Ideas

Find ways to compound everything you want to grow

Your time gravitates naturally towards what you love to do. If what you love to do intersects with your work, then it is likely that often when you are not working you are doing things that further your excellence at your trade anyway. If these extra hours are the same as the hours you work, every year you do something gives you almost 2 years of experience. And if you work hard to be 30% more efficient, that multiplies the 2x. This consistent advantage compounds over time.

Questioning Fundamental Truths

I have lived a very lucky life so far. I love my family and my friends and they love me (I think.) Things have worked out well for me, but last night things were different. Fundamental truths that I believed, ceased to be. See below for this harrowing tale of shock, anger, and deceit.

At approximately 11:52pm on Saturday September 20th my friend Robert (names have been changed to protect the innocent) placed a Domino’s pizza order online for pickup. At 11:54pm, we were excited to see that our order had entered the “Prep” stage. I had confidence that things were under control, because I was assured that Domino’s employee Miguel was my pizza’s personal caretaker.

At 11:56pm, we saw the pizza enter the bake stage. At this point, Robert, Dan (another protected name), and myself left our home to pick up the pizza at place of incident. We arrived at place of incident at 12:09am, right at the time the pizza was supposed to be coming out of the oven. The quoted bake time was 8-13 minutes.

Robert and I exited Dan’s vehicle (a mint green 1997 Nissan Maxima) and proceeded to the place of incident. At 12:09am, much to our shock, we saw our pizza’s being finished AND PLACED INTO THE OVEN. This was directly contrary to our assurance that the pizza was in the oven at 11:56pm.

After a period of utter disbelief, Robert and I were in frantic search of Miguel, our only hope for an answer. We were informed by employees at the place of incident that there was no one by the name of Miguel employed at the establishment. I lost all ability to speak, or comprehend.

After hearing this story, I implore you all to now ask yourselves, if you cannot trust Domino’s pizza tracker, what can you trust?

I appreciate everybody’s support in this difficult time.

Travel Tip: Wear flip flops

The last few trips I have taken have been made a tad bit more comfortable and pleasant because I wore flip flops.

First, going through security is a breeze since you don’t have to take off and put your shoes back on (I hate doing that.) Most of the time, they just let me walk through security with my flip flops, though in JFK I actually had to take them off, which wasn’t a big deal because of how easy the procedure is with flip flops. Second, when you’re actually on the plane, it is nice to be able to kick off the flip flops and walk around barefoot. Call me a hippy, but I quite enjoy the feeling of carpet on my feet.

I think any flip flops will do, but I am partial to Rainbow and Reef. They mold to your feet over time and are extremely comfortable. I believe Rainbow has a lifetime guarantee on the soles of their sandals. Once they are worn out, they will replace them for FREE — the part that is molded to your feet stay on the sandal. Don’t quote me on that though.

Give it a try.

Poker Players are Unpleasant

I have found that poker players as a generic group are more unpleasant than the population as a whole. Keep in mind that I am making this observation this despite the fact that I grew up in New York and went to school in Baltimore, two of the more unfriendly cities.

I have observed that most (obviously not all) poker players are ruder, grumpier, and more arrogant than the general populace. For example, I have found that people who play poker seem to have a very inflated opinion of their poker playing abilities. How many games/sports do you know of in which absolutely no one is unskilled? How often do you meet someone who plays poker on even a sporadic basis that says they aren’t good? How is it possible that 85% of the people I speak to are “good” at poker? Everyone claims to be good at poker. What is up with that?

In the real world, how often have you seen civilized, moderately intelligent people who barely know each other, yell at each other and call each other stupid for no reason? Not too often I would suspect. It happens on the poker table all the time. The game may be for money, but it is a game and people have a right to play it any way they want, as long as they play by the rules. You always get those belligerent know-it-alls who start berating the fish (unskilled player) for making a dumb move. Sure, you just lost some money but get a grip and show some manners — we should just be adults!

For such a beautiful game, poker does attract its fair share of ugly people and degenerates. What a shame.

Appreciation of Weekends

It seems that I have a newfound appreciation for weekends now that I am out of college and out in the real world.

An Experiment in Murphy’s Law and Probability

I think I am unlucky. Not really, because I don’t believe in luck, but I figured I would try this experiment for amusement purposes. I have a little pouch with my 2 keys in it. The two keys are indistinguishable from each other at first glance, but only one of them opens the lock on my door. Every evening after work, I pick a key from the pouch at random and see if it opens the door. After 18 tries, one would expect around 9 first attempts to have been successful. But, naturally Murphy’s law prevailed, and that was not the case.

Of the 18 attempts, ONLY ONE succeeded on the first try. WHAT?

The Beginning, Again

This is approximately the 3439084th (or 5th) time that I have attempted to start a blog and 3439083rd (or 4th) time I have said “I’ll actually keep posting this time.” There have been a slew of reasons why I put up, took down, put up, and took down my blogs over and over.

But alas, I think this one is here to stay. Besides the obvious privacy implications, I see no compelling reason not to keep one. Nor do I see a real compelling reason *to* keep one. Nevertheless, on a whim I decided to create this site, and at least for now, I’ll keep it.

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