The Phantom Wife Kerfuffle
I've been involved with data issues for years. I think in one of my first MIS classes we discussed how allegedly unique social security numbers had exceptions: one number, for example, had been used by over 1000 people. In fact,- Out of the 280 million Social Security numbers [ID Analytics] studied across its network of databases,
- More than 20 million people have more than one number associated with their name.
- More than 40 million numbers are associated with more than one person.
- More than 100,000 Americans have 5 or more numbers associated with their name.
- More than 27,000 Social Security numbers are associated with 10 or more people.
One company I worked with in the mid-1990's (now a subsidiary of Equifax) did a lot of marketing research householding tasks (which we often called merge/purge and/or dedupping mail lists). (We used software from Group 1.) For example, on different mail lists, I might have stored addresses of any permutation using "Dr. Ronald", "Mr. Ronald", "R.A.", "Ronald Armand", "Ron", various spellings of my surname, "Mr & Mrs.", "Mrs."; if I lived in an apartment, it could be described by "#999", "Apt 999", etc.; "; "St." or "Street"; 5 or 9 digit zip codes, and so on.) The basic idea, of course, is if a company wanted to mail something to me as part of their target audience and they had purchased/licensed several mail lists, it was very expensive (not to mention annoying to me) to send multiple copies of the same ad promotion/catalog, etc. So the goal of dedupping is basically to reduce mail list duplicates to one per household/unique canonical address.
The observant reader may have noticed that I included "Mr. & Mrs." or "Mrs." In fact, I've never been married or had a live-in girlfriend. Why do I get mail for a phantom wife? My guess is that the marketing inference was that I was likely married, and they wanted to market goods or services to her. For example, suppose I made a direct purchase of Big & Tall underwear from a national vendor; my purported wife might be placed on an email list or a mail order catalog of bras and other items from their women's division. I do admit it gets annoying having to filter out or unsubscribe from these annoying irrelevant promotions.
So during my professional IT odyssey I spent several years in a consulting role, often living the life of a road warrior; for example, when I was working for Oracle in 1998, I commuted on weekends from Chicago to Oakland. I might get in O'Hare at 2 AM Saturday and have a 4 PM flight back out on Sunday. I had to get out to the Post Office later that Saturday morning to fetch my mail, and do various errands, maybe squeeze in a workout at the gym. Oracle only let me commute every other weekend while I was on that project (because of expenses) until near the end of my stay. I think things have lightened up since then; consulting companies are better at negotiating 4 10-hour workweeks and a travel day.
But as part of company cost controls, we consultants often would be issued a company credit card (in fact, I have one for my current employer, although I have had limited travel engagements). The good thing about that is that we don't have to float expenses on our own credit cards and wait for reimbursement after accountants had gone through and approved our expense reports/receipts. (In fact, I'm haunted by the fact that the accountants kicked back a page or two of receipts for some odd technical (format?) reason to Oracle Consulting's Chicago headquarters (vs. my home address), which I almost never saw because I was almost always billing; I only saw the returned receipts after I left Oracle, so Oracle probably still owes me on those expenses.) We still have to file expense reports and receipts (under the company card system), but, e.g., under my current employer, the receipts are integrated into the expense process, so it's more of having to record expenses and matching the accumulated receipts. It's a lot better than my Oracle days of having to scotch tape receipts onto numbered sheets, etc. Never mind the issues of trying to find a misplaced receipt or having virtually unreadable receipts. The downside of a company card is that you may lose certain perks, say, airline miles, under cost saving measures the company has negotiated with the card issuer. And it becomes highly visible when you don't use the company card for an expense, and I don't care for dealing with nitpicking, by-the-book company accountants. For example, on one return flight back to Arizona, I found out my ride home wouldn't take credit cards. The driver gave some bogus rationalization for not doing that; luckily I carried just enough cash to pay the charge, got the receipt and scanned it and the driver's business card in the event my company balked at the transaction.
