Vaughn Ripley's Blog, page 4
January 28, 2013
Sugared Water
Apple Computer wanted John Sculley to join them as CEO and apply his marketing skills to the personal computer market. Sculley was not sure that he wanted to join Apple and Steve Jobs sealed the deal when he made his legendary pitch to John, "Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of [...]
January 22, 2013
Eyes of the Hawk’s, Part One
I shake off the last of my morning java jitters and step through the door carefully. Here I am. A deep breath marries me to the smell of the desert. Sage is plentiful here. There are some manzanita off through the mesa. A roadrunner couple precociously dances at a million miles an hour at the [...]
January 19, 2013
The Cowboy-up Workout
Today I am back in motivational mode. We are going to learn what Cowboy-up means to me. No, I do not wear cowboy boots and a six-shooter during my workouts. These are merely props to demonstrate my euphemism. Besides, they look cool next to the iron. I must start this blog article with a disclaimer—Actually [...]
January 1, 2013
Resolutions for 2013
Every year most of us come up with a list of resolutions to accomplish during the new year. I did some research and found several surveys that list the top ten resolutions that folks choose. I took the liberty of compiling my own list based on several lists I found. These appear to be the [...]
December 31, 2012
Another New Year
In circa 1973, Frank Zappa released a song about television. This song, I Am the Slime (Oozing Out of Your TV Set), tells a tale of how bad TV can be ... Well, I often think of this song with a futuristic slant on it. I think in the 90's you could have replaced TV [...]
December 22, 2012
Write Your Book
I was inspired by my friend, Susan Kim, to write about how easy (literally) it is to write your first novel. We were talking about writing and the ups and downs of it when it occurred to me that the majority of people I know dream of writing a book and yet fewer than 5% [...]
December 17, 2012
Get Out of Debt
Did you know that the total U.S. credit card debt is nearly $800,000,000,000. Yes, that is 800 billion!! That means that the average credit card debt per U.S. household is close to $16,000. Average household debt (credit cards and loans) is $54,000. More than 50% of Americans carried an unpaid balance on their credit cards [...]
December 12, 2012
Enough is Enough!
The year is about to come to a close. And, unless the Mayan calendar thingy is right, we will have all of 2013 to make all of those changes that we tried to do last year ... And the year before ... And so on, and so on. Enough is Enough!!! Are you going to [...]
December 1, 2012
World AIDS Day 2012
Today is World AIDS Day. Please take 60 seconds out of your day to reflect and remember the millions and millions of people affected and infected by this horrible HIV virus. No one knows the exact count, and we probably never will. But statistics and scientific estimates put the numbers somewhere around: 40,000,000+ people living [...]
November 21, 2012
Observations of a Commercial Gym
For the past three years or so I’ve been training at a small private facility that caters mainly to powerlifters and Olympic weightlifters. It was a phenomenal place to train – packed with very strong, smart people who had forgotten more about building strength and increasing performance than most “personal trainers” will ever know. Recently, [...]
