🎼 Almost heaven, west of Phoenix. 🎶
Maybe someday I’ll write about my love/hate relationship with baseball. Hint: It has something to do with the ’94 World Series.
Tag Archives: Beer
Attention to Detail
So, I’m out in the garage polishing some wood boxes and thinking about what I need to do to make this into a functioning workshop. I go to the fridge and take out a can of Stone Brewing’s Tangerine Express Hazy IPA and as I’m opening it I notice something I had not seen before. In fact, I can’t recall ever seeing anyone do what they did.
What I’m referring to is a very small “addition” (by subtraction) they have made to the opening tab on the top of the can. See if you can figure out what I’m talking about from these two pics. I know it’s not exactly earth-shattering or, in the long run, important at all, but I’m nevertheless impressed by their commitment to their brand. I see it as a gesture of respect for their market.
My Dad The Bowler
Just found this in the garage, covered by dust. I resurrected it, meaning I cleaned it off and hit it with some Howard Feed-N-Wax. hard to believe it’s been nearly 58 years.
That series works out to an average of 247 per game. The old man was a good bowler, and a scratch golfer. He never rolled a 300; I think his best game was 279.
I used to keep score for his team back then. I was finishing my Junior year of high school when he did this. I don’t recall if I used to sneak sips of beer when no one was looking.
I Most Def Can Tell a Lie!
Most of us know by now that much of the folklore surrounding our nation’s first president is apocryphal, but I suppose there’s some value in hyping those qualities we consider good and valuable. Surely, although it is no doubt untrue, the thought that our preeminent Founding Father was an upstanding, decent, and honest person is useful for setting expectations.
Of course, whatever those expectations had been, they’ve now been essentially torched by the deeply flawed person who has been cosplaying as our president for nearly four years. Donald John Trump is a classless, phony buffoon. That he managed to con tens of millions of people into believing he either cared for them and their lives, or that he was competent enough to actually do anything that would materially improve their lives, does nothing to rehabilitate his reputation as the most dishonest person to ever “serve” in that office.
This graphic was a simple observation I committed to Photoshop as I was learning how to select portions of photos to layer on top of another photo. Nothing spectacular; just a minor statement of reality.
What a Short, Familiar Trip It’s Been!
This isn’t a WordPress theme designed for showing lots of photos, but I’m going to share a few from the drive.
Finally! I think I ordered the tickets for tomorrow’s final round of the U.S. Open, at Pebble Beach, at least eight or nine months ago. The day has arrived and we left Simi around 12:30 today, after a quick lunch at Mod Pizza. We drove up in Steve’s brand new Ford Edge, taking the 5 North to Santa Nella, which is somewhat East of Gilroy, which everyone knows is the garlic capitol of the world.
As we drove North I was pleased to see there are still some carpets of wildflowers dotting the hillsides, and I managed to snap this photo of some poiple flowers somewhere between Mt. Pinos and Tejon Pass.
It’s been a couple of years since I’ve traveled this route and, even though descending from the Grapevine into the San Joaquin Valley portends a fairly boring drive for the next few hours, I’ve always enjoyed this part of it.
As a young man, I must have hitchhiked up and back from the Bay Area dozens of times; many of them were up the 99, before the 5 was completed. The first few years after completion, the 5 was faster, but depressingly boring. Here’s where those two roads diverged in a yellow field.
We passed this raceway, which we at first thought was the Buttonwillow Raceway, but it turned out to be the Kern County Raceway Park. It seems, from the highway, like it’s in the middle of nowhere, but the map shows it’s actually not far from Bakersfield. In case you didn’t know it, Merle Haggard was born in Oildale, a small town just North of Bakersfield. Back in the late sixties, I spent a week in Oildale one day, but that’s another story involving a school bus and an anti-war demonstration in San Francisco.
The two cups of coffee I had for breakfast, and the beer I had at lunch, finally caught up to me and we had to make a pit stop in Kettleman City.
According to Wikipedia, “The San Joaquin Valley has been called ‘The food basket of the world’, for the diversity of its produce. Walnuts, oranges, peaches, garlic, tangerines, tomatoes, kiwis, hay, alfalfa and numerous other crops have been harvested with great success.”