So for one employer I had to use Diners Club as a company card; there was some paperwork which they sent me, telling me to have my wife Sherrie also sign. And I said, "Say what? I'm not married." (And I seem to recall there was also a correlated issue, e.g., in filing beneficiary information at work, like survivor benefits. Let's just say I was trying to designate one or 2 members of my nuclear family. So there's some type of paperwork where your wife has to sign off if the beneficiary is not her, and I got some sort of push back from HR that I had to get Phantom Sherrie to sign off on this.) I have no idea where this Sherrie came from; I've never specified a spouse on any paperwork, anywhere, anytime. I was irritated enough to call Diners Club directly, and it was like an Alice in Wonderland experience, because the guy is not buying I don't have a wife, like "Yeah right, buddy. I've heard it all before. You guys always say the same thing. I'm not going to argue the point: just have Sherrie sign off on the paperwork, and get it back to me." It's like I'm talking to someone from an alternate reality. THERE IS NO FREAKING SHERRIE. There never has been in any way, any form, any how. I have no idea where they got it from: some other Ronald Guillemette in New England or Quebec?
I did have an older girlfriend who could have gone by a similar variation when I was an 18-year-old junior/senior at OLL; her given name was Sharon (like one of my little sisters, which is weird, but then I have a brother-in-law named Ronald also.) Sharon was a drop-dead gorgeous Catholic Pentecostal. (It plays into the story.) Let's just say I'm a skeptic. One of the CDP sisters/nuns drove us to one of these services (neither of us had a car). I'm doing this for Sharon, definitely not my idea, but I would have spent time with Sharon if she just wanted to feed birds. We get there; I had never been to one of these services and am not really comfortable about anything (other than the privilege of standing next to a woman I really, really like) when some guy near us gets up and starts babbling, "FA-LA-KA-LA-BA-MA", Everyone around me is like buzzing, "The Holy Spirit is speaking through him in tongues!" I turn to Sharon, and I say, "Oh, come on! GIVE ME A BREAK!" (I had heard more convincing babbling from a baby!) Now Sharon had always been sweet, positive and agreeable with me until this point of time, but she then shot me a look that could kill. AND THEN SHE GETS UP and starts "speaking in tongues": "BOO-KU-LA-GRA-ME-RAY-FA-LA" (Well, don't quote me; I'm paraphrasing the babbling. Some syllables may be inaccurate or out of order.) I'm mortified, deeply embarrassed and pissed off. I get up and walk several seats away from her. The service finally ends, and we have to meet back at the car. I feel sorry for the sister driving the car. You could have fit one or 2 people between Sharon and me in the back seat. We couldn't have physically been any further apart and still be in the car. I don't think she was filled with the Holy Spirit, loving me in spite of my (admittedly numerous) faults. She was pissed and glowered back at me with a look that could kill, and I myself wasn't happy with her either. It was a long, quiet, tense ride back to campus. Our first fight; there are probably married guys laughing their asses off at me, thinking I don't know the first thing about being in the doghouse. Well, I've got a Mom and 4 little sisters who have also let me know that I'm not God's gift to women.
Eventually we got past that fight, but it turned out she had deeper ties to these Pentecostals. I think they had some commune in the Dallas area. She started hinting she was thinking of going to the commune unless I gave her a reason to stay. Now of course I wanted her to stay; she was my girlfriend and I had feelings for her. But what was she hinting at: engagement and marriage? I was just 18, barely able to handle my own school bills with a scholarship and work/study. My folks had no money, couldn't put us up. The economy wasn't great, I was still a year from graduation, and I didn't know what prospects I had for getting a job that paid enough to take care of a family. (I wasn't at all sure what I could get with a double-major in math and philosophy.) So--no. I wasn't going to take responsibility for her life decisions. If she stayed and ended up blaming me for letting her Dallas opportunity get away... She was 22. If she chose the commune over me, maybe she didn't love me. I kept telling her it was her decision to make, and she made the tragically wrong decision (from my perspective) to move to the commune (I don't think she was graduating--in fact, I'm not even sure what she was majoring in, how she ended up in San Antonio. I knew she was from New York (I'll sometimes write something like she's the only good thing to ever come out of NY; in the blog, I'll sometimes reprise BJ Thomas' song "The Eyes of a New York Woman", and I can't stop thinking about her. I'll put the song on auto-repeat.).
And to this day, I've never heard from her again--and I've really, really missed her. She never wrote to me. (Whatever thoughts I entertained about becoming a priest sort of died the first time I saw her in red hot pants on one of our more unusual dates. She had spectacular legs. It was as if I had never seen before a pair of mesmerizing exquisitely shapely, beautiful, flawless feminine legs before; their sight was seared into my memory--if I closed my eyes, all I could see were her legs. I know, I shouldn't be so superficial. I will say that I got a lot of unsolicited respect from the guys in the dorm for dating one of the most beautiful coeds on campus, which is something not a lot of geeks can say.)
