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Taking Lunch from Children Is Never OK

The headline was so outrageous I didn’t believe it at first. I see a lot of crazy stuff on the Internet that doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Unfortunately, this one is true: Administrators  at Uintah Elementary School in Salt Lake City confiscated and trashed the lunches of up to 40 students because their parents were apparently behind in payments.

Mood music:

From The Salt Lake City Tribune:

Jason Olsen, a Salt Lake City District spokesman, said the district’s child-nutrition department became aware that Uintah had a large number of students who owed money for lunches. As a result, the child-nutrition manager visited the school and decided to withhold lunches to deal with the issue, he said. But cafeteria workers weren’t able to see which children owed money until they had already received lunches, Olsen explained. The workers then took those lunches from the students and threw them away, he said, because once food is served to one student it can’t be served to another. Children whose lunches were taken were given milk and fruit instead.

Parents were understandably outraged. Erica Lukes, whose 11-year-old daughter had her cafeteria lunch taken from her as she stood in line Tuesday, told the newspaper that as far as she knew, she was all paid up. “I think it’s despicable,” she said. “These are young children that shouldn’t be punished or humiliated for something the parents obviously need to clear up.”

The school district issued this lame apology:

When lunch time came, students who still had negative balances were told they could not have a full meal but were given a piece of fruit and a milk for lunch. The district does this so children who don’t have money for lunch can at least have some food and not go without.

Anyone with half a brain knows a piece of fruit and milk is hardly enough lunch for a child. It’s also a known fact that for a lot of poorer kids, school lunch is often the only decent meal they get all day.

Any decent soul knows that when parents fall behind on payments, it should never, ever be taken out on the kids. What’s worse is that in this case, it doesn’t appear parents knew they owed money.

I want to forgive the administrators who did this. I doubt they are heartless. I doubt they set out to do wrong. But their actions certainly demonstrate that they are unqualified to be doing the jobs they have. They should be fired or retrained.
Uintah Elementary in Salt Lake City

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Death by Regimentation

I lead a pretty regimented life. I’ve gotten good at juggling multiple activities at once and sticking to carefully mapped out schedules. Regimens are good for me. I need specific plans for eating, exercise and career/family management.

But I have to admit, all that regimentation is like a noose around my neck lately.

Mood music:

I recently reined in my eating plan and got back to exercising because my health was beginning to drift. I have a new therapist and a new doctor. And though the going has been tough, we’re adjusting to the boys’ new school.

All in all, good progress.

Yet I’m almost constantly on the road. I drive to and from work. I pick up the kids from school. Then it’s back out for this appointment or that activity. This is the grind multiple days per week usually.

It’s all good. It’s what I signed up for, so to speak. But I’m realizing more than ever that my shoulders aren’t as strong as they should be to carry the weight.

I don’t need or want a change in routine. But I do need to find a better way to manage it all without feeling beaten down.

Better eating and steady exercise is a big step in the right direction. My sleep needs work. I’ve yet to figure out why I keep waking up in the middle of the night and staying up for an hour or more at a time. Better sleep would most definitely make everything else more manageable. I use a CPAP that sometimes feels like more trouble than it’s worth because the mask doesn’t fit right. One more thing to work on, which means more appointments.

I don’t tell you all this to complain. This is more an exercise in self-assessment. I need to make more adjustments to how I live my days, and posts like this usually mark the turning points.

I also share it because a lot of you have the same pressures. There’s no getting around the craziness, but it always helps to know that you’re not alone in the struggle.

You could also say misery loves company.

Or, as Red Green likes to say, “I’m pullin’ for ya. We’re all in this together.”

red green

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Proof That Mental Illness Needn’t Be A Career Killer

A few months back, I was interviewed for a Forbes article on people who turned their mental illnesses into a career strength. I’m happy to discover there are more success stories to share.

