Bob Wertz

I mentioned earlier this week that the Edward Tufte workshop in Atlanta eight years ago was a driving factor in returning to graduate school, but that’s actually a partial truth. There were actually five lectures that sparked an interest in design research and grad school. All of them held in vast hotel meeting rooms with hundreds of attendees, but each of them connecting with me on a deeper level.

Jonah Lehrer, AIGA Gain Conference, October 2008, New York City

Gain was AIGA’s “Business of Design” conference¹ and there was a roster of big wig, influential speakers. Jonah Lehrer was there to talk about his best-selling book, Proust was a Neuroscientist. Lehrer connected creativity with neuroscience advancements, arguing that artists often figured out how the brain worked before scientists did. This concept that neuroscience and creativity could be linked was fascinating to me. A few years after...

Yesterday, my middle schooler lost his backpack with his school-issued Chromebook, his homework and two library books. It’s a long story, but after a period of panic, we found it in the high school front office.

Last night, we put an AirTag on his bag… just in case it happens again.

My sleep schedule has been a little bit off lately… went to bed early, woke up a little after midnight, came downstairs and my daughter was still up finishing homework/procrastinating.

Eight years ago today, I attended an Edward Tufte workshop in Atlanta. I left questioning so many assumptions about how designers present information and how people process data. It was one of the driving forces behind my return to grad school.

My son’s middle school has been sending an email, a text message and a pre-recorded phone call every Sunday night at 6:30. Thankfully, the principal just mentioned in the email that she’s not going to do the phone call anymore after talking to parents. There is such a thing as over communicating.

The start of another season. Ryan had some really nice saves today. 🥍

I realized the other day that our family tends to give places nicknames and that to an outside observer, our place names would be undecodable. Here are a few of my favorites.

• St. Mary Ashley. In reality, this church is St. Mary Episcopal Church, but our former babysitter, Mary Ashley got married here. It’s on my drive home and when my wife would ask where I was, I’d say “I’m by St. Mary, you know, where Mary Ashley got married.” Eventually, I shortened it to St. Mary Ashley.
• The Honeybaked Ham Plant. Not far past St. Mary Ashley is sprawling industrial facility. Once owned by Honeywell, it’s now operated by Shaw Industries and makes carpet fibers.¹ It obviously does not “make” hams, but I guess at some point, Honeywell became Honeybaked. If I told my wife I was near the Shaw Industries plant, she’d have no idea where...
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If you don’t value government, everything looks like waste.

Long day ahead of me, but the weekend is on the other side.

I still have Facebook, primarily to check my memories. Usually, it’s something funny that the kids said, or some family pictures. But today was different:

“Just left Columbiana in a stampede. Rumored shooting. Scary.”

We’d gone to Columbiana Mall near our house to do some shopping and stopped at the Red Robin near the exit to get some dinner before heading home. After dinner, we stepped out of the restaurant into a stampede of people running toward us. A woman yelled “Go! There was a shooting!” as she ran past. We darted back inside Red Robin and left through their exits. I had Norah and Jill, and we got briefly separated from Ryan and my wife, Liz as we left through different doors. We found each other, ran to the car and got the hell out of there as police and first responders poured into the parking lot from all directions.

That is...