Category Archives: Personal

Confessions of a Nielsen family

Our family was chosen recently as a Nielsen family, filling out the diaries about our viewing habits during one week. It’s surprising to me that the system is basically unchanged since my family did it when I was about 10. (Yes, they had television back then)

With my wife and daughter on a mission trip and my son not watching TV, it was basically a record of my viewing. I was interested to see how aware that made me of what I was watching. I don’t watch a lot of TV (everyone says that): an hour or so in the morning and some in the evening. But knowing that someone was going to see what I had watched made me ver self-aware; when I watched 30 minutes of Phineas and Ferb, I wondered what they would think of a 49-year-old cartoon fan.

Years ago, a sociological tendency was discovered, something called the Hawthorn Effect. Here’s a description from another website:

The Hawthorne effect — an increase in worker productivity produced by the psychological stimulus of being singled out and made to feel important.

Individual behaviors may be altered by the study itself, rather than the effects the study is researching was demonstrated in a research project (1927 – 1932) of the Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric Company in Cicero, Illinois. This series of research, first led by Harvard Business School professor Elton Mayo along with associates F. J. Roethlisberger and William J. Dickson started out by examining the physical and environmental influences of the workplace (e.g. brightness of lights, humidity) and later, moved into the psychological aspects (e.g. breaks, group pressure, working hours, managerial leadership). The ideas that this team developed about the social dynamics of groups in the work setting had lasting influence — the collection of data, labor-management relations, and informal interaction among factory employees.

The major finding of the study was that almost regardless of the experimental manipulation employed, the production of the workers seemed to improve. One reasonable conclusion is that the workers were pleased to receive attention from the researchers who expressed an interest in them. The study was only expected to last one year, but because the researchers were set back each time they tried to relate the manipulated physical conditions to the worker’s efficiency, the project extended out to five years.

The Hawthorne Effect isn’t all that it was once thought to be. That is, researchers have discovered that other factors influenced the original study. However, my experience as a Nielsen respondent reminded me that there is some truth to it. People alter their behavior when they know they’re being studied.

Or at least they become more aware of what they do. Even if it’s watching Phineas and Ferb.

Computers and Me

My dad was a math professor. One day he brought home a programmable calculator. Among other things, you could type in a series of instructions and get it to play a basic Battleship game. I thought that was pretty cool.

I worked as a graduate assistant in the Communication Department at ACU, teaching freshman speech. One of the other GAs had an Apple ][ computer. Wow! Then, the next semester, one of my friends got one of those new computers: a Macintosh. Wow!!

Following that semester, I went to Argentina as a missionary apprentice. One job that I stepped into was preparing a bulletin for the congregation we worked with. I used an IBM Selectric typewriter (the one where you could change “fonts” by switching the type ball) and did real cut and paste, with scissors and glue. I also learned to use Letraset, which allowed me to do special effects with headlines.

While I was in Argentina, my dad bought a computer. He mainly used it for WordStar, a powerful word processor. It was far from user friendly, but it got the job done.

When I returned to the States, I also returned to ACU to complete my Master’s in Communication. One of my fellow GAs, J.D. Wallace, had an electronic typewriter. It allowed you to type in different sizes, to do bold and italics, and even stored a page in memory so that you could go back and do corrections.

J.D. and I did a project together. I spent time putting together the cover, carefully using Letraset to produce a professional looking document. I had seen the jagged graphics put out by computers and was smug in knowing that my painstaking handiwork had created something so much nicer. I remarked to J.D., “Let’s see a computer do that.” To which he replied, “They can do that.” And my world officially changed.

It was one of those moments in life where I thought I had some money. Several thousands dollars can seem like a lot to a college student. So I decided to go computer shopping. One of my friends, Doug Brown, had let me use his Mac some. As he extolled the virtues of the Mac over the PC, I was sold. I wanted a Mac.

