I’m tumblelogging my trip: Travel is Fatal, or for LiveJournalers qc_travel.

This is, apparently, frustratingly hard for some people (not you, of course) to understand.

Exhibit 1a (White People)	Exhibit 1b (White People)
Exhibit 2a (Black People)	Exhibit 2b (Black People)

None are simple cases of affluence or success. Those are the results of radically different socio-economic backgrounds.

So, can we please stop talking about black and white people?

“But what about racism toward black people?” I already commented.

I wish it wasn’t necessary; but, this issue arose in the draft’s review. The sort and order of the above were and have remained randomized. I got the same dose of progressive brainwashing as you.

For all my recent pretension toward honesty and respect of intellectual property laws, I’m still a pirrrrate.

I’m curious... which song is your favourite?

What songs have been stuck in your head all month?

Me first.

The buzz is on about 52 First Dates. Which, by the way, I will only refer to as “Operation 52D” from now on. I just like referring to things as Operations.

Can I answer the questions I keep being asked? Ok, here goes:

1. Yes, there are responses!
2. No, I won’t post them (at least, not without permission).
3. Yes, I will write / photograph / interview / postmortem the hell out of the dates.
4. No, I’m not worried about finding “The One” and regretting my firm decision to not call for a second date.

I don’t like the presumption of this being some kind of cakewalk. Or, a joke. It’s definitely humorous. And it’s not for or about sex. It’s a realization that I know some of my limits better than most who know me.

One of those limits is my awkwardness in one-on-one encounters. “But, Scott, I never felt awkward when we first met. I thought we got along fine!” Well, that’s ... thanks - I’m blushing! But, I promise my mind was racing trying to keep my limbs from flailing into nearby glassware, keep from getting too excited (or too introverted), and keep a fun conversation. In short, I felt self-conscious, constrained, and pressured.

Awkward.

This rule applies universally: men and women. With no one I know has there been an exception. And, my coping strategy is simple: avoidance.

Which is exactly what I did the moment I started receiving responses.

But. Finally. Tonight, after work, I sat down and forced myself to answer every e-mail in my inbox.

A System

One of the pressures in going out is the (imagined?) expectation of fun. I feel as it’s my responsibility; and, that I fail if there is no mutual excitement. Certainly, I don’t expect the same of others. Maybe that’s unfair?

Regardless, I followed these guidelines in my responses with the intention of maximizing the potential for a fun date:

• Brainstorm! I scratched out was I wanted to do, and then erased what wouldn’t fit in the framework of a first date. Each was harder than it sounds - three or four hours!
• Respect the comfort level: I shared about myself only a little more than was shared with me. My intention was to encourage, so that I could gauge my date suggestions.
• Invite discussion, but keep it light: Short and light responses to all topics raised. Hopefully, this will leave the ice-breaking component of the first date intact.
• Ask for suggestions: I gave my availability, asked for date ideas, and tried my hardest to sound up for anything (well, I am!). Thus, if my gauging was way off, this leaves an opening for fun.

Patterns?

To start with: smart women. Literate, artistic, and educated. Adventurous, too! Unsurprising, given the ad. And, a fact that makes me smile.

A few people who just moved to Seattle; and, are interested in seeing the best parts. I only hope I can well represent this city I’m so fond of.

Anyone remember muxtape?

I loved that site. It helped me share songs I was obsessing over.

Oh, well.

The B reactor at Hanford has been declared a national historic monument!

This has some personal significance for me. When I worked at PNNL, I was able to tour the decommissioned reactor. That tour helped me connect with nuclear history.

The B reactor wasn’t created for electrical generation purposes. It was the first “production” nuclear reactor - ever. And, it produced one thing: plutonium-239 for Trinity and Fat Man.

The construction wasn’t complex, fancy, or particularly daring. The United States was at war. The reactor was effectively a scaled up version of the Chicago Pile (which has its own fascinating story) with concrete walls put around it. And, the physics determining the construction was simple:

It was a three story high cylinder of graphite riddled with hollowed out tubes. In those tubes were slugs of uranium separated by many more slugs of lead. When that much radioactive uranium is placed together, the neutrons emanating will a start a supercritical reaction.

You don’t want that to happen.

But, the graphite and lead buffer neutrons - moderating the reaction. And, the intense heat was mitigated by pumping thousands of gallons of water, straight from the Columbia river, through the tubes. The water came out contaminated and was then placed in the storage pools dotting the Hanford reservation.

