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 . . .

Another Reason I Let My Wife Handle the Grocery Shopping

 
Samurai

IRVINE — A mentally disturbed man wielding a samurai-style sword killed two workers and slashed three other people at an Albertsons before police shot and killed him Sunday.

— Orange County Register, June 30, 2003

Banzai!

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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?

Three Short Arguments Against Affirmative Action

 

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that race can be a factor for universities shaping their admissions programs, saying a broad social value may be gained from diversity in the classroom.

The Fairness Argument

If it was unfair when we used to discriminate against blacks and Jews, don’t tell me it’s fair now to discriminate against whites and Jews.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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 . . .

First Library Card Discovered

 
First library card

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 . . .

HW’s Video Game Reviews

 
NBA Street cover

NBA Street

The most racially insensitive video game I’ve ever seen.

Every black character is a prancing, jive-talking buffoon, there’s a 7-foot-6 Japanese guy with a four-word English vocabulary — “Not in my house” — delivered with an accent straight out of a Godzilla movie, and followed by inscrutable grunting and mumbling . . .

And so on.

My kid loves it.

Good News, Bad News

 

After more than two months out of work, The Programmer lands a consulting job . . .

Good news: I get paid and I need the cash.

Bad news: I work for a guy who delivers insights like

“See, now it’s not just about working better-faster-cheaper, it’s about working smarter!”

in the tone of someone who just found a cure for cancer, or who thinks that without him, we’d all be actively seeking out ways to work stupider.

More good news: He doesn’t micromanage my work, because he has no comprehension of what it is I actually do.

Thus spoke The Programmer.

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.”

HW’s Book Reviews

 

Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki with Sharon L. Lechter C.P.A.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad cover

And I know a father who had a son
He longed to tell him all the reasons for the things he’d done
He came a long way just to explain
He kissed his boy as he lay sleeping
Then he turned around and he headed home again

— Paul Simon, “Slip Sliding Away”
 

Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories.

— John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester

You might get the idea from reading this book that being rich is synonymous with being happy. I’ve never seen any indication that that’s true.

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