An Arizona Cheesehead's Thoughts

Behavioral Economics is my jam! If it had been a real thing back when I was in college, I would have ditched my Business Major in a heartbeat. For those who don't know what it is, the short description is that it's the study of how and what effects your economic decision making. What makes you buy one car over another? How will your current experience influence your investing decision a few minutes from now, a day from now, a week from now? That kind of stuff. What does one do with the results? Well, you can use them for good or evil. As a business type, I always think about how it can increase profits. As a human, I also think about how it could help make people make better decisions for themselves or society. An example of the latter, say you want to increase the percentage of employees investing in a 401K (assuming that's a good decision for their financial wellbeing). How you do it is automatically sign them up for it as people don't want to do the work of eit...

"A stranger is a friend I haven't met yet." - Will Rogers Truer words were never spoken when it comes to me. I love talking to strangers even if I'll never see them again. Airports are great for striking up a conversation. Nothing like a captive audience who is probably bored as well! I was waiting to board a flight to Seattle a while ago when I noticed the family in front of me. Two kids about eight or so and two parents. There was no way I couldn't talk to the daughter. She was dressed in a pink t-shirt with a grey cat on it, matching leggings, pink Hello Kitty shoes and, the pièce de résistance, a headband with cat ears. Man, she was styling! I broke the ice with  a "I really like your outfit." The reaction I got was the shy kid face against the parent's leg move. The Mom said, "What do you say when someone compliments you?" That got a mumble from the pants' leg. Not deterred from the conversational attempt at all, I follow...

In case you aren't wired into the world of Jimmy Buffett as I am, he announced this week that he's going to slow down next year. Of course, for Jimmy, that might just mean fewer concerts but more books, CDs (I believe they just announced a new Christmas one coming), plane trips and surfing. I don't think the guy will ever "rest". A few people waxed nostalgic about their love for Jimmy and I was reminded of three Buffett shows I've been to that were awesome in different ways. Wasted Away Again In Margaritaville The earliest show was when Jimmy and Mac came to open the Glendale Margaritaville (RIP) in April of 2008. It was an all day event. Mville gave the Arizona Parrot Head Club 500 free passes and invited a group of us for morning cocktails and some TV time on the local news. A parking lot tailgate followed and then they roped off the courtyard area across from the restaurant and put Jimmy and Mac on a stage in front of the Arena. Can you tell I wa...

I confess, I haven't watched local or national TV news in years. I bugged out once all of the stations were doing "death" teasers for their broadcasts. "This surprising item in your kitchen will kill you!" "There are unknown predators in your neighborhood!" "Find about the commonplace product under the third step of your stairs that can give you cancer!" "You MUST watch our broadcast or you're doomed!!!!" You get the gist. It was all about sucking you in to watch and the teaser segment was always buried somewhere in the broadcast so you had to wait through it all. Here's another thing that turned me off from TV news; reporters standing in front of a building hours after whatever action happened before. Seriously, you could put that reporter in front of a blank green screen and gotten the same amount of relevance. "What you can't see now because it's all cleaned up is that the bus jumped this curb and ran in...

Our wall of tiles is complete! I wrote about the creative process  a while back where we all had an opportunity to make the tiles. A lot of work by Kim, our resident artist (and VP), later and the wall is done. Careful placement with spacers for the grout. We hired some people to affix the tiles to the wall and do the grout work. They were at it for quite a while. Supply of tiles to be affixed to the wall.  So, yeah, we thought we had made enough tiles... Kim had to make some more as the space was bigger than what we already had for our supply. She did all the stain and kiln work and most of the final design determinations. Kim overseeing the placement work. There was careful consideration to placement to make sure the pattern of colors and tile designs flowed well. Grout work. After a few of the rows had grout put around them we found that the grout stain was also staining the tiles. So, they had to tape off each tile before putting in the grout. And, we h...

We took a little site seeing trip while in Germany last week. My colleague wanted to show me the  Cologne Cathedral or, as we almost locals like to call it, the Dom. According to Wikipedia (which wouldn't lie), it's the most visited landmark in Germany. The Dom is a Roman Catholic cathedral and it took 800 years to build. Construction started in 1248 and ended in 1880. Well, there was a break in there from 1473 to the 1840s. It's a very impressive structure. At one point, it was the tallest building in the world at 516 feet. The Washington Monument took that title from it in 1884. So tall I couldn't get it all in the picture. (I could have if I had walked further away but my ankles told me not to try it.) Look at all the carving work! One of the entrance doors. The main entrance with a bunch of Saints (I'm assuming) watching it. These were close to life size from the perspective I saw them. You can't be called the "Hight Cathed...

I never want to leave home again after the week I just had. Oy. Let's recap, shall we? And, by recap, I mean that even though I'm trying to keep it short there was... Just. So. Much. Monday I arrived in Germany at 7:20 in the morning and spent the day in the sales office. My only sleep was maybe an hour in the car on the way from Hamburg to Muenster. I had a Parrot Head conference call scheduled for what was midnight my time. I debated trying to sleep first but decided to tough it out. I'm the Moderator of the calls. I dialed in a few minutes before midnight and it said my PIN wasn't valid to start the call. I tried again, thinking my sleep deprived brain just mistyped. No success. I then sent a text to the person who sets up the calls. She gave me some other PINs to try. By this time, people were emailing - "Are we still doing this? I'm on the call and it hasn't started." We finally found a successful PIN and started the call late. I hate that...

My friend and work colleague, Steve, moved away for a few years but is now back and working with us again. I'm happy because he's a great human, a pleasure to work with but, most importantly, he's a social butterfly like me. (Well, I guess the great human part is more important, but not for this story.) The difference between us in the latter category is that he's much better at following through with events. A few months ago, we set up an event called Random Happy Hour. The idea was to invite a bunch of different people within the organization, hang out in a relaxed setting and get to know each other better. We called it "Random" but it wasn't entirely. We invited our "usual" suspects, people we wanted to get to know better, people we wanted to introduce to each other and people with well developed internal networks. We then told everyone to invite whomever else they wanted to. The first Random Happy Hour was fairly small but went well. We h...

Any day I learn something new is a good day. Any day that I experience something while traveling that the more experienced road warriors haven't is a great day! (Well, not scary experiences.) I was flying from Phoenix to Houston and, while waiting in the lounge at Sky Harbor, overheard a conversation. One of the people was the brother of our pilot who said that there was a group of family getting on board to celebrate his brother's last flight before retirement. Apparently, this is a pretty big deal. The agents at the gate announced it. The purser on board announced it and also gave a bio of the Captain, Rob Wilson, over the loudspeaker. A short while before we landed, the purser handed out copies of an official looking memo in celebration of the event. I wish I had taken one but I wanted to make sure all of the family got a copy. But, that wasn't the end of it. As we taxied to the gate, the plane was subject to a water salute  while another announcement was made than...

There's one those Facebook things going around. You're supposed to l ist 12 albums that have stayed with you, but only one per band/artist. Don't take too long and don't think too hard. No compilations. You're also supposed to tag 10 people to do it after you. I don't tag people in these types of activities so I posted mine and told people to participate if they want to. It wasn't easy. As soon as I was done, I thought of another 4 or 5 right away.  I also wanted to explain my choices which would have made for a long Facebook post. But, a great blog post! So, here goes. Rick Springfield - Working Class Dog - 1981 This was my immediate pick. An instinctive one, really. It has Jessie's Girl which is sorta "my" song but also so many others that I love. It's not at all uncommon for me to queue this up on my iPhone and listen to it all the way through. It's not quite as cool as listening to it on vinyl but it suffices. My Rick Sp...