“Next slide please!”

I can’t tell if the presenter is speaking to their assistant operating the laptop or reading my mind. I’ve sat through hundreds of PowerPoint presentations through my career and feel as if I‘ve delivered just as many.

Exaggerations aside, it’s at least enough to reach the conclusion that the evolution of the PowerPoint presentation is on par with toilet paper. Ingenuity has reached its peak with this conveyor of pie charts, line graphs and occasional animation of text.

Further improvement is just futile. But on this day I notice something different.

If you know how to use a Ghost Runner, what baseball card bubble gum tastes like and where you were when Mookie hit a dribbler through Buckner’s sticks, I’ll venture a guess you’re a baseball fan. Okay, maybe that last one is my own, but you know what I’m talking about.

Summer. For a dad looking back at his childhood, it’s hard to distinguish one summer from another. The memories run together to form a confluence of irresponsibility, amusement, awakening and mischief that often mark the most treasured years of our youth.

Everyone loves a scoreboard. Okay, maybe losers don’t. However, even under those circumstances an individual driven to succeed can use the results of a scoreboard to motivate themselves to get better at what they do. That’s why I love Google analytics. It’s my own personal scoreboard for the success of my website.

Do your kids fight with each other in public?
Do they scream in the grocery store when denied Fruity Pebbles?
Do they ask, "Dad, why is that lady so fat?" as they stand behind her in line at McDonald's?
Do you tell them it's because she eats too many Big Macs and the Diet Coke is not helping?

If you answered YES to any of the above, or any of your own experiences, accept it, YOU ARE THAT DAD!

It all begins innocently enough. Okay, well biologically speaking that’s not true. Flash forward several weeks when the pee hits the e.p.t., the magical plus appears and all your wife’s afternoon naps suddenly make sense. You’re going to be a Dad!

Digital cameras are great, but I find they lack one thing, anticipation. Remember the feeling you would get opening up that envelope after your photos were developed? You couldn’t wait to find out how good that sunset picture turned out. You would even find a few photos you forgot were part of that roll as it had been in the camera for so long. If you had friends like mine you would get the chance to wonder exactly which night it was they stole your camera and took that photo.

How do you have a successful Garage Sale?

Here are five tips to clearing out some space, keeping junk out of a landfill and earning a fist-full of dollars.

If your kids are enrolled in youth sports, chances are you’ve received an email with a subject line that declares “Coaches Needed!” If they aren’t old enough yet, just wait, it will come. The request is straightforward and the encouraging words of its writer make it even simpler as the email goes on to say “no experience required” followed by, “there’s a free clinic to teach you the basics.” If this does not compel you to take the leap, your kid will close the deal as he looks up at you and says, “Dad, will you coach my team, please?” I mean how are you going to say no to that? “Sorry son, but I suck at soccer and I’m afraid I will lose my mind trying to get ten kids in a straight line.” If you go the, “Sorry son, but I just don’t have time” route, you’re an asshole.