At that time, there was one store in Abilene that sold Macs. I’m not sure how, because their prices and service were terrible. At least the salesman had no interest in wasting time on a college student. I finally made the drive to Dallas to buy my Mac. The salesman I spoke with had been raised as a missionary kid in Africa. He understood the issues of taking a computer overseas. (I was already committed to go to Argentina; I was soon to be committed to marry as well, but that’s another story) I bought my Mac and made the happy trek home.

In those days, Macs came without much software. For a while I had a computer that couldn’t do much of anything. And it took me a while to get a printer, spending $200 on a dot matrix that took 6 minutes to print one page. (!) Eventually I’d buy a 20MB hard drive ($400) and add a second megabyte of memory (another $400).

I’ve bought a number of computers since then. But that was my beginning in the computer world. The other day on Twitter, I commented to someone that I had bought my first Mac in 1988. They replied, “I was born in 1988.”

Sigh…

Holidays

Interesting how different times of the year have a different feel to them. For millennia, most of the Western world has built its schedules around agriculture, with planting and harvest defining what would be done when. I would argue that now, in the United States at least, the school schedule tends to dictate things. Maybe I feel that way because I live in a town with three universities, but it seems like most of us find summer to be a logical time for vacations, and the fall has a certain sense of newness to it.

Whatever the case, the holiday season is a special time. For some it’s especially bad, with memories of loved ones who are no longer with them or with exacerbated feelings of loneliness as they see others enjoying the holidays. Some people have unpleasant anniversaries at this time of year, a remembrance of a past hurt.

I like the holidays. I like the music. I like the foods. I enjoy the sporting events. Above all, I enjoy time with family.

We usually go to my parents’ house for Thanksgiving. Even though they live within an easy drive from us, we don’t seem to get over there very often. My sister who lives in the Ft. Worth area usually comes, with some of her family. As our kids get older, schedules get more and more complicated.

Christmas Eve is usually spent with my mother-in-law. In Argentina, Christmas Eve is much more important than Christmas Day; people gather for a meal and stay up until midnight. There are lots of fireworks throughout the evening, with midnight becoming a chaos of explosions and light. We don’t do fireworks in Abilene nor do we usually stay up until midnight, but we enjoy that time with her.

On Christmas Day, we usually drive to San Angelo to my parents’ house. Both of my sisters are usually able to come, along with their families. The house is packed to the brim, but it’s quite an enjoyable time.

We don’t tend to do much for New Year’s. In Argentina, the celebration is very similar to that of Christmas Eve. For the Archers in Abilene, it is usually a much quieter affair.

What about you? Are the holidays good for you? How do you typically spend them? Any unusual traditions in your family?

Public Service Announcement

Back up your data. Multiple times, multiple places.

That’s a lesson that I should have learned multiple times, but keep failing to absorb. Maybe if I tell it to other people, I’ll hear it myself.

I’ve been trying to recover as much as possible of what was on the laptop that was stolen two weeks ago. A lot of things are just gone. Some were things that I created, so in theory I can create them again. Other things weren’t, and I have no way of recovering them.

So for now, I’m doing redundant backups to an external hard drive, one with a “cloning” program, one with a backup program. I want to get additional backups going to our server at work, just for safety’s sake.

Knowing me, I’ll be diligent about this for a while, then slowly slack off. Until I lose data again.

Or maybe, just maybe, I’ve learned my lesson this time.

How about you? Are you protecting your data? Any particular scheme for that that might be of use to the rest of us?

Ministers Support Network Retreat

Carolina and I got to go the Summers Mill Retreat Center for a weekend retreat with the Ministers Support Network. It’s hard to describe the time we shared this past Thursday through Sunday. Resource people Eddie and Annette Sharp, David and Jeanne Wray, Charles and Judy Siburt, and Dean and Jeanine Bryce went to great lengths to listen, counsel, encourage and inspire the 7 couples that attended the retreat.

It was amazingly therapeutic for us, allowing us to discuss and deal with scars that date back to our time in Argentina.

There is an anonymous benefactor who makes all of this possible. He spends thousands every year to sponsor three of these retreats. Over two hundred ministers and ministers’ wives have been blessed by this ministry. Carolina and I are privileged to be able to count ourselves among the blessed.