Those storage pools weren’t very watertight. And, the cleanup continues to this day.

That’s it. The uranium will change into plutonium. When a slug is ready, you push it out of the tube. The plutonium falls into a pool of water with conveyor belts at the bottom. Rinse, wait for it to cool, and you’ve got bomb making materials.

Notably, the B reactor still has Soviet Russian detectors from Cold War treaties. They check the flow of water from the Columbia. No water, no reactor.

Employee’s Self-Assessment of Results Against Commitments

The first of my three commitments is a personal goal. It is less about working with the team so much as aligning myself to team success. Toward shipping our product, I have made commitments and accomplishments above and beyond simply participating in the process. I have provided review and feedback for all aspects of the project, including involvement in the planning process, raising and proposing solutions for development concerns, and helping bring new members up to speed.

Additionally, I took a lead position in the conception and implementation of the integration sprint. When the planning process was lead firmly in the direction of continued independent sprints and codebases, I investigated and presented the future risks to the team. I then acted as the scrum master for the sprint to integrate our disparate codebases. Simultaneously, I included planning for the ramping up of our engineering process and testing infrastructure.

My second commitment is about improving the performance of the development team. I don’t know if our team’s performance has improved. However, I do know our ability to understand and work with each other has improved. I influenced the definition of goals for the team, as opposed to individuals, to strive toward. This creates interdependencies and makes a team. Unfortunately, it also makes very clear team deficiencies. I think we have more work in improving our weaknesses and relying on our mutual strengths before I can consider us an “improved” team.

My third commitment was about ensuring the development team and our partners are synchronized. Much of the work there has been a matter of connecting the results and consumption of our teams. While painful, this has forced a spotlight and evaluation of both groups. On our partners’ side, the model creation process has been relatively uncontrolled and therefore allowed rapid evolution. The simple fact there are over six branches of the models – none matching the current project features – indicated there was a need for rigor. On the development side, we had only an ad-hoc process for accepting model changes, regenerating designers, and realigning all associated work. Now that our pains are understood, both teams (and our GPM) agree on the importance of defining and formalizing these processes. By getting all parties on the same page, we can make steps toward parity. (No one person can do it alone.)

Overall, I feel I have at the very least achieved my commitments. They were aggressive goals with the intention of causing both tactical and strategic change. I have been employed at Microsoft for six months, and had solid commitments for less than half that time. While simultaneously learning the culture and currently existing processes, I have been influential and some cases instrumental in both team and project improvement. I have had some setbacks, personality conflicts, and have been overly optimistic in some goals; but, thus far have allowed none of my overall commitments or personal goals to slip.

Self-Assessment of Commitment Rating: Achieved

Manager’s Overall Assessment of Employee’s Results Against all Commitments

Scott join the company in January and was productive in his role very quickly. I have been impressed with his attitude toward creating maintainable and quality code, and drive to have the right environment and practices. When working on the build system Scott quickly learnt the tools (TFS, MSBuild, C#, VS SDK) and then made the right design trade-offs to get what is needed and support a build that does not require SDK installation. His ability to dig into issues was great.

Scott was able to ramp up on the DSL toolkit, VS SDK and validation framework and our own toolset to get a number of sprint work items done and go beyond that to looking at the approach we take to generating the DSL designers and the associated code. He was able to come up with a number of ways to improve this process. He did not follow through with carefully written set of features for vendors to complete. I would have liked to have seen that.

Scott also influenced the way we work with his drive for and creation of the process developers follow in order to get code reviewed before check in.

For all Scott’s promise he has shown some behaviors which if not addressed will prevent his ability to be successful in the team and long term. If he is able practice better behaviors and show a shift in these I see Scott being very successful in the future at Microsoft.

The first pattern is attendance. The hours he keeps in his office have been erratic and he has been late to or missed many meetings. Both have resulted in Scott being hard to find and I have received feedback from multiple team members that they are unable to locate Scott at times during core business hours. The result of this is not just lost time but erodes the level of trust the team can have in Scott.

The other, and this is often related to the first, is that Scott needs to do better at remaining in contact with his team mates, particularly other disciplines. Missing daily scrums have been particularly harmful and resulted in others not knowing what his focus is and how his tasks are progressing. Some have viewed this as Scott taking a very Scott centered view of the project.

