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I learned my lesson

I was about to leave the supermarket parking lot. A lady tapped on my window with a concerned look on her face. “Did you know that it’s unsafe to drive while listening to headphones?”

My reply: “Thanks for letting me know.”

Inside my head: “I know that. I’m driving extra carefully while I have these on. And did you know that deaf people drive too?”

The lesson I learned? I often have the urge to tap on people’s car windows while they are sitting with their engine running for long periods of time and say, “I have to breathe this air. Would you mind turning your engine off?”

I won’t.

Reason? That lady made me feel angry toward her. I don’t want people to feel angry toward me – and they may not change, anyhow, so it would just be a waste of my (ahem) breath.

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Humility looks good on you

(This is one of those blog posts that has been rolling around in my head for a couple of weeks.)

We were visiting some friends overseas. One of them said, “That’s not how we pronounce that here – that’s only how it’s pronounced in America.”

At the time I thought, “Oh, I just didn’t know that.” But later, I realized how that friend made me feel stupid.

I’ve done that many times. “I’ve been there, and that’s not the way it really is.” Or, “It’s bad because there’s such a better way that it’s done in England, where we lived.”

I hope I lean toward humility and not toward arrogance. And I try to remember what C.S. Lewis once said: “If you think you’re not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.” I have a long way to go.

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Graceland

If you are ever going to be in Memphis, I would highly recommend a visit to Graceland. I’m not a big fan of Elvis, but it was fascinating to tour his home.

My favorite part was when we passed by the family graves. The tour guide lowered her voice as if we were going to wake him. She was giving reverence, like someone would give to a god.

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An early SUV

Digging through boxes last weekend, I came across this drawing from yours truly – circa a long time ago.

Yes, I did invent the idea of SUVs. (Sadly, the royalty payments are way behind.)

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Big corporations do adapt

Big corporations get a bad rap. But the stereotypes are not always true.

(Yes, McDonalds does offer packets of seaweed in other parts of the world than the USA.)

Thanks to a former colleague of mine, who brought that back to me after their travels to another part of the planet.

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Vertical addresses

In the UK, addresses are more vertical than in the USA.

(This was from a fax that came through to the office I worked at in England from 1995-1998.)

In Nairobi, Kenya, Africa, where Heather and I lived for five years, there are no street addresses. And that’s a city of 3-4 million people. There are street names but not building numbers. You have to ask good directions to find a place.

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Improve your Facebook

Helpful Facebook controlsMany of the people I hang out with use Facebook. Not all know about a great way to stem the flow of messages coming into your stream…

Undoubtedly some of your Facebook friends who are not those you want to hear about every single day of the week. And likely, a few of your Facebook friends are not really friends – but you don’t want to “unfriend” them and cut them off forever.

All you have to do is hover your mouse over the right edge of their latest post. A little X will magically appear. You can choose to hide that individual post, hide all posts by that person or by application (like if they are always telling you of their latest Farmville triumph) – or if you really don’t like them, you can mark their post as spam.

I fault Facebook for not making this option more obvious. I thank them for the anonymity of that control.

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