As reported today by History.com,

On this day in 1775, the U.S. postal system is established by the Second Continental Congress, with Benjamin Franklin as its first postmaster general. 

Isn’t it ironic that we could easily imagine Benjamin Franklin as an enthusiastic early adopter of technology that is steadily rendering the traditional postal service obsolete?

This afternoon, after reading David Bradford’s insightful post, “8 Things Every Business Person Should Learn From Pokemon Go,” I downloaded David’s “101 Tips for Personal, Powerful and Permanent Business Connections” from a link on that blog page.

This is a great guide that goes beyond a traditional primer on networking and makes specific recommendations for building meaningful, long-lasting business relationships.

Four tips that jumped out at me: 

23) Remember that there is a Law of Reciprocity in the Universe. Give as much or more than you receive; otherwise, your network will dry up.

39) Always ask the Question – “What can I do for you?”

99) The Single greatest factor that gets and retains attention is a deep personal relationship.

100) Nothing will define you more than the people who impact your life at pivotal junctures. So surround yourself with great people both in the physical world as well as in the virtual world.

I am deeply grateful for the wonderful people who have impacted my life at pivotal junctures. David, you positively influenced my life today.  I look forward to implementing your tips into my life.

At 12:45 a.m. EDT on July 18, 2016, the SpaceX Falcon 9 launched and landed over Port Canaveral. The rocket was carrying the Dragon CRS-9 craft to the International Space Station. Photo Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com

Shots like this are still thrilling to me!

In 1726, Daniel Defoe stated, in The Political History of the Devil, “Things as certain as death and taxes, can be more firmly believed.”

Yesterday, 290 years later, I heard an Oracle colleague add a third certainty, “Now three things in life are certain: Death, Taxes and Data Breaches!“

How will you cope?

This morning, I arrived early at Oracle headquarters and took a stroll around the lake.  It was fun to see the 2010 America’s Cup winning yacht displayed in front of Building 500. Here are a few of the photos I took – of the yacht and descriptive information posted about the yacht and race.

It has been enjoyable to participate at Oracle Headquarters this week in a set of meetings regarding information security. This afternoon, we had a fun surprise when our colleagues from Japan announced their marketing slogan, The Power of Cloud by Oracle (POCO), and passed out POCO – branded chocolates to everyone in attendance!

Should we consider launching POCO-mon GO?

Where were you when Neil Armstrong first stepped on the moon July 20, 1969, forty seven years ago today?

I was sixteen years old, living on a farm outside Richfield, Idaho. Our family didn’t own a television set, but on that historic Sunday evening, our family joined some friends in town to watch the moon landing on their black and white television.

What a thrill to see that grainy image of a man from earth climb down the stairs and step onto the surface of the moon!