Addressing these issues should allow Scott to show a great cadence of delivery.

Final Commitment Rating: Exceeded
Final Contribution Ranking: 20%

In English

Nine to five, Robinson.

And, talk with your PMs more.

Otherwise, you rock.

I cleaned my room as part of the 100 things challenge.

On the floor were two items that, sadly, had been separated:

1. A strip of forever stamps.
2. A pack of postcards.

I hope addressees figure out what they have in common (besides knowing me).

I’m back from Cuba. This has been the case for two weeks now.

I don’t have anything to add to my letters. The visit gave me a different appreciation on my life at home. I think that’s a good return on my investment.

And, isn’t that what travel is about?

noisybastard brought a digital camera and took some vibrant pictures. Meanwhile, Sam and I took two film cameras: an EOS, and FTb. Most of these developed shots, in my opinion, are more true to how I felt life was there...

Gritty.

The concept of “racial equality” is not falsifiable. We believe the convenient fiction because it would be worse to be wrong about the alternative.

In my previous post, I listed the few simple rules I use to review other people’s resumes. Sadly, in my quest to be clear and concise, I ended up vague and unhelpful. This happens more than I like to admit. But, today is a new day. Let’s make a resume together!

This resume will be real - it will be about me. But, it won’t be my resume. It will be bizarro-Scott’s resume. He just graduated college and wants to upgrade from an exclusively ramen diet.

The Format

Our resume will be pure text. If you don’t understand why, read this comment.

The Heading

Scott Robinson
 
P.O. Box 911
Maple Valley, WA 98038
 
scott@quadhome.com
+1 (206) 229-9142

My name. My contact information. That’s it.

Deadpan serious: I have seen ridiculous things like birthdays, astrology signs, and height/weight. I’m sure metroid23 has seen worse. If those things are relevant to the position, list them in the body of the resume.

Objective Statement

No one reads these things. If we were customizing our resume for a specific position, we might include it. We’re not. This is our job fair resume.

Experience

My last three positions or my last five years. That’s my arbitrary rule I use to decide what experience is relevant. Unfortunately, bizarro-Scott wasn’t the most industrious student. He did only one summer internship, fiddled with building a community site for students in his major, and had a short tenure with the campus computing services group.

The Basics

Each piece of experience needs a few pieces of information:

1. Position title.
2. Name and location of organization.
3. Dates worked.

This is when we need to resist embellishing. Were we a “technical intern 3” or a “computer security researcher” for the summer? One is almost meaningless and the other can be misconstrued. Whatever is chosen, we need to be able to justify and defend it.

Web Programmer/Designer
EECS Community Website
Pullman, Washington
05/2007 - 12/2007
 
Research Intern
Pacific Northwest National Labs (Department of Energy)
Richland, Washington
06/2006 - 08/2006
 
Technical Consultant
Student Computing Services (Washington State University)
Pullman, Washington
08/2004 - 02/2006

Some organization names need clarification. Not everyone knows about the national labs; therefore, we annotate with “Department of Energy.” “Student Computing Services” is very generic; but, annotating it clarifies to the reader its scope.

The Descriptions

We’re writing for two audiences: recruiters and future bosses. They’re want the same thing; but, search for it in different ways. Therefore, we brainstorm two sets for each experience item:

1. EECS Community Website
   • Keywords: PHP, Python, Web, Blogs, Atom, RSS
   • Accomplishments: Started the site. Designed and made it. Negotiated with administration to OK it. Continue to administer it.
2. Research Intern
   • Keywords: Python, network security, parallel processing, distributed systems
   • Accomplishments: Researched data sources. Designed and wrote software to integrate them to a previously existing database. Optimized previously existing processing tools. Gave technical presentations for multiple groups. Got a job offer.
3. Technical Consultant
   • Keywords: networking, helpdesk, support
   • Accomplishments: Supported students in-person and over phones. Worked in multiple computer labs. Trusted with sensitive student information.

Finally, we combine them together to create our descriptions:

EECS Community Website
Created a Python powered student blog aggregation website. Negotiated with the school administration to establish appropriate speech policies. Built a PHP-based tool for administration and maintenance. The website continues to function and resulted in increased exposure for students and the university.
 
