harry … the ASIC guy

As I’ve mentioned before, I live in California, the state with the 46th best elementary school system in the country. Thank you California Lottery! So keep that in mind as you read the rest of this post.

One of the more challenging homework assignments my 3rd grade daughter receives regularly is to write a short story using a list of the week’s dozen or so spelling words. For instance, this is one that she received not so long ago:

Write about a time when you worked very hard to learn something. Tell what the experience was like. Use spelling words from the list.

And the list was:

coach    blow    float    hold    sew    though

sold    soap    row    own    both    most

She wrote about the time she learned to play the piano at summer camp. I won’t embarrass her by posting the story here, but suffice it to say that it was pretty forced. Don’t even think about asking how she got the word “soap” into the story!

So, this evening, whilst walking the dog, I was listening to this week’s episode of Leo Laporte’s This Week in Tech podcast (aka TWiT). On the podcast, someone mentioned a site called Wordstream. On this site, you can enter a keyword and it will tell you the most common search terms that includes that keyword. The idea is that, if you want to increase your SEO (search engine optimization), you should use the words that are most common in searches and the search engines will send people to you.

I immediately thought of my daughter’s homework assignment. The users of this site must feel like her, trying to weave the words generated by this site into their prose. I wondered how odd that would be. So, I decided to try it, just so I could get a taste of what my daughter went through. And also, because I thought it would be kinda fun.

Being “the ASIC guy”, what word other than “ASIC” could I have entered. After entering my keyword and my email address, I received an email with the 10,000 most common search terms that include “ASIC”. I decided to focus on the top 50 search terms, separating them out into individual words and listed them on a sheet of paper.

Now, without further ado, is Harry’s SEO Homework:

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The alarm rang.

I lurched up out of bed, already in a panic, staring at the clock to see what time it was.

11:00am. Damn!

I took care of the basic biological necessities, then threw on my jeans, a T-shirt, and my brand new ASIC Gel-Kayano running chaussures. At least the company I worked for didn’t have a dress code and they didn’t care what shoes I wore. Designing ASICs and FPGAs is much easier when I’m comfortable.

I had been assigned to the verification team. My job was to search for bugs and to wrestle them down. Thankfully, I was able to use Verilog and System-Verilog for this project. Not like those VLSI design days, when I, and so many of my fellow engineers, had to wear a tie to impress the boss and had to use VHDL because they made us . A language by any other name is better than VHDL. Sure, VHDL is more structured. But, Verilog is a whole lot easier to use.

I’d been searching in some DCT4 code for one particular bug that had eluded me for 15 days. It should have been implemented in analog, but some Einstein decided digital logic was easier to design, so here I was.  It was me vs the bug. And the bug was winning!

Then it hit me. I was looking at the wrong register!

I felt a surge of power as I unlocked and modified my testbench. The combination of sleeplessness and Mountain Dew made me delirious. For a moment, I thought I was wearing a women’s dress and Onitsuka ASICs while playing volleyball in a prison cell. Gotta stop hanging out with those guys from the UK who watch Monty Python all the time.

I acted quickly, changing an “lt” to a “gt“, invoking the recompile flow on the new code, and kicking off the regression sim.

The simulation worked and I breathed a sigh of relief. My boss had threatened to bring in some hotshot design services company that he’d found on a website if I couldn’t find this bug. The nimbus that had been floating over my head for weeks was gone.

Now I could keep my job.

And now it was time for the layout guys to sweat!

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Phew! That was a lot harder than I thought. (Especially since those ASICS running shoes get a lot more hits apparently than the ASICs I usually write about). But now that I wrote and published that story, I expect I’ll be #1 on Google Search in the morning:-)

To be fair, I think there is certainly some value in understanding how people find this blog through various search terms. It helps me to understand what kind of information they are looking for and that helps me choose better topics to write about. But, taken to the extreme, if I write content for the search engines instead of all of you (my readers), then I’m in trouble. You may find me, but you won’t like what you find. And that would be much worse.

