Wiser words...

My dad once gathered my brother and me up, and said he was going to tell us the secret to success. His next words were, "Win if you can, lose if you must, but no matter what happens always cheat." My mom yelled at him from the kitchen of the trailer we were living in, and I figured I had it made. Since that day (I think I was 11) I've evolved through varied definitions of the term "cheat". Occasionally in my younger years, "cheat" meant do whatever it took to win/get ahead. In the Disney film The Sword In The Stone, the wizard Merlin defines cheating as using magic: "Every last trick in the trade, if I have to." He doesn't do anything dishonest, even when Madam Mim turns into a purple dragon (the dishonest form of cheating), merely thinks very creatively. When I realized that honesty and integrity were important to me, my definition of "cheat" took a turn in this direction.

I've had some fairly proud "cheat" moments in my life, though only a couple stand out as the years go by. One was in my last job, where 16 alligator clips, 2 ethernet cable ends, 2 pieces of foam, and some very creative soldering became what we called the "superhack" and allowed us to verify that 1200 feet of CAT 6 ethernet cable were still useful and didn't need to be thrown away.

The most recent was on our return from Newport Beach, where I discovered that my fine Swiss watch is water resistant but not steam resistant. On getting the watch back from the store where it had been dried out, I discovered that the date was wrong. Whereupon I discovered that the knob setting that allows turning the date forward was not working. No worries, I could just turn the hands (that still worked) forward and the date would go forward that way. Whereupon I discovered a problem. It takes roughly 3 spins of the little knob to turn the hour hand 360 degrees (12 hours). It was July 1. The date according to my watch was the 9th. Faced with the prospect of roughly 132 spins of that tiny little knob, I improvised. With a little dose of awesome. Enjoy.