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He was introduced to us as “Charley, an old-time key logger,” an introduction that seem to both amuse and annoy him. “Thanks, I guess, Carol, Did you really have to put in the “old-time” bit…
He was introduced to…
He was introduced to us as “Charley, an old-time key logger,” an introduction that seem to both amuse and annoy him. “Thanks, I guess, Carol, Did you really have to put in the “old-time” bit? These folks can see I’m old just by looking at me.” “Oh, sorry Charley,” Carol from HR laughed, blushing a bit, “But I hope he tells you some stories about being a jam-breaker.” Charley didn’t look like a lumberjack. He was about five-nine, slight of build, and lean in a hard sort of way. He was bald with the gray fringe buzz-cut short except for a little forelock which stood strai…
Alan Cay Culler
January 19, 2025 
Some life lessons we are meant to learn. . . over. . . and over again. Not long ago I wrote about patience. I quoted a one-time client, who didn’t take well to my advice to “Be Patient.” “Pa…
Some life lessons we…
Some life lessons we are meant to learn. . . over. . . and over again. Not long ago I wrote about patience. I quoted a one-time client, who didn’t take well to my advice to “Be Patient.” “Patient?! Alan, the world was not built by patient men!” I went on to note that high performing entrepreneurs and inventors were not known as the soul of patience. Neither, I suppose, are military leaders. It is hard to imagine General Patten, Napolean, or Genghis Khan, being described as patient. I have in my life been patient, sometimes with children, sometimes too much with people who were beha…
Alan Cay Culler
January 12, 2025 
The post Change: Alarms and Indicators appeared first on Wisdom from Unusual Places.
The post Change: Ala…
The post Change: Alarms and Indicators appeared first on Wisdom from Unusual Places.
Alan Cay Culler
January 6, 2025 
This post will send in the wee hours o’ New Year’s Eve 2024. Here, in the good ole US of A, New Year’s Eve is amateur alcoholics night, when teetotalers, and even those with a serious drinking…
This post will send …
This post will send in the wee hours o’ New Year’s Eve 2024. Here, in the good ole US of A, New Year’s Eve is amateur alcoholics night, when teetotalers, and even those with a serious drinking problem, know to leave the roads to those idiots who binge drink once a year, loud-singing the Robert Burns anthem, “Should auld acquaintance be fergot an’ nev’r braught ta maieend, . . .” followed by sloppy kisses and hugs. The still slightly sober may ask, “What the hell does “Auld Lang Syne” mean anyway?” To which a more pedantic tippler-friend may answer, “Old long seen, or …
Alan Cay Culler
December 28, 2024 
It is the Winter Solstice. In the cold we huddle around the fire, joined in our communities. At the dark time of year, when the days are short, we celebrate the light. During this time I often imagine…
It is the Winter Sol…
It is the Winter Solstice. In the cold we huddle around the fire, joined in our communities. At the dark time of year, when the days are short, we celebrate the light. During this time I often imagine ancient peoples in their shelters, with a roof smoke hole above the fire, bringing evergreen boughs inside, so the green reminds them that spring will come again. I even wrote a song about this fantasy called Deep Winter’s Night. I was encouraged in this fantasy first by the Megalithic monument Stonehenge oriented towards the Summer Solstice. I felt that these people in 2500 BCE were quite attu…
Alan Cay Culler
December 21, 2024 
It has been almost one year since I published Traveling the Consulting Road: Career Wisdom for New Consultants, Candidates, and Their Mentors. This year has been gratifying and humbling. It has been g…
It has been almost o…
It has been almost one year since I published Traveling the Consulting Road: Career Wisdom for New Consultants, Candidates, and Their Mentors. This year has been gratifying and humbling. It has been gratifying because a significant number of people have bought the book. Amazon data shows that my book sold more copies than 90% of self-published books. It also sold slightly more than the average number of copies for all self-published books. This is humbling. Clearly this distribution is very skewed with a very long tail. Many books do not break double digits; a significant number are under 100 …
Alan Cay Culler
December 15, 2024 