If anyone else wants to give this a try just for grins, just go to Wordstream and try it out. Just let me know where to find your “masterpiece”.

harry the ASIC guy

I may be the engineer in the family, but my wife is the inventor.

Being an engineer is easy. You go to school to learn well established laws and methods. When you get a job, there are others who can mentor you and show you the ropes. If you need to know more, there are training classes to take. Someone else, usually marketing, decides what needs to be to be designed. All you have to do is follow the rules.

Being an inventor is hard. There is no school for inventing, nobody to teach you the ropes, and no classes to tell you how to do things. You come up with your own idea that has never been done before. You learn on the fly what you need to know from a variety of domains you know nothing about. You build it yourself. There is no such thing as first pass success. Experimentation and refinement are a constant process.

For those of you who know Joyce and have been privileged to receive one of her hand-made personalized holiday “greetings”, you know that she is one of the most creative and gifted people you could ever meet. I’ve had people tell me that they look forward to the holidays just to find out what she is going to send. Most Novembers, our garage looks like a scene out of Honey I Shrunk The Kids as Joyce invents a new holiday greeting. Each of these inventions takes countless hours of brainstorming, planning, experimenting, assembling, and tweaking to get it “just right”.

There was the mobile of our kids made with clear fishing line tied off. The fishing line, being so slick, would always untie until Joyce figured out to add a drop of glue to the end to keep it in place. Problem solved.

A few years ago Joyce made a lantern with pictures of our children on the outside. It took a lot of research and experimentation to make sure the cardboard comprising the lantern was sufficiently coated so as not to catch fire but still provide a cozy glow. Good to go.

And probably the most interesting of all, there was the snow globe which contained an acrylic encased photo of our daughter Kiara reaching for the stars. I remember Joyce’s frustration trying to pry the small Lucite blocks from their molds until she realized that sticking them in cold water would loosen the blocks from the molds due to the CTE mismatch between the materials. Then, these Lucite blocks were placed in baby food jars that had to have just the right mixture of water and propylene glycol to be viscous and not grow algae. Perfect.

About a year and a half ago, we were visiting Legoland in Carlsbad, CA. My kids (then 4 and 6), especially my son, have a gift for getting “sidetracked”. So, Joyce thought it would be a good idea for our kids to have our cell phone numbers conspicuously on them in case they got lost. That way, it would not depend on their memory of our cell numbers for us to be contacted by a helpful stranger if they wandered away. That’s when the idea for the “WhoTat” was born.

Joyce decided to start a business called Aware Gear that would provide safety products for young children. The first product was the WhoTat which is a temporary tattoo that is personalized with a phone number to call in case of emergency. Kids like to wear them and parents know that their kids don’t need to remember their phone numbers. Now, I’ll admit that I was personally dubious that this was needed. After all, how hard is it for a kid to remember a phone number? The problem is that most of us have several phone numbers (home, work, cell) and a scared lost child of any age can get confused and even mix the phone numbers together. That’s what my son did, mix the numbers together.

As with the other holiday greetings, this was an invention of its own. At first it seemed easy. Just buy these tattoo sheets that could be fed into a printer, design some neat tattoos, add the phone number, and print. But it wasn’t so easy. First there were moisture issues where the printing process wouldn’t work on humid days or the ink wouldn’t stick. Then the Tats were kind of sticky, so baby powder was used to remove the stickiness, but not too much so as to blur the image. It was probably 6 months before she got the process down to something that would repeatably produce a high quality product.

The second offering was a skin sticker where you could write in your own phone number or message on the fly. Again, material problems. Most recently, she is producing glow-in-the-dark skin stickers called gid-its. With Halloween coming up, and all the inherent dangers of visiting strangers while trick-or-treating, this should help kids stay safe. Once again, this has proven to be a real lesson in materials science, specifically how to get paint with glow-in-the-dark powder to adhere evenly to a non- porous acrylic surface. Who knew? Oh, and 2 days ago she told me about another invention idea and I already see the beginnings of prototypes around the house.

