Category: Personal

Dead Brand Walking

Not unexpected, but still….a bummer:

G.M. said Tuesday that it would phase out its Saturn brand by 2012.

My 2000 Saturn SL2 will hit 100,000 miles sometime in the next month or so. It’s not the most stylish car on the road, but it is reliable as hell and gets +30 MPG on the highway even now.

The “different kind of car company” hasn’t been different for a while now, so in a way it’s not much of a loss to GM. Still, I can’t help but think that GM really screwed the pooch with this brand. Saturns are/were great cars with a loyal following. Now they’re a footnote.

I’d been planning to drive my Saturn until it dropped, but this news makes me want to make sure that day doesn’t come for a good long time. Time to call the mechanic and schedule a tune-up. 🙂

Things You Don't See Every Day

Busted chair

The 140 character version: Guests around table, chair on an angle, butt met chair, solid wood chair broke into pieces, butt met floor. Hilarity ensued.

Way busted

It’s really, really busted. So now we have 5 chairs (that might or might not also fall apart) and one pile of kindling. Nobody was hurt and the chair wasn’t all that expensive, but 9 years later finding a replacement that matches will be a challenge.

Other than that, though, it was a good weekend.

Dear World

We, the United States of America, your top quality supplier of the ideals of liberty and democracy, would like to apologize for our 2001-2008 interruption in service. The technical fault that led to this eight-year service outage has been located, and the software responsible was replaced November 4.

Early tests of the newly installed program indicate that we are now operating correctly, and we expect it to be fully functional on January 20, 2009. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the outage.

We look forward to resuming full service and hope to improve in years to come. We thank you for your patience and understanding.

Sincerely,
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

New Camera!


After hemming and hawing I pulled the trigger and bought a new DSLR – the Nikon D40. Now I need to learn how to do more with it than just use the automatic setting. 🙂

Execution Matters

In the early days of my career, I had a lot of trouble with the fact that I was a Drama major. Employers tended to think that I was just marking time at a job until I ‘got discovered’. And back then, I didn’t have a good answer for their objections except to say that it wasn’t so.

Now, I know better.

One of the biggest things you learn when doing theater is that when the curtain goes up you have no excuses. Either you know your lines or you don’t. Either the costumes are finished or the actors are onstage in their underwear. Either the lighting people know their cues or the cast is standing there on the dark. There’s no way to hide from the audience when the spotlight is on you.

In short, theater may be a highly creative art, but talent alone is not enough. You need to be able to get the job done.

And that’s a transferable skill.

What I do today is worlds away from the productions of Brigadoon or The Desert Song that used to consume my life, but the focus on execution is exactly the same.

In my leadership classes at USF, we heard a lot about how managers focus on getting things done, but leaders focus on “vision”. There’s a lot to be said for that concept. But more and more, I’ve come to believe that you should never underestimate the power of execution, because without it, you don’t get to lead anybody anywhere.