The Double-O's. Take a look back through the swirling mists of time.

[Rain Man]

We're approaching the end not just of a year, but a decade (in popular culture numeric form if not in actual date form). We had the 80s, the 90s, and now the 00s are falling by the wayside. So how'd the 00's treat you?


If you dare, answer the following questions for the 00's.

1. What's the biggest change in your life since 1/1/00? What parts of your life haven't changed at all?

2. What are your top three accomplishments since 1/1/00?

3. What are your top three disappointments since 1/1/00?

4. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your personal experience since 1/1/00? In other words, how did the decade treat you?

5. What was your biggest fork in the road since 1/1/00? Knowing what you know now, would you have chosen the other path if you could go back now?

6. Compared to your expectations on 1/1/00, how is your life different on 12/31/09 than you expected? How is it exactly as you expected?

7. What are your three strongest memories of the 00's? Three best memories?

8. What is your prediction of your life on 12/31/19 (ten years from now)? What will be the same and what will be different?

9. What are the three most important events in the outside world since 1/1/00?

[Discuss Thrower]

1. What's the biggest change in your life since 1/1/00? What parts of your life haven't changed at all?
College. It's been a hell of an experience. What hasn't changed is my ability to say inappropriate things.

2. What are your top three accomplishments since 1/1/00?
1] Graduating High School
2] First Solo Flight
3] Initiation(s) [Freemasonry, Shrine, College Fraternity, Scottish Rite]

3. What are your top three disappointments since 1/1/00?
1] Graduating High School with a 2.4 GPA
2] January 11, 2004. Sunday at Noon. 38-31.
3] Running away from girls (particularly, my one GF who is now engaged)

4) On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your personal experience since 1/1/00? In other words, how did the decade treat you?
4/10

5) What was your biggest fork in the road since 1/1/00? Knowing what you know now, would you have chosen the other path if you could go back now?
Applying only to one college. And it's a tough decision, if I didn't go where I'm going now I'd miss out on a lot of people and experiences, but at the same time maybe things would be better for me.

6) Compared to your expectations on 1/1/00, how is your life different on 12/31/09 than you expected? How is it exactly as you expected?
Didn't have too many expectations as an eleven year old. Didn't have a lot of expectations for anything to be honest even as I grew up.

7) What are your three strongest memories of the 00's? Three best memories?

1] Initiation into my college fraternity
2] First Solo Flight
3] My first semester in said fraternity

8) What is your prediction of your life on 12/31/19 (ten years from now)? What will be the same and what will be different?
I will hopefully have a job of some sort, maybe in law, maybe not. Hopefully living somewhere within a reasonable drive of Kansas City along with my dad holding on to our tickets that we've had since '93, along with him still alive so that we can at least still continue the tradition of going to the majority of home games for twenty-six years.

Same? Probably not eating a healthy diet. Different? My state of mind, where I'll be living, what things I will enjoy and not enjoy.

9) What are the three most important events in the outside world since 1/1/00?
1] Proliferation of personal computing and the internet
2] As Americentric as it sounds, 9/11.
3] Continued violence in Israel

[Rain Man]

I'll go.


1. What's the biggest change in your life since 1/1/00? What parts of your life haven't changed at all?

This has been by far my most stable decade. Every past decade saw rampant change, but in this decade I still have the same job, the same house, and the same wife and family (less one beloved cat, sadly).

The biggest change for me has been the growth of my company. On 1/1/00, I was one guy working out of my house. Now I've got a pretty good sized office space in downtown Denver. So probably my biggest change has been from having nobody reporting to me to having roughly 20.

2. What are your top three accomplishments since 1/1/00?

A. Growth of the company (see above). We've gone from being a gnat in our market to being one of the big dogs and most well-known in our field in Colorado. Until this year, we've grown every year, and depending on December's books, we've been profitable every year. Plus, the Small Business of the Year award this year was a coup.

B. House rehab. On 1/1/00, it was still a long road ahead, but in slow patient steps we completed our house rehabilitation and also furnished it pretty well along the way. On 1/1/00, I think we still had some rooms that were empty.

C. Weight and running. A year ago I couldn't say this, but I think I weigh less right now than I did on 1/1/00. And I never thought I'd run a half-marathon, of which I ran 6 in 2009. According to the national formulas, I am actually slightly above average among half-marathoners of my age and gender, too, (51st percentile - barely above average) and I'm very proud of that.

Runners up include:

I was tempted to state that having a good marriage is a top-three accomplishment, but I kind of viewed that as more of an expectation than an accomplishment, so I didn't count it.

Similarly, I'm happy with the travel I got to do this past decade, but it didn't quite make the top three. Going to Madagascar is pretty close, though. I've long wanted to go there, and honestly had kind of thought I'd never make it.

Early in the decade, I was having good success in writing, and won some contests, but it's not quite top-three material. Nonetheless, I was proud.

Good health is another accomplishment that is more of an expectation. However, in mid-1999 I had a big cancerous growth removed from my neck, and was worried that it was the beginning of big trouble. (It wasn't a serious cancer, but hey, it's still the C word.) However, there have been no recurrences in ten years, and the doctor said that if it didn't come back in five years it was probably a fluke. Hallelujah! It's not my accomplishment, but it really, really makes me happy.

It was kind of rewarding to see my former firm burn itself down as they tried to expel my psycho ex-boss, but that wasn't my accomplishment. More of a feeling of redemption.

3. What are your top three disappointments since 1/1/00?

A. Net worth. I had a good decade, but it's not really reflected in my net worth right now. The tech bust, the meltdown last year, and the housing bust all hit me hard. These are my prime earning years, and I had a couple of really good years in 05 and 06, but it didn't translate to the balance sheet as well as I had hoped. I've got to figure out how to save more for retirement.

