A few days ago I was watching a Daily Show segment about the Illinois lottery when something struck me as very disconcerting. The segment focused on a middle-aged couple who had recently won around $250,000 in the state lottery. The focus of the segment was on Illinois’ current inability to actually pay lottery winners, even though … Read more
I’ve been trying for months to derive some sort of life lesson for the story I’m going to tell here, but I haven’t figured it out, so I’ll just tell the story and hopefully it will mean something important. I was having lunch with an old friend at A Pizza Story, a Neapolitan pizza place … Read more
This past weekend, I helped a friend move into a tiny house. Specifically, he and his family (one wife and two sons) moved from a decent-sized house to a much smaller house. I think it’s around 900 square feet, plus a basement. For a while now, my friend has been reading a blog called Mr. … Read more
Yesterday I was checking out after eating dinner at a local Mexican restaurant. I had enough cash to pay for my meal, but I commented that I rarely like to use cash when I could use my credit card, as it allows me to track and categorize all of my purchases. Every month I look … Read more
Today I got a rather shocking group e-mail from a friend about a recent development in his life. I’m really grateful that he shared his story, and I asked him if I could post it on my blog so it might benefit you as it benefited me. He asked to remain anonymous, hence the lack … Read more
A few days ago I listened to a talk about asking for feedback. While I’ve been a big fan of the power of asking for feedback for a long time now (as a manager at my previous job, to my Kickstarter backers at my current job, and in general), the talk really opened me to … Read more
Let’s start off with some examples: Exhibit A: Hey, Jamey, did you get that e-mail I sent you this morning? Exhibit B: Hey Jamey, did you get that e-mail I sent you this morning?? — Exhibit C: Myra had the baby! Exhibit D: Myra had the baby!! — They’re subtle differences, to be sure, but … Read more
I was a keynote panel member today at a funding session at a local university, and the experience reminded me of one of my favorite YouTube videos. It’s a video of Wil Wheaton (the host of a YouTube show about board gaming called Tabletop) serving on a panel at a gaming convention. A kid asks him … Read more
It’s been a while since I’ve written about love language, so if you want to catch up on my original entries, they are listed here (in addition to the original 5 love languages): Acts of Service Touch Quality Time Words of Affirmation Gifts Chocolate Quantity Time I also wrote an entry about the 15 workplace … Read more
Did you know that today is Roald Dahl Day? I didn’t even know this, and I’m a huge Roald Dahl fan, as I wrote about earlier this year. I only know this because I recently got an e-mail from someone asking if they could write a guest post on my blog about Roald Dahl Day. … Read more