Craig's Corner

Back in the dark ages my brother and I played “Pong” on the black-and-white television set in the family room.  The consoles had a variety of cables and it was so cool to convert the TV from its 5 stations (including UHF with the wire hanger) to this interactive game.  We played in the basement, right next to a real ping-pong table – somehow the zig zagging green dots were far more compelling than actually hitting a ball back and forth.  Despite my enthusiasm for Pong, in the 2014 modern age of technology I’m one of a handful of folks who haven’t gravitated towards games – and thus I had to go to Wikipedia  to learn what Angry Birds is all about.  With more than 2 billion downloads, and a full length movie coming next year, it’s clear that I’m out of the mainstream.  This week thanks to Edward Snowden, the Guardian and the New York Times , it came to light that the NSA is able to use third party ads to access user information of the games.  In addition to gathering meta-data on ce

I fell into a trap this week along with many others.   I saw a headline, clicked through and speed-read the summary of the article.   I then came to a series of conclusions based on the reporting, the source of the reporting and the context as presented.   In all it took less than a minute.   I set aside the link and the story – knowing it’d be great fodder for this week’s blog.   On the celebration of Martin Luther King’s birthday, President Obama said   “There’s no doubt that there’s some folks who just really dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black President.” His interview with The New Yorker continued:   “Now, the flip side of it is there are some black folks and maybe some white folks who really like me and give me the benefit of the doubt precisely because I’m a black President.”   These quotes are quite revealing from the nation’s first black President who has studiously avoided too much race-oriented discussions.   I was surprised to see this and easily  jum

I started learning Spanish in 7 th Grade.  My parents and older brother were second language French speakers ... so by choosing Spanish I was already setting myself apart as the rebel of the family.  I progressed reasonably well until my sophomore year in high school when the teacher conducted the class totally in Spanish.  I quickly adapted what I thought words should sound like in Spanish – becoming proficient in Spanglish, earning me low marks while brandishing cultural insensitivity.  My Spanglish was perfected during my time in Los Angeles.  I used to have an appropriate amount of embarrassment that I hadn’t mastered a foreign tongue, instead cobbling together words and phrases that ultimately are more gibberish than anything else.  Today I’m in good company.  According to the AssociatedPress : “the Spanish-language version of Healthcare.gov, is ‘so clunky and full of grammatical mistakes that critics say they must have been computer-generated.’ … ‘It’s written in Spanglish.’ 

2014 has started with startlingly frigid temperatures throughout much of the U.S..   In my nearly 25 years as a Californian I would rub it in at times like this.   Once, when I was running a division of a conglomerate that was headquartered in Minnesota with offices in New York and Santa Monica, I listened as folks complained about snow and wind chill.   I chimed in:   yea, getting the sand out of my shoes is always annoying.   Now that the shoe is on the other foot, it's even less amusing.   This week northern Minnesota   (and some other places) were actually colder than the surface of Mars (according to The Smithsonian ) .      As a Californian who spent 9 months in Minnesota, it was me who felt more of a Martian.   Outer space is where the political world is headed about the politicization of weather issues. Climate Change   – originally branded as Global Warming – is the phenomenon where “normal” weather patterns have changed and human abuse of the planet is the cau

My friends got married the other day.   The fact that they’re both male is somewhat noteworthy, but with Marriage Equality wending its way across the United States, less so.   That the ceremony took place aboard a Rose Bowl Float is what took the world by storm.   It’s a little surreal to be watching along with 80 million others when you actually know the people on the screen.  (And kudos to so many of the TV stations for not cutting away.)  The best way for me to celebrate their marriage and the start of a new calendar year is by introducing you to them.   I met Danny some 16 years ago.   He was hired (sight and resume unseen) by the owner of a client to take over my duties as I transitioned out of my role as day-to-day person and took on the role of a more traditional consultant.   Danny was younger than me, cuter and had a boyfriend.   Try as I might to dislike him for such things, I couldn't.  We immediately bonded.   He was eager to learn, had the smarts to pick