When our children were little, we replicated the time-honored tradition of putting the kids to bed each evening. Once the baby fell asleep, we would often close the door to attenuate household noises, especially the clamor of older siblings bustling about, lest we wake the baby. This brings us to a cardinal rule young parents learn quickly: Rule #1: Do NOT wake the baby. …especially late in the...
Progressions in Math
(An Introduction to Your Future Math Classes) An exceptional teacher is distinguished by a constellation of critical attributes. Among these include a mastery of the material, an innate desire to teach, a modicum of patience, a splash of pizzaz for entertainment, a creative approach to communicate concepts to various learning styles, an element of storytelling, and more. I had a professor in the...
Being Accepted into Any Functional Group
When you work in groups, you can’t help but notice certain social dynamics within the group and between groups. Some groups are more serious. Some are more fun. Some groups are hyper efficient. Some take longer to get things done. Groups can do things that individuals can’t do alone. Consequently, at some point, most of us want to be part of a group, to share a collective aim with a collection of...
Andy & Alexandra Discuss Ukraine
In 2012, I hired a Ukrainian web development firm. At the time, they had a dozen employees and offered an array of technical services my company needed. My initial project manager, Alexandra, was one of their company founders. She was ambitious, highly competent, and just as important, likable. As their company grew from 12 people to ~200 employees, Alexandra moved from project management for...
Losing Our Childhood
When I was little, I had an assortment of plastic toy animals – farm animals, a few dinosaurs, a giraffe, an elephant, and some others odd characters… the usual gang of creatures a young child might enjoy. And I did. This motley crew became the bedrock of an imaginary world that could occupy my mind and engross me in solitary play for extended periods. I don’t recall the various adventures my...
Deficits, Debt, Interest, Taxes, Austerity, Waste, Inflation and The Fed
Numerous threats encompass a nation and a national psyche – some real, some existential, some external, some internal. In this post, I discuss a real internal threat, one of our own creation, completely under our control, but not under control – our national debt. Our nation’s enormous debt and persistent deficit spending significantly constrain our future economic options and form the...
What Game Are We Playing?
“Should I go for 3-of-a-kind or the full-house?” I thought aloud. I was home from college for Christmas break. Between semesters. Final exams behind me. Eight family members gathered around the kitchen table to play Yahtzee (the dice game) at my grandparents’ house. I sat on the end of the table, closest to the door. To me, Yahtzee was an exercise in statistical probabilities mixed with pure...
My Key Takeaways from Reading the Federal Budget
Citizens often complain about taxes and government waste. If we suspected less of the latter, there might be less of the former. Yeah, maybe not. Anyway, in thinking about this, it occurred to me that while I have read summaries and commentaries on the U.S. Federal Budget, I had never read the Budget itself – the actual source document. To develop a more informed view, I read the Federal Budget...
A Framework to Help Develop Your Criteria for a Spouse
This blog post has a purpose – to prompt young people to reflect on the qualities they aspire to find in a prospective life partner before they become entangled in love and feel they have found their future spouse. More than a decade ago, I meandered into an airport bookstore in Stockholm and, on a whim, purchased a book for my transatlantic flight. The book was titled Too Soon Old, Too Late...
The Imminent Transformation: How AI Will Revolutionize Industries and Reshape the Workforce
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is all the buzz lately, and rightly so. I suspect it’s a bigger deal than you think. AI isn’t just some fringe, hypothetical Star Trek tech for geeks and nerds to drool over. Not any longer. Prediction – AI technology will creep into every facet of modern culture and will completely transform vast industries such that we will not recognize them in 10 years, perhaps 5...
Inflation and Where I Think It’s Going
I bought a 50 lbs. bag of rice at Sam’s six months ago for $20. I know, that’s a lot of rice. But it was cheap! This week, I was shopping at Sam’s again and saw the same rice product, priced at $26 per bag. That’s 30% inflation over 6 months! How does this square with the reported 12-month Consumer Price Index inflation rate of 6.0% (9.5% for food)? See chart below. I discussed this, in part, in...
Physics and Life
I needed to test a new microphone. So, just to have something to say for the audio test, I began discussing potential & kinetic energy as a analogy to life… a thought I have been contemplating for more than a decade. I expected the idea would eventually be a written blog post, but I thought the initial rambling in the video was decent, so I just kept talking… for nearly 10 minutes. A...
Gold. Lots of Gold.
The U.S. Treasury (plus the Fed) holds a lot of gold. I was curious about this, so I looked into it… so you don’t have to. How Much is a Lot? The U.S. Treasury currently holds 261 million Fine Troy Ounces of Gold (261,498,926 to be exact). The book value for this gold is recorded as $11 billion. If you’re not familiar with accounting, book value is NOT market value. Dividing $11 billion by the...
Lightning Fast
Summer. 2018. Sweden.
Lightning struck this tree, which subsequently toppled and almost fell on my wife’s head.
My Father’s Eulogy
It is a strange thing to miss your own father’s funeral. Today is the second anniversary of my father’s death. He passed away while my family and I were in transit to visit family in Sweden. Mom waited until we had completed our first flight and were about to board our trans-Atlantic flight before telling me that Dad was nearing the end. Mom knew I would have stayed, had I known, and she wanted...
Why Inflation Feels Like It’s More Than Reported
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) came out for May 2022, showing 8.6% inflation over May 2021. “Experts” claimed this was higher than expected. For the rest of us, inflation feels higher than 8.6%, when we visit the grocery store, go to lunch, or fill up at the pump. In fact, it’s difficult to name a product we regularly purchase that’s ONLY up 8.6%. So, where’s the disconnect between what leaves...
Playing to Win
The kids and I used to wrestle on the living room floor when they were younger – when I was younger. All three were afforded the same wrestling opportunities, but Soren (my son) seemed to enjoy it more than his sisters. Boys sometimes have extra physical energy demanding an outlet. Because Soren was smaller than me, I wrestled with him down on my hands and knees. This enabled Soren to develop his...
Social Security Status
Although Covid, money printing, inflation, and geopolitical complexities dominate the media and our collective conversation, we seem to have lost focus on the Social Security Program. Why? Because it’s boring, in comparison. Nevertheless, a Social Security implosion looms on the near horizon. Consequently, I thought we should resurface this conversation, between panics. The main problem, Social...
Precious Time
Years ago, I was on the phone with a customer. During the conversation, we spoke briefly about our families, as sometimes happens, especially with long-term customers. “Do you have kids?” he asked. “I do. Three,” I replied. “How old are they?” “10, 7 & 4… girl, girl, boy.” “I remember when my son was four…,” his sentence trailed off as he began to reminisce of things that once were. Nostalgic...
Mistletoe
In November 2004, my wife (Sofie) and I were driving back to Austin after visiting family for the Thanksgiving holidays in Oklahoma. “You can really see all the mistletoe, now the leaves have fallen,” Sofie commented from the passenger seat, looking around and basically chilling out because, well, she wasn’t driving. “Maybe we should sell it online,” she continued, knowing the tradition of being...