Random Learnings #32
On my way to Chicagoland for my nephew's college graduation, I stopped at the Illinois Railway Museum - highly recommended, I'll write up my visit soon - and picked up…
1950s Walmart Greeter?
Everyone has seen the retiree working as a Walmart greeter. Everyone wonders whether the retiree works for the joy of interacting with people or the desperation because money is tight.…
Random Learnings #31
Unlike Woodrow Wilson, a Princeton professor with a PhD in political science, Truman had no abstract theories about the office. (In fact, he was the last occupant of the White…
A Friend Returned
Last night, a friend returned to visit us .... or more specifically, our house. My wife, my sister and her husband were out for dinner when I noticed our neighbor…
Random Learnings #30
I have read many - too many - books, articles, scholarly papers, etc., about the anti-Semitism faced by Holocaust survivors faced returning home, especially in Eastern Europe. By a large…
Random Learnings #29
The last Shah of Iran, Shah Reza Pahlavi, was a huge Rangers fan: The diplomats pressed for yet more royal visits, ideally with the shah comping to Britain again. The…
Front-Yard Wildlife Lesson
A bald eagle caught a neighborhood squirrel - one of many - and decided the best place to eat was in our front-yard oak tree, totally unperturbed by the fascinated…
Cool Photos #6
January 1993. London, England, interviewing for jobs. Original plan for my wife and I to move together, but by this time we were separated but I still had dreams of…
Cool Photos #5
This is the reading room of the Rijksmuseum Research Library in Amsterdam. From the main museum there's an entrance that leads to a viewing platform from where I took the…
Best. Joke. Ever.
One of Dell's acquisitions was based in Israel, with which my development center was integrating our storage solution. Their technical leaders flew to Minnesota for a week of meetings, typical…