Mood music:

A good friend forwarded me “Why I Hired an Executive with a Mental Illness” by Rob Lachenauer, CEO and a co-founder of Banyan Family Business Advisors. Lachenauer describes hiring someone after a job interview in which the candidate came right out and told him she had a mental illness and was on medication. He writes:

My reaction to the candidate’s disclosure was, frankly, disbelief — disbelief that she found the courage to make herself so vulnerable before she was hired. She had to be interviewed by other members of the firm before I could invite her to join us, but we did hire her — and over the past few years, she has become not only a core member of our team, but a large part of the glue that holds the firm together.

He correctly points out that while The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 prevents employers from discriminating against people who have a mental illness, the discrimination still happens a lot. In fact, he notes, when he told a former VP of a major investment banking firm about his column, he warned him against publishing it. “Clients are afraid to work with firms that have mentally ill people on the professional staff,” the former VP told him.

I’m glad that didn’t stop Lachenauer from running with it, and I’m grateful he gave that job applicant a chance to prove herself.

I outed myself when I was already comfortably entrenched in my job, having proven myself a thousand times over. I still felt I was taking a risk by starting this blog, but my bosses and colleagues turned out to be very supportive.

By the time I interviewed for my current job, the blog was already well known in the industry. My current boss had been reading my work by that point, and my continued blogging about life with OCD, depression and anxiety was not an item up for debate.

I’ve been fortunate, and I’m happy to see, through stories like Lachenauer’s, that the needle continues to move in the right direction.

leader

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Cable News and the Justin Bieber Effect

I lost faith in cable news as a conduit for useful, balanced information long ago. Once I stopped watching, the drop in my depression and anxiety was considerable. I grew a lot less bored, too.

When I see respected journalists like MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell cutting off an interview with a former congresswoman to report breaking news about Justin Bieber’s DUI arrest, I know all the more that shutting it off was the right course of action.

With its action, MSNBC is telling us another star getting arrested is more important than all those troubling revelations about NSA spying. That’s what Mitchell was talking to former US Rep. Jane Harman about when she decided to interrupt the report. So that must be the message.

And it’s not just MSNBC. I see the same type of behavior from Fox News and CNN on a regular basis.

People love to pick on Bieber for a variety of reasons, and you all know I’m no fan. But his antics look pretty mundane when compared to the bullshit these cable news networks dish out with rushing speed.

Excuse me as I shut the news off again. I have more important things to do, like counting the socks in my drawer.

Justin Bieber MSNBC Jane Harman Illustration by Starcasm.net.

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Downworthy: The Answer to All Those Stupid Headlines

I loathe the link-bait bullshit that’s taken over my Facebook newsfeed. Upworthy. Opposing Views. Even The Huffington Post. They’re all guilty to varying degrees.

Call me a snob, if you will. I was a journalist for 20 years, and I like my headlines straightforward and to the point. All I see these days is shit that goes something like, “Michael asked his mom for a Pepsi. What came next will blow your mind.”

Mood music:

My friend Alison Gianotto, chief technology officer at Noise, hates it too. Instead of merely rolling her eyes as I do, she built a free, highly amusing browser plug-in called Downworthy that’s currently available for Google Chrome. When you add it to your browser, a little icon of poop makes itself at home in your toolbar.

Turn it on and it’ll take all those hyperbolic headlines and replace them with something snarky that people like me consider more realistic. For example, “Be Overused So Much That You’ll Silently Pray for the Sweet Release of Death to Make it Stop” is translated to “Be Overused So Much That You’ll Silently Pray for the Sweet Release of Death to Make It Stop.”

A couple examples of the end result:

winter phenom

glacier lake

When you’re having a hard day and Upworthy throws all that annoying garbage your way, this plug-in will make you feel better.

Life is hard. Some days the challenges threaten to drown us. You certainly can’t blame the publishers of Upworthy for that. It’s simply how life is sometimes.

But if a toy like this can distract us from the darkness, if only for a few minutes, it will help us live to fight the next battle.

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Wherein I Run Afoul Of The U.S. Secret Service

My resolve against the inner demons is tested regularly.

Some are little tests, like being put in a room with all the food and alcohol I once binged on daily to see if I can resist the temptation.