Research Intern
Designed, wrote and deployed a Python application to integrate data sources into a previously existing network security database. Independently researched distributed and parallel computing techniques. Used that knowledge to optimize previously existing processes providing improvements of at least an order of magnitude. Gave well-attended technical presentations distributing expertise to fellow employees. Wrote proposals detailing future avenues of research.
 
Technical Consultant
Supported customers in a helpdesk position both in-person and over the telephone. Entrusted with and handled sensitive student information. Worked in multiple campus computer labs often solving on-the-spot networking and software issues.

Remember, not every piece of experience is with a company.

Make movies? You’re a “cinematographer.” Discuss your awards and completed titles. Take pictures for your school paper? You’re a “news photographer.” Talk about the select pictures and relevant articles.

Our resume style isn’t just for techie soon-to-be professionals.

Education

We only include our most recent institution and the associated honors. If our GPA sucked, don’t bother listing it - they’ll know what it means and likely won’t ask.

We include clubs only if we put some effort into them.

Washington State University (2007)
Bachelor in Computer Science, 3.1 GPA
 
Clubs: IEEE of WSU (Vice-President 2006-2007, Career Fair/Junior Dinner 2005-2006)

Ego

Remember the rule about every section being shorter than the preceding? Basically, we have two lines max.

Personal Interests:
Bicycling, hiking and spelunking man-made structures.

Final Result

Add a little ASCII jazz.

                                Scott Robinson
P.O. Box 911              	
Maple Valley, WA 98038
+1 (206) 229-9142
scott@quadhome.com


 EXPERIENCE
============

Web Programmer/Designer
EECS Community Website
Pullman, Washington
05/2007 - 12/2007

Created a Python powered student blog aggregation website. Negotiated with the
school administration to establish appropriate speech policies. Built a
PHP-based tool for administration and maintenance. The website continues to
function and resulted in increased exposure for students and the university.


Research Intern
Pacific Northwest National Labs (Department of Energy)
Richland, Washington
06/2006 - 08/2006

Designed, wrote and deployed a Python application to integrate data sources
into a previously existing network security database. Independently researched
distributed and parallel computing techniques. Used that knowledge to optimize
previously existing processes providing improvements of at least an order of
magnitude. Gave well-attended technical presentations distributing expertise to
fellow employees. Wrote proposals detailing future avenues of research.


Technical Consultant
Student Computing Services (Washington State University)
Pullman, Washington
08/2004 - 02/2006

Supported customers in a helpdesk position both in-person and over the
telephone. Entrusted with and handled sensitive student information. Worked in
multiple campus computer labs often solving on-the-spot networking and software
issues.


 EDUCATION
===========

Washington State University (2007)
Bachelor in Computer Science
3.1 GPA

IEEE of WSU
  * Vice-President            2006-2007
  * Career Fair/Junior Dinner 2005-2006


 PERSONAL
==========

My pastimes include bicycling, hiking and spelunking man-made structures.

In the last week, I have reviewed several of my friends’ résumés. And, I find myself repeating the same suggestions. I don’t speak from a position of authority on the subject. My opinions come from having incrementally improved my own résumé since 2002.

Let’s explore Scott’s simple rules. What’s yet another guide between friends?

Stay focused

Write an advertisement. Your résumé sells you. There are rules and guidelines.

Be short. An ad does not tell a life’s story. It conveys the highlights leaving the reader wanting more.

Be readable. A flashy ad is an attack. A clean ad is inviting and guiding.

Be clear. Every sentence is simple and meaningful. Don’t exaggerate; instead, focus on your success.

Tell a story

You’re in a cafe. That attractive somebody you’ve been exchanging glances with stands up. They’re walking up to you! “Hi.” “Hi,” you respond with your best smile. “What brought you here?”

People respond to stories. People remember stories. People do neither with a list of facts.

Every description in your résumé should be a plot arc. What did you do? Why did you do it? What were the results?

Led a team to build a widget. Gained experience with skills X, Y, and Z.

vs.

Led a team of professionals in X, Y, and Z. We built a widget that put the company back in the black.

What would you say to that attractive somebody? Be interesting and positive - you have one shot.

Experience, Education, and Ego

Your experience is your accomplishments. Your education is other’s expectations. Your ego is whatever remains.

Those are ranked in order of importance. Emphasize experience over education and education over ego. Anything else is an obvious mark against you.

Finally, the strict requirement of a single page is an artifice. Use the space you need. But, every inch dilutes your message.

