Latest news and thoughts

How do you know spring is coming?  Some people would say the temperature is getting warmer, or the nights are getting shorter.  But, in America, a sure sign spring is coming, is the beginning of baseball’s annual tradition of Spring Training.

The tradition has been around since the start of baseball back in 1876.  It didn’t take long before the National League teams realized there was a problem with starting Spring Training in February.

When Bill and Paul started their company in the late 1970’s, they couldn’t always afford those pesky things like paying their staff.  In lieu of paying with cash, employees who worked overtime or bonuses often times got stock options instead of cash.

By 1986, Microsoft went public and people holding those stock options became instantly wealthy.  Overall, three employees over the next decade would become billionaires and 12,000 of them became millionaires.

When you are looking for someone, the world can be a pretty big place.  That summed up how Tommy Larkin felt.  For his whole life, Tommy Larkin had been looking for his younger brother.

Back in the early 1980’s Tommy and his younger brother were adopted out to different families in Canada and the boys were split up.

Then, in the early 2000’s, Tommy started looking for his younger brother.  He said the primary reason for his search was because there was so much he didn’t know about his family or their history that finding his brother would be a big help.

As the song goes, “if I can make it there…  I can make it anywhere.”  Of course the song lyrics refer to the song, “New York, New York.”  Maybe what Frank Sinatra was alluding to, was the fact, that things are different in New York.  If ever a story illustrates that, it’s this one.

New York has always had a more flamboyant and unique way of dealing with its problems.  One such problem arose just after New York became New York and it is a problem that continued for more than 300 years.

Chances are you have heard of Charles Darrow.  If you don’t know the name, then it’s likely you know his invention; the board game, Monopoly.  But what if what everyone knows about the one of the most well known board games in the world is completely wrong?

Legend has it that at the height of the Great Depression, a down-on-his luck man developed a board game that lifted him from poverty to extreme wealth at one of the worst times in American history.