Workaholistic Repose Fixation on retirement seems to take three forms from my observation. The first is the most obvious that people who are looking forward to retiring are usually very fixated on the financial preparation for the blessed event and all the lifestyle issues associated therewith. Finding that perfect spot with the right weather to suit your temperament and presumably the right pace and proximity to civilization to fit your expectations of how you will…
Time Warping The folks at 23andMe always like to surprise me about what they can give me for value added from one little swab of spit taken from me several years ago (probably three or four years). They are regularly using my chromosomal blueprint to cross-reference me to new and distant members of my family that I have little or no interest in connect with. But they also like to make observations about my lifestyle…
Teaching in the Modern World In my backyard at my Ithaca house, the house I call Homeward Bound because it adjoins the Cornell University campus where my mother, all of my children and I all attended, there sits a wonderful rock and copper life-sized statue of a reclining Socrates, decked out in full toga, teaching his students most emphatically with hand gestures and such. This always struck me as the epitome of the Socratic Method…
Zoomsday When I was preparing to move out here to San Diego, I wondered a lot about what I would be doing to fill my days. I was technically coming out here with a job, but it was a deferred salary job that may or may not have lasted very long. I had been retained by one client for expert witness services through the team with which I had enlisted, but had no idea whether…
Frazzled On Wednesday I think I pushed Handy Brad too far. He had worked through the weekend to get necessary things done in the garage. This included painting the walls now that the epoxy floor was in and, as a last-minute, but logical, addition to the to do list, the laying of industrial rubber baseboards to finish off the intersection of new floor and newly painted walls. I must admit, what started as a practical…
August Doldrums I just sat at my desk and realized that my New Yorker calendar was still showing June. How did that happen? Well, I guess that means I’ve had a busy summer and while it has involved a lot of work of many types, it has mostly just sort of slid by without me formally sitting at my desk and keeping things refreshed, like my calendar. Today is Thursday and that means trash…
Teaching the Unteachable I am getting that prickly feeling after six months of planning to teach a course in late September. I am six weeks away from the first lecture, but I have been through this drill and I know how many hours of preparation is required for each scheduled hour of lecture. Experienced professors will tell you they can get it down to 4-5 hours of preparation. When I started teaching in 2007 at…
The Work Day I find myself in full-on, task-oriented, deadline and goal-oriented mode. All it takes is a specific project like my latest expert assignment and a tight timeframe and I am at my desk first thing in the morning, working until my iPad runs low on juice (~4 hours), taking a break to check in on my other responsibilities ranging from my scientific R&D company to my teaching gig to the various projects I…
On Your Mark We are lying in a comfortable king-size bed in the Edgewood Lodge on Lake Tahoe in Stateline, Nevada. It is a full-service resort, which has all the trappings of a Four-Star resort. The gatehouse with guard, the valet parking only, the vaulted yet modern lobby that screams Lake Tahoe and the magnificent views from its lakeside perch. When we check in we get a cute silk gauze bag with hand sanitizer and…
Amazon on My Mind It is said that when Jeff Bezos was taking his now-famous cross-country trip to move to Seattle, he wrote the business plan for his new business idea. That idea was to build the world’s biggest bookstore using this new concept that was gaining traction in 1994, the Worldwide Web. The internet and its packetization of information across large and remote data networks had been building in the defense and academic worlds…