MMGA - Make Me Great Again, Maybe...

  Merry 2 days past Christmas.  I would say keep Christmas in your heart all year, but I am not sure my Christmas, is your Christmas any more. I was so happy to see the snow.  My father would have been happy, he used to always say he loves a white Christmas, but it can all go away on the 26th.  It didn't all go away on the 26th, but it will most likely be gone (for the most part) by the end of the weekend. I have to admit it was so nice riding home from work at around 11 AM on Christmas Eve, the snow was fresh on the trees.  The white a stark contrast to the brown of the dormant trees and the green of the pines.  I really do love that fresh snow on the trees.  That is such a nostalgia trigger.  Not to any specific time, but for some reason it always takes me back. And speaking of back, we haven't talked about the search for greatness.  I was thinking on that drive home about my past, but more so how happy I was to be able to be here with my w...

  Through the magic of AI, I have been able to fully visualize what my big grey cat thinks he looks like when he is rolling around on my desk.  However, we all know he looks like this: I post this as I have been playing with AI generated images and text.  If you think AI is a fad, you are so wrong.  Are we moving too fast without good guardrails because AI is the gold rush of the next generation? Yes...  I would say my generation's gold rush was the Dotcom/Internet rush.  It made a lot of people, broke a lot of people, and the same with business and industry.   I wonder sometimes if my grandparents were as leery of the TV as I am of AI.  I meant that statement to show that I might be afraid simply for the sake of the unknown, but I am concerned about what we will do and what will happen if we truly get to the singularity or hell just simply AGI (though there are some that say we are already there). With all that, I have been enjoying research...

  "A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm" - Shakespeare, Hamlet. I was thinking about that quote as I have been doing my yearly listen to Simon and Schuster's The Christmas Carol narrated/read by Patrick Stewart.  I am always amazed at how long we have understood that it is wrong to pay someone less than the value of their work.  It is also interesting that we have felt that the reason folks are poor is solely the result of that individual. Now, mind you, I do think there is a layer of personal responsibility to pulling yourself out of poverty, but it is also a combination of personal drive, help and support from others, and luck (right place right time, know the right people, etc...). I tried to think about the times I was poor and struggling.  Yes, there have always been times when monies were tight and times when it wasn't.  I remember working 2 to 3 jobs to bring in monies while I lived in Hawaii...

I Like Life is a song by Leslie Bricusse from the movie Scrooge with Albert Finney (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066344/).  I just love that musical.  Believe it or not, I am a fan of musicals and just due to nostalgia it is at the top of my list.  As I have mentioned, I loved (still love) Christmas time.   As I have alluded to, I believe a lot of why we thought things were so much better in our past was for two reasons.  One, we are generally younger with less stress and responsibilities.  Our priorities were different and many times those priorities were fun.  The second item is that we generally use nostalgia as a way to compare when things were better.  We try to get back to it, a feeling, a moment, a place.  Unfortunately, we tend to do this at the expense of now.  As I sit here writing this listening to the Scrooge soundtrack on vinyl, I am awash with memories of watching this movie on TV when I was younger.  I can remem...

It is that time of year again.  As much as I love spring and summer, due to my desire to grow things, Thanksgiving through the New Year holds a very special place in my heart and memories.  As I mentioned earlier, I can't "truly remember" a lot about my past.  I can't dive in and pick a specific day and tell you what I was doing or what anyone else was doing, those types of memories just aren't there.  Hell, I can't tell you what I did yesterday (that's not actually true, work let out early and I did some indoor plant work that I had been putting off). I am a Christmas nut believe it or not.  I am that guy that ran around the office at my corporate job dropping bottles of wine randomly on people I worked with desks.  I am pretty sure they knew it was me, but I didn't leave a note or card.  Why, I was hoping they felt that little tinge of magic.  The one I felt during the holidays.  See, it was all magical to me.  I don't allow myself to ...

  As I would expect, today's brain is not in the mood to harass me.  Smile at somebody today, it makes both of you feel better. -JJ (mmga I'm good)

I am going to take a quick break from the search for past greatness and just write about the now.  We are in the city (again).  I wish we had more time to explore and enjoy, but that isn't why we are here.  To say that this isn't great, would be true, but not totally.  I'm in a good room, actually more of a condo, nice veranda, and lots of ads on the TV for Leon Ellis's restaurant  Chocolat  (if you live around the city and watch cable you must have seen this commercial – it is on all the time!) and ultimately, I am with my wife which makes everything great.   We have come to NYC a lot in the last 3 years and outside of Saint Patrick's Cathedral we haven't done a lot of sightseeing.  You may think that all that is going on in my life that I look backwards all the time, thinking about "better times", but that isn't true.  To say the last 3 years have been hard would be a massive understatement, but many things have happened that I wouldn't wan...