Nice Try Like everybody these days, my inbox and credit cards are inundated with fees for every service under the sun. The concept of micro fees and subscriptions has become a big issue in modern life. One of the reasons I subscribe to Rocket Money for $8.99/months is that they regularly remind me of all the small and large subscription fees I am being charged, which forces me to reexamine my services on a regular…
The Talented Mr. Trump Twenty-five years ago, a young Matt Damon, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow starred in a strangely interesting film called The Talented Mr. Ripley. The story was about an underachiever who has enough education and self-awareness to choose a course of action to improve his circumstances by committing dastardly deeds and assuming someone else’s personality and life. What makes the movie so eerie is that Tom Ripley seems like a polite and…
Kim’s Big Week Every once in a while I can’t help myself and I must write a story about my lovely Kim, the love of my life. Kim and I met in the summer of 2005. I was six months out of a three year relationship following my second marriage and only days since breaking it off with a woman I had met on match.com. I also met Kim on match.com under circumstances that always…
The Passage of Time Outside on our deck on the wall of the house where there are no windows, we have placed a large 30” metal wall clock. These days, large wall clocks with a certain artistic statement are not so unusual. You can buy one on Wayfair or any manner of online shopping site and have your choice of countless styles. We actually bought this particular clock to hang over the inside front door,…
April Panorama It’s hard to keep a perspective on the weather when you live in a place like San Diego. We are in our fifth year of living full-time on this hilltop and I am generally pretty happy about the weather overall, but more confused than not, especially at this time of year, about what is normal, what is abnormal and what is shifting. I will define the normal/abnormal axis as the cyclical swings of…
Jack of All Trades One of the oldest English expressions is “Jack of all trades” which dates back to Old English in 1390 when, during Medieval Times, it was considered a strength for a man to be knowledgeable and capable in several different skills. One might even suggest that since that was really the end of the Dark Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance, that the Jack of all trades may well have morphed…
I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Get Up There use to be a very funny commercial with some elderly woman on the kitchen floor pressing a small transmitting device that she wore around her neck which would announce to some emergency service or other that she had fallen in her home and that she was unable to get up. Naturally, there was nothing really funny about the situation since that happens all too often to the…
Moses and Wealth Yesterday, in honor of Holy Week, Netflix put on a three-part series about Moses. It was a dramatization of the well-known biblical story that starts with Moses’ birth to a poor Israelite family in Egypt, his dramatic adoption via the reed basket floated up the Nile and found by a royal princess despondent over the loss of her natural child. It spent little time reviewing Moses’ upbringing in the house of the…
Pixelating I understand the hierarchy of communications. It starts with the written word and moves to the spoken work (as in recorded). At the same time, the written word gives way to pictures, which then give way to video, which eventually gives way to live, real time video and audio interaction. It’s all very logical and its clear that involving more senses in the communicating process is almost always an improvement. The expression that a…
The World According to Rich I just had an exchange with my red, but supposedly anti-Trump friend Kevin. This is that text group that I have been engaged with for several years that used to be two Florida residents (read that was them being red in political orientation) and one too blue Californian (blue ex-New Yorker…same thing). We added another friend from Arizona, Steve, who is appropriately purple, less by political leaning and more by…