Thirty years ago today (January 28, 1986), the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded just after liftoff. Everyone on board was killed. I was attending pharmacy school at the time. I remember walking into Griffith Hall, and everyone was standing around a TV screen. I asked what was going on, and someone told me that the shuttle […]
Help On The Way
We had a blizzard this weekend. We had 30 inches of snow between Friday night and Sunday morning. It was a top-5 snow event for us. My family and I started snow removal on Sunday morning. I was outside by 7am. I purchased an electric snowblower last year, so I thought I would be ok. […]
My Powerball Jackpot
The Powerball jackpot for tomorrow night is now estimated to be at least 1.5 billion dollars. I’ve spent a little bit of time thinking about what I would do with my winnings. First a little bit of lottery math. The jackpot number is a pre-tax number, if you take it in annual installments. I don’t […]
The Bill of Responsibilities
In the Otemachi train station in central Tokyo, several subway lines converge. Trains pull up to the platform with hundreds of passengers who are rushing to work. There is one escalator that takes passengers up a 5-story rise to street level. When I first saw this escalator, I assumed that there would be a mad […]
Noise Reduction
I joined the 1K Club this year. The 1K Club are people who have flown 100,000 miles in a year. This year I have been to Tokyo 8 times, plus Paris, Turks and Caicos, New Orleans, and Dublin, Ireland. That is a total of 126,720 flight miles. This is the point where I should note […]
The Tortoise & The Hare
When I was little, I read a fable called The Tortoise and The Hare. You’ve read it too. There is a race between a Tortoise (a turtle) and a Hare (a rabbit). The tortoise is slow, and the Hare is fast. They line up to race, and everyone knows that the Hare is going to […]
The Crow’s Nest
Old sailing ships used to have a basket attached to the highest mast on the ship. The basket was called The Crow’s Nest. A sailor was assigned the job of climbing up into the basket, and looking around. That sailor had better viewing than anyone else on the ship. He was the lookout. —– Years […]
The Ant & The Grasshopper
I read a fable when I was young called The Ant and The Grasshopper. In the fable, the ants worked and saved every day, and the grasshoppers played and enjoyed their time in the sun. The grasshoppers teased the ants, because the grasshoppers were having a lot of fun in the sun. The ants kept […]
Chronos & Kairos
I read an article this week about time. The article noted that there are two words in the Greek language for time: Chronos and Kairos. Chronos is linear time. Chronos is “I will pick you up at the train station at 7:30”, or “our meeting will last one hour”, or “my flight is delayed 90 […]
Being An Introvert
In the 1990s, I worked at a place called Astra Merck. It was my first corporate job. I would come into work every morning, make a cup of coffee, check my e-mail and voice mail, and then go out and speak to the people on my team. I had a colleague who came into work […]
