Work Less - Live Longer

A recent study has shown that if you work until you are 65 you will only live 18 more months, on the average, after retirement. Also, your creativity peaks at age 32.

With that in mind, I guess I am doomed to die young because I am not smart enough to retire.



Table 1 – Actuarial Study of life span vs. age at retirement.

Age at Retirement------------Average Age you'll Die
49.9----------------------------------86.0
51.2----------------------------------85.3
52.5----------------------------------84.6
53.8----------------------------------83.9
55.1----------------------------------83.2
56.4----------------------------------82.5
57.2----------------------------------81.4
58.3----------------------------------80.0
59.2----------------------------------78.5
60.1----------------------------------76.8
61.0----------------------------------74.5
62.1----------------------------------71.8
63.1----------------------------------69.3
64.1----------------------------------67.9
65.2----------------------------------66.8

I Spy

The other day I had to pick up my daughter from school and take her to the Orthodontist. When we got to her appointment a received a phone call from my boss stating that he needed some information that I had electronically. Fortunately, I had my laptop with me. Unfortunately, I didn't have an air card, as I was planning to work at home on our wireless network.

I didn't have time to drive all the way back to work or to drive home, so I did the next best possible thing. I drove around until I got a signal strong enough from some business's wireless network and emailed the information. I'm not sure what I think about that.

I do know that I felt like a secret agent spy sneaking around and tapping into some terrorist network to thwart a national security threat. (but was I one of the good guy spies?)

Has anyone had any similar type experiences?

Clean Hands and a Pure Heart

Emails will always come back to haunt you. Here is an email that was sent to me and others that was attached to a room being scheduled. unfortunately, it was intercepted by the librarian. The best case of "whoops" that I have ever seen.


Rex has graciously volunteered to bring down a bootleg copy of the movie he made for this year's Engineer's Conference. Bring your lunch to the library conf. room at noon, but make sure the Nazi Librarian doesn't see it. Or we could eat lunch at 11:30 and then go in and view the movie with clean hands and a pure heart. It's only 15 minutes long, but I scheduled an hour just in case we want to see it 4 times (if it's really good).


Now we know that big brother is always watching, because here is the intercepted reply:

I should warn you that the "Nazi Librarian" sees all, and prefers the "clean hands" and allegedly "pure heart" course of action. But she has been known to enjoy smacking around Anarchists who torch the rule book. So choose well.



Seig Heil!


(name withheld)

Nazi Librarian

I don't know when I laughed harder: when I got this email or when my friend had to pass the librarian when we went into the library conference room. Only one word comes to mind for my friend: BAAAAA! (sheepish sheep sound)

If at First...

They're Back! The little furry things with black and white stripes, and this time they have followed me to work. My office is out in the trailer trash section of our work complex, where we have set up a several modular units because we grew too large for our building. Now I realize that there is some benefits to dieting.

Well, a family of skunks have moved in under one of the units and they let us know every now and then that they are in the neighborhood by letting off a little squirt here and there. Well, even folks in my trailer trash part of the world had enough of that so they became determined to put an end to these skunk's doctrine of manifest destiny.

Of course they came to me to address the problem because the stories of my adventures with these wily critters have become legendary. Well, more specifically, the tales of my wife's release program have kept the crowds going at the water cooler. So obviously they demanded that my wife and I should team up to get rid of the skunks. I flatly refused. Not because I didn't think that I couldn't catch the little guys, on the contrary, I knew that I could, which was the problem. The difficulty being, as President Bush found out, is the exit strategy. I knew all about the shock and awe with the guns a blazing, but my removal strategies, though I think are quite efficient, have been criticized by the leftist media (my wife's blog).

So, I left our grounds crew supervisor on his own on this one, though, I did give him a lot of advise of actually how to proceed in the operation, of which he ignored most of. This was something that we all would soon regret.

First of all, he bought a trap that could have caught a bear. Oh boy, wouldn't that have been fun if we showed up one morning with a bear in our trap. I mean, a skunk could perform a highwire circus act in there, being able to wave his bushy little tail anywhere he darned well pleased. Next, he placed the trap down a long narrow corridor between buildings with only one way in and one way out. I guess he thought that it would be wise to corner these guys down a long dark alley. Obviously, he hadn't done his homework on war strategy. This may work with destroying tanks in urban warfare, but it only helps a skunk's howitzer when it only needs to aim it's barrel in one direction (effective use of foreshadowing and figurative language, my high school English teacher would be proud of me).

Thinking that this may cause some sort of problem for himself (but I think, not really realizing what this problem could be) he tied a rope onto the trap, leaving the untied end out in the open, out of the alley. Could he have been thinking, "hey, instead of walking up to this trap where I can be sprayed, I will pull the trap to me bouncing it over hard ground, with every tug bringing the trap ever so much closer to myself." Get the visual.

There's not much left to the story. The skunk was caught and the detonation occurred right under my window. Needless to say, we have not seen the grounds guy since then.

I guess this supports the change that I have made to an old adage, "if at first you don't succeed...DON'T BECOME A SKUNK TRAPPER!!!!

And BINGO Was His NAME-O

Once a year my work puts on an employee appreciation luncheon. It is an opportunity for our senior leadership to thank us for all of the hard work that we have shown in the last year, yada, yada, yada. You get the picture. Well, to liven everything up, a few years ago, I suggested that we play some BINGO. I was joking, but they took me seriously because they view me as mister fun and excitement. What can I say, I work with a bunch of engineers. They hired me on the spot and now year after year it is my job assigment to be the annual BINGO caller.


So tomorrow, I am hosting the seventh annual BINGO event. It has actually been kind of fun and I have added my own twists to it. Its kind of been a combination of 'deal or no deal', 'let's make a deal', 'the price is right', and 'the Apprentice' or was that 'the Bachelor'. Whatever ever it is, it is the one with the married guy acting single with the wacky hairdo. There is nothing like being able to fire your boss, even if it is pretend.



It is amazing to see that there is actually something that gets people more worked up into a frenzy than a 4:00 a.m. after Christmas sale at Walmart. All you need is a little gambling with free money. I usually get a pocket full of $1 bills donated to me that I use to try and buy some nice prizes back from the winners. It's amazing how someone will give up a $100 gift for 10-$1 bills.

Then I remember how these are the same people who voted in our last election and I get really depressed.

Hellenistic Lubrication 101

I walked in late to a meeting this morning. The first words that I heard were from a guy that I hadn't seen before, and he said, "To answer that question, we need to talk about the history of grease." This caught me as strangely funny, and it put a smirky smile on my face, but what made me almost bust a gut was that everyone in the room had an extremely serious look on their faces as if that statement was as common as Obama handing out stimulus checks.

You see this guy was a machine parts lubrication salesman making a pitch to our shop mechanics on the finer attributes of his product over his competitors. Kind of like a corporate version of the jr. high cheer, "we got spirit, yes we do, we go spirit, how 'bout you, and your stinky axle grease."

Has anyone ever noticed in your vocations or circle of peers, conversations, that if someone who was unfamiliar with what you do or haven't caught the original context of a conversation,would come across as really strange to the normal bystander?