I decided tonight. I served it as a vegetable side dish, partially disguised beneath some Cheddar cheese sauce. Half way through dinner it hit me: what’s the point? I don’t like cauliflower. I never have. Oh, I can eat it all right. It doesn’t make me gag, but that is faint praise...
Panettone (in the Br...
posted by Rick
Easter is when I think of brunch and special holiday baked goods. One of my favorite of these is Panettone, which is actually an Italian Christmas delight, but this is my blog so we’ll do it my way. Any bread is a pain in the butt to make because of the kneading and the rising and the...
Misplaced Interferen...
posted by Rick
One of the most troublesome high-tech news stories to linger in the media is the way that high-tech workers are treated in China. Foxconn, who employs a million workers in China building the iPhone and many other consumer electronic devices, has repeatedly come under file for creating working...
Kodak – The Go...
posted by Rick
Kodak filed for bankruptcy this week. Everyone knew it was coming, but still it’s very sad. Kodak was the Google of their day. Kodak always attracted the best and brightest engineers to their campus, funding research projects far afield from their core business (the first OLED screen is...
Playing Doctor
posted by Rick
I recently became concerned that I might have sleep apnea, a sleep disorder characterized by abnormally low breathing or missed breaths during sleep. Although an individual with sleep apnea is often unaware of having difficulty breathing, even after they awaken, the condition can cause the...
Why Our Economy Isn’t Going Down the Tubes
posted by Rick
This week I received one of those alarmist chain letters decrying the collapse of the American economy and using for argument “19 shocking statistics” like: #1 The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001. About 75 percent of those factories employed over 500 people when they were still in operation. #2 Dell Inc., one of America’s largest manufacturers of computers, has announced plans to dramatically expand its operations in China with an investment of over $100 billion over the next decade. #4 In 2008, 1.2 billion cell phones were sold worldwide. So how many of them were manufactured inside the...
American Airlines Ma...
posted by Rick
Writing about all of my bad customer service experiences would be a full-time job, so I let most of them roll by with a shrug or a sad shake of the head. Yet every now and then, someone sets the bar so low, it’s remarkable. Take, for example, my experience with American Airlines yesterday. An...
Bickford’s App...
posted by Rick
Decades ago I fell terribly and hopelessly in love with a young woman named Elaine. Any stranger on the street could see that we were doomed. I lived on the West Coast, she lived on the East Coast. She was smart and sophisticated and worldly. I, on the other hand, was a caricature of the...
Take My Wallet ̵...
posted by Rick
The moment you think you’ve lost your wallet, you get that panicky feeling. All of your cash, your ID, and your credit cards are suddenly gone. Your range of options is dramatically limited. You might be stranded somewhere, unable to get home or into the club where your friends are. You...
Let’s put the ...
posted by Rick
At this time of year it’s easy to get caught up in the hubbub of friends and family, parties and presents, and forget the real reason for Christmas: we are primitive, superstitious Neanderthals. For millennia any tribe with enough brains to recognize patterns in the night sky has held a...
The World’s Bi...
posted by Rick
What is the world’s biggest secret? Perhaps you are thinking “the formula for Coca-Cola”, “who shot Kennedy”,” what happened to the Holy Grail”, or “the location of Atlantis”. All good guesses, but these are merely historical curiosities....
Samsung Galaxy Tab, ...
posted by Rick
Every now and then a product comes along that makes me want to sit down with the product manager, buy them a beer and ask “So…What was going through your mind when you made these decisions?” The Galaxy Tab is one such product. First of all, it’s an awkward size; just a...
Rick Scherle is a marketing consultant, teacher, artist, hacker, and Yoga practitioner who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.