Attention Might be Overrated

Clive Thompson’s recent article in Wired magazine encourages us to let our minds idle or wander. In fact, he cites research that says we can’t keep our attention from wandering. Our minds drift away from the task at hand one third of the time. Brain scientists now believe that time spent daydreaming is used by [...]

Too Much of Anything

I’ve always been a portable gadget geek. I carried a PDA before there were enough devices on the market for them to be called PDAs. I have a box at work that is filled with devices, like the Palm V and the Apple Newton, that I believe were just too far ahead of their time [...]

On Staying Calm

I spent thispast weekend in New York with my son. We were celebrating his 21st birthday. I flew in from Indy and be flew from DC. The weekend didn’t start very well. Alex went to the wrong airport so he missed his flight. He got on another only to have the plane return to Dulles [...]

Reuniting with the Past

Over two consecutive weekends I attended my wife’s 30 year high school reunion and my 25 year college reunion. These are interesting events. First, there is little worse than being the spouse at a 30 year reunion. I was lucky enough to know about a dozen of my wife’s classmates or spouses (the ones she [...]

Putting your Job on a Diet

An amazing thing about Americans: the more we try to lose weight the more weight we find we need to lose. As the size of the weight loss industry increases, so do our waistlines. We all know why, but we don’t want to admit it. The simple fact is that it requires hard work and [...]

We’re All Frugal Somewhere

My brother is a wine geek. He travels the country visiting wineries and buying very expensive bottles of wine. Most of his picks taste like Alka-Seltzer to me, but he’s quite pleased with them. While many of us in the family think his wine expenditures are beyond extravagant and would never consider spending that kind [...]

Keeping Good Customers

When I graduated from college in 1984 I was already enlisted in the US Air Force and on my way to Officer Training School in San Antonio, Texas. The first thing they did when I arrived (besides shaving my head) was to issue me a set of uniforms. For the first four years after getting [...]

Just the Right Touch

A recent study conducted ad Depauw University describes how people convey emotions thru touch. In the study, blindfolded subjects were touched by people who were told to try to express a particular emotion (anger, fear, happiness, sadness, disgust, love, gratitude or sympathy). No words were exchanged. Subjects were as accurate at determining the emotion conveyed [...]

10 Things Being Killed by the Internet

When I registered the port-to-port.com domain, I couldn’t get anyone to understand why it was important. It was so long ago that the registration was free and there was only one registrar. Needless to say, people understand the importance now. All of this came up in a recent conversation I was having with a friend [...]

The Things Children Ensure

I attended the annual conference of the North American Council on Adoptable Children ( NACAC) in Columbus Ohio. I’m here because Susie and I adopted our third child 15 years ago. Those who know us well have watched us love thru some difficult times. One of the bright spots from the experience was our role in [...]

Expectations Form Quickly

I’m still enjoying my Kindle more than I thought I would. I have forty books In my Save for Later queue, along with 3 I’m in the middle of reading. Since I got it, I’ve been reading 3 times as many books as before. To my wife’s amazement, I’m even reading fiction.
As I prepped for [...]

Revolutionary Running

A couple of years ago, I decided to quit coaching high school Cross Country. I felt like I was the only person who cared about the program. The students didn’t show up half the time. We finished perpetually last in every meet. I had lost the joy, so I quit.
Later that year, as Winter approached, [...]

Telling People Who You Are

I’ve just listened to three speakers talk about “Building Buzz for your Online Brand” at Techpoint’s New Economy New Rules presentation. The last speaker was Pat Coyle, a local online marketing expert. He said two things that stuck with me. First, he talked about the personal nature of social media. He said you lose the [...]

Turning Play into Work

I just finished reading Play by Stuart Brown and Christopher Vaughan. some of the best information I get from reading inxolves reminding me of things I already knew. That’s the case with this book. We all played as a natural part of our childhood, then we grew up and eschewed play. We feel that adults [...]

Cynicism Reigns

I watched a Marc Singer documentary called Dark Days yesterday. It told the story of people who lived in the subway tunnels of New York. The film profiles several of the residents amd discloses a little about how they came to be living underground, or at least how they recall having come to live underground. [...]