B. Writing. On 1/1/00, I really wanted to get a novel published and get recognized as a writer. I worked at it and got some good recognition at that time, but when the company took off it all fell by the wayside. I was gaining momentum and dropped the ball.

C. Workload and creativity. I haven't yet figured out how to manage my workload and still spend lots of hours at work. I would have hoped that I'd have that figured out by now. Related to that, I'd really like to move my company and my practice to a more creative and unique space, whereas right now it seems that we're often on a bit of a treadmill, but when you have a lot of fixed expenses to cover each month, it's hard to get off the treadmill to make the other stuff happen.




4. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your personal experience since 1/1/00? In other words, how did the decade treat you?

Probably a solid 8.5 Happy family, good business, good health, got to travel a bit. Pretty good overall.


5. What was your biggest fork in the road since 1/1/00? Knowing what you know now, would you have chosen the other path if you could go back now?

I pretty much ran a straight and narrow path in the 00's. I don't think I had a lot of major life decisions, which is probably somewhat par for the course for a guy my age.

The biggest decision, I guess, was the decision to grow our company as opposed to being independent consultants. My initial plan was to just be a lone eagle, but as business came in, we decided in about 2001 that maybe we should ride the growth. I think that was a very good decision.

(As you'll see, the company was a big factor in my life in the 00's.)


6. Compared to your expectations on 1/1/00, how is your life different on 12/31/09 than you expected? How is it exactly as you expected?

I really never expected to be managing people or running a company. It just kind of happened. So that's very different. And I don't have (or more aptly, make) time for more creative endeavors, which is kind of a disappointment and not something I expected. I was much more active of a thinker in the 80s and 90s.

Chiefsplanet has been a wild-card factor, too. This place is the source of most of my social interaction, which is not something I would have predicted on 1/1/00. Back then I was on the Star board but was pretty new to the concept of electronic interactions. The only real-life interactions I have are with coworkers and with my wife's real-life friends, and if I had a birthday party I'm not sure I could invite enough real-life friends to avoid embarrassment. I'm really hoping some of you will show up at my funeral when I die, because otherwise my wife will have to hire some people to look sad. But I really like this form of social interaction, and it works well for my style, and I consider you all to be good friends.

Other than that stuff, my life today is not far from what I would have predicted on 1/1/00.

Perhaps another surprise is simply the stability that I've had. Historically, I've had a history of doing stuff for about five years and then moving on. That didn't happen in this decade.


7. What are your three strongest memories of the 00's? Three best memories?

Strongest:

A. 9/11, like most people. I got a call from my dad to turn on the TV, and those first images are seared into my mind as I watched a helicopter circling the north tower and started thinking to myself, "Why am I not seeing the other tower?" and then calling out to my wife to come when the second tower went down.

B. I got to go into the main tomb of the Great Pyramid by lucky happenstance. We're in the heart of the pyramid, just my wife and me and two other people, and it's heavy in there. No other way to describe it than heavy. It's way smaller than you would expect, and you know the power of where you are, and oddly, there's a big ventilation fan in there to suck out the humidity of visitors' breaths, and it made this loud hum that was otherworldly. You would normally think that a fan noise would be annoying in a place like that, but it added to the experience in a rather bizarre and mysterious way.

C. Carrying my cat around the block one last time so he could check stuff out before taking him to be put to sleep. Best friend a guy could have, and as noble and worthy a creature as ever walked the earth. Life isn't fair sometimes. I buried two grandparents this decade, and I respected them immensely, but dang, that cat was by my side for a dozen years of thick and thin.


Best memories:

I'm a fan of travel, so travel moments tend to trump other stuff.

A. Going to dinner with my wife on our cruise on 06 or whenever, and we were all dressed up in tuxedo and ball gown, and more relaxed and happy than at any other time this decade. I want to retire on a cruise ship.

B. We had an afternoon wandering around Saqqara on our Egypt trip that was just surreally cool. The vision of driving up to the Step Pyramid that rose out of the desert like something from 2001: A Space Odyssey, walking around at the site itself and absorbing the history, walking through unreal desert to other sites, finding a human bone at one point as I slid down a hill, even stopping for sodas at a totally isolated shop out in the middle of nowhere. Looking in one direction and seeing pyramids on the horizon, and then turning around and seeing pyramids on the other horizon. It was amazing and it was spectacular and it was hard to believe I was there.

C. In the early part of the decade I faced a lot of abuse from my former firm, which at the time was a lot bigger than mine. Without going into detail, it was nasty stuff and the person running that firm is a nasty person. At the culmination, a big contract came up from a big client that had been the breaking point of my relationship there. It was my client at my old firm, and my boss had tried to extort it from me in exchange for a partnership vote, threatening to veto my partnership if I didn't give him credit (and the bonus) for it. When I left, he got to legally keep it since they were under contract to that firm. He's a lying, cheating, stealing, lying thief. After fighting over it for years, the client eventually made a global contract and put it up for bid, and we won it. It was a huge victory for the firm, and it was a huge personal redemption for all the blood that I had shed over it.

Runners up:

In South Africa, we went to our tent and there were zebra and nyala grazing next to it. And it was a great tent with a great view across this great valley, and it was just ... great.

Small business of the year award. Hearing our name get announced, and then getting to go up and accept the award. That's really, really cool.

We had a day in Madagascar that we call "The Perfect Day". Hard to describe, but it was perfect in every way, and was a very blissful moment. It wasn't the visual experience that South Africa was, but it was memorable because there's a very rewarding feeling in going that far, to a place that remote, and not only pulling it off but having it be a great experience.

My psycho ex-boss's firm recovered from the self-inflicted burning like that woman in the bathtub in Fatal Attraction. We had a big contract in 2007 that we really enjoyed, and so of course they pursued it hard when it came up for bid in 2009. Guess who the two finalists were. I was on pins and needles waiting for that decision, and they picked our firm. Huge, huge win - it was a big contract, it was a contract we really enjoyed, and it was one more ice pick in Freddy Krueger's chest.

