Friends and family have been calling for the last few days asking how my 80th birthday was. I’ve told them all that it was the best birthday I’ve ever had. They wanted to know what I got as a present. I told them it was the best gift I’ve ever gotten. It wasn’t a thing. It wasn’t stuff. It was a framed collection called “Dad’s Greatest Hits.” It listed the memories of my three children, which they read and presented to me with gusto. It has 43 thoughts and quotes. Allow me to give you a feel for it. It…
Author: Lloyd Graff
I have obsessed over my 80th birthday coming this December 16th. I’ve looked at the day with dread, wondering how I can reach it, yet wanting to celebrate it with the hope of sailing past it and moving into a state of happiness. Frankly, I am baffled that I can still tie my shoes and pick out a tasty apple. I have chosen to continue to lead Graff-Pinkert thanks to the brilliant efforts of Noah and Rex who have decided to continue to work with me and challenge my ideas without mocking me. Buying, selling, and brokering used machine tools…
It’s almost Thanksgiving and I’m already saturated with football. Pro football on Turkey Day means the Detroit Lions play in the morning and the Dallas Cowboys later. The Cowboys are awful and even their cheerleaders are almost ugly. The Lions are Super Bowl contenders after losing every game a few years ago. A superb coach, ferocious like a lion, and a quarterback, Jared Goff, who can go a whole game without an interception. He is boring, but every team but the Chiefs and Bills is wishing he were on their side. What else is worth watching in the NFL? I…
I heard a powerful story yesterday told by one of the founders of the betting platform, Kalshi, Tarek Mansour. The platform recently achieved prominence because it endured many hurdles to gain legal permission to allow betting on the elections in the United States. Mansour sees betting on elections, and weather events like earthquakes and tornadoes as an expression of the unpredictability of life. He recounted a Taoist parable about a Chinese farmer whose most valuable possession was his horse. One night, the horse vanished and the farmer was very sad. But he said to himself that there was a reason…
I am so tired of hearing the lament of people in the machining business that they can’t hire any good machinists. I am going to throw out some ideas that might be useful. Feel free to debunk them in the comments. Young men are the most underemployed group of folks in America. Millions of men in the United States are under 35, live at home, are unemployed or have low paying jobs. They are often unmarried or not in a long-term relationship. They are prone to depression and drug use. The American education system continues to do an atrocious job…
Two candidates for American President with the election two weeks away. One the repellent narcissist, the other who manages to avoid every question except about her opponent. Ugh. But the campaigns have become fascinating to me because of two unique and quite amazing supporters, Elon Musk and Taylor Swift. Musk is attracting crowds to his events by giving away $1 million to one lucky attendee who also signs his petition advocating freedom of speech and the right to bear arms. This is a guy who supported Barack Obama in his first presidential run? Elon Musk came to this country with…
Who would have thunk it a few years ago? The robot boom that many people thought would grow and grow and displace millions of workers has ebbed. Certainly robots have proved their worth with some jobs in manufacturing. The dull task of loading and unloading parts is perfect for robots, but now many of those jobs have already been replaced. Industrial jobs as a whole are down now with new machines having peaked in the period after the Covid pandemic. One place where robots are still hot is in food preparation and packing. Often done in a cold environment where…
What’s the stupidest idea you can think of? In a brainstorming meeting a couple of days ago, Rex and Noah and I were stuck thinking of the same old strategies that have been working just well enough for Graff-Pinkert. Then Noah challenged us to think of ten STUPID ideas for Graff-Pinkert. It turned out that the three of us came up with more than 30 goofy ideas for the business, several of which turned out not to be that stupid, spawning positive action the same day. It’s not inconceivable that one of them will turn out to be brilliant. In…
“I can’t get good people to run the machines.” “I can’t get good men to go to my college.” The two statements are common laments today and related. Stephen Dubner’s brilliant podcast, Freakonomics, just updated its series from two years ago about dropping college enrollment and why men are not going to college, much less finishing. He interviewed, among many others, D’Wayne Edwards, founder and President of Pensole Lewis College in Detroit. **** D’Wayne Edwards’ story is fascinating and relevant to the manufacturing world. He grew up in Inglewood, California, home of the Forum where the Los Angeles Lakers played.…
Today my wife, Risa, got out of bed and experienced an awful moment of feeling the room was spinning. She is no tourist to migraines and vertigo, but this felt different. It passed in a couple of minutes, but the fear that it would return lingered. We sat on a bench in our bedroom, and I sang the John Denver song, “Some Days Are Diamonds,” one of my all-time favorites. We spent a quiet hour together. She drank electrolytes and felt confident enough to take a shower. Then she got on with her day. The song stuck in my mind…