In the movie Wall Street, when invited to lunch by Charlie Sheen, Gordon Gekko replies "Lunch is for wimps."
 
I lived through the late eighties and well into the nineties absolutely loving that line! Hell, I must have used it thousands of times since I originally heard it.
 
I loved it for all of the following reasons:

• I thought it was a very cool line.
• I believed it.
• It’s all about not wasting time (which is even more important once you have a wife, kids, and cancer).

For one thing, I have learned how to slow down and smell the roses. Cancer alone will take care of this. I’ve also learned that one can indeed conduct business over a meal ... especially if that meal is with someone whose company is enjoyable. But in spite of my "growing up," I remain a guy who basically feels that lunch is a huge momentum-breaker that not only requires one to re-start his or her engine, but who also must spend a great deal of time in transit. Time that could much more readily be spent at the end of the day with one's family and/or good friends.
 
But even more important, is the fact that the individual who is inviting me to lunch would even suggest this as a worthwhile place to conduct a "first date." Why? Well, here are a few reasons:

First off, lunch is more or less a standardized "block" of time. One hour? Ninety minutes? Whatever it is, it is pre-packaged in a way that commits both parties to a set amount of time at a very set physical locale.

So, if either party fails to impress, someone is going to suffer. They will sit there, quietly chomping their food and even more quietly working up a lathered mad; wondering how they were so willingly horn-schwaggled into somebody's misguided idea of a good time!

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I woke up this morning with a song burning in my head. It was Yakety-Yak, by The Coasters – circa 1958.

I couldn’t get the lyrics to this tune out of my brain.

“Take out the papers and the trash,
or you don’t get no spending cash.
Get all this garbage out of sight,
or you don’t go out Friday night.”

And so on.

Next, I turned on my shower radio (a must for a Type A personality) to hear a talk-show host interviewing a man whose son had been terrorized by a gang of teenagers. They assaulted his nine-year old kid, swiping his bike as a trophy for their miscreant behavior.

The father was furious and pledged to move out of the city of Pittsburgh, “even if I have to just walk away from my house.” He went on to recount “many” such assaults and crime in an area of the city that is being “run by teenage thieves and gangsters whom the cops themselves fear.” He cited others whose homes and families had been victims of these “parentless punks” and wondered aloud “Just how can this be?”

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Just the other day, I was headed out the door for a few days of R&R in Florida. Being (somewhat) fastidious by nature, I decided to have one last look at my e-mail before leaving. Big mistake. For the in-bound e-mail that I found myself staring at was one of those "conundrum-class" messages.

The e-mail was from someone who dreamed of building their own company.  Already possessing an undergraduate degree, the question was if I thought it would be worthwhile and beneficial for this person to get an MBA.  They felt that it could give them more opportunities and would be good to have to fall back on as a ‘safety net.’

To which I responded:
 
It's late as hell, and I'm headed to Florida for vacation in a matter of hours and so I was just shutting down my computer when I saw your e-mail!
 
Damn! Why did I have to read it? But you have touched on one of my pettest of peeves.
 
So ... first off, please understand that I earn at least part of my living and ALL of my health benefits by teaching at Duquesne. And since I have cancer, these health bennies are really important to me!
 
And, I firmly believe in formal education.
 
But when it comes to MBA's, well ...

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As regular listeners to the show already know, about ten weeks ago, the Technology Council (why can I not seem to get over calling it the High Technology Council?) finally hired Steve Zylstra’s replacement.  Her name is Audrey Russo, and she has a diverse background in manufacturing and R&D.

She is an outsider (New York City raised with time spent in both Philadelphia and other east coast locales) and a self-described “bomb thrower”. Apparently, the Tech Council’s Executive Board (hell, the full board is some 45+ people - how could they be expected to render any decisions?), and after four consecutive “white breaders”, figured it was probably time to break the pattern.

I interviewed her on February 23rd and found her to be aggressive, smart, and “most likely to alienate” at least half of the Tech Council’s ruling class.  In my mind, this is precisely what is needed. But could I have read Audrey wrong?

So far, no significant announcements have come from the council --- I guess that I was probably being overly optimistic, vis-à-vis any immediate and dramatic changes being made --- but it is of course still very early in her regime. I plan on meeting again with Audrey, perhaps in early summer, to review overall progress.

During my interview with Ms. Russo, I repeatedly asked her exactly what plans she had to change the scope of the clearly moribund council while being saddled with a small operating budget, stagnating membership, and no real product to market (unless one considers the Council’s health insurance buying power to be a significant differentiator).  Her reply was, “Well, we first need to get out there and listen to what our members want.”

Hmmm.  Sound like any of ten thousand politicians you’ve heard before?

What if instead, Audrey had said

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