this is matt

I wrote a guest post about Power Rangers over at Geeky Wives. Check it out!

I’ve been thinking about this since Sunday night – not obsessively, and certainly not exclusively. This thought process and I have been on-again, off-again, sort of non-exclusive, seeing other people, that sort of thing.

Anyway, I occasionally watch Undercover Boss because it’s on right after Amazing Race, which my wife enjoys and therefore I enjoy. In this episode, a young manager at a United Van Lines warehouse didn’t like his job. This seemed to shock the CEO, and at his big reveal, he basically just scolded the kid and then said he’d be checking in with him over the next year to blah blah blah better employee. He’s being retrained.

Wrong. Dude does not like his job. He thinks it is boring. He said that being in that position is the result of a series of bad choices. Mr. CEO had a fantastic opportunity to find out how to make that job better — to make the company a place that future generations will care about and want to work for — and he squandered it by doing the standard out-of-touch-boss thing and pinning all of the blame on the employee. That’s not to say the kid was a model citizen, but the CEO could have learned something there.

Mr. CEO asked his wife to go undercover at a location that he thought might recognize him. A female employee said that it was impossible for women to advance at United Van Lines; “it’s an old boys club”, I believe she said.

Well, when Mr. CEO met with her, he didn’t say, “We’re fixing this now,” or “You are promoted.” No, he said, “Our team is working hard to change this,” and “I take the advancement of women very seriously.” Really, dude? 28 years of her life wasted at your company, and the best you’ve got is “We’re working on it?” Not good enough, and I hope the money you threw at her doesn’t blind her to the fact that you’re not really doing anything.

I picked up an anime called Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle for Sarah for her birthday, and we finally got a chance to sit down and start watching it last night. We got through the first four episodes, and it’s already pretty sweet.

In a nutshell: Sakura’s memories have been scattered throughout a whole bunch of alternate dimensions, and her best friend Syaoran, who is secretly in love with her, has to find them or she’ll die, but in order to travel between worlds, he has to sacrifice his bond with her, so she won’t remember him. Like a good video game, he gets teamed up with two people who complement his skills and personality and they get dropped into a strange world and start discovering new powers and stuff, like the guy who has a magic dragon that turns into a sword.

(I really like when stories are structured like video games)

I’m pretty sure this was made for girls, but since I’m married now, it’s okay to think it rocks.