It's not A Christmas Carol, but I'm not Mr. Dickens.

This is a true story.

At a point previously in my career, I worked in an environment where
the tradition was to give Christmas gifts to your direct manager and
the people who reported to you. In my first year in management in this
environment, I had six 'front line contributors' reporting to me (that
was the fancy term for the employees at the bottom of the hierarchy).
So right before Christmas that year, I went to the bookstore and
bought six copies of a motivational page-a-day calender to distribute
to my staff as my gift to them.

Well, someone said to me at the time "Why would you do that? They
don't like you, they don't respect you, and they make your job
difficult. If I were you I wouldn't give them anything." So I returned
the somewhat expensive gifts and gave them something else instead that
was so small I don't even remeber what it was.

However, to this day I remember exactly what they gave me! Five
dollars worth of lottery scratch off tickets in a Christmas card.

I'll give you a minute to do the math.

Yep, that work's out to one dollar from each of them, including the 99
cents for the card. Clearly, their thoughts of me were just about the
same as my thoughts of them. I was insulted and let a lot of my fellow
management members know about this. I my mind I was a better manager
than they were employees.

However in true holiday fashion, the spirit of Christmas Future took
mercy on me. One of my scratch off lottery tickets was a $100 dollars
winner. The moral of the story - give better holiday gifts to your
managers.

Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

My world has become a movie. Specifically "Bill Cosby:Himself", which I and many people I know consider one of the funniest live performances ever.

 

This movie was released in 1983 and contains live footage of Bill Cosby doing stand-up comedy. For while it was running on HBO constantly in the middle 80's. I eventually bought the soundtrack and when it was released on DVD in 2004 I was right there at Best Buy to add it to my collection.

 

Over the years I have clearly overdosed on this movie. One of the keys to Bill Cosby's stand-up performance was his storytelling style. I can't tell a short version of anything, and have a story for any subject. (In fact isn't this blog just a bunch of stories?).

 

Me: "Hey Dad, I have something to tell you"

 

My Dad: "Will this be a SHORT story?"

 

Today we call that "creativity", when I was younger we called that "a motor mouth."

 

Regardless, for those of you who know the movie, here are topics discussed in the movie and my my true life experiences linked to the subject.

 

-Parents who censor themselves? My youngest child runs around the house saying "Oh Fudge-er", which as you can guess does not please my wife.

-The kids turning on you when the other parent arrives in the room and disapproves? I have been blamed by my kids for everything, including why they vomit, urinate, cry, go to school, have days off, spill stuff, what they watch on TV, etc.

-On Grandparents not being the person I grew up with, but trying to get into heaven - I won't even describe my in-laws, but oddly not my parents. That's a whole other post.

-Little Jeffery on the plane? I have been on both sides of this hearing a parent sound like a broken record and sounding like a broken record my self!

-Mothers getting so made they can't remember a child's name? I have apologized in advance to my kids for the fact that I call then by the wrong name. I was okay until we had a third, then my brain went out on the names, the worst is when you go through all the kids names and your spouses name until you get it right!
-Ask your father for a dollar for the school picnic, get a lecture about killing a grizzly bear with his loose-leaf notebook. Here is how I answer most questions from the kids - "Back when I was your age..," the rest of the time my answer is "Go ask your mother"

 

These are just on the subjects of dealing with the kids! I won't even touch the sections on dentists, childbirth, drinking, poo-poo, being intellectuals before having children, and people having a conniption.

 

Go buy the DVD, the best $10 bucks you'll spend this year. If you already have it, go watch it.

 

"Come here and pull my finger!"

 

Business travel always sounds glamorous until you have to do it.

My past traveling for business can be summed up in two words: sporadic and overnight. I would travel maybe twice a year, most times as long as a week. Beginning this year, I will be travelling for work at a slightly higher frequency and will be making more single day trips.

Recently I made my first foray into the world of "round trip in a day travel". I have just a few observations on this.

 

I believe I lost six months off my lifespan from this ridiculous travel itinerary. I didn't travel that far: Newark, NJ to Raleigh, NC; Raleigh to Charlotte, NC; Charlotte back to Newark. I wasn't awake all that long that day either, from 5AM to 11:30 PM. It was like each thing I did just increased the drain of everything I had already done by an exponential power of ten. I ran out of reading material and grabbed stuff off the chairs in the concourse (you will not find me recommending New York Magazine, ever). I ate Popeye's Chicken at the terminal. I consumed lots of caffeine in very small cups. 

  

By some odd scheduling quirk, my connecting flight through Charlotte was the same plane I was on both coming from Raleigh and going to Newark. I wasn't as freaky as the other people on the plane about making airline connections as I knew myself and this plane were going the same place. However waiting on a tarmac in Charlotte for 30 minutes to take off for a 20 minute flight makes the "cargo" a little restless. I do think it's odd to get off a plane just to get back on a plane. Key technical issue I learned - when an airplane pilot turns off one engine to save fuel while waiting, the reading lamps and air conditioning on that side of the plane don't function (at least that's according to the US Air personnel on the plane I was on).

 

I also came to a stunning conclusion about airports - lots of them look alike. I haven't been in that many airports, but Raleigh and Charlotte could have passed for the same place, and both resembled Pittsburgh, which was very similar to Phoenix. My thought on telling any airport apart from another is the food and shopping selection. Charlotte had a NASCAR Shop and a Bojangles restaurant, while Pittsburgh had a Quaker Steak and Lube restaurant.

 

Not that previous week long business trips I had taken weren't much better. Here are some of the highlights.

 

Sunday - Extended travel via a late night flight to some remote location complicated by an understaffed rental car desk and a hotel not having a reservation for your room.

