Our sweet old girl passed away on Wednesday, September 24th.  It was a tough one.   I wasn’t ready.  I should have been, but I wasn’t.  Even now, over two months later, I’m getting emotional writing this. I found Lady literally in the middle of the street 13.5 years ago.  I was walking Charley (see my …

Continue reading "Goodbye, our sweet Lady"

From everything I’ve been reading lately, there seem to be some misconception about the purpose of a standard. What is a standard? Most importantly, a standard does not mean “only.”  There can be multiple standards that serve the same purpose.  I’ll get to an example of that in moment. Per SMPTE, a standard provides structure, organization, …

Continue reading "What is a standard and why should you care?"

As anyone who sees my posts and comments knows, I am excited about the prospect of a standard which supports game asset interoperability. Original Concept As I originally conceived it, a set of standard metadata could be defined which would describe the properties of the asset.  A simplistic example:?Category = Weapon?Type = Sword?Bonus = +5 …I …

Continue reading "A Standard for NFTs as Interoperable Game Assets"

I recently read a post and some excellent accompanying Medium articles regarding the impracticality of NFTs representing interoperable game assets across apps in the GameFi space. I’m going to overly simplify, but the author was highly skeptical for three reasons: The impossibility of maintaining visual and behavioral integrity across games The challenge trusting assets from …

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I had such a great time last month writing about many of the amazing women who have touched my life in a series of posts on LinkedIn for #womenshistorymonth, I thought I would make them easily accessible here. Katy Castagna View on LinkedIn I read a post recently that was liked by one of my …

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I have a theory that all rules to govern good behavior, leadership, business practices, etc. boil down to one simple tenet, The Golden Rule – treat others as you would have them treat you. In this series of posts, I’m going to look back and tell some stories, mostly about where I made mistakes and what I learned …

Continue reading "The Golden Rule – Communication"

I mentioned this in a previous blog entry but thought it might be worth expanding upon. I’ve long held that there is only one rule necessary to live by, the Golden Rule, or Treat others the way you want to be treated.  It’s difficult to find other “rules to live by” that aren’t derivative of …

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We lost our beautiful English Springer Spaniel, Charlotte “Charley,” yesterday.  I know I am lucky to have had her in my life for the past 14 years, but right now it is difficult to get past how much I miss her.  Still, I don’t want to dwell on the end of her life, but rather …

Continue reading "An Empty Bed"

For the past four years, I have been embarrassed to be an American.  Every time Trump tweeted, spoke, issued an executive order, or rolled out another heinous policy, I was not just outraged, I felt humiliated. On 1/17 on CBS Sunday morning, I watched Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, laugh and clown around …

Continue reading "Today, I’m Proud to be an American"

It’s easy to gleefully chuckle each time one of Trump’s election-challenging lawsuits (I’m tempted to put that word in quotes) is tossed out of court, often with a scathing opinion, but it’s important to look at why they keep getting so resoundingly rejected.  Just because they lacked any semblance of legal substance does not mean …

Continue reading "Unexpected Trump coup obstacle: Pride in work"

Like, I’m sure, many of us, I’ve been thinking a great deal about leadership these days.  Good leadership has many attributes – compassion for team members, respect for personal time, delegation, open-mindedness, etc. – but I’m thinking about one aspect specifically – modeling the behavior desired from others. I’ve long held that there is only …

Continue reading "In a Global Pandemic, Leaders Wear Masks"

This past weekend (4/23-27/2018) The Robotics Education & Competition (REC) Foundation held is annual VEX Robotics World Competition in Louisville, Kentucky.  Thousands of middle school, high school and college students, representing hundreds of the best robotics teams in the world descended on the Kentucky Exposition Center for three days of intense rivalry.  Yes, with teams from over …

Continue reading "VEX Robotics World Competition Promotes the Best of Tech Community Values"

(Above:  Isabelle and I circa 2001/Me 2017) Anyone who knows me would be shocked to read this post.   Up until a few years ago, I was never interested in fitness.  Oh, I would occasionally control my eating, cut back on sweets or Coke (still my favorite drink), things like that, but I am a foodie, …

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In spite of the challenges, it was a wonderful trip which I don’t regret for a minute.

