First of all, I pray that everyone is having a great start to a great new year – 2010!  Don’t take a single day for granted, the year is what you make of it.  Just think, if we could all be as focused and productive each day, like we are at work (or school) on the last day prior to a long vacation or trip…we’d get so much done by the end of the year.  Secondly for those wondering about our annual potluck get-together, we purposely decided to avoid the busy Christmas/New Year’s period….right now, we’re looking at having it on a Saturday – a potluck lunch sometime in February.  I’ll let you folks know the place and time soon.  Should be lots of fun and we’ll have prizes and games as usual. Remember that old saying?…”Because the cells that make up the human body are dying and being replenished (at differing rates, depending upon the cell type) continuously, at the end of every seven year cycle, you’re a completely different person made up of completely different cells.”  As with everything else, there is a basic truth in that saying.  As I recall, the cells have varying lifetimes, ranging from blood cells [...]

Wow, it’ll be Christmas in a couple of days, with New Years to follow next week. Soon we enter 2010…the beginning of a new month, the beginning of a new year, the start of a new decade. To paraphrase my dad, “So much can happen in [ten] years.” The past decade seems to have just flown by. Ten years ago, in Dec 1999, I was the team lead for IBM service techs in the Pacific Area and we were all anxiously waiting to greet the new year…and new millenium, but for reasons beyond just holiday cheer. It was really a worrisome time for those of us in the computer business. I remember having to reluctantly cancel most everyone’s leave for a three month period: Nov through Jan, just to ensure that we were fully manned in the event that something went wrong during the transition to the new era – especially for computer systems. For months, I attended weekly regional conference calls to discuss the issues and prepare. It was the eve of Y2K and we were unsure as to how the changeover from 19XX would affect accounting systems and databases across the countless bytes of storage and computing that [...]

Wow, it’s October already (and sol hot/humid tonight!) so I suppose it’s time for another monthly note. I just read about Coach Shoji and his Wahine Volleyball team passing the 1,000 victory mark last week. It’s a testament to his coaching and recruiting abilities and his players, both current and past, praise his focus, consistency and life lessons they learned playing for him. I was also thinking that 1,000 wins is a testament to his ability to go through this process year after year, ever since he started way back in 1976 – such tenacity and longevity! There is only one other NCAA women’s volleyball coach who has reached this rare milestone; and I’m sure he shares many of the same abilities – not the least of which is, he has been coaching even longer than Coach Shoji. Folks sometimes think that longevity is a given…you do something, and voila, after so many years, you achieve longevity. Actually, depending upon the activity or task – like NCAA coaching – it can be a long haul. Longevity is so valued that they give out awards for it. I was let go from IBM Corp just six months short of making it [...]