Since Halloween is coming around and child safety is a big concern for a lot of parents, I’d like to ask a favor … ummm … I mean offer you an opportunity. Actually, 3 opportunities.

First, as I mentioned, my wife is a creative genius and you have the opportunity to acquire some of there original work. Her products really do help to keep kids safe and are fun and you have the opportunity to get them for your kids. If you don’t have young kids, tell a friend who does. You can order them here. An if you use the checkout code ASICGUY10 you will get a 10% discount.

Second, you have an opportunity to support a good organization. In addition to the 10% discount mentioned above, Joyce will donate 10% directly to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The NCMEC acts as an information clearinghouse and resource for parents, children, law enforcement agencies, schools, and communities to assist in locating missing children and to raise public awareness about ways to prevent child abduction, child sexual abuse and child pornography. John Walsh, Noreen Gosch, and others advocated establishing the center as a result of frustration stemming from a lack of resources and coordination between law enforcement and other government agencies.

Lastly, if you have gotten some value out of reading this blog over time, then here is your chance to thank me. I’d really appreciate it.

harry the ASIC guy

By Narendra (Nari) Shenoy, Technical Program Co-Chair, 46th DAC

Each year, around this time, the electronic design industry and academia meticulously prepare to showcase the latest research and technologies at the Design Automation Conference. For the casual attendee, after a few years the difference between the conferences of years past begins to dim. If you are one of them, allow me to dispel this notion and invite you to look at what is different this year.

For starters, we will be in the beautiful city of San Francisco from July 26-31. The DAC 2009 program, as in previous years, has been thoughtfully composed from using two approaches. The bottom up approach selects technical papers from a pool of submissions using a rigorous review process. This ensures that only the best technical submissions are accepted. For 2009, we see an increasing focus on research towards system level design, low power design and analysis, and physical design and manufacturability. This year, a special emphasis for the design community has been added to the program, with a User Track that runs throughout the conference. The new track, which focuses on the use of EDA tools, attracted 117 submissions reviewed by a committee made up of experienced tool users from the industry. The User Track features front end and back end sessions and a poster session that allows a perfect opportunity to interact with presenters and other DAC attendees. In addition to the traditional EDA professionals, we invite all practitioners in the design community – design tool users, hardware and software designers, application engineers, consultants, and flow/methodology developers, to come join us.

This first approach is complemented by a careful top-down selection of themes and topics in the form of panels, special sessions, keynote sessions, and management day events. The popular CEO panel returns to DAC this year as a keynote panel. The captains of the EDA industry, Aart deGeus (Synopsys), Lip-Bu Tan (Cadence) and Walden Rhines (Mentor) will explore what the future holds for EDA. The keynote on Tuesday by Fu-Chieh Hsu (TSMC), will discuss alignment of business and technology models to overcome design complexity. William Dally (Nvidia and Stanford) will present the challenges and opportunities that throughput computing provides to the EDA world in his keynote on Wednesday. Eight panels on relevant areas are spread across the conference. One panel explores whether the emphasis on Design for Manufacturing is a differentiator or a distraction. Other panels focus on a variety of themes such as confronting hardware-dependent software design, analog and mixed signal verification challenges, and various system prototyping approaches. The financial viability of Moore’s law is explored in a panel, while another panel explores the role of statistical analysis in several fields, including EDA. Lastly, we have a panel exploring the implications of recent changes in the EDA industry from an engineer’s perspective.

Special technical sessions will deal with a wide variety of themes such as preparing for design at 22nm, designing circuits in the face of uncertainty, verification of large systems on chip, bug-tracking in complex designs, novel computation models and multi-core computing. Leading researchers and industry experts will present their views on each of these topics.

Management day includes topics that tackle challenges and decision making in a complex technology and business environment. The current “green” trend is reflected in a slate of events during the afternoon of Thursday July 30th. We start with a special plenary that explores green technology and its impact on system design, public policy and our industry. A special panel investigates the system level power design challenge and finally a special session considers technologies for data centers.