The Original Plan See Zion National Park, celebrate my birthday, and stay either in the Watchman Campground at Zion or nearby.   The Revised Plan See Bryce Canyon National Park in the morning and Zion National Park in the afternoon. The Reality The day went mostly according to the revised plan with one significant hitch along the way. The Good In spite …

Continue reading "Utah Mighty 5 RV trip, Day 7 – Friday, 12/25 – Bryce, Zion & Turning 50"

The Plan Drive to Bryce Canyon National Park then back to Escalante Petrified Forrest State Park for our second night in the campground. The Reality Spent the day thawing the gray and black water tanks which had frozen overnight and then drove to Bryce to spend the night (for some of us) at The Lodge at Bryce Canyon. The Bad Woke …

Continue reading "Utah Mighty 5 RV trip, Day 6 – Thursday, 12/24 – Frozen Tanks"

The Original Plan Drive from Bluff to Natural Bridges National Monument, hit Capitol Reef National Park and then on to Escalante Petrified Forrest State Park Campground. The Revised Plan Drive north to Natural Bridges National Monument, hit Capitol Reef National Park and then on to Escalante Petrified Forrest State Park Campground. The Reality Here’s where I made my second rookie RV mistake.  I didn’t check our …

Continue reading "Utah Mighty 5 RV trip, Day 5 – Wednesday, 12/23 – Natural Bridges & Capitol Reef"

The Plan Drive south to Bluff, Utah, check in at the RV park, visit Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, and return to Bluff for the night. The Reality Headed down to Bluff and checked in at the RV park I had reserved.  We then visited the Bluff Fort Historic Site which was mostly a re-creation of the original …

Continue reading "Utah Mighty 5 RV trip, Day 4 – Tuesday, 12/22 – Bluff Fort & Monument Valley"

The Plan Visit Canyonlands National Park. The Reality Got the call from El Monte in the morning and dropped the Behemoth off at a local repair place.  While the RV was being fixed, had brunch at Sweet Cravings.  Fortunately, the Behemoth was repaired by noon.  We saw my father and Susan off and headed out to Canyonlands.  Just …

Continue reading "Utah Mighty 5 RV trip, Day 3 – Monday, 12/21 – Canyonlands"

The Plan Visit Arches National Park with my father and Susan and have dinner together to celebrate my birthday. The Reality We drove to a private RV park, Moab Valley RV Resort, to fill our fresh water tank which they were kind enough to let us do for free.  After filling up, we drove to the Hampton Inn …

Continue reading "Utah Mighty 5 RV trip, Day 2 – Sunday, 12/20 – Family & Arches"

On December 25, 2015 I will turn 50, so I decided to have a brief mid-life crisis and do something a little crazy.  My family and I have always talked about renting an RV for an extended road trip to several national parks.  With a college freshman (Isabelle), high school sophomore (DJ) and a girlfriend …

Continue reading "Utah Mighty 5 RV trip, Day 1 – Saturday, 12/19 – The Adventure Begins!"

Anybody get tickets last week for Coachella?  Anybody?  Bueller? I didn’t and neither did anyone I know.  Now, that’s OK.  Demand far exceeded supply and pre-sales were strong, so everyone isn’t going to get tickets.  My beef is with the process. In case you haven’t purchased tickets lately, this is how it works. Promoters announce …

Continue reading "A User-Friendly Ticket Experience"

As most of us have, I’ve been thinking about this past year a lot the last few days.  It’s been a year of high highs and low lows for the Lesh family.  We’ve had some wonderful events, such as Isabelle being accepted into college and DJ becoming a high-schooler, and a few challenging times which …

Continue reading "Goodbye 2014, Hello 2015"

Isabelle was accepted Early Decision to Emory University today.  For those of you with younger kids, there are two types of early applications to college (with a few flavors) – Early Decision, which is binding, and Early Action, which is not.  Some colleges offer both, but most just one type. Emory was her first choice so she …

Continue reading "My baby is going to Emory University!"

My beautiful, talented daughter was accepted to Tulane University!  She’s going to college.  It’s cliché, but it really is hard to believe my baby girl will be off to college in nine short months.  I distinctly remember her first day of kindergarten, a story I tell to anyone who will listen (or in this case read). …

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Toward the end of 8th grade, DJ was recruited to the Harvard-Westlake Middle School robotics team by a new friend.  He needed DJ’s skills to maintain the robot the team had designed but which was not doing well in competition.  DJ couldn’t help last year, but this year he leads the design/build efforts (with programming, …

Continue reading "DJ’s team (HWMS Quantum Potentials) qualify for regionals in 1st FTC robotics event"