Some are bigger tests, like getting lost en route to Washington D.C a few years ago with my wife and kids in the car. Getting lost in a car used to be the stuff my anxiety attacks were made of.

Then there are the huge tests, like the time I got an unexpected grilling from two U.S. Secret Service officers — incidentally, the day after getting lost on the interstate somewhere in New Jersey.

Mood music: 

[spotify:track:3ckQ5LMB0ORA45X0ozu9eR]

I wrote a full account of the encounter for CSOonline.com in “What it’s like to be grilled by the Secret Service,” so I won’t repeat it all here. That column captures it from a security perspective.

Here I’ll focus on the emotional part.

First, the gist of what happened: I was taking photos from my BlackBerry of Marine One (with President Obama aboard) taking off from the White House South Lawn. I guess I lingered there for too long, because the Secret Service thought I was taking surveillance photos. Two Android smartphones later, I’m amused they found BlackBerry-quality photos threatening.

One of them was pretty tough and didn’t believe my honest protests that I was just taking pictures and walking around there because I’m a White House history buff. One officer played bad cop, grilling me as if I were just caught red-handed robbing a bank. The other guy played the reassuring role. “We’re just going to get one of these for our records,” he cooed as he snapped a picture of my unshaven face.

Apparently nobody ever showed them the picture of the Brenners visiting the West Wing three months earlier. They did note that I was texting a lot as I walked, and they wanted to know who I was texting. When I told them it was Howard Schmidt, President Obama’s then-cybersecurity advisor, it knocked them off stride. I told them I was making dinner plans with Howard, that I was buying him dinner to thank him for giving me, the wife and kids the West Wing tour.

“Why didn’t you tell us that in the first place?” the meaner of the two cops asked.

As I told Howard what happened over burgers that evening, he had a good laugh.

I didn’t fault the Secret Service cops at the time. It’s not their job to know these things. It’s their job to nail terrorist activity when they see it. Could he have been a bit nicer to me, given that I was doing nothing wrong and all? Sure. But I try not to hold grudges.

It does say something about how much of a police state we’ve become in the decade-plus since 9-11, though. I also admit that if I could do it again, I’d be more belligerent. Government’s excessive reach into our lives has been laid bare since then. If I knew then what I know now, I would have been far more outraged.

Truth be told, the experience did freak me out. My back went into spasms and my hands shook for hours after. As they were in my face accusing me of running a terrorist surveillance mission, I was thinking to myself, “If these assholes haul me in, it’s really going to screw up the work I had planned for this afternoon.” I’m a typical OCD case, worrying that getting arrested will screw up the work day.

But it’s all good.

I didn’t go back to my hotel room and order $80 worth of food and a bottle of wine to comfort myself. A few years ago, a friendly encounter with Secret Service would have made me do that.

My mind wasn’t paralyzed, either. I got a lot of work done back at the hotel, even with the headache.

And hell, I got a pretty good column out of the experience.

Secret-Service-agents-death-investigated

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How to Apply for Social Security Benefits for OCD Suffers

Guest blogger Ram Meyyappan explains how severe-OCD sufferers can receive financial help.

If you suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), Social Security Disability (SSD) benefits may be available to you. Before applying, you will want to learn more about the application, review, and qualification processes with the Social Security Administration (SSA). The following tips will help you better understand the programs available and the process of applying.

Tip #1: Understand How to Medically Qualify for Benefits for OCD 

The SSA reviews OCD claims under the listing for anxiety-related disorders in the Blue Book, which is a manual of disabling conditions and the medical evidence needed to qualify for benefits with each of those conditions.

The listing that applies to OCD requires your medical records prove you experience persistent and severe symptoms that include at least one of the following:

  • Anxiety
  • Irrational fears
  • Panic attacks
  • Compulsions or obsessions
  • Reliving traumatic events

In addition to documenting symptoms matching at least one of those listed above, your medical records must also document that your OCD also causes:

  • An inability to function outside your own home without constant assistance or monitoring

OR

  • Severe issues that include two of the following:
    • Pronounced difficulties in completing everyday activities, including essential activities of daily living
    • Functioning socially
    • Concentrating, completing tasks, or moving at a reasonable pace
    • Recurrent episodes of increased symptoms, even while undergoing treatment

For more information on medically qualifying with OCD, read “OCD and Social Security Disability.”