Steve and I had no trouble identifying grapes, corn, and cauliflower, but I originally thought these trees were almond trees. However, after a reverse image search, we’re pretty sure these are pistachio trees.
We arrived and have checked in. We’re watching the end of the 3rd round. As soon as it’s over, we’re walking across the parking lot to have dinner at Pea Soup Andersen’s. After that, we’re heading to the Paraiso Brewery in Los Banos. Tonight is comedy night.
I’m hopeful I can capture some of the beauty of the course at Pebble tomorrow. We’ll see.
Everybody Needs a Hug Now & Then
How Can You Pass up an Offer Like This?
Back in late July of 2010 (actually, Picasa – and my camera – tell me it was on Saturday, July 24, 2010, at 2:45 PM) we were enjoying the Summer weather at Sycamore Cove State Beach here in Malibu, Caifornia. We had camped out in an adjacent site in Point Mugu State Park, which requires a short walk to a sand carpeted tunnel that takes you under the Pacific Coast Highway; very kid safe! I can’t recall if it was with the Indian Guides or the Girl Scouts, but we were there with a bunch other families and a bumptious horde of little girls.
Despite my having recently undergone surgery to remove a Melanoma and a couple of lymph nodes (just to be sure it hadn’t spread, which it hadn’t), I was determined to spend some time on the beach. My wife had purchased both a long-sleeve, UV-resistant shirt and a large umbrella designed to corkscrew deep into the sand. I was able to sit in the shade pretty comfortably and enjoy my children and their friends – and a beer or three – frolic in the surf and sand.
We had been there a couple of hours when this young man and two women came walking by. He was holding a sign that said “Free Hugs”. Most people were ignoring him but, being the old hippie that I am, I just couldn’t resist availing myself of his offer. Frankly, I think those who didn’t (and that was most everyone on the beach) were being disrespectful. Here was a fellow human being who, despite all the fear in this world, was offering to hug perfect strangers.
To tell you the truth, for all I know he could have been pledging a fraternity (though the timing wasn’t right) or working on some sort of thesis or paper (the timing wasn’t terribly propitious for that either). I really didn’t care. It just struck me as the right and decent thing to do. Besides, there is something magical about connecting with strangers in a very human way. Hugging is something we all do. Hell, even male professional golfers hug their caddies nowadays . . . at least after a victory!
Notice I am carefully hanging on to my beer!
It’s now well over a year and a half later and I’m still healthy, so I guess he wasn’t carrying any communicable diseases. Don’t think it didn’t cross my mind. Regardless, I think we all can use a hug from a stranger now and again and after surviving my cancer scare I suppose this was just one way of my affirming I’m alive and kicking. Next time you see someone with a sign like this, go ahead a stick your damn neck out. I doubt you’ll be sorry you did.
PS – Just in case you were thinking, “That Rick’s a lying SOB. He just took a picture with the guy for fun”, here’s the pic Linda took shortly after we posed for the one above.
Chillaxin . . . sin Robaxin.
No Me Jodas, Chico!
This is one of those days when I really haven’t felt like doing much of anything. I did chop up and remove the Bougainvillea that’s been outside the Living Room window for 15 years and has finally outlived its usefulness. However, I enjoyed the company of my neighbor and close friend Marty while doing so, along with a couple of beers and at least two shots of Scotch. In fact, he lent me the big jaw clippers I used to chop up the thickest parts of that damn beautiful yet thorny vine!
I also translated the first “Social Menu” I’ve ever seen, which was in the form of a .jpg file and was in Danish – forcing me to actually type out the text in to Google Translate rather than merely copy and paste it and, I’ll admit, I spent some time on a very serious post I’ll publish soon. Sometimes it’s necessary to be thoroughly incorrigible . . . and today just happens to be that day. Maybe it was five beers and a few shots of Scotch. Who’s counting?
Photo Courtesy of ¿Se Escucha?
Enterprise 2.0 Conference Still Percolating in my Head
Almost three weeks ago I had the good fortune to attend my first Enterprise 2.0 Conference, in Boston, MA. My attendance, though highly sought after (by me) for over a year (as a representative of the company I just “retired” from), was still somewhat serendipitous, and relied heavily on the generosity of Susan Scrupski, the Executive Director (or, as she is wont to describe herself, the Concierge) of the 2.0 Adoption Council.
