Vampire Selfies

There's the expression 'they can't walk & chew gum at the same time.' I'm a bicyclist. I'm keenly traffic aware, meaning I monitor all cars around me. I have a mirror on my helmet for those behind me. Anyhoots, because I ride the roads so frequently, and slowly at 15-20 mph, I can see a lot. Quite often I see a car pulled over. Because I bike a few feet away I can easily view the driver. 100% of the time they're on their phone, just like in the pic. I see this, and so do you, probably every day. We used to think they're out of gas, but now we all know they're just yapping on their phone. Here's the problem(s) with this. Problem 1: Let's say your local or state law says ya gotta pull over to yap. Any (new) car sold in the last, what? 5 years? 8 years? has Bluetooth. Your phone has Bluetooth. You can actually talk through your car stereo! Yes, crazy I know. But true. Oh wait! Your car has no Bluetooth? Or you're not sure? Or yo

In downtown Chicago, pay attention which train you board

Dateline: 2014. Location, downtown Chicago. I was at some health care conference (yuk) for a couple days. I had several hours to kill between hotel checkout and my flight home. I decided to walk around for those 3 or so hours. Walked down to navy pier, around that area. It was really hot that day. I only brought wingtip dress shoes, that was a mistake. Walking around in the heat for a few hours. It's nice there, just hot, dehydrated, needed more water. Anyhoots, finally went back to hotel to pickup my carryon bag. So had that & a laptop bag. I'm wearing shorts, wingtips, & a blazer, for the shortish train ride to Midway airport, the orange line. Costs $3, great way to get there, no traffic etc. Picture in your mind: blazer, shorts, wingtips. Leather laptop bag. Carryon small suitcase. In downtown Chicago the 'El' train has many downtown platforms, 1 story up. Works great. The trains are color coded, easy to follow via the big maps on every platform. I was sitt

Why do women wear makeup?

At one of my other pure insanity work stops I've not yet written about, I talked my way into employment at (another) Seattle tech startup. The satellite office was in the western burbs of Mpls (Hopkins for your scorecard). There were 2 people working there in this office space over a Wells Fargo. By the time I left, 3 years later, there were over 20. This was due largely to me inking so many new accounts, I was grossing 7 figures in year 2 (from zero). Let's focus. Most of the new hires were freshly college graduated females, hired as project managers, which mainly meant working with their counterparts in Bulgaria. Figure, 5 blokes, 15 birds in the office. I wasn't doing the hiring btw. Ergo, working with a flock of birds in their early 20s. One of the smartest was a rock star kind of pm, unflappable, great w/clients, etc. However, for me distracting oddity was this: she wore so much makeup it was like a weird parody. It was caked on. She once told me she got up at 5am or s