Author: chuck goolsbee

Car Photo Of The Day.

That’s the Glace brothers, in an XK 140 MC FHC (IIRC… heh, sorry couldn’t resist that temptation) in the 2001 Forza Amelia Vintage Rally. Yours truly is in the foreground, enjoying my first ever ride in a 300sl as we depart Amelia Island for St. Augustine.

Somehow Highway 1A1 up the east coast lacks a certain je ne sai quois, of the equivalent routes here on the west coast. Go figure.

Housekeeping

OK, so the sharp-eyed among you may have noticed a bit of a shake-up in the blogroll.

I’ve removed a couple of links. Bill Dickson’s server died, so he’s gone 404. I also removed Peter Lalor, since he actually died last October. I figured it was time to retire his link. Not that I’ll forget him or anything, just that his website is for all intents and purposes static. On that note I was staring at my iChat buddy list today and realized I have three dead people on it. 2006 was a hard one for me in that respect as I lost three good people. I don’t know why I chose today to remove them from my binary interfaces… it just happened. Oh well.

Anyway, I added some other links. Other friends, other websites I read, etc. Car stuff of course. Some datacenter links too. I read this stuff every day as it is the industry I live and work in. Some of you may find it interesting… or not. Just more stuff that when concatenated is chuck goolsbee.

A good quote

I don’t recall who steered me towards this movie, but I watched it last night. It was a “not bad” flick, well worth the slot in my netflix queue.It contained a quote that sums up well my issue with “Reasoned Discourse, or the lack therof.

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re selling Jesus or Buddha or civil rights or ‘How to Make Money in Real Estate With No Money Down.’ That doesn’t make you a human being; it makes you a marketing rep. If you want to talk to somebody honestly, as a human being, ask him about his kids. Find out what his dreams are – just to find out, for no other reason. Because as soon as you lay your hands on a conversation to steer it, it’s not a conversation anymore; it’s a pitch. And you’re not a human being; you’re a marketing rep.”

Bingo. People are wary, and have grown quite weary, of being sold to. It isn’t that they are interested in your ideas, so much as SELLING theirs.

Vonnegut turns the last page….

RatcliffeBlog—Mitch’s Open Notebook: Vonnegut turns the last page….

I just now learned via Mitch’s blog that Kurt Vonnegut has died. Very sad.

His gentle humor inspired me as a young adult. My son Chris has become as voracious a reader as I was at his age. I’m compelled now to create a care-package of Vonnegut books to send to him in Chile. That is probably the best thing I could do to honor Vonnegut’s memory.

I actually had the pleasure of attending a lecture by Vonnegut, ironically at Texas Tech when I was a student there. He was wonderfully entertaining and very informative. He spoke as well as he wrote. There are several passages from his books which are firmly lodged in my imagination, particularly from Deadeye Dick, Slaughterhouse Five, and Galapagos. They spring into my thoughts constantly and make me smile, or ponder.

Goodbye Mr. Vonnegut.