Hide Behind a Keyboard

Hide Behind a Keyboard

I've been called a lot of things. Idiot, A # # hole, Jerk. Old man who should sit down.

I made a mistake by saying, on a social media platform, that I was embarrassed to be a native Minnesotan because of what people were doing up there. I got roasted. Comments like "you should know better" were met with "I quit drinking the Kool-Aid."

Most recently, the guy next door sent a scathing, certified letter, letting me know that I was overwatering and killing his trees. One line really bugged me because we haven't spoken about this, AT ALL. The line, "I would rather have communicated like normal neighbors, but it appears as though you're not interested in that." Funny, as a text message, that has been blocked, just doesn't seem like "communicating" like normal neighbors. Also, who told this "guy" to plant trees that are susceptible to disease, right on my property line? Not me.

I blocked him as I was advised to because he sent a "text message" saying that I had mowed into this yard and that this was not acceptable. Dude. I just got home from the hospital! To this day, thanks to Wallenberg Syndrome, I still have balance issues and a bad limp.

The letter itself was a rant, like he spoke. One long paragraph with ZERO suggestions as to how to correct it. So, I took the exact opposite approach. I completely turned it off and wrote "It's off!" on the signature receipt that the tool suggested.

The Guy Who'd Never Say It to Your Face

Take that same guy and put him across a table from me. Coffee shop, doesn't matter. Now watch what happens to his courage.

It evaporates. Every time.

Because it was never courage. It was distance. The internet gives cowards an invisible wall, and the wall is a keyboard. Behind it, everybody's a tough guy. Everybody's got the hot take, the gut punch, the thing they'd "never let slide." Strip away the screen name and the avatar and put a real face on the other side of the table, and that same guy will suddenly find a reason to check his phone.

I spent 30-plus years in enterprise IT and telecom, sitting in rooms with executives who'd cut you down over a missed SLA without blinking; to your face, in real time, no hiding. I've had a stroke that took the strength out of my left foot and made we relearn how to walk like a man twice my age. I've sat at a trading desk and watched a position go against me in real time, no delay, no do-over button. None of that prepared me for the particular flavor of gutlessness I get from friends, neighbors, and strangers online. Because at least the guy in the boardroom had to look at me while he said it.

Why I Stopped Hiding, Even When It Would've Been Easier

Here's the part I'll own: I get it. Hiding is easier. I could post my trades without my face attached, keep my mouth shut about the stroke, the drop foot, the fact that I'm bald and 60 and not particularly interested in pretending otherwise. Nobody would know it was me if a trade blew up or a post didn't land. Anonymous failure doesn't sting the same way.

But anonymous anything doesn't mean much either.

I named this blog Old, Bold, and Bald because I got tired of watching people, myself included, plenty of times, trade their spine for a login. You want to say something, say it. Own it. You want to disagree with me, disagree with me where I can see you do it. Let's talk about it. Face to face. I'll take a real argument from a real person over a drive-by insult from a cartoon avatar every single time, because one of those exchanges might actually teach me something.

The Keyboard Isn't the Problem. You Are.

I'm not making some tired "the internet ruined civility" argument. The internet's a tool. A hammer doesn't make you swing it at somebody's head. The keyboard doesn't make you cruel, it just makes cruelty free. No eye contact tax. No tone-of-voice tax. No standing there watching your words land on an actual human being who now has to carry them around for the rest of the day.

Take that tax away and you find out fast who somebody really is underneath the manners.

So here's my ask, and it's not complicated. Before you type something, you wouldn't say standing in front of the person, sitting across the table, in the room, close enough that your voice would shake a little saying it, don't. Not because the internet police are coming for you. Because if it only exists behind a keyboard, it was never real in the first place. It was just noise from someone who may be too afraid to actually talk with you.

I'm old. I'm bald. I've got a foot that doesn't always do what I tell it to and a trading account that occasionally reminds me I'm not as smart as I think I am. I've got nothing left to protect by pretending to be someone else online, and honestly, neither do you. Say it with your name on it, or don't say it at all.

That's the whole post. Come find me and tell me I'm wrong, but be open-minded enough to "Be curious, not judgmental." I'll be here.

