Ray’s Daily
July 27, 2018
When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced.
Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.
Cherokee Expression
I did not get much done yesterday since I had an oral surgeon remove a molar and spent the rest of the day relaxing. Now I am trying to catch up so I need to again send you a Daily from the past.
Ray’s Daily first published on July 27, 2006
A new friend and I discussed the differences in the people we have met over the years while we were having coffee this morning. Like I am sure you have over the years we also have run into our share of happy people, sad people, angry people, hateful people you get the idea we all meet lots of different types of people. As we talked we realized that some of us seem to have the ability to get along with almost everyone while others seem to always run into people that are unreasonable and disgruntled. Later I started to think about what we talked about and the more I pondered the more I realized that some of us care for most of the people we meet, have the patience to hear them out and the wisdom to try to understand what causes them grief. I think just taking the time and showing interest lets people know you care and when they realize you do the atmosphere changes.
Have you also noticed that some people seem to have all the luck while others spend their days under a dark cloud? In my experience those people who expect things to turn out OK usually benefit and those who expect things to go bad find that things usually do. I don’t think these people are clairvoyant, l think it is that most of the time we get what we expect. If we look always for the bad I can guarantee we’ll find it and if we are open to the good it will show up at our door. My old friend Toby would say it is mostly all a case of attitude, I am sure that is part of it, but I also think it has a lot to do with our outlook and our ability to enjoy what we are given.
Here is a Yiddish folk tale that carries a message that I think we all need to understand.
An old man sat outside the walls of a great city. When travelers approached, they would ask the old man, “What kind of people live in this city?” The old man would answer, “What kind of people live in the place where you came from?” If the travelers answered, “Only bad people live in the place where we came from,” the old man would reply, “Continue on; you will find only bad people here.”
But if the travelers answered, “Good people live in the place where we came from,” then the old man would say, “Enter, for here too, you will find only good people.”
The hidden beauty of this story is the fact that those who move on believing they live among only bad people will never find their place in life and those who appreciate the good in the people around them will be at home wherever they might be.
Me? I know you and it just does not get much better than that!
~~~
“Be glad of life, because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars.”
Henry Van Dyke
~~~
Economics 102: The Energy Debate
A Texas oil tycoon and an Alaskan oil tycoon were debating which state had the most oil…
The Alaskan tycoon said, “Listen, there is so much oil in Alaska that I could buy enough gold to build a wall of solid gold 100 feet tall and 100 feet wide all the way around the state of Texas”.
The Texas tycoon scratched his chin, adjusted his cowboy hat, and said, “Well boy, I’ll tell ya what….you just go ahead and build that wall, and if I like it…….I’ll buy it”.
~~~
What’s the greatest worldwide use of cowhide?
To hold cows together.
~~~
I overheard a friend telling his pal, “I can’t break my wife of the habit of staying up until 5 in the morning.”
“What is she doing?” the pal asked.
“Waiting for me to get home.”
~~~
The lazier the man is, the more he plans to do tomorrow.
Norwegian proverb
~~~
I was working in a scrap yard during summer vacation at an engineering university. I worked repairing construction equipment. One afternoon, I was taking apart a piling hammer that had some very large bolts holding it together. One of the nuts had corroded on to the bolt, so to free it I started heating the nut with an oxyacetylene torch. As I was doing this, one of the dimmest apprentices I have ever known came along. He asked me what I was doing. I patiently explained that if I heated the nut, it would grow larger and release its grip on the bolt, so I could then remove it.
“So, things get larger when they get hot, do they?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “That’s why days are longer in summer and shorter in winter.”
There was a long pause, then his face cleared. “You know, I always wondered about that,” he said.
~~~
“I belong to Bridegrooms Anonymous. Whenever I feel like getting married, they send over a lady in a housecoat and hair curlers to burn my toast for me.”
Dick Martin
~~~
The receptionist for the company where I’m employed found some cash in the office, apparently mislaid by a co-worker.
She sent out an e-mail that said, “If anybody can say where he/she lost $66, please let me know and it will be returned.”
Within minutes, one employee replied, “Betting on Super Bowl 2007.”
~~~
NEW WORDS FOR 2008
Essential vocabulary additions for the workplace:
- BLAMESTORMING: Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.
- SEAGULL MANAGER: A manager, who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves.
- ASSMOSIS: The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard
- SALMON DAY: The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end.
- CUBE FARM: An office filled with cubicles.
- PRAIRIE DOGGING: When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people’s heads pop up over the walls to see what’s going on.
- MOUSE POTATO: The on-line generation’s answer to the couch potato.
- SITCOMS: Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage. What Yuppies get into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids.
- STRESS PUPPY: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny.
- SWIPEOUT: An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless because magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.
- XEROX SUBSIDY: Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one’s workplace.
- IRRITAINMENT: Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying but you find your self unable to stop watching them.
- PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE: The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again.
- ADMINISPHERE: The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve.
- 404: Someone who’s clueless. From the World Wide Web error Message “404 Not Found,” meaning that the requested site could not be located.
- GENERICA: Features of the American landscape that are exactly the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, and subdivisions.
- OHNOSECOND: That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you’ve just made a BIG mistake.
- WOOFS: Well-Off Older Folks.
~~~
No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed to an uncharted land or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.
Helen Keller
~~~
Ray Mitchell
Indianapolis, Indiana
Management is not responsible for duplicates from previous dailies. The editor is somewhat senile.
Ray’s Daily has been sent for more than fifteen years to people who want to start their day on an upbeat. If you have system overload because of our daily clutter, let me know and I will send you the information via mental telepathy. If you have not been getting our daily you can request to be added by e-mailing me at raykiwsp@gmail.com. Back issues are posted at http://rays-daily,com/ currently there are more than 2000 readers from around the world.
Ray's Daily 
Leave a Reply