I would be lying if I said the thought of Sharon didn't cross my mind over this Diners Club kerfuffle. But I hadn't heard from Sharon in 20 years, and she was the closest thing to a Sherrie I had ever dated. So I'm baffled. I don't recall how the Sherry kerfuffle ever got resolved with Diners Club or work back then; Diners Club was fighting me tooth and nail over this denial of reality for weeks. Maybe they got me confused with some other Ronald Guillemette I don't know about. I would have thought if that was the case they would have rechecked their facts from the get-go vs arguing with me. But in the 10-15 years since then, Sherrie hasn't resurfaced via other cards or employers. But really, how do you prove a negative?
All I can say is even the federal government hasn't (yet) tried to argue I have some wife from an alternate universe. But when you hear about babies making no-fly lists, you start wondering when the other shoe will drop.
As for Sharon, I'm sure she moved on, got married, had kids. I tried to look up another OLL girlfriend while I was teaching at UTEP (she was from El Paso). Apparently one of her local cousins called my folks' house while we were at Midnight Mass, and my Protestant brother-in-law took the call. She's married with a couple of daughters and wished me a happy life. (Another missed opportunity.) I've kept track of other women of interest from high school and UT through social media, but they're married (in one case, three times divorced: she had registered in the portal under her maiden name). Nobody special in Houston (there is an ex-girlfriend there I hate with a passion; she didn't take it well when I decided to break up with her. It was awkward since I had met her at church on campus (so much for Mom's advice about meeting a nice girl through church), and it was impossible to avoid her, so I left around the time I started my dissertation) or during my years in academia. I've never dated a current or former student, but there are some weird stories about aggressive women I'll probably never put in the blog. Because of the pervasive atmosphere of political correctness in academia, I wasn't about to put my career at risk over even a consensual relationship with female students not in my own classes; I insisted on keeping my office door open if I were with a coed.
Well, I'll give a minor example involving coeds. At UH, like other graduate teaching fellows, I shared an office with two other doctoral students, plus there was an occasional MBA student at an intermediary desk. We usually kept office hours, and at the time I was teaching a couple of classes in COBOL programming, which at the time served as the undergraduate MIS service course. In this one case, two coeds came in for help debugging their programs. I don't recall if the others were at their desks, but surely I was safe with two coeds there. So I'm right in the middle of looking over a long computer listing, probably the least sexy thing known to man, when all of a sudden I felt the student's bare foot inside my left pant, stroking up and down my shin/calf, i.e., playing footsie. I didn't know what to do; what I did know was the risk of a counter-claim if I escalated the issue, and as a doctoral student, I couldn't afford the political hot water. So I decided to ignore it and didn't respond. She eventually stopped. After they left the office, I overheard the laughing coed tell her friend, "Did you see me turn the teacher on?" (Now I had never played footsie during my own dating history; I will say it wasn't the first time that an aggressive woman tried it. I think being a geek of average height and limited dating experience and somewhat overweight (not as much as now), I didn't get hit on by many coeds. I also had a reputation for being a nice guy, not kissing on the first date, etc. I do think some women like people in authority, like a teacher, or smart guys, but it's not an everyday thing.
