My continued thoughts on Ray Oldenburg's "The Great Good Place:



Ray highlights the need for the Third Place to be a neutral ground, "where individuals may come and go as they please, in which none are required to play host, and in which all feel at home and comfortable."



Of course, this is in stark contrast to the home (First Place) and work (Second Place) that cannot be neutral to various friends from different houses/workplaces. I spent a while thinking about how… Continue

This is the first of a short series of blogs written to document my thoughts on Ray Oldenburg's book, "The Great Good Place." In his book, Ray discusses the 'Third Place' as the public places where people go to enjoy the company of others in an informal social setting as necessities for our personal and community health. Henceforth, references to the author's work will be discussed as Ray's ideas/assertions.



Ray makes a historical reference to the post WWII era, where after the… Continue

Add lack of access to good coffee to the list of sacrifices required of deployed military service members..



So my supervisor (MAJ B) recently ordered a Keurig for our regional trans office in Afghanistan.. At first I was excited about getting away from the $20 coffeemaker, but my hopes would soon be crushed by the lack of good coffee it produced.



I don't know as much as I'd like to about quality coffee, but the bitter brew this 'revolutionary' machine kicked out was on par… Continue

I've been playing around with different name possibilities and logos for a while now.



On one hand, I do wish that I had the name figured out as one less 'to do' on an already infinitely long list. On the other hand, I'm comforted by the fact that I'm not going to settle for a sub-par name that doesn't capture the essence of the business I'm making plans to create and that when the name finally does come to be, it will be 'the one' much in the same way that I knew my wife was 'the… Continue

Today I reached the point in my coffee education where I felt ready to begin developing the first iteration of my business plan.



The problem is that I have endless ideas, some of which I have formally developed in a binder, and am only now starting to figure out how to transcribe and articulate those ideas in the form of a business plan. Much easier said than done..



I once read about a clock-maker, or 'timepiece' maker, who was renowned for his artistic brilliance and… Continue