they offered me a full-time job.

What I did right: I showed up for work, I did everything they asked me to do, and whenever somebody else was sick and they asked me to try to fill in, I filled in and actually managed to do a decent job.

What I’d do differently: It wasn’t a bad gig, until Yoko Ono came along. Actually she was from Pittsburgh and she was Scottish-American. But the relationship interfered with the job and the job interfered with the relationship. And when something went wrong with one, it messed up the other too. I’d have done well to learn how to separate the two. That’s a lot to ask of someone who’s 23. Now I’m 31 and don’t know how now either. Neither does my 40-year-old boss.

1998: I moved to St. Louis to take another job in IT. This was also the year I re-discovered God and religion. This was a dream job, working for my church. I took a demotion and a pay cut to do it. Of course I didn’t know until I’d already quit my other job that it was a demotion.

I’ll get off track if I talk about it much more than that, so let’s just talk about what went right and wrong.

What I did right: I racked up a lot of impressive statistics and I learned how to do everything they asked me to do. I usually wasn’t happy about it, but I always did as well or better than the person who replaced me. The guy I replaced was a legend and I don’t think anyone would have been able to replace him adequately.

What I did wrong: I shouldn’t have taken the demotion. Not at 23. If you’re married and have kids, I can see taking a demotion so you can work better hours to spend more time with your family. When you’re 23 and single, you can’t waste time climbing a ladder you already climbed once. A banker in Columbia offered me a job as a systems administrator when he found out I knew OS/2. I should have taken it and called St. Louis and told them I wasn’t coming.

This job really went downhill as another relationship was coming to an end too. No need to re-hash that.

I made one other mistake. I won’t elaborate on it. But if you see upper management doing something unethical, LEAVE.

2005: Mercenary time. My first contract was with a very large and very nearly bankrupt cable company. The work wasn’t nearly as interesting or challenging as my previous job, and my coworkers were at either extreme: Some were among the very best people I’d ever worked with, and some of them were just overgrown high school bullies. But it was work, and the pay was fair, which was nice after working for seven years at anywhere from $15,000-$20,000 less than I was worth. Making a double mortgage payment and still having more money left over at the end of the month than I’d had a year before was very nice.

What I did right: I came in, learned quickly, took things seriously, was very professional and very effective.

What I did wrong: I didn’t press in. I did what I was asked, and that was it. That’s what a hired gun does. And the result was I was treated like a hired gun. As soon as the money got tough, I was the first one out the door.

I had coworkers who didn’t want me to learn more about the system. Since they didn’t want to show me, I should have found another way to learn it. And I should have loosened up.

2006: I won’t tell you who I’m working for now, other than to say it’s someone you’ve definitely heard of.

This time, I made an effort to go to lunch with my coworkers. I didn’t do that at the cable company because I was trying to save money. I’d gone without enough money for a couple of months and was deathly afraid of having to do it again. I’m still a tightwad and everyone knows it, but I’m willing to spend $7 to bond with my coworkers once a week. The theory is it’s a lot harder to show the door to someone you like than to someone you barely know.

The other thing I did this time was to steal some responsibility. I volunteer for everything. Sometimes they end up giving it to someone else anyway. But I’m always willing. When people give me some of their old responsibilities, I take them, and I figure out how to do them faster and smarter. After about two months, now my boss is surprised when I do something his way.

My path isn’t the only path. There are two previous bosses I wouldn’t hesitate to work for again. One is a retired U.S. Marine. He went into the Marine Corps as a technician, fixing teletype machines. When teletypes became less important, he moved on to computers. When he retired, he kept on working for the military as a contractor.

Most of my coworkers today took a similar path. Some enjoyed very long careers as defense contractors after their military days came to an end.

That seems to me to be a good route to take if you don’t have a lot of connections. And the upside to the military approach is that you know your job won’t be outsourced to India. That’s a real danger and that danger is going to get a lot bigger before it gets any smaller.

The other previous boss has a degree in psychology. He started working with computers because he found them interesting. I don’t know how he got started in the field, but during the time I worked for him, he was the epitome of connections. He knew everybody, and whenever something goofy came up, he knew how to get in touch with them to get the answer. The result? He’s every bit as entrenched as a tenured professor would be. The difference is there’s no question as to whether that’s a good thing.

Barry Bonds is no Kirby Puckett

Dave Farquhar Baseball ,

In case you’ve been on another planet this week, two things rocked the Baseball world. Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett died of a massive stroke at age 45. He was younger than Julio Franco, who is still playing in the major leagues, and Puckett is only the second youngest Hall of Famer to die. Lou Gehrig died of ALS at age 37.

The other news is the publication of a book detailing Barry Bonds’ use of performance-enhancing substances such as steroids since 1998.Both men had a dark side. According to the book, Bonds’ jealousy of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa caused him to start using steroids and a bizarre mix of other substances to bulk up. It’s clear to anyone who remembers the skinny kid in the Pittsburgh Pirates uniform from 1988 that Bonds has been doing something to transform himself. Bonds said it was Flaxseed Oil. Guess what? I take Flaxseed Oil. I take a lot of it. I’m 5’9" and on a good day I weigh 145 pounds. Barry Bonds used to be built like me. Now he’s built like a professional wrestler, and he got that way practically overnight. I don’t think it was the Flaxseed Oil…

Puckett had something else going on beneath his always-smiling exterior. Kirby Puckett was the kind of guy who would go out of his way to help anyone, and the kind of guy who could keep a positive attitude throughout absolutely anything. If Kirby Puckett said the team was going to win, everyone believed it, and Kirby Puckett always found some way to win. But the home life wasn’t as good. Puckett’s first wife divorced him because of domestic abuse.

But it should be noted that even after the divorce, the abuse, and the other things that came out afterward, Puckett’s ex-wife thought highly of him. It takes a lot of good to cover domestic abuse. But Puckett had it.

Puckett was born and grew up in the projects in Chicago and dreamed of one day being the next Ernie Banks. Well, he played a different position (Banks was a shortstop, Puckett played mostly center field) and he didn’t play for the Cubs, but other than that, he did a pretty good job of emulating his hero’s attitude and his statistics. I haven’t seen a public statement yet, but I suspect Ernie Banks has told more than one person he was flattered to be Kirby Puckett’s hero.

It all ended tragically. Puckett’s career, that is. In 1996, Puckett woke up one morning and couldn’t see out of one eye. Glaucoma. Without depth perception, you can’t play baseball, so Puckett just walked away. Well, that and he told us not to feel sorry for him. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2001. His career was very short, but so spectacular that he made it on his first ballot.

In his later years, Puckett secluded himself, and his friends started worrying about him. One account said Puckett nearly weighed 400 pounds at one point. I’m not sure if that was a typo. But Puckett was trying to straighten himself out. He’d started training again, trying to get his weight down, and was engaged to be married. He hoped to start coaching baseball, maybe as soon as next year.

It’s sad. We’ll miss Kirby Puckett. And we can’t wait for Barry Bonds to just go away.