8. What is your prediction of your life on 12/31/19 (ten years from now)? What will be the same and what will be different?

For the most part, I'll go more with what I hope than what I expect, and I guess I think they're not all that different. I'm optimistic enough to think I can affect my destiny.

I'd love to continue to have a happy marriage and my health, first and foremost. It's trite to say it, but those two things are the foundation for everything else. I need to give them more time than I did in the past decade, and can't take them for granted.

After that, I'd like to see the company continue to grow and thrive. In ten years, I'd love to have offices in two other cities, which would mean more travel for me, but that's not unwelcome. I'd also like to see the firm doing some different things - being truly thought of as a "thought leader" in some areas where we're recognized as national experts - and being innovative and cutting-edge to the extent that we really don't have competitors. The question will not be who to hire, but whether they can afford to hire us. I've got some really, really cool ideas for this, and hope I can pull some of them off. The nice thing is that it would also pull me off the treadmill feeling that I've had for a while. I have the luxury of being the first in my company to step into these waters, and hope that I can be a trailblazer for others to follow.

I'd like to be published, both fiction and nonfiction, in a prestigious manner, and I'd really like to rediscover my old hobby of wargaming, which has been idle for far too long. I need more fun. I'd also like to see some of my real-life friends more often.

I love my house and see no reason to move other than my nomadic instincts, but hopefully the company expansion will appease that. I doubt that the house will be paid off in ten years, but there's a chance, or at least we'll be close. And that will be huge.

On a tougher note, my wife and I still have all four parents, and all four are headed downhill. I'm not sure what's going to happen this decade, but I suspect that there will be some loss there, and it will be painful. Not much way to avoid it, though.

On a travel note, I'd like to visit Brazil (and maybe Peru), Timbuktu, and Russia and Finland as my top travel goals in the coming decade, assuming my wife is interested. I'd also like to do a Transatlantic crossing by ship. Alternate goals would include New Guinea or Borneo, Japan or China, Antarctica (though this will likely wait until retirement), and Romania/Bulgaria/Albania. Maybe Turkey, too. Geez, I want to go everywhere. Just give me a destination.

At some point, I'll want to retire, which means selling my company. In the next decade, I want to keep positioning us for that, which means growth, profitability, and development of the next generation of staff. In a perfect world, I cash out at the end of the next 10-15 years and then work as an employee at the firm for another five years to complete the transition. Then it's off to a blissful retirement.


9. What are the three most important events in the outside world since 1/1/00?

I'll probably propose a different order, though I suspect most lists will be similar.

A. The Internet and mobile communications. This is Number 1 in my book, though it was getting a good start before the decade began. Think about the changes being wrought by this fundamental change in how we interact with each other. Physical storefronts are being replaced by electronic storefronts. Chiefs fans from around the world get to know each other, with myriad benefits. GPS and mobile phones have revolutionized something as mundane as driving. E-mail and texting is ubiquitous. Knowledge is at everyone's fingertips now. Entire industries have been fundamentally transformed - music is the most obvious example, but others too. With this technology, we continue to move away from buying hard goods and toward buying creativity, which is something that can offset the negative trends occurring in traditional manufacturing. This technology is changing our lives dramatically and will continue to do so, and the 00's will be seen as the decade where it went mainstream.

B. I think the meltdown of this last year has bigger implications than just a recession. I think there have been a lot of shenanigans and cooked books fueling an overrevved economy for the past couple of decades, and I think the demise of a lot of American industry bodes poorly for the future. Combine that with the unprecedented retirements we'll be seeing, and there's going to be a huge burden on Working America in the next decade, and with fewer good jobs to support that burden. The population is stabilizing, which means less natural growth, less home appreciation, and net withdrawals from the stock market. I think the meltdown was a rather spectacular introduction to a long-term slowdown of the American machine and the American Dream.

C. 9/11. Duh. However, there's been conflict ever since the first borders were drawn, so I think this is just the modern version of the Barbary Pirates or Biafra or Vietnam or The Hundred Years War. This too shall pass, though I hope it doesn't end up with some radioactive cities.


And that, my friends, is my decade at a glance. Hopefully your decade also rated a high score, and your future decade will be just as bright.

[Hydrae]

The first decade of the 1900's were called the "aughts." What will this decade be called, the "Os?"

[pr_capone]

1. What's the biggest change in your life since 1/1/00? What parts of your life haven't changed at all?

Change: I left the cult I grew up in. I see the world in a whole new light now.

Same: Still need to lose weight.

2. What are your top three accomplishments since 1/1/00?

1. Leaving the cult
2. Getting married
3. Buying a home

3. What are your top three disappointments since 1/1/00?

1. Losing my family because of the cult (though they have now also left and we are on speaking terms again)
2. Being medically discharged from the Army
3. My behavior from 2002-2005

4. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your personal experience since 1/1/00? In other words, how did the decade treat you?

5

I'm gonna say that I broke even. This was by far the most difficult 10 years of my life but that has been offset by the past 4 years I've had with my wife and with my family coming back to me.

5. What was your biggest fork in the road since 1/1/00? Knowing what you know now, would you have chosen the other path if you could go back now?

I keep coming back to this.

I made a decision in 2002 to leave the Jehovah's Witnesses. It was extremely difficult as I knew I would lose everything I had in my life. When I left I literally had no friends and no family.

I lost my job because I could no longer function, after moving out of my apartment I lived in my car for a few weeks, and at one point even tried to take my own life. I was in seriously bad shape.

That said... I came through it and am a better person for it. I would not change my decision.

6. Compared to your expectations on 1/1/00, how is your life different on 12/31/09 than you expected? How is it exactly as you expected?

My life is completely different. In 1/1/00 I was looking forward to being made a Ministerial Servant (think Deacon in a church), I had a girlfriend who I thought I would be married to. I had a great job I expected to still be at.