Rather than considering it a hindrance to attendance, the prolonged economic malaise this year should provide a fundamental reason to participate at DAC. As a participant in the technical program, DAC offers an opportunity to share your research and win peer acclaim. As an exhibitor, it is an ideal environment to demonstrate your technology and advance your business agenda. As an attendee, you cannot afford to miss the event where “electronic design meets”. DAC provides an unparalleled chance to network and learn about advances in electronic design for everyone. Won’t you join us at the Moscone Center at the end of the month?

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This year’s DAC will be held July 26-31 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Register today at www.dac.com. Note also that there are 600 free DAC passes being offered courtesy of the DAC Fan Club (Atrenta, Denali, Springsoft) for those who have no other means to attend.

(The following is the text of an email I received this afternoon from a friend of mine in the Bay Area. I thought it was great and so I am sharing it with you, with his permission. If you would like to help him “unload his burden”, please let me know and I can put you in touch).

__________

Hi all,

Ok, so let me preface this by saying that I know I have a very deep and very hard to cope with, mental illness.  Somehow I feel that makes this more acceptable. As you may or may not know, we are moving.  I have decided that the boxes and boxes of IEEE and ACM journals will not be moving out of my storage and to our new home.  This is very hard for me.  It kills me to think about all the work and energy that went into fighting the universe’s entropy to come up with these things, and I CANNOT just take them to the dump (which I know is what I ought to do in a very real and cathartic sense.)

I know they are all available online and will forever be, at this point.  Years from now, I will not have the lone surviving issue of an incredibly important research paper otherwise to be lost to history.  I know that.  When I was younger, I had visions of one day having them all bound into annual editions and putting them in my library with oak or mahogany lined walls, overstuffed burgundy furniture, and a pool table with red felt in the middle of the room.  It’s time to put away my childish things and stop carrying this load.

As I said, it is very difficult for me.  What I would most like is to find a good home for them where they will be shelved, appreciated, and used.  The problem is that I think all the engineering libraries in the bay area all have as many (or even more) than they would like.  If any of you want to fill out a company library, I would be happy to give them to you.  I have about 25 years worth… the prized parts of the collection include IEEE Computer, IEEE Transactions on Computers, and IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence… amongst lots of others. It will be hard to dump the Computer issues back to 1985… that seemed to be a glorious time in computer architecture and design.  A bygone era.  

I hate reading these things online.  My first inclination when I see an article I want to read online is to print it.  I’d much rather have it on a shelf and look it up that way saving myself the time to print, but I know it’s crazy, and I can no longer afford to keep hauling around this paper.

I believe I am going to fail in finding a home for these things.  This is my last ditch effort to find someone to take them.  I suppose the next best thing to the dump is taking them to an actual paper recycling plant.  I suppose that is at least one step more green than doing the landfill thing, which I truly find distasteful.

I am open to any and all suggestions.  Sorry for this long e-mail.  I hope it was at least a little entertaining looking into another person’s deep dementia.  I know I have issues.  Over twenty-five years’ worth…

-al

I’m still up at the Design Verification Conference (DVCon) and have not had a chance to summarize last evening’s Software-As-A-Service and Cloud Computing EDA Roundtable. I will do that over the weekend and have a complete rundown next week, including slides.

In the meantime, I wanted to pass on some information that was announced a week or so ago and which I became aware of just this week. Mentor Graphics has initiated a Displaced Worker Program to provide free training to customers who have lost thier jobs in the last 6 months. Back last Decemeber I had issued a challenge to the EDA vendors to do just this. I don’t know if this challenge had any affect; hopefully they did this because they thought it was the right thing to do.

So far Mentor is the only company that has done this, to my knowledge. I’ve personally had discussions with one other of the “Big 3″, so hopefully they will follow suit. Maybe Mentor’s offer will help prompt them.

