Facebook's shaky PR offensive

On Thursday night I watched Sheryl Sandberg's interview by PBS Judy Woodruff.

As I anticipated, Ms Sandberg tried to wiggle her way out of Woodruff's tough questions by using condescending “clichés” instead of unequivocal answers.

My take-away from the entire interview is: Yes, Facebook allowed the Russians to tilt the presidential election in Trump's favor, and yes, Facebook was so greedy that it took all the money and looked the other way.

Finally, yes, she and Zuckerman fully deserves that me and two billion people close their Facebook account (mine is “suspended” for the moment, as a first step to curing this horrible addition).

End of ski season Funk

It happens to me every year. When April comes, temperatures rise, snow starts melting, skiing becomes more marginal and everything start looking gloomy.

It feels like the end of a good thing and the beginning of nothing. Spring is still far away and skiers like me are in a sad state of limbo and totally out of place.

In the past, our ski area would stay open well after mid-April and sometimes keep the lifts running through May 1, but this year, as a way to commiserate with a less-than-stellar snow year, "everything skiing" will be shut down on April 8.

Wow! How will I survive such a dreadful void?

My Facebook addiction (update)

Yesterday, Facebook finally admitted that most of its 2 billion users could be at risk of having their public profiles accessed by outsiders without the users' permission, making what was already a terrible situation even worst.

What a fine job, Zuckerberg and Sandberg!

Today, I've been out of that platform for 15 days and have not missed much; instead, I've gained a chunk of my precious time I didn't waste on that social network.

So far, I'm a successful recovery addict and I hope that my Facebookholism will be totally cured very soon.

How to spot and enjoy good terrain

There are talents in skiing that can't be taught, they can only be garnered out of love for the sport. One of these is the ability to perceive and use the subtleties of the terrain that unfolds in front of us as we ski.

Some runs and lines are better candidates than the uniform, boring slope and can only be appreciated if we've assimilated them fully.

Imagine if you can a soft, flexible ribbon, both longitudinally and torsionally; this is what I'm talking about and this is what might glide under your skis.

This may sound vague, ethereal and complicated and I guess it is. Just play with it and you might get it.

“25,654!”

This is the number of mornings I have woken up since the beginning of my life, give and take a few leap years every now and then.

Some of my mornings were still lacking the basic element of consciousness, when I still was a baby, others were marked by some severe hang-over when I was young and irresponsible, others by huge worries, when I had banged my car the night before, forgotten a deadline or made some terrible decision.

A few more morning were marked by sharp physical pain, following an accident, an operation or some injury, and in some cases just general discomfort as was fighting the flu or was just under the weather or waking up fresh from some heartache or other deep disappointment.

Too many mornings begin stumbling out of an airplane, sleep-deprived, groggy, jet-lagged and unprepared to go to work. For a host of reasons, none of my mornings were created equal and, over the years, many of them have given me the chills for a bunch of valid reasons.

Of course, they were also these mornings that came too early without enough sleep to restore my batteries and make me see clearly into a surrounding waking world.

Finally, they were all these other fantastic mornings that made me want to go out and conquer the world and continue the task I had reluctantly given up the night before.

Today, with less activity, far fewer decision made the day before and a lot more wisdom, my mornings are generally calm, easy and are filled with ideas, plans and projects I'm looking forward to.

I only wish I'll be fortunate enough to enjoy many more of these hopeful daily beginnings!

Sloshing down the hill!

The slush skiing season is now into full swing and with it an option to quit skiing for the season, hurt yourself or improve your skiing skills by learning to have fun as your skis sink into that gooey snow that intimidates and tires most of us.

Of course, no wants want to get hurt as the end of the season closes-in and skiing slush safely seems paradoxical at best.

Here's how I handle it. First, there's plenty of resistance from these huge masses of slushy snow, so slow-motion isn't such a good idea.

Some powerful momentum or a good modicum of speed is required to push through it.

The difficulty is in the way one can differentiate between what's too slow and what's too fast, and this variable changes hour by hour as the exterior temperature raises.

The other rule is to be very gentle on the edges and keep a flat ski whenever possible, prefer longer radius turns to short ones that tire quickly and keep in mind to remain very “light” on skis at hold time. It's springtime, warm and sunny, but don't ever let your guard down!

Be super-concentrated; watch what each ski is doing at all time and as soon as one deflects, correct the situation. Stay in the middle of the skis and don't allow sudden deceleration to bring your body over your tips.

Remain focused, quiet and balanced, hope for the best and, most importantly, invite the courage to invite speed into the process!

Exploring paths we never took

For many of us, our lives are the result of choices we've made along the way of growing and maturing.

Without them, we wouldn't be where we are today, no matter how bad or good our place in life has turned out to be.

While the exercise can be at times difficult to imagine and experience, I find it useful and enlightening to go through all the choices we never made, or the paths we never took along the way, in order to discover or try to experience how these could have changed us and modified our destinies.

I do it often as I wake up early in the morning and decide to go revisiting and looking at what these “forks on the road” could have kept away from us.

What I'm delighted to report is that for the most part, I wouldn't want today's results any different than they are, and I'm astounding at the quasi-absence of regret in what was has been my tumultuous life so far.