Boomer Randomness

On one hand, the title of this post tells the whole story.   On the other hand, I’ll expand on it a bit. New Year’s Day is my favorite day of the year.   For me, January 1 st is the beginning of a new chapter of life, a day to visualize the coming 365 days (or 366 in the case of 2016).   It is a day to take stock of where one has been during the past year, how much of the year worked out as planned twelve months earlier, how much didn’t.   New Year’s Day can open the door to new possibilities, new dreams, new accomplishments and more. Every year I write about my ‘process’, which basically involves thinking through what I want for the coming year.   I do this through the whole month of January, from New Year’s Day at the beginning to my birthday at the end.   I look into the coming year and map out what I want to do and accomplish.   It’s like goal setting and New Year’s resolutions but a bit more involved.   I also pick a keyword that symboli...

I recently took one of those silly quizzes on Facebook.   The challenge they posed was that they could tell my highest level of education by my answers to 25 questions.   I do not believe those quizzes amount to much, other than to funnel targeted advertising to the participants.   That was certainly true for this one: every question was surrounded by ads for educational entities. Of course I can’t resist the urge to take a quiz like that.   I seem to know a lot about a little.   How did I do? I scored a 71%.   Actually it should have been slightly higher because I accidentally clicked the wrong answer on one of them.   Most of the questions were easy for me, such as ‘in what year did WW1 end’?   There were 4 choices and only two of them were even close, although I did happen to know the answer is 1918.   Some of my other answers were totally good guesses.   And there were a few in which I had no clue.   In fact, I miss...

Apparently I am very popular.   How do I know this?   Because I receive dozens of email a day on both of my personal email accounts.   It appears the volume of email has grown exponentially during the past two months, which must mean my popularity is growing. Or maybe I get more email because it was Christmas shopping season.   Naw, that can’t be it. Email is a blessing and a curse.   The speed and convenience of email communication is undeniable.   Letters take a day or more, email is instant.   That also means junk mail is instant.   Of course, I still get junk mail in my physical mailbox.   Some people measure their personal popularity by the number of Facebook friends they have.   Some people don’t even know their Facebook friends but that high number makes them feel good.   And connected.   I have ‘only’ two or three hundred FB ‘friends’ but I know all of them on some level, either personally or professionally. ...

President of the United States is one of the most important and most thankless jobs on the planet.   The pay and benefits are good ($450,000 annual salary for life, free transportation everywhere, 24-hour security, a personal staff and a rent-free 54,000 square foot residence, just to name a few).   But the responsibility is frightening.   A President’s decisions and power affects hundreds of thousands of military personnel, millions of citizens and world history. The job application is relatively easy and the minimum requirements mostly involve age and citizenship, but successfully candidates for the position spend millions of dollars to impress the ‘boss’ … we the people.   Whoever gets the job knows the exact start and end date, accepts that it will last four years initially and there is the possibility for a four-year renewal, after which they can never hold that job again. Who’d want a job like that? At this point, with about eleven months remaining...

Time is our best friend and worst enemy.   We have twenty four hours each day to get things done but sometimes that’s not enough. Time flies.   Where does the time go?   It’s bed time; wake up time.   Time to make the donuts.   Hammer time.   Time is on our side, yes it is.   Time marches on.   Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future. “Lost time is never found again.”   Benjamin Franklin “To everything there is a season, a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, a time to die, etc.”   Ecclesiastes “Time is money.”   Benjamin Franklin “Lost time is never found again.”   Benjamin Franklin Wow, Ben must have had plenty of time on his hands; so many time quotes are attributed to him. I apparently do not have time on my hands.   There is so much I want to do in life, even on a daily basis, yet I never seem to have the time to do it.   Or I just don’t make the time.   ...