Saturday Night: Live

 Last week I watched some clips from the 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live. As a kid, growing up in New York, I used to stay up late to watch it, like many of my fellow New Yorkers.

My uncle used to work at 30 Rockefeller Center, so he would occasionally get me tickets to NBC programs like  Late Night with David Letterman and Saturday Night Live. 

Although I didn't get a chance to see a live broadcast of SNL, I did get to see the two-hour dress rehearsal that occurs each Saturday night from 8 PM – 10 PM. Based on the audience's reaction, a couple sketches are cut from the show to make it fit in 90 minutes. 

So, I had a chance to watch the dress rehearsal on December 17, 1994 with Courtney Love's band, Hole along with George Forman as the guest host. 

After the dress rehearsal, my buddy and I went to a local NYC bar and we were thrilled to watch the live broadcast while knowing what was about to happen. 

DOGE and the Shakeup in Government: A Culture Shift

Without a doubt, the entire world has seen the shakeup in the U.S. federal government led by the President and DOGE.

In a nutshell, the fundamental culture of the federal government has been impacted by a shift from a traditional bureaucracy to an entrepreneurial, cost-cutting mindset. 

Each type of organization has one keyword that's a driving force in its organization. For the federal government, that word is "risk." What's the risk of doing this or what's the risk of doing that? 

For entrepreneurial organizations, the key driving force is "opportunity." How can I turn this challenge or setback into an opportunity?  

Opportunity prioritizes speed of change over security, whereas risk prioritizes security over speed. Each has its appropriate place and time. 

Parris Island Heads

I came across this Lego diorama of a head (bathroom) in boot camp. It's a reproduction of the final boot camp scene from the movie, Full Metal Jacket. 

When I shared this image with friends, they were amazed that the heads were actually arranged like this. Yes, we were literally side-by-side and face-to-face in some of the barracks we stayed in at Parris Island, South Carolina.

Every evening in boot camp we had 50 mins of free time just before taps where we could read and write letters home and socialize with the other recruits in our platoon (about 60 of us). The very first thing we’d all do when free time began was make a beeline to the head to poop so we could do it at our leisure. Believe it or not, we would read our letters and have discussions in this arrangement while giving our fellow recruits a courtesy look-away when completing the final paperwork.

The military excels at pushing people beyond their comfort zone in a safe, controlled environment.

Tube Tester Memories at Blair TV

Life was simple before World War II. After that, we had systems.

– Grace Hopper

Before solid-state electronics, like the transistor, there were vacuum tube electronics like the triode. Vacuum tubes consume a lot of power and are fragile, similar to an incandescent light bulb.

As a child, we had many televisions in my home. Every bedroom had one, and there were two more in the basement. The reason we had so many TVs was because my father would always stop to pick up discarded televisions that were lying on the side of the road, waiting for track pickup. 

About a mile from home was the now defunct Blair TV repair shop that had tube tester. My father would pull out any suspected bad tubes from the TV's he found and bring the tubes to the TV repair shop for testing. Once he uncovered a bad tube, he'd pay a few bucks to replace it and, voila, we'd have a working TV in the house.