I could not imagine having the life I have now back in 1/1/00. The only constant in my life from then to now have been the Chiefs and online forums.

7. What are your three strongest memories of the 00's? Three best memories?

1. Being sworn into the Army
2. Getting married
3. The night I told my family I was no longer a JW

8. What is your prediction of your life on 12/31/19 (ten years from now)? What will be the same and what will be different?

I will still be busy online and will still have a passion for motorcycles and riding with B.A.C.A. I'll still be married to my wife but I hope we have a little one running around the house.

Hopefully in 10 years I will have moved away from Wichita and will live somewhere a little more interesting... near a beach.

9. What are the three most important events in the outside world since 1/1/00?

1. 9/11
2. the internet and computing in general
3. wars in Iraq & Afghanistan

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by J-Town Fan 1988

2] First Solo Flight

Is the flying just a hobby? It sounds like it's not a career plan for you.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by pr_capone

I made a decision in 2002 to leave the Jehovah's Witnesses. It was extremely difficult as I knew I would lose everything I had in my life. When I left I literally had no friends and no family.

I lost my job because I could no longer function, after moving out of my apartment I lived in my car for a few weeks, and at one point even tried to take my own life. I was in seriously bad shape.

That said... I came through it and am a better person for it. I would not change my decision.

Holy cow. Glad you came through it okay. It's amazing to hear from people how strong a community that is, and how hard it is to pull away.

[Discuss Thrower]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Is the flying just a hobby? It sounds like it's not a career plan for you.

It'd be a career plan if I wasn't so sure in my mind that my chances at getting such a career are highly improbable. I'd only want to fly charter plans and have no real desire to fly commercial, and the only way to fly charter is to have beaucoup hours.. Only way to have hours is to have a job, and that means either commercial, CFI, or military... I'm ruled out the latter option medically, the middle option doesn't pay jack, and the former only pays after you've amassed beaucoup hours... My former instructor personally informed me of the downsides to the career before he quit instructing himself.

But I keep it in mind as an option.. Maybe I'm not cut out for a career in law.. Who knows. I still need a bachelors' degree to be a pilot anyway so after I get VFR and hopefully Instrument rated we'll see how things go.

[DJay23]

1. What's the biggest change in your life since 1/1/00? What parts of your life haven't changed at all?

Biggest change is that I am now happily married. At the start of the decade I was in a long relationship, had distant ideas of marriage but nothing I was planning on. Thing that hasn't changed is that my immediate family is still in tact and as close as we ever were.

2. What are your top three accomplishments since 1/1/00?

a)Graduated from college (12/15/01)
b)Started my teaching career (8/20/02)
c)Got married (9/5/09)

3. What are your top three disappointments since 1/1/00?
I don't tend to stay disappointed in events in my life so these probably won't seem major:
a) That I'm not a dad yet
b) That I didn't take a lot of chances
c) That KU only won 1 National Title in the decade.

4. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your personal experience since 1/1/00? In other words, how did the decade treat you?

I would have to say that taking the pH of the decade for me would put me somewhere in the basic range. Higher than neutral but not scorching bleach. I guess on a scale of 1-10 I'll go with an 7. It started off slow, got really crappy for a few years, then picked up toward the middle and ended with a bang.

5. What was your biggest fork in the road since 1/1/00? Knowing what you know now, would you have chosen the other path if you could go back now?

My biggest fork was making that decision that a lot of guys in their 20's or 30's makes, and that is, do I want to continue "doing what (who) I'm doing" or do I want to settle. I chose settling. I would absolutely not choose the other path.

6. Compared to your expectations on 1/1/00, how is your life different on 12/31/09 than you expected? How is it exactly as you expected?

My life is different in where I live and with whom I live. It's the same in that I have the career I had chosen and that I still have the same basic set of ideals in place, just ammended and refined over the years.

7. What are your three strongest memories of the 00's? Three best memories?
Three strongest memories:
a) The feeling at the end of one particular relationship, where you just thought it would never get better and that heartache is not a misnomer, it really does hurt in your chest.
b) The feeling of complete confidence and joy at landing my current job.
c) The feeling of total contentment with the world that I felt on my wedding day.

Three best memories:
a) Seeing my wife enter the sanctuary on our wedding day.
b) When I realized that I had FINALLY found the perfect woman for me.
c) Watching KU win the national title.


8. What is your prediction of your life on 12/31/19 (ten years from now)? What will be the same and what will be different?

I will be 42. I think my wife and I will have a pair of children, hopefully the oldest turning 10 in 2020. I'll still be teaching. I'll have built my final home after taking several stepping stones to get to that point. One similarity is that I'll have the same ridiculously high expectations for everyone including myself. One difference is that I'll internalize most of that for the sake of the people who have to deal with me on a daily basis.

9. What are the three most important events in the outside world since 1/1/00?

a) September 11th
b) The Great Recession
c) The technology boom.

[DJay23]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Plus, the Small Business of the Year award this year was a coup.

Congrats on this! I appreciate this more now in life as my wife's father is a small business owner and I now know the work involved in making it successful.

[Bugeater]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

I'll go.


1. What's the biggest change in your life since 1/1/00? What parts of your life haven't changed at all?

This has been by far my most stable decade. Every past decade saw rampant change, but in this decade I still have the same job, the same house, and the same wife and family (less one beloved cat, sadly).

The biggest change for me has been the growth of my company. On 1/1/00, I was one guy working out of my house. Now I've got a pretty good sized office space in downtown Denver. So probably my biggest change has been from having nobody reporting to me to having roughly 20.

2. What are your top three accomplishments since 1/1/00?

A. Growth of the company (see above). We've gone from being a gnat in our market to being one of the big dogs and most well-known in our field in Colorado. Until this year, we've grown every year, and depending on December's books, we've been profitable every year. Plus, the Small Business of the Year award this year was a coup.