Until next time,

Stay Old, Bold, and Bald, and maybe a bit Grumpy too

A Modern Day Scrooge

I got a rather nasty, venting, certified letter from my neighbor complaining that I was killing his spruce trees because I “overwater.” So, I turned the system completely off. I’m not sure who told him to plant those things right on the property line anyway.

Years ago, he sent a text complaining that I, who has balance issues, mowed into his yard. He was blocked and I was advised to stay away from him. Now, I have hired a landscaping company so that I don’t have to deal with this level of selfishness. FYI, it ain't cheap.

He couldn’t just walk over and talk like “normal neighbors.” No suggestions or recommendations provided. Just a rant from a guy who wrote this letter like a 5th grader who writes like he speaks.

Not sure if he knows this, but there is a disease that is eating at Junipers in the KC area called Cercospora needle blight.

Moral of the story: don’t act like Scrooge and point your finger with no suggestions on how to fix the problem until it’s too late. Oh yeah, you’ve been blocked in pretty much every possible way, so you will need to come over and speak with us to resolve whatever issues you may have.

Until next time,
Stay Old, Bold, and Bald

Cheat Code Satisfaction

For the longest time, I've been doing a puzzle online on a popular social media platform. After each puzzle, it would show me my time along with the times of a few others who'd done the same one. 

Every time I finished, I'd notice that the people I was "competing" against finished in a fraction of my time. And every time, I'd grumble that they had to be cheating, but I never actually took the time to figure out how.

Well, yesterday I thought about it a little more and searched for cheat codes for these puzzles. Lo and behold, there were a bunch of sites.

This morning, I decided to try one. All but one of the answers were right. For that one puzzle, the words were correct, but a couple of them didn't line up. 

I found myself getting frustrated because I wanted so badly to "beat the clock" and beat everyone else. And I did beat the clock. But I didn't feel fulfilled, because it wasn't really me who solved the puzzle. 

Sure, I filled in the blanks, but I was just copying from another source, kind of like looking over someone's shoulder during an exam. I didn't do that then, and I won't do it now.

I know cheaters are going to cheat. But there's something to be said for honesty being the best policy.

I've always said I don't like to reinvent the wheel; meaning it usually makes more sense to do what's tried and true instead of banging your head against the wall trying again and again. I still believe that when it comes to fixing things. But this isn't the same thing.

Bottom line: I just didn't feel the same satisfaction as when I solved the puzzles on my own. Now that I know why some people post such low times with no errors and no hints used, I'm going to keep doing it my way — the honest way.

I'm not saying this approach is for everyone. Like I said, cheaters are going to cheat and take whatever advantage they can find.

But until today, I felt real satisfaction doing it myself. Sure, I used a hint here and there; sometimes just to get to the next step, sometimes just to admit there was no way I'd have figured it out otherwise.

At the end of the day, it's the satisfaction of doing it myself that leaves me with a sense of what I'm actually capable of. Even if it's just a puzzle.

Until next time, stay Old, Bold, and Bald — and maybe a little grumpy too.

Ghosted for a Year and Now???

 Over a year ago, I was having breakfast meetings with a couple of guys that I was looking to join if the stars aligned.

After being ghosted for a couple of months, I figured that they had moved in another direction, but they didn't even bother to call me to let me know.

Then, a few months ago, I got a text from one of the guys asking how I was. Needless to say, it took me back a bit. I was cordial and responded that I was keeping busy, followed by a good to hear type of response the next day. Then, nothing.

Then, yesterday I received another text from the same guy asking if I was available Friday for "Breakfast." Seriously? I waited a bit and then responded, in a cordial manner again, that before I would confirm, I wanted to know the agenda and the expected result. I thought that was fair since they milked me for all that it was worth. They were trying to get business with the org that I just left, and they wanted to know what they could so that they could get an inside advantage.

His response was, "Sure, agenda is really we wanted to thank you for your help at XXX, catch up with you to see what you were doing, and to see if XXX can help you if we can. We have significantly grown our organization built around HC." 

They just wanted to thank me and see what's up and what they can do for me. Um, how about that job we discussed over a year ago?

