On Being Poisoned for Profit
This is a bit of a rant, so if you’re one of those who takes things personally, or gets all hot and bothered by things people write, well, maybe just pass on this one. I do a mental exercise every so often. If a commercial comes on while I’m watching TV, I try to put myself at a remove from it. The goal here is to be more an observer than the passive participant that is often how we experience TV. Doing this allows for evaluating the commercial more objectively and I can tease out the subtle message the marketers are trying to send. Sometimes I do it for fun, sometimes to tell my kids so they understand that it is not reality, just marketing to separate people from their money. One group who has mastered the ability to manipulate us by preying...
The Geek’s Creed
This is my computer. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My computer is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I master my life. My computer, without me, is useless. Without my computer, I am useless. I must operate my computer true. I must code cleaner than my competition who is trying to eat my lunch. I must out-code him before he out-codes me. I will…. My computer and myself know that what counts in technology is not what it looks like, the marketing hype, nor the claims we make. We know that it is the code that counts. We will code… My computer is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weakness, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its keyboard and its display. I will...
Kindness at Random
“Pay It Forward” is a movie in which a young boy, who believes in the basic goodness of people, decides to try to get as many as he can to do good. Instead of paying a favor back, he asks them to pay it forward and, in that, do something for someone else. A boy with a drum, wanting to give something to a very important person of his time, but having very little, decides all he can give is his music. It is one of the best gifts. “Seven Pounds” is a movie in which Will Smith stars as an IRS agent who, due to a haunting secret, decides to change the lives of seven people he does not know. And, finally, there is the story of the young girl who gives her last peso to buy a cage for a bird with a broken wing. A king comes to town. ...
Living the Hyperopic Life
About fifteen years ago, in a former life, I worked with Josephine and Josephine had a plan. She was driven by a single goal which was to work as hard as she could, climb the corporate ladder and make enough money so she and her husband could retire at forty-five and live the rest of their days in relaxed splendor. Jasmine planned to begin working part time about two years ago. In her mid forties, she felt it time to spend more time with the kids who had, up to this point, been brought up by nannies. She was considering going freelance and starting her own consulting business. Her time would become her own and she’d made enough money that she and her family were pretty well off. Hunter has worked extremely hard for the last several years...
Happiness Served Here
“It’s ‘The Decade of Discontent’,” I said a few years ago during a conversation about being in your forties. And it occurred to me this very well could be. Professionally, people of this vintage are often on the cusp of deciding to chase the money, continue to chase it, stop chasing it or do something completely different in an effort to find that which fulfills them most. The children are grown, but not all the way so there is still that dependence but independence has crept in so parents aren’t “needed” as much. The body starts talking back too, asking “what exactly are you doing working me like this and why is coffee not involved?” And then there’s the big stuff. Shocking and...
Driving Drunk with Both Hands on the Wheel
I wonder what the woman was thinking as she sat on her motorcycle at a stoplight in suburban Chicago a few weekends ago. She might have been thinking of her kids, where she was headed or maybe nothing at all. No one knows but I bet it wasn’t about the car coming up behind her, at speed, as it plowed in and took her life. The woman who hit her was putting nail polish on. The forty six passengers who were hurt on Boston’s green line when the trolleys they were riding in collided weren’t expecting to have to be attended to by medical personnel. They were just riding the trolley home on the evening commute. They were thinking, for the most part, what they think about every day on that ride. The twenty-four year old driver of the trolley that caused...