B. House rehab. On 1/1/00, it was still a long road ahead, but in slow patient steps we completed our house rehabilitation and also furnished it pretty well along the way. On 1/1/00, I think we still had some rooms that were empty.

C. Weight and running. A year ago I couldn't say this, but I think I weigh less right now than I did on 1/1/00. And I never thought I'd run a half-marathon, of which I ran 6 in 2009. According to the national formulas, I am actually slightly above average among half-marathoners of my age and gender, too, (51st percentile - barely above average) and I'm very proud of that.

Runners up include:

I was tempted to state that having a good marriage is a top-three accomplishment, but I kind of viewed that as more of an expectation than an accomplishment, so I didn't count it.

Similarly, I'm happy with the travel I got to do this past decade, but it didn't quite make the top three. Going to Madagascar is pretty close, though. I've long wanted to go there, and honestly had kind of thought I'd never make it.

Early in the decade, I was having good success in writing, and won some contests, but it's not quite top-three material. Nonetheless, I was proud.

Good health is another accomplishment that is more of an expectation. However, in mid-1999 I had a big cancerous growth removed from my neck, and was worried that it was the beginning of big trouble. (It wasn't a serious cancer, but hey, it's still the C word.) However, there have been no recurrences in ten years, and the doctor said that if it didn't come back in five years it was probably a fluke. Hallelujah! It's not my accomplishment, but it really, really makes me happy.

It was kind of rewarding to see my former firm burn itself down as they tried to expel my psycho ex-boss, but that wasn't my accomplishment. More of a feeling of redemption.

3. What are your top three disappointments since 1/1/00?

A. Net worth. I had a good decade, but it's not really reflected in my net worth right now. The tech bust, the meltdown last year, and the housing bust all hit me hard. These are my prime earning years, and I had a couple of really good years in 05 and 06, but it didn't translate to the balance sheet as well as I had hoped. I've got to figure out how to save more for retirement.

B. Writing. On 1/1/00, I really wanted to get a novel published and get recognized as a writer. I worked at it and got some good recognition at that time, but when the company took off it all fell by the wayside. I was gaining momentum and dropped the ball.

C. Workload and creativity. I haven't yet figured out how to manage my workload and still spend lots of hours at work. I would have hoped that I'd have that figured out by now. Related to that, I'd really like to move my company and my practice to a more creative and unique space, whereas right now it seems that we're often on a bit of a treadmill, but when you have a lot of fixed expenses to cover each month, it's hard to get off the treadmill to make the other stuff happen.




4. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your personal experience since 1/1/00? In other words, how did the decade treat you?

Probably a solid 8.5 Happy family, good business, good health, got to travel a bit. Pretty good overall.


5. What was your biggest fork in the road since 1/1/00? Knowing what you know now, would you have chosen the other path if you could go back now?

I pretty much ran a straight and narrow path in the 00's. I don't think I had a lot of major life decisions, which is probably somewhat par for the course for a guy my age.

The biggest decision, I guess, was the decision to grow our company as opposed to being independent consultants. My initial plan was to just be a lone eagle, but as business came in, we decided in about 2001 that maybe we should ride the growth. I think that was a very good decision.

(As you'll see, the company was a big factor in my life in the 00's.)


6. Compared to your expectations on 1/1/00, how is your life different on 12/31/09 than you expected? How is it exactly as you expected?

I really never expected to be managing people or running a company. It just kind of happened. So that's very different. And I don't have (or more aptly, make) time for more creative endeavors, which is kind of a disappointment and not something I expected. I was much more active of a thinker in the 80s and 90s.

Chiefsplanet has been a wild-card factor, too. This place is the source of most of my social interaction, which is not something I would have predicted on 1/1/00. Back then I was on the Star board but was pretty new to the concept of electronic interactions. The only real-life interactions I have are with coworkers and with my wife's real-life friends, and if I had a birthday party I'm not sure I could invite enough real-life friends to avoid embarrassment. I'm really hoping some of you will show up at my funeral when I die, because otherwise my wife will have to hire some people to look sad. But I really like this form of social interaction, and it works well for my style, and I consider you all to be good friends.

Other than that stuff, my life today is not far from what I would have predicted on 1/1/00.

Perhaps another surprise is simply the stability that I've had. Historically, I've had a history of doing stuff for about five years and then moving on. That didn't happen in this decade.


7. What are your three strongest memories of the 00's? Three best memories?

Strongest:

A. 9/11, like most people. I got a call from my dad to turn on the TV, and those first images are seared into my mind as I watched a helicopter circling the north tower and started thinking to myself, "Why am I not seeing the other tower?" and then calling out to my wife to come when the second tower went down.

B. I got to go into the main tomb of the Great Pyramid by lucky happenstance. We're in the heart of the pyramid, just my wife and me and two other people, and it's heavy in there. No other way to describe it than heavy. It's way smaller than you would expect, and you know the power of where you are, and oddly, there's a big ventilation fan in there to suck out the humidity of visitors' breaths, and it made this loud hum that was otherworldly. You would normally think that a fan noise would be annoying in a place like that, but it added to the experience in a rather bizarre and mysterious way.

C. Carrying my cat around the block one last time so he could check stuff out before taking him to be put to sleep. Best friend a guy could have, and as noble and worthy a creature as ever walked the earth. Life isn't fair sometimes. I buried two grandparents this decade, and I respected them immensely, but dang, that cat was by my side for a dozen years of thick and thin.


Best memories:

I'm a fan of travel, so travel moments tend to trump other stuff.

A. Going to dinner with my wife on our cruise on 06 or whenever, and we were all dressed up in tuxedo and ball gown, and more relaxed and happy than at any other time this decade. I want to retire on a cruise ship.