After over a year, 07/24/2025 to be exact, I get this request. 

My response was, "No need to thank me! I'm also not sure what Smart Dog IT would do for me at this point, so I'll pass on breakfast for now. Appreciate you thinking of me. Good luck with the growth!"

After that, the next day, I got an "understand" and a "take care for now."

What's the old expression? "That's a fine how do you do."

Not that I expected something incredible to happen, but that's all that I got? Take care for now? I don't even know what that means.

I guess I'm back to square one. Only this time, I'm not holding my breath.

In the meantime...

Stay Old, Bold, and Bald. Not to mention a bit Grumpy too.

"Good Fit" Is Code for Younger and Cheaper

Let me tell you something nobody puts in the recruiting brochure. Somewhere around age fifty, you stop being "experienced" and start being "a flight risk for retirement," "maybe not a culture fit," or my personal favorite, "overqualified." Overqualified. As if knowing what I'm doing is suddenly the problem.

I've got more years behind me than in front of me at this point. I'm not going to pretend otherwise — I'm bald, I'm blunt, and I've buried enough coworkers' bad decisions to have earned the right to be both. But here's what twenty-five-year-old me didn't know and forty-something HR screener doesn't want to admit: the stuff that actually keeps a company from setting itself on fire is the stuff you only learn by getting burned a few times. Nobody hands you that in a bootcamp certificate.

The Interview That Wasn't About the Job

I sat across from a hiring manager once — young guy, sharp, probably smarter than me on paper — who spent forty minutes asking me questions that had nothing to do with the role and everything to do with whether I'd "keep up." Whether I was comfortable with change. Whether I'd take direction from someone younger. I answered every one of them straight, because I've got nothing to hide and less patience for games.

What he didn't ask: whether I could walk into a mess nobody else wanted to touch and actually fix it. Whether I've sat in the room when the wheels came off a project and had to be the calm one. Whether I've made the same mistake he's about to make and already know how it ends.

That's ageism. It doesn't wear a sign. It shows up dressed as "team fit" and "energy" and "long-term potential," which is corporate for we've already decided you're closer to the door than the desk.

They Can't Say "Too Old." So They Say "Good Fit."

Let's call it what it is. Nobody in HR is legally allowed to say "we're passing on you because of your age" — that's a lawsuit waiting to happen, and every company past a certain size has a lawyer who's told them so. But they still need a reason to write down, something clean and defensible that closes the file without opening a claim.

Enter "good fit." Enter "culture fit." Enter "we went a different direction." None of it means anything specific, and that's exactly the point — it can't be challenged, because it was never really about anything. It's not a real assessment. It's a placeholder for a reason nobody's allowed to say out loud.

I'm not saying every "not a good fit" is code for "too old." Sometimes it's true — sometimes the fit genuinely isn't there. But when it shows up right after they find out how many years you've got, or right after you mention you've been doing this since before your interviewer was born, don't kid yourself about what just happened. The language was built to be unfalsifiable. That's a feature, not a bug.

The Math They're Not Doing

Here's the part that gets me. Companies love to talk about risk management right up until the hiring conversation, and then all of a sudden they want to bet everything on unproven potential instead of demonstrated results. I've built things. I've broken things and fixed the break. I know what a bad decision smells like three meetings before it happens, because I've made that exact bad decision myself, on my own dime, and learned the expensive way so nobody else has to.

That's not a liability. That's the whole point of hiring someone with a track record instead of a hunch.

What I'm Not Going to Do

I'm not going to dye anything, dumb down my resume, or pretend I don't know what I know so I look less threatening in a Zoom call. I built a rule for myself trading — my stop is my decision, everything before that is noise — and it applies just as well here. My experience is my decision to keep. I'm not apologizing for it, and I'm not hiding it to make somebody younger feel better about the org chart.

If a company can't see the value in someone who's already made the mistakes, already fixed the mistakes, and doesn't need three months of hand-holding to be useful — that's their loss, not mine. I've got the scar tissue to prove I'm worth the seat. I just need somebody willing to look past the bald head and the years to see it.

