I'm an ideas man.  Always have been.  If I have my way, always will be.

I'm a good problem solver.  Give me a situation, I'll sort it out.  An example of both came up today.  My friend who works for an airline got promoted to some global sales position.  That's good an all, but one question: why am I not in charge of sales for EVERY company?

Within about 5 minutes I came up with some brilliant ideas to get airline profitability way up.  For this fictional example, let's use American Airlines.

Idea 1:  Paint the planes blue.  Most planes you see around are silver.  Boring.  If you walked into a car lot, and all the cars were lame silver and then there was one nice looking dark blue one, which would you buy? Exactly. Same works for planes.  Another option I just came up with: glow in the dark planes.  You look up in the sky at night and see the shining spectacle, you want nothing more than to BE on it.

Idea 2:  Benches instead of chairs.  Chairs are cumbersome.  Too big.  It's hard to get past someone when you go to the bathroom.  They don't lean back very far.  Basically, they're overrated for sitting on.  So take away the pleasure all together and put on a bench.  People sit on benches for long football games all the time.  They wouldn't mind for a plane ride.  You'd fit in MORE passengers and save money.

Idea 3: All-You-Can-Eat.  No one wants to pay 5 bucks for a sandwich because 5 bucks for a sandwich is a ripoff. So tell them this: 30 bucks for all you can eat the whole flight.  It seems reasonable, and your profit margins are through the roof.  Because really, all you're giving them is the same cheap ass sandwiches over and over until they're full.  I don't care about food on a plane anyway, I'm usually asleep within 10 minutes.  But other people may like it.

Idea 4: Luggage valet.  Why do you have to get off the plane and meet your luggage at baggage claim and then wait for it to be thrown on the conveyor belt, battered, and eventually get to you? Half the time I can't recognize my suitcase because I never get around to putting a clever marker on it.  Let people pay a bit more and have it brought to them valet style. Take advantage of the rich snobs who don't want to wait, and give those rich snobs the option of giving you their money.

Idea 5:  Less pilots.  Does there really need to be a co-pilot?  You don't see cabbies or truck drivers needing assistants.  Give the flight attendant a few lessons in case of emergency, but otherwise, let the guy fly the plane by himself.  Also, why make him wear a uniform? It probably pisses him off to put on, and that's why he drinks before flying.  Jeans and a t-shirt. With the airline logo so it's professional.

Idea 6: More entrances.  This might take a large redesign of the American hangar system, but using both the back and front of the plane lets loading and unloading go that much faster.  Cut 5 minutes on take-off and arrival, and at the end of the day, you've got enough time to work in another flight.  I hate waiting for old women to drop their overhead luggage on their heads, or the 350 lb guy to collapse into the aisle.

I could probably come up with more, but I've cut at least a billion right there.  Maybe tomorrow I'll tackle another industry.   All in a day's work.

A pretty good weekend.  My genuine interest in people and people's lives (if they appear the least bit interesting) makes it relatively easy for me to make friends.  Especially at a bar-type setting where the social lubrication is already applied. 

My exercising has been kicked up a notch, especially when I figured out I "won" the Houston Lottery, so I better step my game up.  I want to do the breast cancer 5K or whatever it's called and hope to beat anyone from work.  Then you add in the non-conventional exercise of yoga (did it for the second weekend in a row, and bought some more classes), and I'm getting pretty well rounded.

I'm staying away from the weights except for low-weight, high rep methodology.  That's how you get ripped.  That's how you get how I want to be.

With my new friend making skills Friday night, I met this girl and volunteered to help her hang her flatscreen TV on her wall in her apartment.  It was a great excuse to whip out my tool kit and feel like a man.  Long story short, after multiple holes screwed, we figure out it's really a false wall (no studs) and won't support anything.  Lesson learned I guess. I gave it a shot.  I will still claim the Karma points for attempting to help.

I got in my 6 mile run today in alleged 105 Heat Index, but it didn't feel bad really.  Then this epic storm hit that tore trees up and made the powerlines die, and the store also died a bit as far as power goes.  Seems back to normal now though.  Crisis averted.

Big Fantasy Football draft coming up.  And it's AUCTION STYLE, aka AWESOME STYLE.  I practiced for a few hours.  I got my players picked.  Now Thursday night: go time. no excuses. Every team has a shot at every player.  And my boss is in the league.  Again, it all boils down to one phrase... STEP YOUR GAME UP.

There was a time I had pretty much given up on modern music.  I thought it was all garbage and nothing good would ever come of it again.  But then, I heard the song "Someday" by The Strokes at the gym at UT and my interest was sparked.  I looked up the lyrics that I could remember, found out the song, fell in love, and my hope was restored.

A similar thing happened when I heard "Float On" by Modest Mouse on a bus.

That's sort of a big deal because I listen to music probably at least 50-55 hours a week now.  Nothing more exhilarating than finding a new good band or song (or pointing out the shortcomings of others).

Strange things are afoot in my life in certain aspects.  Some people say that everything happens for a reason, but I think that's stupid.  Because by the very definition of cause & effect, of course everything that happens has a reason.  Atleast in the past.  Not necessarily going forward.

And isn't keeping you distracted and entertained for a bit a good enough reason at times? 

Me and atleast some of my comrades find themselves in the funk of living weekend-to-weekend, vacation to vacation, kinda mode with little look to the future.  I struggle with that at times, but then I remember that I never really looked too far into the future in the past, and things worked out alright.  Nothing ever gets done by planning.  Sometimes it's good to just float on.