For a lot of reasons, I have been thinking about the little things recently, and how big a difference they can make in life. In work, in home life – really anywhere. It’s not a earth-shattering revelation, but it still surprises me sometimes.

One little example: For more than a year after we moved into our new house, we complained about how cold the kitchen is. It’s frustrating, because it’s the newest part of the house, but it was always a lot colder than the other rooms in the house, and the cold draft would make its way into the other rooms. The kitchen needs a little work, but the chill problem was enough to push us to consider making a major renovation, or at the least figure out a way to redo the insulation as a whole.

But anyway, this weekend, I decided to try a little thing to make it better. I spent about an hour hanging that insulating film over two windows. You know, the stuff that you shrink with a hair dryer.

A little thing. And cheap.

You know what? It worked. It didn’t solve the problem entirely. But suddenly, the kitchen isn’t as cold. The draft doesn’t get as far. And a whole chunk of our house that wasn’t all that comfortable is now that much nicer.

But there’s more of this ‘butterfilm effect.’ Because the temperature is better balanced near the thermostat, the heat isn’t running as much. Because the heat isn’t running as much, the upstairs isn’t getting overheated. Since the upstairs isn’t getting overheated, that area is more comfortable, too. Oh, and I expect that when our next oil bill comes, we’ll see a break there, too.

What’s my point? Everywhere there are problems that seem big enough that you don’t quite know how to fix them, or you know that to really fix them, you need a full overhaul of whatever it is that you’re trying to fix. But maybe, just maybe, there is a small thing you can do that will resonate. Maybe it’s a personnel thing. Maybe it’s a quick fix to an infrastructure problem.

So where is your drafty window? It may not fix the problem. After all, we’ll still need to deal with the insulation at some point. But it’s a small fix that makes the process of fixing the major issues a little more comfortable to deal with.

Alright, I’m not going to wade into the Fourth Amendment debate I did with my last post. It’s sort of the same discouraging debate you get into on far too many occasions these days. We could talk about a problem and solutions, or just accuse the other side of not knowing what they are talking about.

Got a lot of the latter last week.

Anyway, Figured I would share the story of the ride back from Indianapolis today, just to note a cool thing at the Indy Airport. If you don’t want to read a positive thing about airport security, stop reading now.

At the Indianapolis Airport, families hauling small kids and their assorted stuff with them not only get their own line, they get a little help. There is a separate space where you can get all the various shoes off, laptops out, formula removed and so on. Then you load your items on to a cart and a worker helps you merge into the line. Then while you corral the kids (or in our case kid) through the metal detector (no infernal backscatter machines at the checkpoint we were at…), the TSA worker helps load your stuff into the X-ray machine.

On the down side, it takes an employee to do it. But I’ll tell you this – it got our family through the checkpoint a lot faster than if I was trying to stuff our belongings into the x-ray, and it made our lives a lot easier, too. In the end, I’m betting it was a net gain of a couple of minutes for the travel line. Multiply that by the hundreds or thousands of families trying to navigate the security lines on a busy day, and it’s a big winner.

I think it’s something that airports looking to speed lines even more might want to look into for busy travel weekends. It was awesome for this new dad, mom and baby. Because no matter how well you try to pack, you’re still hauling a lot of stuff.

photo credit: charlesfettinger

It’s been repeated in the newsrooms I have worked in hundreds of times – something along the lines of “When things work the way they are supposed to, it’s not news!

And I couldn’t help but reflect on that this week as I (gasp) tried to travel (eek!) by airplane and needed to pass through a (nooooo!) TSA screening checkpoint. Yep, and with a baby.

Guess what happened! Oh my God, are you ready for my horrifying story of molestation and depravity the likes of which haven’t been seen since the Romans frisked everyone going into the Coliseum, which must have led to the downfall of Rome?

Are you prepared for my firsthand account of the savage destruction of my Fourth Amendment rights at the hands of TSA heathen?

Did anyone touch my junk?

Sorry to disappoint. Like millions of my fellow travelers, I went on my merry way after taking off my shoes, unbagging my laptop, deftly folding my child’s stroller and proceeding past the very polite person who waved me through the metal detector. There was no hue and cry. No one patted down the baby’s diaper. In fact, I thanked people – the nice TSA guy who applauded my dextrous collapsing of the stroller. The guy waving me through the metal detector – he got a thank you, too. And the guy checking my license and boarding pass. We actually exchanged a few pleasantries as we waited for the line to move down and I could pass by.

I don’t want to minimize the incidents which have been shown throughout the media this week, because some of them are pretty appalling. I don’t necessarily think we have found the best solution to our airport security, either. But a few things should be noted.

1. For 99.99% of people going through, the TSA checkpoints have been nothing more than inconvenient.

2. People who look for ways to crete controversy – particularly when being aggressive with a cell camera or acting aggressively with a cell phone camera around – will almost always succeed in creating that controversy and/or distorting the truth. Be aware of that when you see those clips on TV and the Net. I’m not saying that the media shouldn’t run these things – because there are situations that need to be exposed. But as a viewer, you need to be appropriately skeptical.

3. And I’m going out on a limb here… Dudes and dudettes, I’m betting that the TSA person would much rather not touch your junk, either. Your junk ain’t all that.

I hope that we come up with either some better procedures or we come to grips with the reality that there are no procedures that are guaranteed to work 100% of the time to stop determined people intent on doing harm to the United States or its citizens. But in the meantime, try not to hyperventilate when all we need, really, is to take a deep breath and figure this out.

Do I have the answers? No. But I hope we can begin to chill a bit and actually ask the appropriate questions.