I recently learned of Jason Isbell. I’ve been rather oblivious to the modern music scene for quite a while now and had not heard of this incredible artist and band. My attention is mostly given to audiobooks and podcasts. When I do listen to music, I either have some groove jazz going, like Snarky Puppy…
Recording for Church
Working on learning this song for a future church service. This song, Come Jesus Come, was written by Stephen McWhirter. Check out his acoustic version – he has a great, soulful voice.
Becoming Unsocial
Online interactions have become increasingly rude and combative. Particularly during this presidential election cycle. Now that the election is decided, I don’t see that condition improving. This style of dealing with differing opinions by name calling, lying, and fabricating stories to stoke fear about an opponent has paid off handsomely and will continue to be…
Turning Tears into Pearls
From the novel The Kite Runner “It was a dark little tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found…
An AI Summary of My Book
Google has an “experimental” product called NotebookLM. It is a note capture tool that integrates large language model (LLM) capabilities. LLMs aren’t truly Artificial Intelligence (AI), but that seems to be what the masses are calling them these days because they don’t understand the difference. With NotebookLM, you can upload files and ask for various…
MARRIED COUPLES IN JEEPS GETTING COFFEE
In this episode of MARRIED COUPLES IN JEEPS GETTING COFFEE, we visit Cafe Verona in Collinsville. We tried a flight of their seasonal drinks and I ordered a small cup of their black brewed coffee. The pumpkin spice was Jennifer’s favorite, of course, followed by the caramel praline. As for me, I give the black…
12 thoughts on incentives by George Mack
Copied from a George Mack blogpost 1. Don’t ask your barber if you need a haircut. 2. “I can fix the $32 trillion US debt problem in 5 minutes. You pass a law that when there’s a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members congress are ineligible for re-election” – Warren Buffett…
The Optimistic and Pessimistic Twins
I heard this story today on Morgan Housel’s podcast: A family had twin boys whose only resemblance to each other was their looks. Opposite in every way, one was an eternal optimist, the other a doom & gloom pessimist. Just to see what would happen, on the twins’ birthday their father loaded the pessimist’s room…
Leaders Inspire Hope
Currently reading Areté by Brian Johnson. A great reminder that anyone and everyone is given the opportunity to display leadership at various times, regardless of where they reside on the org chart or role in a community. Those that craft the most compelling visions and attitudes about the future are often viewed as effective leaders.
Training Colleagues
I had the privilege of joining other budgeting professionals last week at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to review and update the materials used to train new Budget Officers and Analysts. We discussed ways to modernize the approach, moving away from PowerPoint being the base platform to a Visio visualization as the basis where each…