“People say I should have known. Maybe. There was that thing at the holiday party, but he was really drunk. The girl was drunk too, by the way. And anyway everybody agreed to drop it and she got ano…
“People say I shou…
“People say I should have known. Maybe. There was that thing at the holiday party, but he was really drunk. The girl was drunk too, by the way. And anyway everybody agreed to drop it and she got another job soon after, so everything worked out. “He was such a sick programmer, I mean, really elegant code, everybody said so. And the dude was a machine. He totally saved the Techniche voice chat bot project, – made the delivery in three days. People said he was mainlining Red Bull, ‘n’ the client said the bot was like talking to a real person. That Indian accent thing was complete magic,…
Alan Cay Culler
December 7, 2024 
The young one had a map of sorts, mostly a list of turns drawn on birchbark – arrow left at the big oak, right after the log bridge, and so on. The path was long for one so young, winding through a …
The young one had a …
The young one had a map of sorts, mostly a list of turns drawn on birchbark – arrow left at the big oak, right after the log bridge, and so on. The path was long for one so young, winding through a deep hardwood forest, crossing a rushing stream on a fallen log, then climbing through fir-filtered sunbeams almost to the tree line. Finally a small clearing opened to the sky, where one could see up to the first ridge of the mountains and down to the village below. Across the clearing, nestled into the hillside was a cabin, so covered with lichens and mosses it seemed a part of the wood. Before …
Alan Cay Culler
November 30, 2024 
It is almost Thanksgiving. At our house we all sit around the turkey, for those who partake, and four-cheese mac-n-cheese for those who don’t, and say one thing we are each genuinely grateful for. S…
It is almost Thanksg…
It is almost Thanksgiving. At our house we all sit around the turkey, for those who partake, and four-cheese mac-n-cheese for those who don’t, and say one thing we are each genuinely grateful for. Saying just one thing often precludes career stuff, I mean it doesn’t really stand up to health, and the love of family and friends gathered together, But I am grateful for my thirty-seven year career in consulting, my clients, my colleagues and for interesting work, and enough remuneration that I was able to retire. I actually think that gratitude is a required value for a good consultant. If yo…
Alan Cay Culler
November 22, 2024 
Disaster! Off and on all day yesterday, I puzzled over what to write this week. Some weeks the words flow like a fast stream onto the screen. Then there are those other times, when Billie says, “You…
Disaster! Off and on…
Disaster! Off and on all day yesterday, I puzzled over what to write this week. Some weeks the words flow like a fast stream onto the screen. Then there are those other times, when Billie says, “You know, none of your subscribers will show up at the door if you miss a week.” R–E–T–I–R–E–D? Isn’t that how you spell it? Why have I turned my avocation into a job with DEADLINES? So yesterday was one of those days where I struggled with not being able to decide what to write and being anxious about it, and rereading everything I’ve posted in the last three years so as not to dup…
Alan Cay Culler
November 18, 2024 
Here, in the United States of America, we just had the quadrennial shouting match we call our presidential elections. We are a very divided country. We have been divided since our founding according t…
Here, in the United …
Here, in the United States of America, we just had the quadrennial shouting match we call our presidential elections. We are a very divided country. We have been divided since our founding according to how much government we want and where the locus of power should reside, federal, state, or local. Now we are also divided by the character of our neighborhood, rural or urban, by Education and whether we work primarily with skilled hands or knowledge and keyboards. We are also divided by race, religion, gender, and how recently our ancestors immigrated to these shores. (This is not a complete li…
Alan Cay Culler
November 12, 2024 
“A woodworker must “apply a thousand skills” to find the ideal use for each piece of wood, respecting the “soul of the tree” and shaping it to realize its true potential” George Nakashi…
“A woodworker must…