For Anybody Else in This Fight

If you're out there right now, sending resumes into a void and getting form-letter rejections, or none at all, from jobs you could do in your sleep, you're not broken, and you're not too old. You're just running into a system that hasn't figured out yet that experience isn't the opposite of energy. Keep showing up. Keep being blunt about what you bring to the table. The right door doesn't care how many candles are on your cake.

Old. Bold. Bald. And still, without question, worth the hire.

Until next time,
Stay Old, Bold, and Bald

Not to Lose More Friends Over Facebook

I've been around long enough to watch a lot of presidents come and go, and one thing hasn't changed: everybody's always sure this is the term that finally breaks the country. It hasn't yet. But something about the last decade of politics feels different; we seem to "disagree" more today instead of finding like-minded people. Why can't we be in the same room and talk like civil people?

People throw around the phrase "Trump Derangement Syndrome" a lot these days. I'm not here to litigate whether that's a real thing or a talking point; smart people land on both sides of that one, and it usually says more about who's talking than what's actually true. What I do know is this: political intensity, whatever you want to call it, has a cost. And most of us are paying it without noticing.

So here's my Old, Bold, and Bald advice, no diagnosis required:

1. Social media isn't the place for your unfiltered opinions.
It's not a conversation; it's a platform with an audience you can't see. Nobody's mind changes because of a heated 11pm post. But someone will screenshot it. Someone always does. If you've got something to say, say it to an actual person, over actual coffee or a simple phone call, where tone survives and you can read the room and not hide behind a keyboard.

Just don't put it on social media. I had a friend that kept posting things without fact checking. When I would point out the inaccuracies or the dated material. I would get beat up because I was from Minnesota and "should know better." My response to a couple people that said was that I left over 40 years ago and that it when I quit drinking that kook aid.

I simply responded that I had enough, peace out!

One "friend", who was a neighbor when we lived in Dallas, pinged me on Instagram to call me a racist. That was during Obama's second term. WTH? My daughter is Asian.

My first day in a political science class had the teacher walk in and asked, do we want government to control everything we do or do we choose to rely on ourselves. It was at that moment that I chose my side.

2. FAFO is not a strategy.
"Find out" sounds tough until what you find out is a strained family dinner, a friendship that quietly ends, or a stranger's anger following you around online for a week. I've learned the hard way: being right in an argument nobody remembers next month rarely covers what it costs you now.

I have a friend that we discussed the ACA (aka Obamacare). We had a civil discussion and came back to work the next day. That's the way it should be.

3. Coming together doesn't require agreeing.
It requires remembering the people around you are more than their voting record. Your neighbor who sees it differently is still the guy who shoveled your driveway during the ice storm: although mine never do but that's a story and rang for another time. 

I'm old enough to know outrage burns a lot of energy for very little return, and bold enough to say so out loud: save your fights for the people who matter and let the noise be noise.

Opinions matter folks. Keep them to yourself.

Until next time, stay
Old, Bold, and Bald

Too Much Politics on TV

 After years of deviousness in this Country. Now, CNBC Squawk Box has become yet another political machine, and I don't get it.

They used to be a great source for business stories about what is going on in the economy and why stocks may be reacting the way they are.

Now? It has turned into a machine about will this cause that to happen and why is one side of the aisle better than the other.

I watched a YouTube video where the discussion was the party of common sense vs. the party of crazies.

Now, I get it but you simply can't change stupid. However, I take the approach that, if it doesn't affect me, I'm gonna leave it alone. Just don't push your ideology on me. 

As I've stated before, I came of age in the 80s, so my Gen X thoughts are way different than the crap that is being pushed on me today. I left Minnesota and told "old" friends that I woke up after NOT drinking the Kool-Aid.  

I'm not sure when leaving your issues at the voting table became you need to believe and vote the way I do, or you are a Nazi. WTF is that? Have these "kids" looked at what the Nazi's represented versus how it translates to today? Being on the Nazi right is not the same as being on the political right today. That being said, the crazies don't see things that way. 

I'm sure that you can guess which side I tend to lean, but that is a story for another day. Woke should lead to Wake The Heck Up, kids.

That being said. Until next time.

Stay Old, Bold, and Bald. Not to mention Grumpy.