kraft foods on efficiency at nasa

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in some big building like a convention center. I had been part of an event that had just finished. During that event, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden had been speaking with me, possibly about an event that would follow the event of which I had been a part.

But now that Bolden's event was about to begin, I had an idea for it. The idea involved questionnaire sheets that were already made for use at the event. But something about them was not being used -- maybe something that could contribute to on-the-spot additions to presentations.

I needed to find Bolden again, so I could ask permission to put the idea into action. I may have been standing with some people, possibly my family members, including my mother and brother. I asked permission to leave them.

I was up on some mezzanine or balcony level. I saw Bolden walking toward a door at the end of the mezzanine. I ran toward him. I caught up with him. I believe I called him Mr. Bolden, although I may have called him General Bolden.

I began explaining my idea to Bolden when suddenly my brother ran up. It was like he also had an idea he wanted Bolden to approve. But he was acting really weird. At one point he stood next to Bolden and got down on his knees, crying and making a praying gesture toward me. This was all for show. I'm not sure my brother's idea ever got expressed.

Eventually Bolden asked my brother to calm down. My brother may have walked away. Bolden told me I could do what I wanted, and that the presentation area was just getting prepared right now.

I walked into the presentation area. The room was dark. The only light was coming from a PowerPoint presentation projected up onto a huge screen. The slide projected was plain white with black letters.There were people working on some technical stuff over by the podium, on the right side of the room. Someone was at the podium, testing the microphone. There also seemed to be, right below the screen, a stage-like area where there were a bunch of gifts and food items. The audience was full.

I knew the questionnaire papers were in the podium on the right side of the room. I was on the left side of the room. I needed to get over to the podium. I didn't want to distract anybody in the audience -- as if the show had already begun, even thought it hadn't. So I got down on my stomach and crawled across the room, hoping to avoid everybody's sight.

But as I crawled across the room, the presentation actually began. I knew I'd have a hard time grabbing the questionnaire sheets right in front of everybody. But I decided that I needed to get them, regardless of what was going on in the presentation.

The current speaker was giving a sort of introduction for the main person who would be speaking. This person was actually an executive from Kraft. But I'm not sure who it was. The current speaker then said that someone else would be up soon to give a fuller introduction to the speaker. The current speaker, I knew, expected me to be the person to give the fuller introduction.

I was almost to the podium, which was now empty and waiting for me. I knew everybody was expecting me to speak. I had to stand up and give my introduction. If I couldn't give this introduction, it would prove that I really didn't know anything about the management structure at Kraft, and that I wasn't very smart at all.

I tried to think of the management at Kraft. I knew Kraft's CEO, Irene Rosenfeld, wasn't going to speak. I was pretty sure that Tim McLevish was still the CFO at Kraft. So I figured McLevish must be the one who was going to speak. I tried to think of the things I knew about McLevish.

But now the Kraft executive was already giving his presentation. I was crawling around on the ground and looking up at the screen. The executive was talking about the steps Kraft had taken to improve efficiency. This improvement in efficiency was, I believe, later on going to be translated into a program that might help improve efficiency in space exploration.

The Kraft initiative was very thorough. A lot of key thinkers from around the world were brought in to assess ways to improve efficiency in all personal, business, and technological aspects of the company. A list of people, with their titles and places of work, scrolled up the screen in white lettering over a backdrop of tree-covered mountains in the fall.

I was surprised to see that one of these key thinkers was the psychologist Karen Horney, who was apparently working somewhere in Virginia. Horney had come in to improve the psychological aspects of the company.

The Kraft executive gave himself as an example where his psychological condition needed improving. He said that it had especially needed improvement after he'd been diagnosed with some disease like cancer. The Kraft executive now began speaking about this disease, and how he was still uncertain whether he would leave the company because of it. He was thinking he might not. It seemed like he had battled the disease to a turning point, and that he was now getting better. He may have given a story about a turnaround in company operations and how it directly related to him to prove this point.

My mind now began to wander again to what I might say about Tim McLevish. I began thinking back to 2008 and 2009, trying to consider all the changes that had taken place at Kraft before, during, and since that time period, and to determine what role McLevish played in those changes. But I wasn't coming up with anything at all, other than a kind of broad statement about the company's stock price.

narciso rats

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was somewhere, possibly outside, with a group of people. We were all probably single people in our late twenties or early thirties. But we all lived with each other in the same house. Somehow it was like the people living with me were all members of my family.

We were all discussing the house. It had been discovered that the house had a rat infestation. The house was infested with what were called "Narciso Rats." A pretty, blonde business woman was explaining this to us. She may have lived with us but also may have been something like our leader, or even our landlord.

We all knew we'd been having rat problems. I knew I had, too. But I seemed to be really ashamed of it in front of everybody else, like the rat problems in my own room were something that everybody else would judge me for. I may even have tried to convince myself that I didn't have any rat problems. But I knew I did. I was really afraid, too. I had a low bed in my room. I knew the rats could easily climb up and get near me at night. They might spread disease that way.

Another man near me, kind of fat, tan skinned, with short, choppy, black hair and eyeglasses, started talking about how he'd thought, at first, that he'd outsmarted the rats. He said, "I laid little bits of food out in a half-circle at a distance from my bed. I thought that would distract them. I thought the bits of food would lead them away from me." But this had probably eventually stopped working for the man.

The blonde woman told us all that the building had tried a number of ways for getting rid of the Narciso rats. But they were really hard to get rid of. Now we were all going to have to leave the building for a while. Some exterminators were coming in to do the whole building. This was the only thing that would work. Even this method might not have been totally sure of success. It might have been a possibility that the whole building would have to be destroyed.

I now realized that in my room I had a different kind of rat. (At this point I was half-waking out of my dream.) This was called something like a "Gold Flow Rat" or a "Gold Floor Rat." I heard some text being read, possibly as I read it out of a book, saying, "This animal has been placed on the dangerous species list."