Hobo Jungle

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Hughes Medical Institute and its massive endowment remains in existence to the current day and is still one of the largest funding bodies of medical research in the nation.

Painfully aware of it; you have not had a fun year or 3 until you have had to suffer through having an HHMI fellow in your research group - everybody and everything is beneath their notice and they must get issued a wheelbarrow just to haul around their sense of entitlement.

One and done and never, ever again, and I don't care that that they are fully funded.

A valuable perspective, one I somehow had a feeling was coming. Honestly.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Hughes Medical Institute and its massive endowment remains in existence to the current day and is still one of the largest funding bodies of medical research in the nation.

Painfully aware of it; you have not had a fun year or 3 until you have had to suffer through having an HHMI fellow in your research group - everybody and everything is beneath their notice and they must get issued a wheelbarrow just to haul around their sense of entitlement.

One and done and never, ever again, and I don't care that that they are fully funded.

A valuable perspective, one I somehow had a feeling was coming. Honestly.

It was people like these HMMI fellows that contributed to my deciding not going to medical school - I did not want to become one of "Them".

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Wow, Talk about life-choices being affected by others (!) And effected!

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Wow, Talk about life-choices being affected by others (!) And effected!

I had multiple career (and I guess that life...) choices. I went with the one in which I was having the most fun. It never panned out to be anything that I had planned.............but it did become orders of magnitude better than anything I could have ever predicted or expected.

[healey36]

At last count the aggregate value of Hughes' holdings have been sold for north of $150 billion (DirecTV, a Hughes company originally, in its final iteration was acquired/merged with AT&T in the last year for $67 billion alone)...I guess GM's much decried acquisition of the company by Roger Smith, CEO, wasn't so stupid after all, lol...

Healey

The value of Hughes Company pieces just keeps growing and growing. GM did not do too bad itself. After paying $5 billion for Hughes in 1985, G.M. sold its pieces for $9.5 billion to Raytheon, $3.75 billion to Boeing, and $26 billion to EchoStar.

Reference: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/30/busin ... ategy.html

Don't know about that last bit...I think this article was drafted prior to the deal getting finalized. Echostar was a player but they got outmaneuvered by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. News Corp bought DirecTV, Hughes Network Systems and PanAmSat for a bunch of money. Rupert wanted DirecTV for his global TV network. The FCC forced him to make a bunch of concessions re: satellite TV in the US. He spun HNS (us) off to private equity (Apollo) and sold PanAmSat to Intelsat. In 2011 Apollo sold HNS to Echostar. DirecTV operated as a News Corp business until a few years back when Rupert got himself into a jam. If memory serves he spun DirecTV off and it was subsequently acquired by AT&T a couple of years ago.

Those years when we were owned by Apollo were the best of my career. We operated as an independent publicly-traded company...the only time in my career that we controlled our own fate. All good things come to an end (miserably in the case of Echostar ownership) Private equity firms make their money buying and selling assets...the same will happen to Lionel eventually.

[John Webster]

Who was the flight engineer?

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Wow, Talk about life-choices being affected by others (!) And effected!

I had multiple career (and I guess that life...) choices. I went with the one in which I was having the most fun. It never panned out to be anything that I had planned.............but it did become orders of magnitude better than anything I could have ever predicted or expected.

I'm very happy for you. What you have explained is why you are so good at what you do. You are a healer and a saver, and taught others how to do the same. It doesn't get much better than that.

I've seen it written that knowledge that is not shared with others is useless. you have proven that to be true. Your sharing knowledge imbued it with value .

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Wow, Talk about life-choices being affected by others (!) And effected!

I had multiple career (and I guess that life...) choices. I went with the one in which I was having the most fun. It never panned out to be anything that I had planned.............but it did become orders of magnitude better than anything I could have ever predicted or expected.

I'm very happy for you. What you have explained is why you are so good at what you do. You are a healer and a saver, and taught others how to do the same. It doesn't get much better than that.

I've seen it written that knowledge that is not shared with others is useless. you have proven that to be true. Your sharing knowledge imbued it with value .

Thank you.

Maybe instead of "did no harm" they can put "did some good" on my stone.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

I am positive it will read: Did great good.

[healey36]

Hughes Medical Institute and its massive endowment remains in existence to the current day and is still one of the largest funding bodies of medical research in the nation.

Painfully aware of it; you have not had a fun year or 3 until you have had to suffer through having an HHMI fellow in your research group - everybody and everything is beneath their notice and they must get issued a wheelbarrow just to haul around their sense of entitlement.

One and done and never, ever again, and I don't care that that they are fully funded.

Never dealt with anyone over there. It must have been strange for them - they just stood there and the cash rained down upon them. With Howard gone and Hughes (the company) disemboweled, I guess they live on with their endowment. I could see how that would leave one insufferable.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Hughes Medical Institute and its massive endowment remains in existence to the current day and is still one of the largest funding bodies of medical research in the nation.

Painfully aware of it; you have not had a fun year or 3 until you have had to suffer through having an HHMI fellow in your research group - everybody and everything is beneath their notice and they must get issued a wheelbarrow just to haul around their sense of entitlement.

One and done and never, ever again, and I don't care that that they are fully funded.

Never dealt with anyone over there. It must have been strange for them - they just stood there and the cash rained down upon them. With Howard gone and Hughes (the company) disemboweled, I guess they live on with their endowment. I could see how that would leave one insufferable.

It seems that the students that come through that environment are taught and conditioned to believe that they know all and that all others are inferior to them. That gets old in my labs after about a day......and they the one I had got told, get in the lab, and get to work.....and yes, you do have to do the research yourself.

[healey36]

Sounds like every kid I ever hired out of a business school...wasn't too kicked up about the work but expected to be a vice-president within five years. They need to tone down the "empowerment" and turn up the "ownership" aspects of the curriculum.

It's been a crazy spring...the rhododendrons are just starting to blow up around here:



I see NOAA's predicting a hot dry summer with more-than-normal tropical storm activity...sounds like a great time. Have to say I put a decreasing amount of faith in the weather prognosticators, although NOAA generally tries to keep it conservative.

Healey

[rogruth]

Seems to me that most new graduates these days think they know more than any of us old dudes.
It makes no difference what field they will know more. Of course there are exceptions.
I got a BA in music in 1956. I knew a lot about instruments and the sounds they make but I didn't
know squat about how to actually teach a kid to play an instrument. Every chance I could find
I visited other schools and band and music teachers. I wasn't a great teacher by any means
but I did it for 43+ years. There are some folks that like to say "those that can do, those that
can't teach". I say those thatsay that have never tried to teach.There are some that chose to
teach even if they could have done something else. Rufus is one who does both and sometime
in the past was also taught by one who could have done either.
My mouth runneth over.

[E7]

Great Pic Healey!

Rich

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Sounds like every kid I ever hired out of a business school...wasn't too kicked up about the work but expected to be a vice-president within five years. They need to tone down the "empowerment" and turn up the "ownership" aspects of the curriculum.

Been that way for a few decades now - comes from parents and high schools teaching these kids that they are entitled to an "A" and a job where they make more than their parents.

It's been a crazy spring...the rhododendrons are just starting to blow up around here

Mine have come and gone already - not that much further South than you.......

I see NOAA's predicting a hot dry summer with more-than-normal tropical storm activity...sounds like a great time. Have to say I put a decreasing amount of faith in the weather prognosticators, although NOAA generally tries to keep it conservative.

Saw that and last year's forecast did not pan out nor the one before and even this weekend's forecast was a mile off - all kinds of alerts were being posted on the weekend. Checked the weather maps and nothing......... I swear that they make it all up.