Brown Motion

I have gone round the earth 20 times in as many years of being in the United States.  That is 1 trip round the planet a year on average. Okay I have driven that distance using an automobile to be precise.  How you ask?  Well simple.  I have owned several vehicles during the two decades of being here and I noted the odometers when I sold them.  Add them up and I get a number.  Add to that all the vehicles I rented for short duration to make many trips criss crossing the continent and then some (drove 150 miles in New Zealand once). Grand total is just north of 500,000 miles driven.  That is 20 times the earth's circumference for those of you keeping score or vaguely aware of what a circumference is. So the perspective is that given a propensity to drive a lot you can easily cover the distance equal to going round our planet in a years time.   That comes to around 70 miles a day of driving every day assuming you take Thanksgiving and Xmas off...

Not exactly an aboriginal activity when the said event took place along the San Francisco shore.  But today being the day before Thanksgiving I decided to stroll the quiet eastern shoreline that is the Embarcadero in the morning hours before the crowds came in. The weather could not have been better.  An overnight downpour had left the city sidewalks shiny clean and the upcoming sun was soaking my back warm.  Here are a few glimpses of how the walk unfolded. Along Pier 1 - where nary a soul stirred.  Even the gulls had the day off. New tallest building pushing into the clouds in its semi finished state - will belong to a software maker that helps run big business in the cloud For the newbie a few things to note if you happen to visit this part of the world.  The piers are numbered from 1 to 41 with the odd numbers running north from the Ferry Building. Pier 39 known by some where the sea lions party and an Italian setup a chocolate factory (a...

Well now let's not be fatalistic. Didn't someone say its not over till its over?  Okay so we are past the milestone of the American electorate voting for a new leader.  CEO of the USA or the newest POTUS. It was a time for many firsts.  In some ways it could be summarized as Slovenia 1 - Pundits 0.  As in the newest FLOTUS is from a foreign country that many on the planet may not have heard of.   Slovenia.  A dot in the south of Europe.   Maybe Trump had not either till he met her at a Fashion Show.  Having Mr. and Mrs. Trump be the First People was not what the pundits thought.   All the pundits that forecast the future were wrong. More analysis reveals that it would be the first prez that has no political background.  First prez who had multiple marriages before he was elected to office.  I have not researched this but likely the first prez who has a wife 25 years younger than him.  Fast forward to the end of his term an...

They say you never stop learning.  I sure hope so.  I was fortunate enough to find a variety of careers after graduating from school with what appears in hindsight was a toolkit to open many jars.  Jars of knowledge and understanding. In doing so each jar or opportunity was just that - a chance to learn a bit of the industry I was working in and make myself smarter in some small area.  I kept learning and extrapolating the skills and ideas of one to another and pretty soon it gave me the confidence to embark on adventures that I had little to no knowledge about. In that respect I worked in Financial Services, helping customers open trading accounts to buy and sell equities in an underdeveloped market; before which I produced steel from scrap, for variety of manufacturing companies. Then came my career in consulting which by design was an opportunity to appear smarter than I was and jump headlong into an area with some of the same tools that I had left school w...