So in my first graduate class at UH, a course in macroeconomics, I've sitting at the front of class (which I did in most classes), and there's a very tall (at least 6 feet in her bare feet, maybe up to 4 inches taller) blonde to my immediate left. (I have nothing against taller women: I often find them attractive, but in my experience, most women look for taller guys and can be dismissive of shorter guys; I think it has to do with social norms/expectations; as for me, I'm secure enough that I don't really care about what other people might think of me being among the 5% of so of men with a taller girlfriend/wife. That being said, most of the women I've dated have been short to average height; I think that mostly reflects the eligible dating pool than a specific preference, the average woman being 5 inches shorter. My Mom is 5'2", and one of my sisters is 4'10", so I often think of shorter women as normal-sized. I have dated one taller woman (by a couple of inches), but height had nothing to do with why the relationship didn't work.) So getting back to this class, I don't really recall that much, if any small talk before lecture or the like. Now, like computer programming, macroeconomics is one of the most boring topics on the face of the earth. So imagine my shock and surprise when I feel this lady's foot dig up my left pant leg and start stroking my leg up and down. This has never happened to me before in my limited history of dating; it was totally unexpected and a complete shock. I didn't even have a clue she was interested in me. But to be honest, we were at the front of class, and the last thing I wanted was for the professor to notice us, stop lecture, and demand to know what the hell was doing on. So I ignored it as best I could. I suspect she sensed that I wasn't interested, and I don't recall any subsequent interaction with the woman. Maybe if she had flirted more before doing that; it was so unexpected. It certainly wasn't her height; I think for guys it's bad enough risking rejection without a woman also ridiculing your stature
Let's Be Clear: I'm Not Nostalgic Over the Confederacy
I think like everyone I went through standard American history classes with doting coverage of St. Abraham Lincoln. I bought into the story that the Civil War was over the emancipation of slaves. My Mom used to tell me stories about the Underground Railroad, and while I attended a South Carolina junior high, we made a family trip out to Ft. Sumter, where the opening shots of the Civil War were fired. So I was quite familiar with conventional American historical accounts of the War, Reconstruction, etc. I'm also not in a state of denial over a motivating factor for secession being a preservation of slavery, an institution which explicitly contradicted the concept of unalienable rights of life, liberty and property.But a number of things always bothered me. One is the fact that the Northern states (and other countries, like England) had abandoned slavery, despite whatever economic advantages of slavery to their farms and factories. And let's face it: there were costs to slavery (food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, not to mention the costs of confining slaves to one's property); since slaves had little intrinsic vested interest in outputs, which were the property of the slaveholder, one might argue that the business model was inherently flawed (more of a tragedy of the commons approach); a worker had little incentive to work beyond the minimum he could do, to treat the owner's property with due care, etc. Alternative models like sharecropping or tenant farming emerged, whereby a percentage of crops was provided to the owner in exchange for land, supplies/equipment, and family lodging. Many criticize the lack of competition for goods and credit pledged against crops for expenses between harvests, arguing it was merely a different form of slavery; still, for someone with little or no property and other resources but background and experience in farming, it provided more incentive and control over one's own financial future.
Certainly if Lincoln had tried alternative approaches, like buying off Southern slaves, it would have been preferential than what happened. There are scholarly debates about this, and granted nobody probably understood at the time the nature and extent of the Civil War and its costs, but let's be clear: Lincoln was about fighting secession, not slavery; the thirteenth amendment ended slavery, nearly 8 months after Lincoln's death and the end of the war. The Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to Northern slave states, only over the South (which Lincoln obviously did not hold control).
What of the kerfuffle over the Confederate statues? I know in the eyes of many cultural Marxists, the statues seem to embody defense of the institution of slavery. Many libertarians, like myself, feel no sympathy for the evil of slavery, nor do we mourn its passing in 1865. We think that the institution would have collapsed with a null and void Fugitive Slave Law in the Union, the high cost of securing runaway slaves, the adverse effect of slavery's effect on local non-propertied workers (taxes for enforcement, wages, etc.), boycotts of slave-produced cotton in the Union and foreign markets, etc. I believe reunification would have been inevitable.
For many Southerners, the war was not about slavery; only about 13% held slaves. For many it was about defending their homes, culture and heritage from Northern aggressors and a remote central government just as oppressive as one from which they fought for independence 80 years earlier. They don't want others trying to destroy their past, their heritage simply because it's politically incorrect, tainted by the sin of slavery. What about the Northern states which also had protected slavery before the nineteenth century? Where their cultural symbols being targeted by these intolerant aggressors, who seem to think scrubbing away the past underscores their conviction against an institution that died 150 years ago?
Personally, I don't care about statues. During my 2 years of living in Austin, I never went once to see the statue of Jefferson Davis. I have never been an admirer of his. Let the birds poop on his head; I'm not going to clean it. It's not like the statue is going to spring to life and lead to the restoration of slavery in Texas. But don't try to censor history by moving a statue out of sight. It's not like you have to genuflect and pray to Jefferson Davis because his statue exists in a public area. People in public may also voice opinions on religion, sex, and politics you don't agree with; it's not like they hold you in chains to keep you there listening to them; you have a right to walk away. And I'm perfectly fine with it if you decide you want to moon a statue of Jefferson Davis. But when it comes to imposing your political preferences on other people, you should know you can count me out.