“A woodworker must “apply a thousand skills” to find the ideal use for each piece of wood, respecting the “soul of the tree” and shaping it to realize its true potential” George Nakashima, architect, artist, builder of beautiful wood furniture worked until his nineties. Now his children carry on his craft. In the fourteenth century Geoffrey Chaucer wrote a visionary poem, Parlement of Foules, about birds choosing mates and people living joined to nature. He began with a wish for more time to perfect his craft as a poet: “The lyf so short, the kraft so long to lern” What writ…
Alan Cay Culler
November 1, 2024 
“The creepy spiders need to be lower. Kids are short, They need to turn their head and be looking directly into those red eyes.” “You are normally such a sweet person. What happens to you at Hal…
“The creepy spider…
“The creepy spiders need to be lower. Kids are short, They need to turn their head and be looking directly into those red eyes.” “You are normally such a sweet person. What happens to you at Halloween?” “Being scared is what Halloween is all about?” “I thought it was about the candy.” “Nah, it’s about conquering your fear. The candy is just a side benefit.” We get a little carried away at our place in late October, not as much as we did when we had a house with a front lawn and bushes to turn into spider webs and ghosts. We gave a lot of stuff away when we downsized to a …
Alan Cay Culler
October 27, 2024 
This picture was on a birthday card I received last week. It is a real photo of Rolland “Rollie” Free setting the motorcycle land speed record on the Bonneville Salt Flats September 13, 1948 eleve…
This picture was on …
This picture was on a birthday card I received last week. It is a real photo of Rolland “Rollie” Free setting the motorcycle land speed record on the Bonneville Salt Flats September 13, 1948 eleven months after I was born. Rollie Free raced Indian motorcycles before World War II. He set a record at 111 miles per hour. He served in the Air Force and was stationed in Utah near Bonneville during the war. Rollie had a bone to pick with Harley-Davidson, which had apparently reneged on an offer to support his racing career. He “acquired” and retuned the Vincent Black Shadow from its owner Jo…
Alan Cay Culler
October 19, 2024 
I wrote a book on consulting. I am writing another book on leading change. This quote by Dwight D. Eisenhower is in both books. “In planning for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, b…
I wrote a book on co…
I wrote a book on consulting. I am writing another book on leading change. This quote by Dwight D. Eisenhower is in both books. “In planning for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable” This quote is attributed to Eisenhower in Richard Nixon’s book Six Crises. It is also mentioned by General David Sarnoff’s published papers. (Sarnoff was a Brigadier General on Eisenhower’s communications staff during World War II and the CEO of RCA before and after the war.) “In planning for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning i…
Alan Cay Culler
October 12, 2024 
This picture is a cartoon archetype. A guru, hermit, wiseman sits before the mouth of a cave high in the mountains. Before him sits a young seeker, a supplicant, whose backpack indicates he has climbe…
This picture is a ca…
This picture is a cartoon archetype. A guru, hermit, wiseman sits before the mouth of a cave high in the mountains. Before him sits a young seeker, a supplicant, whose backpack indicates he has climbed high into the mountains looking for answers to his burning question: “What is the meaning of life?” The punchlines almost always imply that seeking wisdom externally is unlikely to find it: “Life? Life is just one darned thing after another.” “OK, I’ll teach you the meaning of life, if you teach me how to climb down off a mountain.” “No, No, I’m not a Life Coach, next mountain …
Alan Cay Culler
October 6, 2024 
To tell you the truth, I’m exhausted. I mean, I did manage to hold my pee till first light, and that seemed to make my man happy, but it wasn’t easy. I mean, I am so thirsty all the time and I dra…
To tell you the trut…
To tell you the truth, I’m exhausted. I mean, I did manage to hold my pee till first light, and that seemed to make my man happy, but it wasn’t easy. I mean, I am so thirsty all the time and I drank a whole bowl since bedtime. But wait, I’m forgetting my manners. Hello, my name is Pip. I’m a twelve year old Black English Labrador Retriever (see my perfect bicycle seat head). And yes, I said black. You can politely ignore all that gray. I am twelve and I live with two humans whose age totals over 150, so I earned every ounce of silver I wear. My man, who calls himself, Alan, and my lady…
Alan Cay Culler
September 29, 2024 
