Off to Zion (park)

The weather here has been awful. I'm excited to take the next couple of days in southern Utah. I'll be visiting Zion Nat'l Park and the ironically-named Snow Canyon, where it should be much warmer than it was when I awoke to several inches of new snow this morning. 80 degrees on Saturday--I'll take it.

Synesthesia

I just finished reading a young adult book, A Mango-Shaped Space. It is about a girl who has synesthesia. This is a condition where stimulation of one sense leads to perception in another sense or another cognitive perception within that sense. Since that sounds like gibberish, the protagonist sees colors when she hears sounds. She also associates each letter or number with a particular color. Other synesthetes might link taste or smell with shapes or colors.

Why do I write about this? Because my wife and daughter have synesthesia. My wife had talked about how she sees colors in numbers, but I didn't really understand it until I stumbled upon the above-mentioned book while looking for a recorded book to listed to on a family trip. My wife also associates color and sound to a lesser extent, such that she can tell you the color of a concert C, for instance. No wonder she has good pitch!

When I found the book, I excitedly told my oldest daughter, who was with me, about my discovery. She surprised me by stating that she also associates colors with letters and numbers. I don't know if sound has any color for her, but the book was an interesting read to me to learn how synesthetes perceive the world. My wife thinks synesthesia is common, but I have assured her that I associate no colors with letters, numbers, sounds, smells, or tastes. My sensory perceptions are very discrete.

Read more about synesthesia here. Synesthetes can have learning difficulties in some areas, for instance foreign languages and math. My wife is good at math, and my daughter does fine, but my wife is terrible at languages, because the equivalent Spanish and English words have different colors, so she has trouble with the associations. But, synesthesia often leads to exceptional ability in the creative arts. My wife is good at art, sculpture, and music. My daughter is good at dance and creative writing and poetry. Synesthesia is also associated with high spelling ability, but my wife and daugher appear to be fairly average in this regard.

Since synesthesia is not a disease or disorder with a "cure," I plan to encourage my daughter to use her synesthesia as an asset to help her perceive things in a richer way and to encourage her to explore careers and hobbies where synesthesia may be an asset. I don't think my older son is a synesthete, but I don't know about the younger two yet.

"I Suspect..."

I like having a sister with the last name of White. Since my last name is also a noun, it made for fun wedding announcements. But it's particularly nice when the family plays Clue, as we did last night. Instead of suspecting Mrs. White, we always use our sister/aunt's full name. Sis, you got off this time--it was Miss Scarlet--but don't think we aren't watching your every move for suspicious activity!

Musical Contracts

Perhaps I need to start working on my singing and acting skills for my next contract negotiation.

Green Eggs and Ham

I had breakfast with my kids at my parents' house this morning before work. My mom had a tradition of fixing a green breakfast on St. Patrick's Day when I was growing up, and she invited us over this morning to pass that along to my kids. They still talk about the green breakfast they had two years ago when they stayed with my parents while my wife and I were in Mexico for our 10th anniversary, so they were excited to go. Mom served eggs, ham, milk, grapes, and muffins. Everything but the ham was green. We had a nice meal, then my mom went to find Green Eggs and Ham while I headed off to work in my green Notre Dame shirt (St. Patrick's Day is a great day to be a ND alum).

Thanks, Mom!

Negotiating against myself

I've been heavily involved lately with a significant set of contracts with one of the world's largest IT companies. This company is moving into a new market segment and is partnering with us as an OEM distributor of our software, bundled with their offering.

On Friday afternoon, we were down to just one major issue, indemnification. The partner wanted to use their big name as justification for our offering more indemnity coverage, but we had explained to them that we had other "big" OEM partners, too, and that our coverage should be tied to the revenue generated by the deal. I thought we had reached a compromise position that would offer them less protection than they wanted, but extra protection in case a certain class of claims was brought--a class of claims they were worried about, but one that we thought was very unlikely to occur.

Imagine my surprise when their attorney called me back to say that his business folks had heard that my company would offer more indemnification, if pressed. The sales director had learned of our absolute bottom-line position and went behind my back to leak this information to the partner with the express intent of getting me to cave. His oft-repeated mantra is "Let's just get the deal done," as if the only function of legal is to kill good deals. He cares nothing about the interests of the company, just his team's sales and commission figures.

I had a tense conversation with my legal counterpart as I assured him that what he had heard was not my company's official position. In the end, I prevailed and they accepted our lower indemnification, but I was very angry that my own colleague would jeopardize the deal and the terms on which it would be consummated to pursue his own agenda. I like being involved in strategic revenue deals, but it is frustrating that my most difficult conversations are usually with my company's own salespeople. For that reason, I sometimes think it would be better to be in a position that was less sales-facing, like drafting inbound engineering development agreements, for instance.

Deleveraging

What a reversal of course! Just last year, my mailbox was inundated with offers for new credit cards, including from American Express (my wife has an AmEx, but I don't). Now, however, comes the news that AmEx is paying some of their customers $300 to pay off balances and close their accounts. I guess they're targeting customers that are at a higher risk of default, figuring maybe with some incentive AmEx can avoid being one of their creditors when the inevitable defaults follow. A brave new world, indeed.