From the category archives:

GenY Thoughts

When my son was just shy of his fifth year, we found ourselves in an Old Country Buffet on a Saturday afternoon. For those of you not familiar with the format of the all-you-can-eat-for-one-low-price buffet, these places usually have a lower price afternoon service that did not include carved meats and a higher price evening [...]

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The kids will be ok

by Rufus on April 1, 2010

Someday, every kid in high school now will inherit the world we leave behind. And I think they may be deciding right now that they do not want to live in a permanently divisive, hate-filled community. March 30, 2010 — When the Kansas Hate group known at the Westboro Baptist Church announced it would picket [...]

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When it is time to pass a torch

by Charlie on February 28, 2010

I spent this Sunday morning listening to a fair amount of Peter, Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan and a few other more obscure artists who moved and continue to move an entire generation. The first thought I had was “how sad that they will never be able to create another PP&M song.” The second thought [...]

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I ran across this video by Tom Peters. Watch it. Peters makes some powerful points about education, but I don’t entirely agree with everything he says. Creativity is not a refusal to color inside the lines. It is a conscious decision to color outside the lines, knowing what the lines mean and why they are [...]

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The logic of the latest Supreme Court ruling has me scratching my head a bit and scrambling to read my copy of the United States Constitution. I found all sorts of references granting rights to people, but none that granted rights to corporations. In fact, apparently there is no right of the people to incorporate, [...]

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The photo above in the Wall Street Journal caught my eye this morning and sent me into a tizzy. For the record, I am a bit upset at the direction the health care reform bill is taking. It favors the preservation of the insurance company system by forcing us to buy the same crap that [...]

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There was just so much stuff today that made this puppy’s head spin. Amazing how the news media can be given all the facts and come to the wrong conclusion simply by assuming the story HAS to be more complicated than the simplest explanation. Banking bonuses getting paid to incompetent employees Jim Cramer came on [...]

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Is social media a fad?

by Rufus on September 20, 2009

I think the difference between Social Media channels and traditional channels is on SM, users rally around the tools, not the message. Most users are too busy yelling out their own message — because they can — that they no longer become part of the community in which they are yelling. Instead of a community [...]

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A good lawn is a better lawn

by Charlie on August 17, 2009

The title of this post is also the positioning statement for the Zack and Shola Lawn Service. Zack and Shola are two enterprising neighborhood boys who figured out they can make money off us older folks by mowing our lawns. A couple weeks ago, Zack and Shola knocked on my door with the flyer in [...]

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I remember that feeling

by Rufus on February 21, 2009

Peggy Noonan hits hope home with a recovery plan that taps into the real and only assets we each have; the human spirit. She says things a whole lot better than I could even paraphrase, so I won’t except to share the last paragraph with you. Dynamism has been leached from our system for now, [...]

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Is this entertainment or opportunity

by Charlie on February 5, 2009

The Wall Street Journal published an article on Tuesday about how many unemployed people are turning to Twitter, blogs and online games to take their minds off their money anxieties. They compared spending several hours a day playing games and using social networks to the 5-cent movie houses of the Great Depression when unemployed workers [...]

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Blame the terrorists.. again

by Rufus on January 19, 2009

Generation Y isn’t lazy, impatient, demanding, high-maintenance and self-absorbed. They are just living life fully, in the moment, every day. Why? Because of terrorism. Huh? Yes, says Tamara Erickson in a recent podcast posted on Bnet.com. GenY came of age during the era of terrorism and that affected them so much that they seek to [...]

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Extra blogging stuff pulled from my brain

by Rufus on January 5, 2009

I collect newspaper clippings for blog ideas. Mostly, the articles are things that sent my blood pressure over the edge or got me wondering “what if it were different” or just things that make me go “hmmmmmmmmmm..” These clippings sit on my desk, tugging at me to write a blog post about them. But there [...]

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What would you do if you had $1 million dollars?

by Charlie on December 10, 2008

Dear President-elect Barack Obama; I am a small business owner. I do quite well for myself as I am in a knowledge-based business servicing the youth sporting market and the retail services industries. I also dabble a bit in coffee and Web 2.0 consulting. I was running some numbers this afternoon on the bail-out plans [...]

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You suck! Your comment sucks!

by Rufus on December 8, 2008

You write a blog post and post it. Someone comes onto your blog and has an alternative point of view. But, instead of engaging this commenter in a logical argument, you lash out at him, belittling his point of view and then using sarcastic remarks in subsequent comments. Is that smart? This happened recently to [...]

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Don’t call me a geezer on twitter

by Rufus on December 3, 2008

Yesterday, I read a tweet from a young someone I’m following who had jury duty. She tweeted: The judge just told us we are not allowed to create a blog about the trial. The geezers in the room laughed. I twittered it our. My first reaction was annoyance with the blatant disregard of the judge’s [...]

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Me, me, me, me, me, me, me

by Rufus on October 30, 2008

I see this ad in the OMMA Show magazine. If this kid walked into your office, looking like this and said, “It’s all about me…” what would you do? Yeah, me too. And I’d make sure he skidded across the pavement a bit so that his hair would shave off. Free haircut. Seriously, does this [...]

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