RICK BLAINE: I came to Casablanca for the waters. CAPT. RENAULT: The waters?! What waters? We’re in the desert. RICK BLAINE: I was misinformed. My wife and son are in Amarillo for a few weeks visiting relatives. I’m not sure I want to be in Texas in July, but they told me the temperature was in the 70s, so I decided to fly in for a few days. When I got there, it was 104, although it did drop into the 70s at night . . . Read more →
Author Archive: Paul Epps
Another Reason I Never Put My Kid in Day Care
LANCASTER, California (AP) — The foster mother of two young boys who died after being left five hours in a sweltering sport utility vehicle was arrested for investigation of child endangerment. The woman’s occupation? She runs a day care center. I’m looking at a picture on CNN.com, and the vehicle appears to be a Cadillac Escalade, so at least the kids died in a nice car . . . Read more →
Overheard
You can’t beat that with a sharp stick! Why does the stick have to be sharp if you’re just going to beat something with it? Read more →
Life Imitates HTTP
I took my family to the airport today. Their flight was scheduled to leave from Gate 404. We couldn’t find it. Read more →
The Joys of Retirement
It looks like Dominik Hasek may be ending his retirement. That’s big news at my house because he’s my son’s favorite goalie, but also another blow to the theory — held by my wife and others — that lots of money plus lots of free time equals major satisfaction, even if your life lacks any real direction or purpose. Now you might say that Hasek loves to play hockey and that’s why he’s getting back into it. And I say: If he was having so much fun, why did he retire in the first place? Read more →
Runaway Train
Railroad workers in a Montclair switching yard lost control of 30 freight cars loaded with lumber yesterday. The cars rolled out of the yard in the general direction of Los Angeles, which is about 30 miles westbound and downhill from Montclair. The cars eventually reached a speed of about 50 miles an hour, so rather than let them rocket into the downtown area, Union Pacific decided to derail them into a Mexican neighborhood in Commerce. Read more →
Something Sad About Parenting
I see things around the house, like a bike that’s too small now, and think about the kid who used to ride it, and how I loved that kid, and now he’s gone . . . Read more →
Brain Teaser
This was posed to me in an interview. I don’t know if there’s a “right” answer, or whether it’s just intended to probe the thinking process of the applicant. You have 50 white marbles, 50 black marbles and two bags. Your task is to arrange the marbles in the bags so as to maximize the probability that a person making a blind selection from one of the bags will select a black marble. Read more →
Yowzah!
O to be yielded to you whoever you are, and you to be yielded to me in defiance of the world! O to return to paradise! O bashful and feminine! O to draw you to me, to plant on you for the first time the lips of a determin’d man! — Walt Whitman, “One Hour to Madness and Joy” Read more →
Stuff They Don’t Teach You in School
A client I’m working with is rewarding the top 20 percent of its sales force by flying them to Lake Tahoe for a 3-day weekend. An enterprising competitor might say to himself, “Hmmm . . . what if something were to happen to that plane?” Now there’s something they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School. Read more →
Useless Reports
A client is paying me to streamline its reporting system. Like many companies, they produce a lot of reports, most of them not very useful. So far, my choice for the least useful, or most useless, is one titled “All Sales Data in Database.” Guess what it prints? If you said all the sales data in the database, you’re right! It’s a big report . . . Read more →
First Library Card Discovered
Something I found around the house this weekend: my son’s first library card. It’s four or five years old now, it’s expired, but I still remember how proud I was when he got it. It’s hard to say why . . . I knew he could read a little bit, write his name — not very well, but still . . . I think at the time I was feeling that, for better or worse, he wasn’t a baby anymore, and here was the proof . . . Read more →
Introducing a 9-Year-Old to Yoga
“You learn to breathe with your whole body. So you breeeeathe in from the bottom of your feet up to the top of your head, and you breeeeathe out from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet . . .” “Can’t you just use your nose or mouth?” Read more →
My 9-Year-Old Kid’s Current Favorite Expressions
Who cares? What’s your point? Serves you right. He sometimes abbreviates them as “WC?”, “WYP?” and “SYR.” Another favorite — borrowed from Calvin and Hobbes/Spaceman Spiff — is you say something to him and he responds,”‘GLOP GLOP GLORP.’ The alien being is trying to say something.” Read more →
Happy Mother’s Day
The hand that rocks the cradle Is the hand that rules the world. — William Ross Wallace, “What Rules the World” Motherhood meant I have written four fewer books, but I know more about life. — A. S. Byatt The joys of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and fears. — Francis Bacon, “Of Parents and Children” Read more →
Kill the Model Prisoners
Ohio executes man who killed woman with knife — Reuters His attorneys sought clemency on the grounds that he had been a “model prisoner.” I think if that’s the best thing you can say about someone, it’s time to go ahead and kill him. Footnote: That’s a terrible headline. Did he kill a woman who had a knife? Was he executed with a knife? Some people might argue that that’s cruel and unusual, although I wouldn’t oppose it personally . . . Read more →
Warren Buffett on Financial Reports
If I can’t understand it, the management probably doesn’t want me to understand it. And if management doesn’t want me to understand it, there is probably something wrong going on. Read more →
Heat Miser
I saw a guy at lunch today who’d dyed his hair red and spiked it, making him look more like a real life Heat Miser than anyone I’ve ever seen . . . Read more →
Genealogy: Who Cares?
I found myself involved in a genealogy discussion the other night, and I guess I disappointed everyone by admitting that I don’t know the origin of the name Epps, nor am I all that curious about it. Read more →
Your Résumé is Quite Impressive
Possible responses: It should be. I wrote it. It’s the only thing more impressive than my actual accomplishments. Read more →