As happens often in dynastic family business sagas, it fell to the second generation to transform a humdrum business with a combination of chutzpah and panache.
For 25 years Visa operated as a humdrum service bureau for banks, with a bureaucracy as hidebound and inflexible as its computer system.
These incidents, embarrassing though they be, fall within the acceptable range of victimless embellishment, those exaggerations that burnish a humdrum existence, amuse our listeners or impress a potential employer.
It is the gentle yet penetrating lucidity of Mr Eugenides's writing that makes a slightly humdrum plot into so involving a novel.
Mostly, though, the speech laid out the humdrum economies of a man whose ambitions ran to political advancement, not wealth.
The current marketing effort was built around the launch of the latest-generation Camry, a humdrum people-mover that has been the best-selling car in the U.S. all but of the one of the past 15 years.
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It is a welcome change after the eight humdrum years she spent as a commercial artist.
MPs will then work their way through a rather humdrum list of chores - opposed private bills, an EU document to approve and a series of votes on various appointments.
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The behavioural economists reckon this may be because psychologists have focused on trying to link the moon to extreme behavioural problems in a few disturbed people, rather than to more humdrum lunacies affecting humanity as a whole, including a bias against shares around full moons.
That does not require a radical rewriting of the rules, but a more humdrum sense of right and wrong.
For starters, Apple watchers expect a relatively humdrum set of announcements on Tuesday.
Political junkies who have read the right books and seen the relevant documentaries won't find any true revelations here, and ordinary moviegoers may find the treatment too even-handed, even a little humdrum.
While handling humdrum cases, he made a successful run for the city council and a losing one for the school committee.
By 1999, French audiences were already hooked on Mr. Dujardin's engagingly macho character, "Loulou, " in the TV mini-series, "Un gars, une fille, " a parody of humdrum married life.
Investors will get a snapshot Thursday of Dell 's efforts to transform itself from humdrum vendor of basic-black PCs to American businesses into a company able to sell snazzy machines to consumers worldwide.
But the service is generally attentive and the environment usually posh, offering a brief respite from the sometimes humdrum reality of day-to-day life.
Most of the time speechwriting is a more prosaic endeavour, writing for moments that are humdrum.
The business in the Commons (their lordships are not sitting until October) is pretty humdrum, but there is plenty of activity on the committee corridor, and a number of important-looking committee reports are due to be published after the recess begins...
Between now and then, there will be more than enough time for a few farewells and final thoughts, but first there's the more humdrum task of the handover.
This week, the Commons demonstrated that unexpected events can generate a fair bit of parliamentary excitement, even when the business on the order paper looks fairly humdrum.
You will do this for one noble reason--the desire to bring a smidgen of your own special star quality to your friends' and family's otherwise humdrum lives--and for many practical ones.
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