Tip #2: Learn How to Financially Qualify for Benefits 

The SSA also requires you to meet certain financial or technical eligibility requirements to receive SSD benefits through either or both of the disability programs available:

  • For Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits, you must have very limited income and other financial resources you can draw on.
  • For Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), you must have worked and earned work credits by paying Social Security taxes, making $1,070 per month or less due to OCD. This is what the SSA considers the threshold for substantial gainful activity (SGA).

You can read more about SSDI and SSI in “Benefits for People With Disabilities.”

Tip #3: Fill Out the Application Completely

To be approved for disability benefits, you must completely fill out the application and ensure the information is accurate and matches your medical records. It is good to have another individual, such as a friend, family member or Social Security advocate or attorney, review your application prior to filing. They may see missing details or contradictory statements that you have overlooked.

Missing or incomplete information in your application will cause delays in the review of your claim. These kinds of errors can also result in your being found ineligible for benefits. For this reason, providing thorough documentation and accurate information on the SSA’s forms is crucial.

Tip #4: Appeal If Your Claim Is Denied

If your claim for SSD benefits is denied, you can file an appeal. The first appeal is typically a request for a reconsideration review of your application. This must be filed within 60 days of that date of the denial notice you receive in the mail.

If you are denied a second time, you will need to request an appeal hearing before an administrative law judge to continue trying to get disability benefits. That request for appeal must also be filed within 60 days of the denial notice you receive.

Ram Meyyappan writes for the Social Security Disability Help blog.

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“It’s a Miserable Life,” Starring Chief O’Brien

Of all the Star Trek series, Deep Space 9 (DS9) remains my favorite. It has the best character development and explores the darker side of humanity in a way the other shows wouldn’t have dared.

Mood music:

DS9 explores constant misery through Chief Myles O’Brien. In one episode he is put into a 20-minute program that simulates a 20-year prison sentence. In another, an evil spirit possesses his wife, Keiko. Then there is the episode where he agreed to partake in Worf’s Klingon-style bachelor party. That might have been where he received the most torture of all.

But if you look at the big picture, DS9 was a hell of a lot more fun for him than his previous posting on the USS Enterprise. There, he was transporter chief, arguably one of the most boring jobs on the ship.

In Chief O’Brien at Work,” cartoonist Jon Adams deliciously nails the boredom O’Brien feels standing at his post. As Adams writes in the opening:

If you’ve ever felt lost and worthless, step aside, because someone else feels even more so, and his name is Chief O’Brien of the Starship Enterprise. Fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation, crappy jobs, and ennui will enjoy our short-lived Chief O’Brien at Work comics.

If you’re a Star Trek fan or you just happen to need a laugh, you need to pay this site a visit.

I’ll end with one of my favorites:
Chief O'Brien At Work

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Don’t Let Social Awkwardness Get You Down

I’m a pretty public guy. I’ve given many public presentations about this blog and the security industry I work in. Blogging by itself means I’m putting myself out there every day. So, you would think I’d be comfortable in public by now.

But sometimes I’m not.

Mood music:

I was reminded of this over the weekend, when I attended the ShmooCon hacker conference in Washington, DC. I got to see many friends and had a great time. But there were several conversations in which I was ridiculously uncomfortable. That’s no fault of the people I was talking to. In this case, it really was me.

Some of this is because of social media. Many of the people I enjoy conversing with on Twitter and Facebook use avatars that are usually not the standard mug shot. Some use symbols, others use cartoons or pictures of animals. So when I see these people in public, seeing the actual face behind the online presence can be jarring.

I also get a little weird in big crowds. I’ll usually insert myself into a group of people and listen to conversations, and when the attention turns to me, I get tongue-tied and sweaty. I’m sure that for every person who notices, there are five more who don’t.