From “The Visible Man: An FBI Target Puts His Whole Life Online”

Hasan Elahi whips out his Samsung Pocket PC phone and shows me how he’s keeping himself out of Guantanamo. He swivels the camera lens around and snaps a picture of the Manhattan Starbucks where we’re drinking coffee. Then he squints and pecks at the phone’s touchscreen. “OK! It’s uploading now,” says the cheery, 35-year-old artist and Rutgers professor, whose bleached-blond hair complements his fluorescent-green pants. “It’ll go public in a few seconds.” Sure enough, a moment later the shot appears on the front page of his Web site, TrackingTransience.net.

There are already tons of pictures there. Elahi will post about a hundred today — the rooms he sat in, the food he ate, the coffees he ordered. Poke around his site and you’ll find more than 20,000 images stretching back three years. Elahi has documented nearly every waking hour of his life during that time. He posts copies of every debit card transaction, so you can see what he bought, where, and when. A GPS device in his pocket reports his real-time physical location on a map.

It’s reassuring that others are practicing information warfare.

The Last Industry

It’s a perverse joke that the phrase “in the industry” is used by artists, musicians, writers, actors and programmers. Industry is concerned with the production of goods. And, refining knowledge is as dissimilar to producing industrial goods as mining gold is to the same. We trade art, food, gold, cars and water; but, only one of these is an industrial good.

The first world is exiting the business of industry. We outsource making things as much as possible. Instead, we focus on “creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, symbols, names, images, and culture.”

But, it’s hard to hold a monopoly on knowledge. Mark Pesce uses these demonstrative examples:

• Encyclopaedia Britannica hides behind a walled garden and is subsequently obsolesced by Wikipedia;
• Television shows and films end up on BitTorrent before they’re broadcast; the torrent for Halo 3 was posted last week. The video game was released on Monday.
• A tight group of reporters and bloggers just brought down the US Attorney General, who attempted to stonewall all investigations into his politically-motivated firings of eight US Attorneys.
• And - oh yeah - there’s that whole open-source movement which is, ever so slowly and carefully, eating Microsoft.

The presumed solution has been “intellectual property” and the complex body of laws associated with it. Copyrights, trademarks, patents, and trade secrets all exist to prevent knowledge from spreading or being used in ways not intended by its original creator. But, again, it’s hard to hold a monopoly on knowledge. And, history has shown that if you think of something, so has someone else.

Furthermore, “intellectual property” only works through collusion. Consider the case of AIDS in Brazil. Merck, a United States pharmaceutical company, spent millions developing the HIV medication Efavirenz and owns the “intellectual property.” But, the cost of their intellectual property was far higher than the cost of industrial production. Therefore, Brazil “stole” Merck’s “property” and saved millions of its citizen’s lives.

The difficulty in maintaining a knowledge monopoly becomes obvious when you consider each step:

1. Thinking new thoughts is easy.
2. Refining those thoughts into “intellectual property” is hard.
3. Distributing that “intellectual property” is easy.
4. Producing goods from “intellectual property” is cheap.

Industry is only involved with production. And production is cheap and getting cheaper. I posit, like Neal Stephenson in The Diamond Age, that the last industry is moving materials - raw materials to manufactured goods to consumers.

Economy Without Property?

From an evolutionary-biological perspective, we have a few basic needs: eat, sleep and sex. Maslow placed these at the base of his hierarchy and titled them “deficiency needs.” The knowledge of how to satisfy those needs on a global basis are well known.

Thus, few people in the first world die of starvation or are chased down by lions. If you or I quit our jobs and did nothing, the socialist elements of the state would still satisfy our basic needs. That’s because only a few people are needed to work the fields, drive the trucks, and handle the basic need infrastructure.

Everyone else is focused on making our lives longer and more entertaining.

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

A couple hundred years ago, a new deal was brokered. If you published your creation of the mind, the public would allow you exclusive right and control of it for a limited time. It was then your responsibility to find compensation for your “intellectual property.” This balance was controversially open when compared to the preceding system of professional guilds.

It seems a new deal will need to be brokered. People need to be encouraged to refine knowledge. But, that knowledge can’t be sold. Therefore, people will need an encouragement that isn’t financial.

Epic fail on the ones and twos.

