An Arizona Cheesehead's Thoughts

Today celebrates the 50th Anniversary of Star Trek's first appearance on US television.  It's a big deal if you're in the nerd and/or geek community. The influence and endurance of Star Trek is nothing short of amazing. Yes, I judge people who blithely, or sometimes proudly, say "I've never watched it". For reals, you don't know what you're missing. I grew up watching The Original Series in reruns. Yep, I'm too young to remember them when they aired. Yay for me being too young for something. BTW, that's TOS to us in the know. It wasn't a perfect show. There was a lot of overacting, cheesy sets and sexist costumes. The plot points were sometimes predictable, you really didn't want to be on the security away team - that was a dead giveaway. (See what I did there?) How many hours did you spend with the crew? They weren't perfect characters, either. I mean, anyone who slept with Kirk died and if that's not a major defec...

Except this year because my Fantasy Football teams are horrible. The first draft was on the Sunday afternoon of our big local Parrot Head weekend. I can blame the dehydration, hangover and lack of sleep for my poor draft. Or, the fact that I did no research. I choose to blame the ongoing sickness that I would endure for the next nine days. I'm always the victim. Here's my Parrot Head league draft in order (I was 11th out of 12): WR DeAndre Hopkins RB Le'Veon Bell (Did I know he was suspended for four games? No, I did not.) QB Drew Brees WR Eric Decker RB Matt Forte WR Kelvin Benjamin RB Giovani Bernard TE Tyler Eifert (Did I know he was hurt? No, I did not.) WR Sterling Shepard RB Theo Riddick WR Corey Coleman D Bengals QB Tyrod Taylor K Adam Vinatieri RB Darren McFadden (Whom I dropped right away to pick up TE Charles Clay.) Fast forward to Wednesday night and my work league as I drafted with a fever and barely kept myself awake (I was 12th out of 1...

A couple of weeks ago, some colleagues and I headed up to Northern Arizona for an optional offsite activity. Our CFO has a cabin (honestly, big house) up there and he has made it a practice to invite his direct reports up every year. This year, he expanded the invitation list to all of the Senior Managers and Directors of the company. (No, his cabin isn't that big. We were spread out over several places for our lodgings.) We headed up to the pines on a Wednesday afternoon. The first night was dinner then hanging out. Thursday morning was golf for those who wanted to play while the rest of us sat on the porch and worked. It was gorgeous! This is when I love technology - a wifi connection and I can work anywhere. We headed to the main lodge for lunch after the golfers returned then delved into our first "work" activity of the trip. It was a "dusting off of our 360s". Back in 2010 and then 2011, our upper management group participated in Zenger|Folkman 3...