Category: Thoughts
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The Mental Pain Of Change
Several weeks ago, my wife and I decided to go out for dinner and a movie. On our way, we drove by a soccer game between the state team and my wife’s school. A decision point came up: should we stop, change our plans and watch a soccer game instead of our previous plans? These…
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Poor Assumptions and Over Engineering
After arriving in Bogotá, we were flying back to Quito and I had a boarding pass with my seat number handwritten on the ticket. It appeared to say 8K and I thought, K?! — there is no such seat on a plane with only 6 seats across. But as an engineer, I have the ability…
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Confirmation Bias Fail
This summer, my wife and I traveled to Columbia. On our way from Medellin to Bogota, we showed up at the Medellin airport with plenty of time. The airport was closed down (no flights it seemed) due to massive amounts of fog and I made several assumptions: The plane hasn’t arrived yet from Bogita yet…
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Embracing Failure
When my parents were living in Sweden, my mom was studying Swedish and finally got up enough courage to try out some of her new learnings on the bus with a fellow passenger. She made a comment to the passenger in Swedish and the elderly woman turned to her and said (in English, very slowly…
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What Motivates Us
Recently, I read this study regarding whether rewarding altruism causes it to disappear, and it reminded me of the two other examples that illustrate that our motives tend to be far more complicated then things first appear. For example, Freakonomics discusses a day care center which decided to start charging parents extra if they picked…
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Resonance and Distortion
Ever listen to a song that you really like, I mean, REALLY like. The kind of song you just automatically reach for the volume to turn it up when you hear it. It resonates with you and evokes powerful emotions. But what happens when you turn it up past the point your speakers can handle:…
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What Do You Dwell On?
On a recent business trip, our CEO connected with a friend and shared some of the challenges that he has recently gone through. The friend shared that when he was going through a very difficult time in his life, he read an article that “changed his life”. As he recounted the content of the article,…
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Missing Experiences That Never Occurred
For some lighter reading, I have recently been reading “Ender In Exile” by Orson Scott Card. If you haven’t read, “Ender’s Game”, I highly recommend it, this book is really just filling in a little more in the story line and the more I think about it, is allowing Card to express some of his…
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Jaded Memories During Conflict
Per an earlier entry on remembering things we never noticed, another place where we struggle remembering reality is during conflict. Because we as humans tend to feel and remember losses far more than we remember gains, we are far more apt to remember the negative things in a relationship rather than the positive things. Incidentally, the…
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ATM Trustworthiness – A Caution
In spite of verging on being paranoid when using ATM machines, we apparently fell victim to a recent scam either involving a fake ATM machine or possibly some form of ATM Skimming. So, my recommendation is to use ATM’s only at known banks or in trusted locations and be on guard for any tampering with…