This was a new experience for me and I had no knowledge of what, exactly, had taken place in previous conferences – other than what generally takes place at most conferences. There was one major difference this event was going to mean for me. For well over a year I had been accumulating “friends” through my use of social media, especially Twitter. I had never met any of these people face-to-face, yet many of them I felt I knew reasonably well and, in fact, quite a few of them I believed I could trust – at least as much as I would trust any colleague I had ever worked with. Now I was going to have the opportunity to spend some face-time with them, rubbing (and bending . . . over numerous beers) elbows for over three days.
A little over a month ago I posted about the possibilities of building relationships virtually and argued that face-to-face meetings, though valuable, were not necessarily the sine qua non of meaningful, trusting, and useful relationships. I was primarily addressing business relationships and, especially, the necessary interplay of colleagues – peripherally touching on sales and arms-length transactions as well.
I haven’t changed my thoughts on the value of virtual contact and the ability to have meaningful relationships without meeting face-to-face . . . but I surely had to think deeply about it after Boston. Here’s why. My first full day there I made it to the all-day Black-Belt practitioner’s session a couple hours late, due to several snafus I experienced with Boston’s public transportation. I entered a room with no less than 60 or 70 people seated at round tables facing the front of the room as a presentation was being given. I managed to find an empty space, sat down, and immediately started searching the room for “familiar” faces. I soon spotted two people I had become “friends” with via their blogs and, especially, through numerous conversations we’d had on Twitter – Luis Suarez and Mary Abraham (@elsau and @VMaryAbraham, respectively).
I was able to recognize both of them despite the fact I had never seen them in person and only knew what they looked like based on their avatars. This in and of itself should be a good indication of authenticity, now that I think about it. At any rate, as soon as there was a break I moved over to their table and was greeted with the warmth and enthusiasm reserved for old friends. I’m not sure I can adequately express the feelings I had right then and, frankly, it’s taken me this long to sort out my feelings and what I think I learned from the entire experience. I’m not quite certain I’ve processed it all yet, but I’m finally able to complete enough of my thoughts to get a blog out.
Later that evening, after the day’s conference activities were completed, Luis, Mary, and I sat in M. J. O’Connor’s (in the hotel where the conference was taking place) drinking Blue Moons, getting to know each other a bit better, and sorting through the day’s experience. I know that Luis has been to many of these conferences and, as one of the most vocal and prolific proponents I know of in favor of social media, he’s no doubt met many people over the years he had previously only know through virtual media. I don’t think it was the same for Mary and I know it wasn’t the same for me. This was the first time I had come face-to-face with people I had grown to know through Twitter, blogging, Facebook, etc. It was truly a wondrous experience.
Seriously, I’m still not entirely over the whole thing. Consider this. It was the first time in my life I attended a conference for my own benefit. Previously, I attended numerous conferences, but always as an employee of Rocketdyne (in all its incarnations during my career there). Before that, I was in small businesses and I don’t recall ever attending any conferences, so no experience on that level. Now let me bring this back to what I think I learned from this particular level of the experience.
It is possible to conduct business and to build a solid, trusting relationship with people you have never met. It is, however, far preferable to have some kind of face-to-face meeting at some point in time in order to solidify the relationship. Of course, now that I’ve written these words I realize I haven’t communicated with either Luis or Mary since returning to Southern California from Boston. Then again, it’s only been three weeks (almost) since the conference began and, given the intensity of the experience, I don’t suppose that’s so out of the ordinary. I took a week out of my life to attend and had a lot of catching up to do once I returned. Couple that with the death of my last (and favorite) uncle a week ago, I suppose it makes sense.
Oops! I’ve managed to digress, so let me return to my last thought. I believe people who wish to work together virtually can enhance the quality of their relationships by having at least occasional in-person meetings with their colleagues. However, I don’t think it’s a matter of the ability to experience body language, eye contact, etc. so many people assert as the most important aspects of human connection, as much as it’s just the informal, off-hand, and emergent conversations and interactions that can only happen during the course of an afternoon or evening spent together. This should include, if possible, sharing a meal or sitting in a pub and bending elbows over a pint or three of some good beer, ale, etc.