Someone once warned that I was becoming a worse person. Of course, I pretended to ignore them. It’s easier to give than take that kind of cutting honesty. But, as time passed, I watched my transformation. And, discounting my devilishly good looks, I’d say maturity did a number on me.

Only maturity in its most literal sense. My generation is one of extended adolescence.

I assume midway into my twenties is the right time for something like this revelation. What is most striking is the plasticity of personalities between teens and adulthood. The events that mold a person can vary from seemingly inconsequential to clearly demarcating. My shape has changed so drastically, it’s surprising I have started to cast cohesively.

Choo, choo, all aboard the metaphor train! Next stop, evasiveness.

“And what did we find? You were amazing! You were so pointlessly complicated! And yet it wasn’t pointless; you were amazingly robust. And the forgetting!” I worry that we won’t teach the hive mind how to forget. A copy of almost every online communication I have ever made is sitting on tara. I used to be camera shy; but, a stream of saved digital pictures has been steadily building.

I was born just in time to have a few years of adolescence before the Internet. Look even one year earlier, and you’re falling down the plateau of penetration. Anyone older then 24 isn’t on the ‘net like someone who is 15 - with neither group comparing with the average college educated 21 year old. And, unless someone takes back the digital revolution, the average individual will soon make Steve Mann appear macabre. Recording your own life is conceited - we share each others’ lives!

In a few days, a very personal Google dance shall finish and another name will fall almost totally off the public grid.

That’s an example of backlash. Some try to leave the purview of search engines hoping to stem the flow. The hot-topic is “privacy” because we’re still worried about our secrets, mistakes and image. But, I’m concerned about our mental health. There are social pressures to exist online. In ten years, my current existence shall be as easily recalled as the “me” from last week. Noone has perfect memory; but, noone could open perfectly preserved mail, pictures, and movies. Even the best diaries weren’t rich media.

An elementary school teacher of mine had her classes write letters to themselves in the future. She mailed them ten years later. When I received my letter, I choked up. metaldave, do you think your future students could understand that?

Digital memory isn’t the point of this post.

I don’t think my adolescent self could recognize me. Too few of the traits he thought were positive mattered. Too many of the negative traits received attention. He was right about surrounding himself with people he envied. But, he could never had understood the ramifications. And, I can say these things with conviction because it’s too easy to remember. I’m not who I thought I should be, as an adult has different demands than a child. He wouldn’t like me if I was honest to him. But, who is honest to a 15 year old?

My personality is an example of unapologetic worse is better.

I’m becoming crotchety in my old age.

The inflection point must have been recently. But, the valuing of style above substance is viscerally unattractive. This isn’t a sexual attractiveness - but on a human interaction basis.

Here are a few hints that you’re not fooling anyone:

• How well known is your favored art?
• Is your favored music important?
• How celebrated is your favored director?
• Why should people read your favored author?
• How unique is your dress?
• Who wouldn’t be right for your religion?
• Is being a polygot indicative of intelligence?

Cultural products don’t exist in of themselves. They’re a result of social processes. Defining yourself by other’s cultural products means you define yourself by other people. I’m interested in the derivatives you have produced.

But, you would never judge someone by their expressed cultural preferences? Uhh, me neither.

There is a particular maxim I hear frequently.

It’s the assumption that today’s youth will be hurt by their high level of online activity.

The logic behind this misconception starts with the realization that the average MySpace profile or Facebook profile is public. Attached to the average profile are an eclectic collection of pictures, diary-like blog postings, and messages from peers delivered as a form of theatre. The pictures are portraits and group shots of friends out and about. The blogs complain about the stress of the day. And the public messages are context sensitive to the drama of the week.

But, rarely, you’ll find a gem in the rough. It may be a gallery of questionably legal activities or an awkward blog of social discovery. Or, perhaps something never intended for the public eye. Regardless, questionable content has come back and bit people. And it seems as if the first generation with a pervasive online presence is headed for a mass painful lesson in discretion.

But I don’t buy that. There is no sense that such a broad age range will be discriminated against for behavior that is not out of the norm. It’s common knowledge that “everyone” imbibed drugs in the ‘60s. Underage intoxication has and will continue to be an issue as long as there are laws against it. Young men will fight. Young women will gossip. And both will think they have fallen in love.

These are the trials and tribulations of growing up.

And if I found someone’s Internet presence completely lacking these hallmarks, I’d wonder what they did with their youth.