O-Dark-Thirty

W. Edwards Deming From Wikipedia, "William Edwards Deming (October 14, 1900 – December 20, 1993) was an American statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and consultant." from Wikipedia: W. Edwards Deming Years ago, again, when I worked in a petrochemical plant, and before Deming died, the Company decided to use Deming's methods to promote substantial improvements in the Company processes. As I recall, Deming had fourteen points. As a young engineer I was eager to study the methods of this great man, methods that after WWII transformed Japan into a manufacturing dynamo. We even watched some live video feeds of Deming promoting his methods. He was quite the curmudgeon. Now the thing about Deming's 14 points is that they are a package deal. Each point is part of a system composed of all 14 points. Think of a system as a cow. Now you can take a leg off a cow and you no longer have a complete cow. That's what a system is all about. Cut a cow in half and ...

A few decades ago I worked with Jack, a genius at file structures and coding. When he was conjuring solutions for our fledgling database he would stare into the air and see the structures as he devised them. At some point he became so good, even I could see them! Jack the Genius was mesmerized by Jabberwocky, which he had committed entirely to memory and would mumble at odd times during his thinking sessions. In case you don't know what Jabberwocky is, here is the definition: jabberwocky   | ˈ jab ə r ˌ wäk ē | noun ( pl.  - wockies ) invented or meaningless language; nonsense. ORIGIN early 20th cent.: from the title of a nonsense poem in Lewis Carroll's  Through the Looking Glass  (1871). So though the word moved into the English language, the power of the poem remains just as potent. JABBERWOCKY Lewis Carroll ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: A...

Blog posts aren’t supposed to take forever. They lose relevance. Yet I’ve been writing and editing this particular post for more than a week, and I finally understand why. I’m baffled. Let me explain. I think that James Altucher and I would argue. A lot. Yet I’d treasure the arguments. I don’t know James Altucher. From his posts, I probably know more details about his life than I know about the lives of my own brothers. We’d argue because we have different world views, but that’s understandable. We come from different backgrounds, and he’s more clever than I, having made and lost a number of fortunes. We have a few common losses, but those are other stories. He stretches his own mind and challenges others to do the same. I like that. The post that got me was on Memorial Day . A casual reader might mistake his post as anti-Memorial Day. When I first glanced at it, my thought was “Wait a minute here!” and I’ll admit to immediate teeth-grinding. Then I read it. I come from a mil...

Blog posts should be less than three hundred words, with pictures. My daughter informed me of this guideline not too long ago, shortly after I started this blog. Three hundred! In the first few hours of the morning I can barely manage to utter three hundred words. When I’m writing, I ramble and three hundred words get left in the dust. An urban legend states that men use 10,000 words per day and women use 25,000. Darling informed me that I needed to save some words for when I get home. I try to do that. But what about the quality of the words? Some days I use the right words – good words, helpful words, uplifting words, words of encouragement, words of enlightenment, words of love and kindness that bring a glow to the hearers. Those are good days, for me and everyone around me. Other days my words are growled out or snapped off, worthless words, critical words, destructive words, words of complaint, words of disillusion, words of ignorance and spite that tear ap...

The World did not end. That is normally not news, but today it will be and I’m sure my blog is only one of millions with the same title. In case you’ve missed this obscure bit of news, Harold Camping, an 89-year-old Christian entrepreneur, predicted the world would end on May 21, 2011. That was yesterday. We’re still here. Some of us are disappointed. Yes, I count myself in that group. Let me think about my two options. 1.      Heaven for eternity, tomorrow at six. Get your ticket. Don’t be late. 2.      Life continues on Earth, with inflation and war and famine and tough interpersonal relationships. And bad blog posts. I’ll take option number one, thank you. With those options, you’re probably agreeing with me. Maybe not. Yet, as I drove down the road on this sunny, hot and humid morning, coming back from First Church (that’s another story) I looked at all the cars on the road and thought of all the people driving them. Then I thought ...

Micah 6:8 NKJV He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8 KJV He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? Micah 6:8 is probably my favorite passage in the Bible. In a single sentence God gives us His requirements for our behavior. I won’t say the rest of the Bible is commentary on that single verse, for surely the Bible teaches us more than how to conduct ourselves; it also gives us insight into God Almighty.  But for behavior, this sure sums it up. Some versions state to "seek justice", or to pursue the law as written by God. Seeking justice can be easy. We’ve all been wronged at some point, and we all want to see wrongdoing punished. However, justice is to be tempered with mercy. Not so easy now. Remember that Jesus showed us mercy w...

One of the central aspects of my life in the last eleven years was my wife’s mother. For the purposes of this blog, my wife will be referred to as “Darling” and her mother as “Frau.” The reason for the former is clear, if you are a fan of Disney movies. I call her mother Frau because I once tried to refer to her as “Mom.” It was during an early conversation and I was smiling when I said it. She was not smiling when she responded. She clearly stated she was not my Mom and I could call her Mrs. (Darling’s maiden name goes here). From that point onward I did not give her a title when we spoke. She reciprocated. However, whenever I referred to her in other company I used the term “Frau” which is fitting since she migrated to the US from Poland via Germany shortly after WWII. At some point in our relationship I had issues with Frau, mostly small and of little significance. But I had to find some way to combat the annoyances. Talking to Darling on these issues often just upset her. Frau is h...