Monday - Early wake-up so that you don't miss "Invitation Only Kick-off Breakfast with Regional Vice-President", getting-to-know-you activities with the same 20 people you've been with before, Monday night dinner with the meeting facilitator.

Tuesday - Wake-up with three pain-relief pill headache caused by excessive beverage consumption with the meeting coordinator.

Wednesday - The traditional "I know it's 5:30 and you are all tired but we really need to complete this subject today so we'll stay here until we wrap it up, beside you are only going upstairs/around the block/on the shuttle" announcement.

Thursday - Over breakfast, wondering if you will ever see your family again. Over last-night-at-the-meeting dinner, celebrating the announcement that causal dress is in effect for getaway day.

Friday - Agreeing with other participants not to ask any questions so that the meeting doesn't last one second longer than it has too.

 

I know this discussion can only go so far. I chose my career and the travel arrangements that come with it. Compared to the guys on Deadliest Catch, my job hazards are pretty insignificant. Would I trade this for flipping burgers? Not a chance. The days I find myself taking solace in the opportunity to fold down the tray, lean the seat back, be served a fresh beverage and enjoy the in-flight entertainment in peace and quiet far outnumber the others. It's at that point that business travel is a small, but valuable, perk.

A link to a stroy about innovation

 

I read a really great article today. 

 

"Recalling the Apgar Score's Namesake"

 

It's on WSJ.com. 

 

You could also send your search engine looking for results for "Virginia Apgar" and gather up a few more pieces on her life, her medical career, and a stamp.

 

I found the article great for many reasons. It framed the sexism that existed once in the medical community here in the United States. It reflected how the medical community, at one time, had a few priorities out of line. Most of all it showed how innovation, the kind that can save lives, can happen in the smallest time frame. 

 

People tend to think the greatest ideas came from scientists or other researchers putting in long frustrating hours in dark cramped development centers. Or maybe they come from a garage or built in the basement by some tinkerer who has devoted years to building a better toilet paper dispenser. Some world changing ideas do come from these places. Others, just sort of show up in a second of opportunity. Those are the stories I appreciate. 

Happy Memorial Day to you!

I don’t work the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. Let me tell you why.

 

Back in 2000, I was working on Long Island, living in Queens, and dating a girl from New Jersey, who, of course, liked to spend the Memorial Day weekend with her friends on the Jersey Shore. SO of course, being the great boyfriend that I was, I committed to getting to her house on Friday night to go to the shore.

 

First, it took two hours for me to get home from work, thanks to a trucking expert who was able to jack-knife a tractor trailer truck right in the middle of the Long Island Expressway. My usually trip home was about 30 minutes.

 

Second, the normal one hour trip to New Jersey became a three hour stand still. At the time I had no cell phone, so it was a most unproductive three hours. This was also before GPS systems were popular, so at least I didn’t have to

 

After arriving in New Jersey, I became the passenger for a two hour ride to the Jersey Shore. At least I wasn’t diving for that part and I wasn’t alone.

 

Total car time – seven hours. Yuck.

 

Since that year, I’ve taken the Friday of Memorial Day weekend off from work. I live in New Jersey, and I make the trip to the Jersey Shore long before the rest of the world. Total trip time 2009 – one hour. Yes, it’s with the same girl. Things change, but they stay the same.

 

Enjoy, and stay safe this weekend.

I'm keeping the corporate jet, because I can!

I consider myself a free market believer. Commerce should be conducted with minimal regulation from government. Give me enough regulation to provide a level and legal playing field. Extortion and price-fixing is out,  safety of all workers is in. Give me credit for innovating and a punish me for discriminating. Beyond that I want government regulation out of my way. Don't cap my profit margins, dictate my salaries, limit where I can sell my product, take my employees for recognition, or challenge my mode of transportation.

What is being witnessed in the present market conditions, in my opinion, could be considered steps toward socialism. How the business environment got here is a combination of more factors than we would want to believe. Take the situation with mortgages on private residences. I will not call it a housing crisis because we are not short of houses for people to live in. I will also not call it a mortgage crisis because a fair amount of people don't have problems with their present mortgage or getting a new mortgage. My unofficial survey of everyone I asked (I'll admit the sample set is not large enough and the self validated responses cannot be confirmed) shows that no one has a crisis in their mortgage. What does exist is a confluence of good ideas and bad execution. For a timely and wide reaching re-cap of all of these factors check out this item from Time Magazine "Blameworthy - 25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis" and this series from The New York Times "The Reckoning".

 

 

Keep in mind that socialism is, technically speaking, the step in between capitalism and communism. Will there be a full blow revolution in the United States leading to the fall of our government and a classless society? I don't believe it possible, but one guy predicts disaster of the U.S. in 2010  (surprise, he may know the U.S. better that we know ourselves). In the meantime, we can read editorials lamenting the social costs of bailouts .

Taking advantage of the Political Climate

Oh those tricky, tricky, Republicans! I find this very funny. I don’t mean to offend (or support) either party. I just think it’s good marketing given the present political climate.

 

GOP Valentines.

I LEGO N. Y.

Oh the genius of an artist. Boys will love this, but girls, not so much.

 

I Lego New York

A few website recommendations for you

Just wanted to bring everyone a couple of items I’ve read recently that I found really interested and wanted to share.

 

Thanks goodness we have a Wii in our house - Playing Video Games Good For You?

 

I like this idea - President-elect Obama names Nancy Killefer as Chief Performance Officer

 

At one time using a mouse was pure science fiction. Check out the video link -  The Greatest Product Demo Ever and What to Learn From It

 

CNBC makes those late night hours watching TV valuable - CNBC.com's "As Seen On TV" Bracket

 

Escape from the news and check on the news – Happynews.com

 

Regardless of your political affiliation check out these two sites - The White House and C-Span. Both bring an amazing amount of factual information.

 

I'll be back real soon.