#BestAdvice: Scouting – an update

Three years ago, LinkedIn invited articles featuring the author’s best advice (hence the hashtag). I was just re-reading the one I published there (on 2/15/15), and decided to re-publish it here on my blog, with an update, because it’s even better advice today in my opinion. Here’s my #BestAdvice: Several years ago I had the […]

Winning performance: it’s the preparation, stupid

Yesterday I read this wonderful recap of the 1967 “Ice Bowl” game in Green Bay, in which the Packers beat the Cowboys with a touchdown in the closing moments of an NFL Championship Game played in temperatures even colder than we’ve had this week. This passage, a remembrance by Packers right guard Jerry Kramer, really […]

Spend your time on what’s important to you, and ignore the jerks

Caroline Fairchild, Senior News Editor at LinkedIn, shared this article by her friend Dan Lyons about the burgeoning culture of overwork in Silicon Valley, with her own questions for her readers about workplace expectations and hours worked. It struck me as cognitive dissonance that in the nerve center of technology, which should be liberating us […]

Leadership: treat your people like dogs

Okay, that’s click-bait. You should really treat your people like I treat my dog. (Well, not literally, because there are those people who consider belly rubs in the workplace inappropriate.) I try never to walk past my dog Hunter without at least giving him a pat on the head. Most of the time, I take […]

Be prepared

I’m not sure why this story from four years ago is still rattling loudly around in my mind. It’s probably because I have two sons about the same ages as the boys in this tragedy, and we spend a fair amount of time in the woods ourselves. It’s an awful story. There are lots of things out there that can […]

A life to learn from , part 2: Julia Teresa (Cosgrove) Vinoski

The day I published the “part 1” of this title, about my Dad’s cousin Bernie Vinoski, is the day my Mom died. One thing I hadn’t played up with Bernie is how his was a life of constant service. That trait has been reinforced in my reading lately. I mentioned in another previous blog entry […]

A life to learn from: Bernard B. Vinoski

One of my heroes was buried Friday. Bernard B. Vinoski, Sr, MD, Colonel, US Air Force (Ret), was my dad’s cousin. They grew up together in little South Connellsville, Pennsylvania. His obituary is here – in it you can read all about his life of incredible accomplishment and service. To me, he was at first […]

Rethinking Things

My little sister Michelle passed away almost three months ago. I decided at the time to rethink some things in my life, though I’ll admit I’ve been somewhat adrift with that effort. I’ve committed to making some progress before the year ends. I picked this book up not long after she died, started it briefly, […]

Some random thoughts on fertility, feminism and modern young women

This article gave me something of a start.  I had no idea until I read it that our son AJ, now six, had a less than 5% chance of ever coming into this world. My wife was just shy of 42 when he was born.  Our older son John had come along almost exactly three […]

Vibrating football games — load of ’70s fun!

Today at the barber shop my older son Johnny Shizzle-Cakes invented a football kind of game you play on a checkerboard. That got me thinking about the vibrating football game we had when I was a kid in the ’70s.  Were those things the worst or what?  You always had the linebackers who would lock […]