IEEE Consultants' Network of Long Island

We Are All In Trouble - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

I was recently a guest and visitor at a meeting of a local club where the owner of the club's accustomed meeting location was asking for an increase in the monthly meeting hall rental fee. Although I thought to myself that the group could probably support that increase, it seemed that many group members thought not. Therefore, a request was made by the group's president that members look around as best they could for an alternative site for future meetings.

At the following month's meeting, someone announced that they had found what might be such a site. However, when the particulars were recited for the membership, one man seated in the back took extreme and virulent exception.

With increasing loudness and stridency and seemingly all in one breath, that one man was calling out: "You don't know anything. You don't know anything. You don't know anything. You don't know anything. You don't know anything! YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING!!!!!"

I think that I have very rarely seen such an ill mannered, boorish and obnoxious display. The honest effort of that one member was totally demeaned and in the ensuing meeting disruption, the suggestion for a new venue got lost.

These days, "Shout 'em down!", "Shut 'em up!", "Throw 'em out!" mentalities and behaviors regarding even the most innocuous of matters seem to be growing more commonplace.

I think we are in very serious trouble.

The Bottle Cap - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

I found this little tidbit in a Snapple bottle cap. This "Real Fact" #196 is wrong.

The $5,368,709.12 figure taken in pennies equals 536,870,912 cents which is two to the 29th power, not two to the 30th power. The correct figures for thirty days would be 1,073,741,824 cents which comes instead to $10,737,418.24 or somewhat more than ten million dollars.

So what I'd like to know is, who does the Snapple research??

Long Range Planning - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

Yes, we were again wandering through the rose arbor at Old Westbury Gardens today and this time, I found the following: 

Now that is what I would call planning ahead.