It seems like every day, that’s a bit hyperbolic, that we have history making or record-setting events. We have temperatures I can barely pronounce we just got over an attempt to overthrow the US government. Call in some wildfires, some treason global warming and we have record-setting, history making events popping up every single week.

I guess it’s my privilege speaking, it would be nice to have a normal non record breaking day. That would be epic ..

I was standing in the yard yesterday, doing some thing in a haze 104° sunshine. The world felt surreal such that it was spinning around without me.

A hummingbird buzzed in my ear and it startled me at first. I felt bad for them with it being this hot. Just as I feel bad for our children as we pass on this heated world.

Hummingbird seemed thankful for the food, yet seemed to be asking me what exactly are you doing with this planet. That’s a really good question and I wish I had the solution. But I promise you little hummingbird, I shall keep your food clean and abundant to the best of my abilities. Autumn is out there trust me

Here we sit and this is a real world with temperatures above 110° with little relief in sight. I’m sorry to say in my opinion, this is the new normal. And I don’t like it. I’m not the type person who does not like progress Not the type, to pine for the good old days. That’s true up until now. It was nice to have just a little period of normal. That could be fire flies in the evening Or a thunderstorm if you are a denizen of the East Coast.

I remember moving to the West Coast and my first summer here the temperature could not get above 80 once. That was in Seattle where the temperatures are a little different but still I enjoyed cool summers having moved from the East Coast. I did not have an air conditioner as they were not necessary.

Here I sit 150 miles down the coast with the air conditioning blasting away. The temperatures going to top out at about 110° today. I don’t even know what that feels like.

I watched a monarch butterfly fly without reason or care in our backyard. It seems so out of place, as they are endangered as well. It seemed to have a look around and say these humans are screwed up. The hummingbirds seem to agree, as a robon frolicked in the bird-feeder.

Who knows, maybe there’s a semblance of normal still going on every single day. And who knows, we as humans may get pur act together miraculously And have normal things just be normal. I have no solution at the present time other than that simple harebrained idea.

In the short term, the last thing we need is your patriotic son of bitch is showing your patriotism by lighting up fireworks. Cool your patriotism for now let’s get through these few weeks. Namaste

Back in grad school, I was actually one of the more elite marketing students in the graduate program at William and Mary. Not in finance, accounting but in actual marketing. I never did anything with the latter.

I was struggling with two of my teammates on a group project where we competed using generic similar products (SIMI SIBI) vying for marketshare and increased sales. It was a computer simulation and we were doing horribly. After two weeks, we trailed the rest of the class by a considerable margin.

We had a check in after a couple weeks and our professor listened to our presentation and offered us this sage advice.

Read the fucking directions

Our next group session that was our first order of business to read those directions. Admittedly, it was something we never did.

After we read the directions our team started doing marketably better. We eventually ended at the top of the class. We had figured out capitalism. Read the fucking directions it’s all there is to capitalism.

Of course that sentence is hyperbolic nonsense but it’s a good start in the right direction. What brought me here is a common mistake made when implementing software. This is what I’m doing right now, and I actually remembered I didn’t read the directions I just assumed that’s how it worked. And guess what reading the directions certainly helps.