Reposted from my blog

I have determined that Brindlee Mountain, the supposed "mountain" that is home to Arab, Alabama, is merely a plateau. Its elevation is approximately 1050 ft, only about 500 ft greater than Huntsville, Alabama. In comparison, Monte Sano and several other Madison Country mountains are over 1500 ft. I shall henceforth refer to it as "Brindlee Plateau." Arab: stop kidding yourself.

Civilians do not seem to like it when you go to their desks in person to ask about the status of something they're supposed to do for you. They seem to vastly prefer emails, phone calls, or any method that doesn't require eye contact.

My guest op-ed column with the New York Times Select is ending soon. I will be reposting the articles here after the obligatory one month delay.

Dual monitors really increase productivity more than I would have realized. It's really nice being able to run a tutorial on a full screen and use the application on another full screen.

Rampant mass emails are driving me nuts. These were quite a no-no in the Marine Corps, but now I generally get about five to six each day. Someone parked in your spot? Send an email to all 3000 people in the building. Someone remove a paper from your desk? Send an email to a distro list of 100 people. Want to share pictures from your recent church trip? Spam everyone in North Alabama. I also really like this tactic: Send a mass email and then when the event commences that the mass email was advertising send it out again to remind everyone! Ha! Gotcha twice! The mass emails I don't mind are free furniture. Send me as many mass emails advertising free desks, filing cabinets, workbenches, and ink cartridges as you can type, because I love free stuff for my office. However, please spare me the birthdays and feel-good touchy feely communications that serve no other purpose than to populate Outlook's deleted items folder. I don't care. I never will.

That is all.