After “featuring” my daughter in a previous blog about Earth Day, my family has been asking me when I was going to do an entry including our other child.

Son, unfortunately for you, I needed a topic this week and your number came up…

Connor turned 17 a couple of days ago.  He’s an awkward kid.  At this point, he’s nearly 6’4” tall and wears size 15 shoes that seemingly can only be found on the internet or the nearest clown costume store.  He’s an honor student who learned to read at age 2.  He loves sports, funny movies and heavy metal music.  He’s violently allergic to talking with members of the opposite sex, unless texting counts as talking (cue Lou from Hot Tub Time Machine).  He’s a chronically slow eater, but his teenage appetite most closely resembles the 10,000+ calorie per day training diet of Michael Phelps.  My wife generally refers to him as being “pokey”, but I’m pretty sure she still holds a grudge over 23+ hours of labor.

Connor will be a senior in high school this year.  We’re doing the Great College Quest all summer, it seems.  After playing three sports for most of his youth, he decided to focus on football this year and has trained six days a week since January.  While laughing almost to the point of debilitation at Tony Horton when he first tried P90X, he finally set that aside and now will actually do extra reps of the “Mason Twist” voluntarily.  There comes a time in every father-son relationship where the balance of power shifts in the “who can take whom?” debate.  In our particular relationship, we are nearing that tipping point.

My son is generally impatient.  Details are boring to him.  He really doesn’t care about story behind most things, unless you count a player’s career stats as “back story” material.  Connor doesn’t care about the different color options for an iPod, he just wants the one with the most storage capacity.  Stat!

He really just wants to get to the bottom line, the end result, the payoff.  Just give him what he needs, when he needs it.  Don’t make things complicated.  While some customers want to know every single detail before making a decision, others want the quickest, simplest possible path to the right solution.

In other words, an “express lane”.

EXAIR has an express lane.  We make it very simple for those kinds of customers.  We make VOLUMES of technical information available in our catalog and on our website for those that want all the details.  If that doesn’t suit your personality, or if you are short on time, simply contact one of our Application Engineers by phone, e-mail, live chat or Twitter.  Our engineers have unmatched experience, and they can evaluate your application and get you on your way to a solution as quickly as possible.

Due to his mannerisms more than his appearance, one of my son’s football coaches nicknamed him “Napoleon Dynamite”.  In honor of that, here are the top ten moments from the movie.

Bryan Peters
President
bryanpeters@exair.com