What do you think? Should they do this?

harry the ASIC guy

Although I’ve observed the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. every year since I was a child, I must acknowledge, for obvious reasons, that this year was special. The confluence of this holiday with the inauguration of the first African American President seems like the culmination of the dream that Dr. King spoke of in 1963. Even though I am not African American, I can’t help but feel a sense of pride that this nation was able to finally make good on the check that the founding fathers wrote over 2 centuries ago when they said that “all men are created equal”.

I’m not naive enough to believe that we now have complete equality and that there are no racial, cultural, or religious biases remaining in the US. I know several people that harbor prejudices towards “others”. Indeed, many Americans have simply found new groups towards which to have these biases. And if history teaches us anything, it’s that history repeats itself. That is why I feel it is so important that we teach our children about Slavery, the Holocaust and other ugly chapters in American and World History .. so (hopefully) it does not occur again.

Still, I realized the other day how fortunate I am to work in a truly global engineering community that is so diverse and where people are, for the most part, judged not by the color of their skin, but by their abilities. I won’t lie and say that I am not aware of the race or nationality or cultural background of the people I work with. Of course I am. But it just isn’t that important to me. And hopefully my race is not that important to them.

If you have the time, watch the video of Dr. King’s I Have A Dream speech and share it with someone who needs to hear it. Or if you have a little more time, read Dr. King’s Letter From A Birmingham Jail (thanks to John Ford for pointing this out in a tweet). In our current age of the sound bite, we rarely hear or read anything so eloquent or poetic.  It’s worth your time.

harry the ASIC guy

Back in March when I launched this blog, my goal was “to share my insights into the people aspects of ASIC engineering”. Now, 10 months and 50 posts later, with the start of 2009, it’s time to take stock and make some 2009 New Years Resolutions.  Here we go:

#1 - I resolve to write shorter and more frequent posts. - Specifically, my goal is to provide a new post 2 times a week and most of them will take less than 5 minutes to read.  By doing this, I hope to be more responsive to what is going on in the industry and provide fresher content. Once in a while I’ll still put up a lengthy post, but that will be the exception.

#2 - I resolve to enable some sort of online community  - So far, the conversation has been mostly from me to you (the readers) and occasionally between the you (through comments). I’d like to get us all involved in doing something meaningful and important in the industry. I’ve had this idea for a while that I called “the ASIC guild” that would be a community of ASIC designers helping each other access career training and job opportunities. With all the layoffs in the industry lately, I think this is very timely. Look for something real soon, but I will need a lot of help. So please let me know if you are interested in helping.

#3 - SaaS for EDA Roundtable - Over the last few months, I’ve blogged quite a bit on the idea of Software-as-a-Service for EDA. A fellow blogger suggested that I organize a roundtable discussion on this topic and I am shooting for DVCON (Feb 24-26) to hold this.  This will also require your help, so please let me know if you are interested in helping to organize or be a part of this.

What do you all think?  Are these the right things to shoot for in 2009?

harry the ASIC guy

I recently caught up with one of my best friends whom I’ve known since Junior High School.  We were on the Math Team together in High School (yeah, we were geeks). We went to MIT together. We moved to Southern California after college together. We got our Masters degrees at USC together. And we both worked in the aerospace industry as our first jobs.

After several years at the Aerospace Corporation, Gary moved back to New York for family reasons. As it turned out, much of the engineering methods and mathematics used to analyze spacecraft attitude control stability (estimation theory stuff like Kalman Filters, etc.) were directly applicable to computational finance (or what is more recently been called financial engineering). With this knowledge, Gary landed a job at an investment bank and did very well, analyzing complex financial instruments to help clients hedge against risk (at least I think that’s what he did … I don’t really understand this stuff that well).

Shortly after September 11, Gary left the corporate world in order to spend more time with his young growing family and to chart his own course.  He performed some personal investing for private clients and eventually created and ran his own privately managed mutual fund. I know this was a big deal for him and he took it very seriously.  He always did painstaking research on companies he’d invest in and never took undue risks with his clients’ money.  As he told me the other day, “this is not a game”.

