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We made it back to Denver in good time 1-9:15pm yesterday. Based on noaa.org info the first half of the trip through Rawlin would be better than the second half. As we got latest updates road condition info from Josie it still sounded so. Given that that first half turned out to be only-one-lane dry at best we were bracing for needing to stay overnight at Rawlin or at best Laramie. The updates were punctuated with phrases like blowing snow and slick. There were plenty flashing signs on the roads that said the same thing. When it got dark around 45 miles west of Rawlin it became difficult to see by eyes alone how the road condition is.  We had to also gauge the real road condition by how fast other cars could travel.  We soon found that the road was quite dry. There was just a 3-mile section west of the wind farm at Arlington that had some want-to-be blowing snow. We were thus able to make very good time on the second half of the journey,  average speed of 75mph, much better than 65mph for the first half.

We of course were very glad to arrive Denver a little after 9pm. But it surfaced the sad state of affairs with things nowadays. Apparently government agencies that were supposed to monitor and report road conditions must have left their posts and allowed flashing digital road signs become totally outdated, same for the similar info on their web sites. We believed weather conditions on this section of I-80 must have been quite bad half a day ago: when there was still day light, along the first 200 miles stretch we saw at least four tow trucks retrieving cars that were upside down by the road sides, some on the west-bound and some east-bound sides.

This morning concern the work ethics of the general populace a thought came to me about a writing named “A message to Garcia” by Elbert Hubbard in 1899. He wrote this stirring short article after dinner one day allegedly to shame his son into taking better care of the family publisher business. Elbert has been a successful publisher and the article became such a hot item in the format of a book (or actually a pamphlet) in the ensuing years. It was made into a silent film first and then a talkie film in 1936. To date it is the 5th most circulated publication in the world. Funny that other than the most which is the Bibles, the other 3 are of dubious distinction. - one was Mao’s Little Red Book, one was by the Jehovah Witnesses… In today’s work environment it would be hard to introduce such a fiery comments on work ethics. But at one times it was widely used as inpirational reading in companies, and it was issued to every USA military officers in both world wars.

Take a reading (for the first time or again) of it. There are lots of people no longer believe it has a place in modern day life. But there are still people who view it inspirational. I was introduced to it over 15 years ago in a Dale Carnegie training class Bell Labs sent me to. The class actually was the thing that changed my mind to go for a management job instead of staying as a practicing engineer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Message_to_Garcia

http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.803/pdf/hubbard1899.pdf

Let me know your thoughts on what was said in it.