B. We had an afternoon wandering around Saqqara on our Egypt trip that was just surreally cool. The vision of driving up to the Step Pyramid that rose out of the desert like something from 2001: A Space Odyssey, walking around at the site itself and absorbing the history, walking through unreal desert to other sites, finding a human bone at one point as I slid down a hill, even stopping for sodas at a totally isolated shop out in the middle of nowhere. Looking in one direction and seeing pyramids on the horizon, and then turning around and seeing pyramids on the other horizon. It was amazing and it was spectacular and it was hard to believe I was there.

C. In the early part of the decade I faced a lot of abuse from my former firm, which at the time was a lot bigger than mine. Without going into detail, it was nasty stuff and the person running that firm is a nasty person. At the culmination, a big contract came up from a big client that had been the breaking point of my relationship there. It was my client at my old firm, and my boss had tried to extort it from me in exchange for a partnership vote, threatening to veto my partnership if I didn't give him credit (and the bonus) for it. When I left, he got to legally keep it since they were under contract to that firm. He's a lying, cheating, stealing, lying thief. After fighting over it for years, the client eventually made a global contract and put it up for bid, and we won it. It was a huge victory for the firm, and it was a huge personal redemption for all the blood that I had shed over it.

Runners up:

In South Africa, we went to our tent and there were zebra and nyala grazing next to it. And it was a great tent with a great view across this great valley, and it was just ... great.

Small business of the year award. Hearing our name get announced, and then getting to go up and accept the award. That's really, really cool.

We had a day in Madagascar that we call "The Perfect Day". Hard to describe, but it was perfect in every way, and was a very blissful moment. It wasn't the visual experience that South Africa was, but it was memorable because there's a very rewarding feeling in going that far, to a place that remote, and not only pulling it off but having it be a great experience.

My psycho ex-boss's firm recovered from the self-inflicted burning like that woman in the bathtub in Fatal Attraction. We had a big contract in 2007 that we really enjoyed, and so of course they pursued it hard when it came up for bid in 2009. Guess who the two finalists were. I was on pins and needles waiting for that decision, and they picked our firm. Huge, huge win - it was a big contract, it was a contract we really enjoyed, and it was one more ice pick in Freddy Krueger's chest.

8. What is your prediction of your life on 12/31/19 (ten years from now)? What will be the same and what will be different?

For the most part, I'll go more with what I hope than what I expect, and I guess I think they're not all that different. I'm optimistic enough to think I can affect my destiny.

I'd love to continue to have a happy marriage and my health, first and foremost. It's trite to say it, but those two things are the foundation for everything else. I need to give them more time than I did in the past decade, and can't take them for granted.

After that, I'd like to see the company continue to grow and thrive. In ten years, I'd love to have offices in two other cities, which would mean more travel for me, but that's not unwelcome. I'd also like to see the firm doing some different things - being truly thought of as a "thought leader" in some areas where we're recognized as national experts - and being innovative and cutting-edge to the extent that we really don't have competitors. The question will not be who to hire, but whether they can afford to hire us. I've got some really, really cool ideas for this, and hope I can pull some of them off. The nice thing is that it would also pull me off the treadmill feeling that I've had for a while. I have the luxury of being the first in my company to step into these waters, and hope that I can be a trailblazer for others to follow.

I'd like to be published, both fiction and nonfiction, in a prestigious manner, and I'd really like to rediscover my old hobby of wargaming, which has been idle for far too long. I need more fun. I'd also like to see some of my real-life friends more often.

I love my house and see no reason to move other than my nomadic instincts, but hopefully the company expansion will appease that. I doubt that the house will be paid off in ten years, but there's a chance, or at least we'll be close. And that will be huge.

On a tougher note, my wife and I still have all four parents, and all four are headed downhill. I'm not sure what's going to happen this decade, but I suspect that there will be some loss there, and it will be painful. Not much way to avoid it, though.

On a travel note, I'd like to visit Brazil (and maybe Peru), Timbuktu, and Russia and Finland as my top travel goals in the coming decade, assuming my wife is interested. I'd also like to do a Transatlantic crossing by ship. Alternate goals would include New Guinea or Borneo, Japan or China, Antarctica (though this will likely wait until retirement), and Romania/Bulgaria/Albania. Maybe Turkey, too. Geez, I want to go everywhere. Just give me a destination.

At some point, I'll want to retire, which means selling my company. In the next decade, I want to keep positioning us for that, which means growth, profitability, and development of the next generation of staff. In a perfect world, I cash out at the end of the next 10-15 years and then work as an employee at the firm for another five years to complete the transition. Then it's off to a blissful retirement.


9. What are the three most important events in the outside world since 1/1/00?

I'll probably propose a different order, though I suspect most lists will be similar.

A. The Internet and mobile communications. This is Number 1 in my book, though it was getting a good start before the decade began. Think about the changes being wrought by this fundamental change in how we interact with each other. Physical storefronts are being replaced by electronic storefronts. Chiefs fans from around the world get to know each other, with myriad benefits. GPS and mobile phones have revolutionized something as mundane as driving. E-mail and texting is ubiquitous. Knowledge is at everyone's fingertips now. Entire industries have been fundamentally transformed - music is the most obvious example, but others too. With this technology, we continue to move away from buying hard goods and toward buying creativity, which is something that can offset the negative trends occurring in traditional manufacturing. This technology is changing our lives dramatically and will continue to do so, and the 00's will be seen as the decade where it went mainstream.

B. I think the meltdown of this last year has bigger implications than just a recession. I think there have been a lot of shenanigans and cooked books fueling an overrevved economy for the past couple of decades, and I think the demise of a lot of American industry bodes poorly for the future. Combine that with the unprecedented retirements we'll be seeing, and there's going to be a huge burden on Working America in the next decade, and with fewer good jobs to support that burden. The population is stabilizing, which means less natural growth, less home appreciation, and net withdrawals from the stock market. I think the meltdown was a rather spectacular introduction to a long-term slowdown of the American machine and the American Dream.