The first year or two the mutual fund did pretty well. Not great. Not terrible. But pretty good.

Early in 2008 I called Gary’s business line and the number was no longer in service. I left several messages at his home number but did not hear back. Finally, about a month and a half later I got a hold of Gary and asked him what was up. As it turns out, Gary had been really busy with all of the details of closing down the mutual fund he had started less than 2 years earlier. And here is where the story gets interesting.

Gary had been talking with lots of companies about their business and sensed from all of them that things were not good.  He also had a first-hand understanding of the financial markets and financial instruments that were to eventually be blamed for the real estate crisis. Whereas Gary had worked on creating these products to hedge against risk, others were using them to create risk and the ratings agency’s were covering it all up by putting AAA ratings on them.

All in all, Gary knew that there was going to be bad times coming up.  So what did he do?

• Did he paint a rosy picture for his clients so they would keep their money in his fund and he could continue to collect his management fee?
• Did he go out and get new investors in order to pay impressive returns to the older ones?
• Did he do something else to cover it up (after all, he knows enough to do that)?

No.  Gary did what it seems that very few in financial services would do.  Gary called up each of his clients and told the truth.  That there was going to be bad times and that he could not make money for them in this environment.  That the risk was too high.  And, even though he had put so much effort into building this fund, he was going to close it down for their benefit.

Many of his clients wanted him to keep going and were willing to assume the risk, but in the end he convinced them to cash most of it out and closed down the fund.

This was early in 2008, before the worst of the news and most of the crash occurred.  Now, looking back at that decision, Gary’s decision probably saved his client’s millions of dollars.  Some of them have called to thank him since then.

I think this is a great story about integrity and ethics and a great way to wash off the slime of 2008 and start 2009 clean and fresh.  If you have not yet chosen a new year’s resolution, let me suggest one.

Just once in 2009, do the right thing when you stand to lose.

harry the ASIC guy

I hope nobody at ASCAP is reading this. Because, if they are, they might be sending my kids to jail. First, some background.

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If you don’t know who ASCAP is, they are the the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. That sounds all fine and good … after all, I support the Arts. In fact, though, they are the ones who go door-to-door to coffee shops around the country shaking down small business owners to pay royalties on recorded music they play in their stores.  All to protect the artist, so he can get his 7% (the average) and the publisher can get his 93%.

Last Friday, we had our parent-teacher conference with our daughter’s 2nd grade teacher. During the conference, we inquired whatever became of the “music share day” that had been planned earlier this year. You see, my daughter, as well as other children in her class, were looking forward to bringing in their favorite music to share with their fellow students during an art class.

To my surprise, it seems that this idea was way out of line.  You see, evidently, ASCAP had previously stepped up to enforce the rights of its client artists (remember, the ones getting 7% of the licensing fees). They felt that a school was no place for children to learn about music unless they pay the licensing fees. So they sued the school board in order to protect their clients rights and stamp out any unauthorized and illicit learning that might be occurring without a valid license agreement. Bless their souls. And now the school board had adopted a clear guideline regarding copyrighted material … just say no.

Bottom line … no music in the art class.

Now, I don’t deny that the original composer deserves some royalty (again, the 7%), and I’m not advocating copyright infringement. But …  isn’t this a clear example where the music industry would be better off allowing schools to use copyrighted music. Not only is the use of this music in a classroom setting harmless to the industry, what better way to spread the music than allow elementary school students to bring in their favorite music. Look at what’s happened with Hannah Montana and High School Musical.

The EDA industry has long supported university education by providing courseware and tools for classroom instruction.  Sure, they want to support learning, but they also understand that students will be more likely to use the tools they learned in college when they get to industry. It just makes good business sense.