My defense mechanism is usually to go wandering around the hotel aimlessly for several minutes. Then I come back and rejoin the conversations.

I think it goes back to childhood, when I had trouble talking to other kids and making friends. It was often easier to be alone with my Star Wars toys and dark thoughts.

I know I’m not alone when it comes to social awkwardness. Friends have described a similar feeling and reaction in their own travels. These are not introverts or hermits. They give talks, take principled stands on many a controversial issue and mix with people at these events until the wee hours of the morning. They look perfectly at ease, but they’re not always.

The good news is that I’ve learned to stick it out; to keep talking to people in the crowd rather than retreating to my hotel room. The awkwardness usually goes away after a few hours, and it’s all good from there.

If I’m really feeling the social anxiety, I will go to my room, but only for about a half hour so I can breathe and collect my thoughts. Then it’s back downstairs I go.

I used to let the awkwardness get me down. Sometimes I outright hated myself for it. But I’ve come to learn that it’s just part of being human. I used to think it made me a freak. Today I see it as a normal sensation we all experience.

I had a very good weekend. I was productive and made new contacts because I didn’t let the awkward moments get me down.

hiding

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When Patriots Fans Eat Their Own

My interest in football is minimal. I love a good story of an athlete overcoming the odds and showing us that anything’s possible. In that regard, Tom Brady is a hell of a role model.

I’m not a fan of the Patriots quarterback’s wife, Gisele Bundchen. I don’t dislike her, I’m just not big on the modeling culture. But here’s something I like even less: Whenever the Patriots lose a big game, as happened Sunday, the Bundchen haters make nasty, foolish comments.

Mood music:

The haters start to joke about how she makes Brady wear ridiculous clothes and how their castles include fancy toilet bowls. They go on to complain that Brady is whipped and that, as a result, he hasn’t been able to win a Super Bowl since they got hitched.

The disdain people have for Bundchen really came out a couple years ago, minutes after the Pats lost Super Bowl XLVI to the New York Giants. On the way out of the stadium, someone heckled Bundchen, saying “Eli (Manning) owns your husband.”

She responded, within earshot of the TV mics: “My husband cannot (expletive) throw the ball and catch the ball at the same time.”

What outrages people most is that her comment essentially blamed the rest of the team for coming up short. It probably wasn’t one of her better moments. But people tend to forget that she’s a human being, prone to all the same moments of weakness as the rest of us.

The morning after that Super Bowl loss, I read a Boston Herald column by Margery Eagan on the whole affair. She wrote:

Super Bowl Sunday offered a telling glimpse into the Brady/Bundchen household. Our suspicions may be true. It was never Tom’s idea to dress like a girl in headbands with hair down his back. Or buy a $1,000 Toto toilet with water jets and blow dryers. Or ride a bike through town with Gisele’s 5-pound ratty dog in his front basket like a teeny, tiny, nasty ET.

At least Tom put his foot down when Super Gi had the Super Idea to name Super Baby Benjamin … River. “Something always flowing, immortal,” blogged Super Gi after her Super Pregnancy and Super Childbirth in the tub, where she meditated for 8 hours. And don’t forget: She wanted a law requiring all mothers to breast-feed and claimed she’d potty-trained Benjamin by six months.

I mean, beyond nauseating.

I laugh when people suggest Brady never asked for the life of a whipped husband. That’s the woman he chose to marry. In marriage husband and wife merge their lives in a blender, and the end result sometimes looks strange.

That’s beside the point, though. We all do and say things that are nauseating. I’ve read and liked Eagan’s columns for years. But she can often be nauseating, too.

When she writes a lousy column, do we blame it on her love life?

No.

Yet when Brady and company lose a game, his love life is exactly what people like to blame.

Blaming the athlete’s wife makes you a sore loser, a hater, and someone who likes to make excuses for a job not done well.

Even more, it makes you jealous and petty.

Cut the crap and be glad your team made it this far despite a season of setbacks.

Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen