Monthly Archives: February 2011

Training Wheels

Mario Batali, American chef and restaurateur.

Image via Wikipedia

Let’s end the week on a food note, shall we?  I know – just like every other Friday.  The sort of big news around my town this week is that Mario Batali is opening a place here.  Due to some funky zoning regulations, our town’s culinary scene hasn’t really kept up with towns around us so this is terrific news.  I’m sure you’ve all seen Mario on TV even if you haven’t eaten at one of his many excellent restaurants.  What you might not know is that his route to that success was kind of different and that’s today’s business thought. Continue reading

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The Promise

Springsteen performing on the Tunnel of Love E...

Image via Wikipedia

As I was exercising this morning I put on “The Promise”, Bruce Springsteen‘s resurrection of a lot of material recorded 30 years ago during the “Darkness on the Edge of Town” sessions.  Many of the songs haven’t been heard before.  Some were hits for others (“Talk To Me”, “Because The Night”), and others were concert faves (“Rendezvous”) even though they hadn’t been formally relased.  You could also hear how some of these songs became others – the most obvious is “Racing In The Street” but besides a lyric change a few of these songs did make it in a different form on to “Darkness.”

The quality of this material raises the obvious question:  why has it taken 30 years and why didn’t it go on the original record 30 years ago?  And that’s the business lesson from Burce today. Continue reading

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Filed under Helpful Hints, Thinking Aloud

The Reserve Tank

I’m writing this post from my back-up computer.  Actually, it’s the back-up to my back-up and I’ve fired it up because I’m using my real back-up to do my work since my main desktop died.  Turns out there are really excellent reasons to turn your computer off at night besides the environmental concerns and those reasons involve fried capacitors (mmm…fried!).  But that’s not our subject this morning nor is a rant about the evil machines that run our lives. Continue reading

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