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De-LAYED!

Flight was delayed almost two hours because a passenger had a breathing device that wasn’t cleared to fly. One of the stewardesses was the first person to notice that the device might need to be checked out, which is a little late in the process.

Having seen enough of the passengers shamble up the aisle to the restroom, I’m convinced that we were actually loading up on extra fuel.

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Leaving (for) Las Vegas

I haven’t been to Vegas since January 2004, when I helicoptered into the Grand Canyon and was stage-side for a Tom Jones concert at the MGM, but I’m 70 minutes from boarding my flight to this year’s ISPE conference in the Unreal City!

This trip should be less eventful than that last one, mainly because I’ll only be in the city for about 65 hours, and I’ll have to sleep for part of that. Also, the exhibit hall hours start at 7:15am on Monday & Tuesday. Ouch.

Some business-related pals will also be at this show, so I foresee some decent dining (and some drunken football-viewing and -betting that will happen on Sunday). That said, Vegas itself isn’t conducive to my kinda picture-taking, so I doubt there’ll be a great Flickr set coming out of this trip. But if there is, you’ll be the first(ish) to know.

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Go as you pay

Here’s the lede from a story in this morning’s NYTimes:

Senate Democrats face an agonizing choice in the days ahead: find a way to raise at least $50 billion in new taxes, or undermine their most important rule [“pay as you go”] for enforcing budget discipline.

I find it telling that “don’t spend so much” doesn’t seem to be one of their choices.

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Trash day

In my favorite movie, the lead says, “They probably had grifter parents and grifter grandparents and someday they’ll each spawn little grifter kids.”

My parents weren’t grifters; they’re packrats. And that trait, I’m sorry to say, has passed on to me. At home, I’ve held on to far too many oddball mementoes over the years. (Can you call something a memento if you can’t remember where you got it?)

I’m the same way at work. Things pile up. Fortunately, much of what I handle now is digital, and storage space is pretty cheap. I can get a little lost among files, but I’ve learned to organize my work-materials pretty well. Of course, I wasn’t always like that, and I’ve been loathe to throw something out “in case I need it,” which is probably the same rationale my parents have. In their case, you can sorta explain things in terms of coming of age in postwar Europe & Israel. Me? No excuses.

Today I decided that this really had to change. I looked around my office and concluded that I will never refer to most of the annual reports, meeting brochures, economic studies, business magazines, and conference guides that have piled up. And so, after the loose paper went into the recycling bin, I managed to generate a pile of trash that was nearly as tall as my wife: