Living Amends

Twenty years ago, my friend Ron and I were technical directors for the development and upgrade of a dipping sonar program. A dipping sonar is essentially a very large microphone that is lowered into the water from a helicopter in order to find submarines. The Navy was seeking a new processor board (computer) for the system. Our company had developed such a board which made winning the job seemed almost certain, so Ron and I were assigned to lead the proposal effort. In a big company, it takes several hundred thousand dollars to crank up the proposal writing process, so deciding to bid on a job isn’t taken lightly. We put together what we believed was an excellent proposal and optimistically sent it off. Two months later, we received a letter informing us not only that we hadn’t won, we were technically non-compliant.   Ron and I had both missed a single requirement in the

Epitaphs and Mistakes

One of the side benefits of blogging is the interesting … and often useless … facts I discover while researching for a post or the weird and wonderful websites that turn up when I Google a term tangentially related to my subject.   I’ve been mentally writing a post on Learning from Mistakes for over a week now, and in the interest of coming at the subject obliquely, as I’m inclined to do, I Googled Famous Epitaphs. Second among About 590,000 results was Funny and Famous Epitaphs on the website, Endless Entertainment to Spare, which also features topics such as Breathtaking Sand Sculptures, 15 Worst Book Covers Ever, and Funny Exam Answers.