Mark’s Bloomin’ Journal

This is just wrong, this getting up at 3.30AM. No way is this enough sleep…to go anywhere on, let alone PDX airport and then another airport and onto yet another airport somewhere, someplace halfway down the globe. But then I have invited it upon myself as for a few years I have angled for a trip to Quito, especially if it falls during the school year! Delta’s middle seats are no better than awful, especially when the people sitting either side of you ooze both over and under the seat arms and into your already meager space. It really is too bad that at the very last second an alert ticket agent (who, doing the math at five in the morning finds me five months shy of being age enough to take my assigned seat in the exit row…despite my being near six feet tall and far more athletic than the portly sloth now assigned to it). Portland recedes and Atlanta approaches and then comes Quito but only after being treated to a beautiful sunset as we transect the Florida Keys above Islamorada (more…)

A recent WSJ article focused on the increasing frequency of children accompanying a parent on business trips. I for one, attempt to rope in one or other of my children on business trips as I really enjoy their company, it is an invaluable opportunity to have conversations otherwise never broached, it reinforces the understanding that money really does not grow on trees and at the same time as I formulate views and opinions on what I see and hear I can bank on the unvarnished insite of a party with a vested interest and refreshing point of view. All this over dinner in some far flung spot when eating alone is so obviously not what I wish or enjoy. (more…)

My kind of a day, being the last day of the month, on the cusp of Mother’s Day and the May issue of Good Housekeeping giving us a much appreciated accolade. It is to be found on page 130, in a section titled “The Goods”. The long and the short of it being that GHRI tested four big name delivery services with the help of consumer panelists and Mille Fiori Flowers in NYC. Purchasing bouquets as similar as possible and within the same price point the article concludes with the following;

Bottom Line: The only service we recommend is Flowerbud.com. Its bouquets arrived in good condition and lasted for seven days.

Short, sweet and to the point. I love it, while at the same time thinking I might give my eye teeth to know the identity of the three also rans. Remember, my mission is that you do not have to find out!

Well well well, despite the much vaunted ability to withstand the assaults of a multitude of perverse minded geeks and hackers it looks like one of the worlds most vaunted fruits may have finally succumbed to a 21st century scourge. Strange timing as around these parts of the pacific northwest our orchards are only just through with blossoming and as the blossoms give way to leaves and fruit set the quality of the end results are as yet unknown and far away. Not so with a crop from the last few years, even in storage and disbursment the results have been juicy and the purchasers duly sated. However as we dig deeper into that barrel it becomes obvious that the apple has indeed been infected by worm (s). Tough at first …to identify this bad bug… and apply an insecticide of the correct efficacy, as it seems to have come from within the fruit itself.

The worm has a big time name… Steve Jobs, if former CFO Fred Anderson’s revelations are indeed held to be true. Apparently the already super wealthy and super arrogant can’t keep themselves from boring further into a fruit’s juicy accounting to further enrich themselves, possibly at the expense of those who would then make financial judgments from books that would be considered “cooked”. (more…)

There are but a few really useful things that help us operate with ease, efficiency, and dare I say it, an element of pleasure in our day to day business lives… and do they ever stand out amidst all the other clutter, gizmos and tools we might be persuaded to surround ourselves with.

No doubt it is to each his own but my short list, a list growing shorter with every aging day starts as it always has with a bicycle, any bike equiped with the exquisite elegance of Shimano Dura Ace and that list now ends with my latest acquisition of real usefulness, namely a GPS. In between of course lies the Blackberry! Not just any old fruit, rather a vintage one dating to when the devices truly represented “Guelph genius”. When they ran seemingly for ever on a AA, sat snugly in the palm or pocket and had no pretensions to be a telephone, a game boy or a way to view loosing stock.. these were the 8/900 series. (more…)