Well, another year of Pitt basketball, and another one-and-done tournament exit. It’s becoming a disturbing trend. Pitt has not made an appearance in the second half of the NCAA tournament since 2009 when they lost to Villanova in the Elite 8. Here’s a look back on this past season, and some thoughts on what lies ahead.
I’ll admit that I’ve been a long-time admirer of Southwest’s business model. As I’ve written in the past, they are a model of operational efficiency. I’ve always experienced top notch customer service, both on the ground and in the air, when I’ve flown with them. Their fares are always competitive, and often the lowest on the routes they fly. I’ve been impressed with Southwest as both an observer of their operations and as a passenger on their planes.
I got my first exposure to them through a case study I read in the mid-nineties while in business school at UCLA. The case study exposed and dissected their operational efficiencies. Shortly thereafter, as I began traveling regularly for business, I got to experience the flight experience first hand. I would watch with interest how quickly they would turn planes when they landed. I would notice how the little things they did allowed them to best the competition – things such as open seating, flying 737’s exclusively, handling their own reservations, and flying to the smaller airports in a city. I’ve always been interested in learning more about how the company was run.
A couple of years back while reading The Startup Playbook, one of the interviews in the book mentioned Nuts by Kevin and Jackie Freiberg. It was presented as a way to learn how Southwest has used culture to build a great company and to deliver outstanding service. Given my desire to learn more about Southwest’s business practices. I added it to my reading list. It took some time, but it finally reached the top.
Opening up LinkedIn today, I see 77 pending invitations to “join” someone’s network. The problem with these invitations is that I generally don’t have a clue who these people are. It’s time. Something has to give.
I’m always on the lookout for books to add to my reading list, even though it continues to grow faster than my reading pace. Case in point – near the end of 2014, I saw a post on one of my favorite tech blogs Gizmodo titled “Bill Gates’ favorite books of 2014 are the smart gifts for the holidays“. The top book on his list was The Rosie Effect, which was the Graeme Simsion’s sequel to The Rosie Project. It didn’t neatly fit into one of my typical reading genres of science fiction or business biographies, but being it was at the top of Gates’ best books for 2014, I figured it must be decent, so I added it to my reading list. Well, it took over a year, but The Rosie Effect finally made it to the top of the queue. Since I don’t like starting with the sequel, I figured I should start out by reading The Rosie Project first. Quite honestly, despite being highly recommended, I don’t personally know Bill Gates, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.
I moved to Southern California almost 25 years ago. Shortly after my arrival, I watched the movie Singles. It’s about a group of twenty-somethings living in Seattle and starred younger versions of Bridget Fonda, Kyra Sedgwick, and Matt Dillon. It was right around the time that the rock bands Nirvana and Pearl Jam were reaching their peak, and the grunge scene was all the rage. It was a great movie that I related to at the time, and the movie soundtrack, which featured Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Sreaming Trees, and The Smashing Pumpkins, was awesome (I still have the CD somewhere, I think).
After watching the movie, I had a burning desire to visit the city of Seattle. It seemed like such a cool place from the movie, and everyone I talked to reinforced my view. I had planned to visit, but life got in the way. I got busy with work, then with a family, and then started doing heavy travel for my job. My travel took me all over the world – Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, New York City, Washington DC, Tokyo, Shanghai, Paris, Munich, Hong Kong, Sydney – but Seattle remained an elusive destination at the top of my list of places I wanted to visit.
Finally, after nearly 25 years of waiting, I got to visit last November with my second daughter Courtney during a visit to the University of Washington. Courtney set up plans to see the school on a Monday, so we left a day early and spent Sunday touring the city. I wasn’t sure what to expect and was concerned that I would be let down. I wasn’t. It was awesome. We saw a lot with our one day (or so) in the city. Here’s a sampling of what we did.
As I prepare to send my third child off to college, I’m seeing costs for colleges that are out of this world and rising. Here are the projected costs for one-year of tutition, room and board at various four year colleges:
So when I see an article like this about universities spending obscene amounts of money on athletic facilities, it makes me wonder if the university system has lost it way. Are these institutions of higher learning, or are they owners of professional sports franchises?
When I got serious about blog reading, Seth Godin’s blog was among the first I added to my reader. While I’ve added and dropped a lot of blogs since I started reading, Seth’s has always been a port of my daily reading routine. What’s impressive is that he has posted every day since I started following him many years ago without missing one. single. day. Even more impressive is the quality of his content. So when Seth Godin says that the best book he read in 2014 was Whiskey Tango Foxtrot by David Shafer, I figured that I should add it my reading list. It took me a while to get to it, but it finally crested the top of my reading list and was the book I chose to kick-off my reading in 2016.
In 2015, I set four main fitness goals around working out, walking, physical activity, and diet. I’ll get into the details below, but it was a great year as far as goals were concerned. In fact, it went so well, that I’m not planning to make too many changes in 2016. Here’s a look at the results from last year and the goals for 2016.
2015 marked my third full year of blogging. I started the blog in November 2012. Since that time through the end of 2015, the blog has hosted over 45K sessions from over 35K users. I realize this is peanuts compared to the daily traffic of some sites (Facebook probably does that every 5 minutes), but it’s better than the traffic of most personal blogs.
Here’s a look at 2015, a few lessons I learned, and what I’m hoping to accomplish in 2016.
In 2015, I came up a little short of my goal to read 36 books, 33 of which were supposed to come off of my 2015 reading list. I managed to get through 25, which was down from my 2014 number of 27 books read.
For this year, I’ve decided to set a slightly less aggressive goal of reading 30 books. It’s still above my high mark of 27 books in one year, but I figured I should set the bar high and see if I can get there.
I’ve put together a list of 25 books that I’d like to complete this year. I didn’t chose all 30, as I’m sure that a few will jump the queue as the year progresses. For example, 8 books jumped the queue in 2015, and 8 also jumped the queue in 2014.