I have a golf ball in my truck. Perhaps to most observers, seeing a golf ball in my vehicle would lead them to conclude that I play golf. The truth: I am really, really bad at golf. You’ve seen those YouTube videos of the ball staying securely on the tee…

Here’s a challenge: Without using the word “salty”, describe what salt tastes like. Now, describe the sound of a bell in as much detail as you can to someone born profoundly deaf. Then, describe the color red to a person born completely blind. It’s likely you’ve been presented with this…

Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well. Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, penned those words to his son in 1774. We all know, of course, that with a few rare exceptions you never start that way. You start by doing things poorly and progress toward doing…

For nearly twenty years, I’ve written software. Most of the development I’ve done has been in old-school Visual Basic. There’s still an active developer community, but VB hasn’t been developed as a language in many years. Essentially, it’s dead. Knowing a dead language can, at times, be useful. There are…

I have a bad habit of ruminating on problems. I’ve written about it before. This is the scenario: I imagine having a difficult conversation with my boss.¹ I’m a non-confrontational person so having hard conversations is, well, hard for me. …

On March 6, 1945, First Lieutenant Jack Lummus — a former player for the New York Giants — led the E Company’s third rifle platoon of 27 marines to Kitano Point on Iwo Jima. Lummus, a “win at all costs” athlete, led the charge — practically assaulting the enemy on…

I’m a runner. In my prime, I ran, on average, about 60 miles per week. Trouble is, that’s all the real exercise I got then and get now. I rarely spend time working on my core or my arms. As a result, I’ve got some well-developed muscles and others that…

Scenario A A 20-something young woman stands at the top of a 50-foot cliff that gradually descends into a choppy lake below. Half of her friends are yelling at her not to do it. The other half, encouraging her. They all know she’s a strong swimmer. She backs away from the edge…

Until we were in our teenage years, my older brother and I shared a bedroom. One night, when I was seven, we lay awake, talking about the enormity of space. I tried to contemplate a galaxy with billions of stars and a universe that expanded forever, perhaps. …