0270 – Personal Security and Redundancy

If we pay attention in life we get sent little hints from time to time about the little things that might be important. I lived a “One is none, two is one!” scenario recently and I felt like it was a great reminder to myself about redundancy. I figured you might enjoy laughing at me and the situation as well as take the opportunity to make sure you have your back ups in place. I make it a point to ensure that when I get a little wake up call I try to apply it broadly instead of just in that specific instance. Today we are going to talk about redundancy.

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Murphy’s Law

There are many variations to Murphy’s law and I believe it pays to be familiar with them all as long as you understand that as soon as you mitigate all of the possible points of failure in a situation a new point of failure will appear and the only solution will undo all the other solutions you devised… Well, despite the fact that Murphy is always looking over our shoulder, the more prepared we are to handle situations, the more likely we are to be able to handle those situations. This is where the old principle that one is none and two is one comes in to play. It is a philosophy that I live by. Probably to a fault.

My Story

This past week, I pulled a stupid move that reminded me of how redudndancy can help to save my own backside when I screw up.  Here is the deal.  I grew up in a family of competitive swimmers and so I developed a love for water at a young age.  When I think of good times, about half take place in or around water.  So, it makes sense that I am interested in passing on that love to my children.  We get in the water whenever we can and in the winter time, the local YMCA is the best place for us to do that.  Every year, things get busy around Thanksgiving so we drop our membership usually until the start of Fedruary.  That is exactly what we did this year.  and last week we headed over for the first family swim of the new year.

Talk about perishable skills.

The YMCA has family locker rooms and that is where we get ourselves ready.  They aren’t very spacious, there is only one hook to hang stuff, almost no counter space and lots of folks waiting to use them so the pressure was on, and we were out of practice.  Two adults and two kids is a pretty good ratio but when you are trying to keep kids and clothes off  the scummy locker room floor it can be a bit intense.  We muscled our way through the confusion, got changed, and got everything in the locker, locked up safe and sound.

Lock your stuff.

I am always amazed at how long it takes us to get an available locker.  You would think that all you would have to do is look for the lockers without locks, open one and claim it.  Not so.  Hardly anyone locks their stuff up.  I have to admit that I wouldn’t be too worried about someone stealing my clothes.  It’s not the clothes.  For me, it is whats in them.  My wallets.  Cash that I don’t want to give away and more importantly the hassle of reporting credit cards stolen and getting new ID’s.  Apparently I am paranoid because we lock our locker.  In fact I am so paranoid that I want no lose ends.  I locked the keys in the locker.  No combo lock for me.  A well built, tight fitting key lock to keep the goblins at bay.  I’ll say it again, with the keys locked inside…

 There I was…

In my swim trunks, no shirt, no shoes, no keys and pissed off at myself.  Seriously, what am I 12?  We headed to the pool and I grabbed a life guard to start solving the problem.  I let her know the situation and asked if she could call one of the maintenance crew in to cut the lock off for me.    I was embarrassed, annoyed and frustrated that a $15 lock was about to be trashed when the life guard came back in to tell me that there were no bolt cutters in the building to handle the situation.  WHAT!?!  I have never been in a building that has lockable lockers and no tools to get locks off.  I jumped back into the pool and tried to sort through how the rest of the night was going to go.

Spare clothes in the car for everyone. That is a start.  But the car is locked.  No problem the truck has a keypad for entry.  So The big problem is really just me getting to the car barefoot with only a towel to get the clothes.  Ok, then we jump in the car, use the spare set of keys to drive home and I come back the next day with the bolt cutters to get our stuff.  Not convenient, but it will work.  Spare keys.  Spare keys.  The spare keys are a complete set minus the house key.  Complete set, including the key for the lock on the locker….

Even when you are cold and embarrassed, “Two is one!”