C. 9/11. Duh. However, there's been conflict ever since the first borders were drawn, so I think this is just the modern version of the Barbary Pirates or Biafra or Vietnam or The Hundred Years War. This too shall pass, though I hope it doesn't end up with some radioactive cities.


And that, my friends, is my decade at a glance. Hopefully your decade also rated a high score, and your future decade will be just as bright.

Can you please use a few less words in the upcoming decade?

[pr_capone]

Originally Posted by Bugeater

Can you please use a few less words in the upcoming decade?

lol

[wazu]

1. What parts of your life haven't changed at all?

a. Still happily married to the same woman.
b. Still commish for the same fantasy football league.
c. Still a suffering fan of the Kansas City Chiefs

2. What are your top three accomplishments since 1/1/00?

a. Becoming a father, and, I think, a pretty good one.
b. Career success.
c. I'm debt FREEEEEEE!!!! (Thank you Dave Ramsey)

3. What are your top three disappointments since 1/1/00?

a. Gained about 20 pounds.
b. Still too selfish to be the parent I could be.
c. Early in the decade had to work two jobs to make ends meet. A rough time.

4. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your personal experience since 1/1/00? In other words, how did the decade treat you?

I'm going to go with "8". Have to deduct two points just based on the ineptitude of the Chiefs.

5. What was your biggest fork in the road since 1/1/00? Knowing what you know now, would you have chosen the other path if you could go back now?

Becoming a father. It was actually my idea. And hell no I wouldn't take it back, even if sometimes I'd like a day or two off.

6. Compared to your expectations on 1/1/00, how is your life different on 12/31/09 than you expected? How is it exactly as you expected?

On 1/1/00 I saw limits to success that I no longer see.

7. What are your three strongest memories of the 00's? Three best memories?

Strongest:

a. Birth of my first child.
b. Birth of my second child.
c. September 11th, 2001.

Best:

a. Birth of my first child.
b. Birth of my second child.
c. A promotion I received at work.

8. What is your prediction of your life on 12/31/19 (ten years from now)? What will be the same and what will be different?

What will be the same? All of my answers to question #1.
What will be different? We will be wealthy and setting up for very early retirement.

9. What are the three most important events in the outside world since 1/1/00?

a. The initial election of George W. Bush
b. The election of Barack Obama
c. September 11, 2001

[Discuss Thrower]

Another thing that hasn't changed is my habitual creeping on message boards... There have been about 5 total that I've paid attention to for more than two years at least... Chiefsplanet has kind of overruled the others though.

[cdcox]

I find it worthwhile to reflect back and look forward. Recording it here will allow me to access it at a later time.


1. What's the biggest change in your life since 1/1/00? What parts of your life haven't changed at all?

The biggest change has been the development of my daughter. She was 9 at the time and is 19 now. The first 5 years of the decade were pretty easy in this regard, but the last 5 years have been tough.

Still working at the same institution (at a much higher level of responsibility), same family, same house.

2. What are your top three accomplishments since 1/1/00?

I tend to strive toward work accomplishments.

1. Being promoted to full professor and associate department head. I was kind of struggling in my career at the beginning of the decade. I had made tenure in '97 and went into a slump. I made some deliberate decisions to work my way out of the slump and started working my ass off. I got one very good break in connecting with a very good collaborator. A lot of the more senior people in my department retired. A couple others took different positions outside the department. I've always been a team player and someone known for getting things done. All of the sudden, I was the number two guy in the department. I get to work closely with students outside the classroom and make a real difference in their college experience.

2. Getting a paper published in Nature. Nature and Science are the two top journals in all of science. They are Carnegie Hall and the Met for scientists. We worked really hard on that paper for about 9 mos. The core group was me and another senior faculty member, a post-doc, and three really good graduate students. I'd call all of them friends. Really good memories associated with working on that paper.

3. My immediate family (wife, daughter and me) still all love each other deeply. Family life has been extremely difficult, but we're still together, we still trust each other, and we still have hope for the future.

Runners up:

Travel: London three times, Scotland once, Cancun twice. I like to travel. I need to do more of it. One advantage of my job is that with a little planning, I can travel internationally and tack on a couple of personal days. One challenge to more travel is that I like to travel lite, while my wife likes to take every creature comfort of home. I did the London and Scotland trips solo and took her on both the Cancun trips. I'd like to do more travel with her.

nfl-forecast.com - one of my hobbies. The growth has been gratifying. Maybe I'll find time to improve the statistical routines that predict Denver has a 99.99999% chance of winning the division in week 6.

3. What are your top three disappointments since 1/1/00?

1. My daughter's physical/psychological/emotional issues. She dropped out of HS after 10th grade. Still needs to earn her GED. Uncertain future. Lots of other issues I won't go into. Never saw it coming. My wife and I have invested tremendous effort, emotion and $ toward helping our daughter move past this. Maybe we are making progress, I don't know.

2. My mom developing Alzheimer's disease. Thankfully, dad is still in good health and can take good care of her. Really tough to see.

3. The promotion to associate department head has been great. I love the responsibility and I think it is helping me develop as a person and professionally. The bump in pay is a nice bonus. But I've been working too many hours and not keeping up enough with my regular prof stuff. I have some ideas how to become more efficient. I hope they are enough to make a difference.

Runners up:

With everything else going on, we haven't been able to keep the house up as much as I'd like, both in terms of repair/remodeling and overall cleanliness.

Medical bills have eaten up a lot of the income gains. We aren't struggling, but I feel like we should be living a little better given my income. Not a biggie.

Retirement not coming as soon as I had once hoped. I'm re-evaluating my expectations.

4. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your personal experience since 1/1/00? In other words, how did the decade treat you?

