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Birthdays

I've got another one coming up, turning 61. Today is my son's birthday so we give him most of the attention since birthdays are a bit more just-another-day's for me than they are for him.

When I arrived at Elon back in 1988 our monthly newsletter listed birthdays for the coming month. It just seemed to be a nice thing so I would always tack that page next to my computer and send emails to folk who knew me (a much smaller number then than the number of folk I knew) wishing them a happy birthday. It seemed a low-cost way to keep in touch and surprisingly folk seemed to appreciate it disproportionate to my effort.

The newsletter moved online eventually and I started accumulating birthdays in my Google Calendar (through entering them in my Google Contacts) on a monthly basis. It became a nice way to start the day sending out 3-5 birthday wish emails and again folk seemed to appreciate it in a way that was out-of-proportion compared to the effort it took on my part.

At some point the university no longer included links to the page listing birthdays for the coming month but someone in some office still maintained it, adding names to the list. I had bookmarked the link and felt as if I had access to classified information since no one else seemed to know about it.

At some point the page came down, giving an error message. Maybe it was policy---fear of identity theft information? Maybe the staffer who maintained it retired.

I still have a fairly large number of Elon birthdays in my Google calendar, just not new ones. Now the burden is on me to check to see that folk I haven't seen for a while are still working here and that their emails are still valid.

Sometimes simple choices at the beginning of a career provide a large return on investment. Erring on the side of doing something nice often works that way.

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