As I said, I haven’t entirely processed how I feel about this or what I think I’ve learned, but I’ve waited long enough to write something down about the experience. I plan on posting at least twice more on what I got out of the conference. My next post will be more of a compilation of the many posts others far more knowledgeable than me have written since the conference was over. Following that, I intend on discussing an issue of Enterprise 2.0 I think is missing from the equation; namely some of the design principles of Web 2.0 I think E2.0 should be emulating and that I don’t see at present. Stay tuned.
We Lost Another of the Absolutely Best Minds in Management This Week
There are two Management thinkers who have influenced my life, and the lives of many of my colleagues – even as we struggle to have their ideas embraced where I work (a titanic, long-standing struggle indeed). One of them, W. Edwards Deming, has been gone for some time now, but the other – Russell Ackoff – just died this past Thursday. Russ was a giant in the field of Systems Thinking. Russ proposed what I’ve seen referred to as the spectrum of learning. He believed the content of our minds could be classified into five basic catergories: Data; Information; Knowledge; Understanding, and; Wisdom.
Russ had been in the habit of visiting us here on the west coast to share his wisdom and wit at the beginning of every year. He would spend an entire day with, usually, a large group of interested people, sharing stories of his experiences over the years. One of those I remember the best is his experience with Bell Labs. He quite accidentally was involved in the design of a lot of today’s telephone system. From that experience he later would go on to develop his concept of idealized design – a method whereby one throws out everything that’s known about a product or system and attempts to design it based on what would be ideal, then work backward to where you currently are.
Another thing I loved to hear Russ say, which he would do frequently was his admonition that it was much harder for a large organization to stop something once it had started than to agree to supporting any activity that was outside their comfort zone. In other words, “It’s better to seek forgiveness than ask for permission”. Russ also pointed out that doing the wrong thing better only made what was being done “wronger”. Russ was so full of wisdom one could easily spend days listening to his stories and the knowledge he gained from his experiences, which were many and varied. Russ spent a large part of his life helping Anheuser-Busch truly dominate their market . . . and become the “King of Beers.”
For the past two years Russ had decided no longer to travel out here to speak to us. He was having back and hip problems and dealing with the incessant screening and the long lines and waits in the airport had become too much for him. My colleague, Bill Bellows, who had for years organized monthly telecons with some of the best speakers and writers in the field of systems thinking and management, asked me each year to accompany him to Philadelphia to visit with Russ and our friend Johnny Pourdehnad, a professor of Organizational Dynamics at UPenn. I was fortunate enough to spend many hours with both Johnny and Russell. One of my last memories of Russ is spending a lovely evening with him and his wife, Helen when Bill and I took them out to dinner for Russ’s 90th birthday. At the time Russ was suffering greatly from the pain he was experiencing associated with what he called “a shredded hip”. It was late January and there was lots of ice on the ground. We had to walk to the restaurant from where we parked and Russ was using a walker. I hovered over him like a brooding hen, scared silly he would slip and fall. He didn’t, thankfully (I had caught him once in his home office), and we had a great meal followed by a birthday dessert. I snapped a picture with my BlackBerry and now wish to share it with whoever may find themselves here.
Russell Ackoff Celebrates His 90th
There are numerous posts and websites where you can learn more about Russ and his work. You found your way here; you know how to search. However, I would like to give mention to one that has been writing about Russell for some time. Ironically, because of one word in the name of this blog, my company’s web filter blocks access to it from inside our firewall. I am referring to “The Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog“, where I got the title for this post.
Russell will be sorely missed by many people. I am hopeful his ideas, his wisdom, his tremendous intellect, and his enthusiasm for understanding and application of systems thinking will find even greater voice now that he is no longer with us. It seems a sad irony of life that so many people only become truly influential after their deaths. Doesn’t say much for us . . . but that’s the way it’s been. I hope Russ’s life will be instructive to many so that we can slowly evolve away from the mundane things that seem to attract us and pay a little more attention to things that matter.
Rick
Systems Savvy 