6 - Yeah, my family and I have problems. But we live in a great country, I have a very secure job that I enjoy and provides a good income, and we have the means to address the problems that we have. We are much more fortunate than most. I'm counting it to the good.

5. What was your biggest fork in the road since 1/1/00? Knowing what you know now, would you have chosen the other path if you could go back now?

Career -- A key moment was when we had a new dean around 2003 or so. He was implementing a massive culture change in the college. He was talking to our department about his plan to bring in new, younger faculty at higher salaries because they would be the ones who could make the college better. Basically everyone in the room was being dissed -- diplomacy wasn't one of his strong points. Despite this, I asked, "What about those of us who are already here, and want to participate in making the college better by increasing the level of our productivity? Will you reward us for our contributions?" It was a rare moment of shrewdness on my part because I knew that I was in a good position to have better productivity in the years to come. Every time I spoke to the dean after that he would remind me of that comment. He even brought it up in meetings from time to time. The important thing was that I got on his radar screen to where he kept his eye on me. And based on my accomplishments, he rewarded me with a couple of merit raises. I'd definitely step out and make that comment again.

Family -- I remember the first time my daughter was hospitalized, about 5 years ago. There was no clear diagnosis, and the first hints that her problems might be as much psychological/emotional as they were physical were being mentioned by some of the doctors. I made the comment that I'd pay $10,000 this instant to make these problems go away. That was a crossroads and I recognized it as such at the time. At every step of the way we've listened to the various doctors and other professionals. I see in retrospect where they have made some mistakes along the way, and clearly we have made some, too. Looking back, given my knowledge at the time, I'm not sure where I could have changed things for the better. Sometimes you do as good as you can, you are disappointed with the outcome, and you just have to move forward to make things the best they can be in the future.

6. Compared to your expectations on 1/1/00, how is your life different on 12/31/09 than you expected? How is it exactly as you expected?

It's funny. I was just kind of going with the flow at the time. I'm not sure what my expectations were, especially professionally.

I think I'm much better off professionally than I thought I would be at the time.

As far as family goes, I definitely did not foresee us heading to these kinds of problems. I figured my daughter would be in college by now and well on her way to becoming an independent, well-adjusted, productive adult.

7. What are your three strongest memories of the 00's? Three best memories?

Random memories. None particularly stronger than the next:

9-11: Ed McCaffrey had just been hauled off the field the night before. One of my grad students came in and asked me if I'd heard about an airplane crashing into the WTC. I tried to follow it on the internet, but all the websties were jammed. Later that day I went to a colleague's office to talk about Bayesian statistics.

DT. I refreshed the Star page to get an up date on his condition, and in giant font they had an announcement that he was dead. What a shock.

The night that Gunther got fired over the internet. Repeatedly refreshing chiefsplanet at 2:00 AM in the morning hoping for an update. Heady times.

Boo coo summer salary in 2003. Bought a large screen TV and Sunday Ticket. That was the last time we really had to live paycheck-to-paycheck.

My trips to London. What a great city. Lots and lots of memories. One relevant to Chiefs fans: checking the outcome of the Steelers game in 2003 at an internet cafe -- we won! Holy shit, this team is good!

Walking across the Brooklyn bridge with my family. Eating a great meal in NYC on the same trip.

Our research group was part of a large government-funded project in the 2002-2006 time period. We had these big meetings every 6 mos or so. We were one of the groups with a smaller amount of funding. All of the groups were supposed to make individual software components that interacted with software components made by other groups inside this larger piece of software called "the dashboard". When they were demoing the dashboard, the first component they used in the demo was from our group. This was a big win, since we were one of the smaller groups. The second component they used was also from our group, as was the third. By now we are doing the thumbs up to each other and doing the silent laugh in the middle of the meeting. The program manger asks, "Why are all the software components from these peons that I gave hardly any money to?" (those weren't his actual words). "They are the only group who's software works in the dashboard." The program manager was pissed. Hilarity ensued. The program manager told everyone that they better have their software running in the dashboard by the end of the meeting or he would cut their funding.

My cousin asking me about my mom's memory problems. Her mom had had Alzheimer's for a few years by that time.

My daughter's first panic attack.

The blue screen of death on my laptop when the hard drive failed and my files had not been backed up for 6 months.

The feeling of making full professor. It's similar to winning the Super Bowl in that they can never take it away from you (barring a complete fu).

My wife and I celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary at the Ritz Carlton in Cancun. Great meal, great celebration.

Beginning the epic bathroom remodel.

8. What is your prediction of your life on 12/31/19 (ten years from now)? What will be the same and what will be different?

I'm going to be as hopeful as possible and say that my daughter will be happily married and maybe have a kid. She'll still struggle with her issues, but will mostly have a normal life.

I think I'll have reached another promotion milestone, either at my current institution or a another one. I think I need to move up a level on the food chain to have a more balanced life. Too much responsibility and not enough power to do my current job for another 17 years or so till retirement.

I have great plans for the house, including the best outdoor living space ever. Finances and time to do the work are limiting. At the least, I'm confident that the epic bathroom remodel will reach a conclusion sometime this decade though.

The wife and I have begun to toy with the idea of getting a houseboat (recreational, not full time).

9. What are the three most important events in the outside world since 1/1/00?

Technology. The internet and mobile devices have been obvious. But advances in molecular biology are also huge, though less visible. They will become extremely visible this decade. The energy/environment nexus also began to emerge as a permanent issue this decade.

Geo-political. The emergence of Fundamentalist Muslims vs. the West as the major geo-polictical conflict. 9/11 was the Fort Sumter event.

Globalization of the Economy. The advantage of the US in manufacturing is long gone. Even an advantage related to value added through technology seems to last only a short time, since other countries can quickly adapt. I believe the economic advantage of this country over others will continue to shrink. Americans are going to have to work harder and do with less. Wish I could be more optimistic about this one.