(As a side note, I would like to challenge the EDA industry, especially the big vendors, to extend the university offerings to those designers who have been recently affected by layoffs. Many of these professionals are in need of retraining and the ability to access these course materials and tools will help them find their next jobs. I think it makes good business sense, because these designers will learn the company’s tools and I am sure will be forever grateful for the helping hand. If you are employed by an EDA company and are reading this, please bring this up with your management.)

 ____________________

That same evening, the YMCA had a Christmas Party where the kids got to perform some Christmas songs. Kiara participated in an Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas song and Nate was the 12th day of Christmas. As I watched them, my thoughts went back to the copyright issue and I wondered to myself whether the YMCA had secured the public performance rights to these songs. I asked one of the YMCA leaders about it and sure enough, they did. Phew! In fact, she told me that the kids are so “with it” these days, they even know to ask the leaders “is it on the approved list?”

Thankfully, someone was careful to make sure they had done things by the book.  Otherwise, they’d have to bring out the paddy wagon to cart all these kids off to jail.

harry the ASIC guy

It was another beautiful Southern California morning.

I stay a little longer on Fridays after dropping Nate and Kiara at Elementary School.  Fridays are assembly day and I like to listen in to hear what is going on and to briefly recapture my childhood, when things were a little simpler and purer than they are today.

Each assembly starts with the Pledge of Allegiance and Miss Miller singing God Bless America, followed by announcements and sometimes awards.

Room 22 - “Most Enthusiastic Reader”

Room 17 - “Best Helper”

This Friday was a little different.  After Miss Miller finished, the Principal told us that we would be hearing from Mrs. Hazard who was the head of fund raising for the Parents Teachers Association (PTA).

“Good morning everybody”.

“Good morning Mrs. Hazard”.

“What a beautiful morning. And you are all so well behaved. Today, I’d like to talk to you about our fund raising drive that you all have been helping with.”

The fundraising drive to which Mrs. Hazard was referring was already the 3rd fundraising event of the year and we were only in September. If you live in California and have kids then you probably can put fundraising on your resume. To be in a school or join any organization with your kids is almost a guarantee that you’ll need to hit up your family, friends, and neighbors to buy chocolate, wrapping paper, books, candy, etc.

Don’t get me wrong. I realize that our taxes don’t cover the cost of the 49th best school system in the country. And the PTAs are trying to help by raising funds. But I just don’t feel comfortable leaving boxes of chocolate with little signs in the printer room at work. Or guilting my in-laws into buying something new every other week.  I feel awkward when a “friend of the family” invites us over for dinner and we find ourselves at a multi-level marketing recruitment event for ionized water. (This actually happened to us). And I’d feel like one of those MLM people if I were to hit up my friends and family every other week for a new donation. As a result, Joyce and I usually end up buying something ourselves. And that is that.

“How many of you have already sold something?”, Mrs. Hazard asked.

About half the hands went up. I looked over at Kiara as she slumped noticeably and put her head down in shame.

“Very good. Now how many of you have sold 10 or more items”.

About 20 or so hands stayed up.

“Excellent.  Please come up after assembly and I will enter your name into a special drawing”.

Kiara slumped a little more.

“I’ll be back here on Tuesday and any one who has sold 10 or more items will also be entered in the drawing. Now, remember, we have only 1 more week left. So go out there and SELL, SELL, SELL!!”

I was about to bust an artery.  Was I listening to someone in the PTA or Alec Baldwin in Glengary Glenross?

I had half a mind to confront Mrs. Hazard on the spot, but making a scene in front of the kids and the moms did not seem like a good idea. Plus, I probably had to think this through.  Maybe I was over-reacting.  After all, life is about selling yourself, so Kiara might as well start as soon as possible. After all, no sense coddling a 2nd grader, right???

Later that day I asked Kiara about what had occurred and how she felt.

“I’m going to get in trouble”, she said.

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t sell anything”.

She was almost in tears.

Am I wrong and am I making too much out of this?  Should I just encourage and help my daughter to sell some wrapping paper to the neighbors.

Or did Mrs. Hazard step over the line?

What do you think?

harry the ASIC giy