Sometimes being the biggest loser is not a good thing. Such is the case of Webvan, an online grocery store that was the biggest loser in the dot-com bust. When all those venture capitalists were pouring money into Webvan - a total of $441 million before the company declared bankruptcy in 2001 - the general consensus was: online grocery shopping was a no-brainer.

Armed with the Barnes & Noble e-reader nook I gave to my 87-year-old father for his birthday, I went to my favorite Barnes & Noble store on Sunday morning. Not so long ago, I was a regular at this store. It was almost guaranteed that I never left without some kind of purchase.

At 11:50 p.m., on December 31, 2009, our dinner host turned on the TV, handed us each a dime and a piece of herring on a cracker. We were instructed at the stroke of midnight to hold the dime, eat the herring, and make a New Year's wish.  Even if I liked herring, which I don't, eating this genus Clupea after champagne and trifle would have no appeal. While it was obvious to my host that I was not playing along with her ritual, she had no way of knowing whether I actually made a New Year's wish. I did, and it was business related.

In 2007, you couldn't turn on the news without seeing a report about another product recall from China. From pet food to tooth paste, to nine million children's toys, around 80% of all product recalls in the US in that year were products manufactured in China. The Financial Times kept a list.

One of my daughter's friends opened a time capsule on Whidbey Island around midnight on New Years Eve to highlight what was,and what has, changed in the first 10 years of this millennium. With no time capsule to review, I have to rely on my memory to think about what has changed in my life over the past ten years. What surprises me the most, as I reflect back on the last decade, is that the changes in my work life are not as dramatic as I would have imagined.