B turns six

So my son turned six yesterday. Damn do I feel old. But for the record, having such a wonderful son makes life that much more cherished and worthwhile, even if it does make the speed to the finish seem ten times faster.

Top 10 Ways to Get Yourself Fired

I rec'd this in a recent splurt. I've been guilty of all of these at one time or another. Right now, though, one and two are my critical defects. Anyway, here they are (according to JobSeekerWeekly.com)...


1. Failing to have a life plan - All very successful people have a clear life plan, whether memorized or actually written down. They create it, massage it, and refer to it often.

2. Not keeping your skill set current - The business landscape is ever-changing and there is more demand for jobs than supply. Not staying on par with colleagues and those vying for your job will be a death knell.

3. Failing to deliver results - Winners in business know that it's all about accountability. Those who harbor a sense of entitlement for simply having put forth effort, irrespective of the results of those efforts, are guaranteed to fall by the wayside.

4. Confusing efficiency with effectiveness - Those who think that communicating via e-mail replaces the need to actually talk with people around them fail to recognize the importance of personally connecting with others in today's highly automated and technological environment. Communicating in person whenever possible is imperative for success-seekers.

5. Believing that you are irreplaceable - There is no room for "divas" in the workplace. As soon as you convince yourself that you and only you can do the job "right", your star will surely start to fall.

6. Knowing all the answers - The old adage remains true: knowledge is power. Professing to know it all can readily stagnate a career. Winners remain unceasingly interested in learning new ideas and approaches.

7. Surrounding your self with "brown-nosers" - Losers like having people tell them how smart they are, whether or not it's true, while successful managers and other professionals accept and encourage intelligence and creativity in others.

8. Forgetting to give credit to others - Losers inappropriately take full credit for positive events despite the help or input received by others, while Winners give credit where credit is due. Losers inevitably reap what they sow.

9. Failing to self promote - Bragging is one thing, but letting colleagues throughout your industry know of your success through case studies, promotion bulletins, or other such tools is quite another. Losers often fail to recognize the importance of letting others know about their successes, or go about it in entirely the wrong way.

10. Losing perspective - Intuitive business people recognize that, despite their best attempts to do everything right, sometimes they approach roadblocks and need the advice and perspective of a respected friend, colleague or even a business coach. Those who fail to recognize their shortcomings are destined for the unemployment line.

Further thoughts on Thailand Travel/Tourism

So thoughts on the comments to the Thailand post...

I appreciate your honesty, Nicole. As mg's subsequent post implies, there is a certain expectation that REAL traveling is about the exploration and "purity" of the place you travel to. But how much of that assumption is propogated by marketers (e.g. REI, North Face, Patagonia) selling Urbanites $350 Gore-Tex rain jackets that will be lucky to see rain, let alone foreign rain.

But, mg, gotta say, part of me goes "No shit! You go! Everywhere we (first-world humans, not just Americans) go, we turn the place into a reflection of where we came from." But it is sort of the Heisenberg uncertainity principle of travel. I.e. by going somewhere to see how other people live, no matter how "pure" your intentions, you alter the behavior and lives of the people you visit. Isn't that only fair since most of us tour/travel with the intention of self-alteration (not to be confused with self-mutiliation while visiting WeWak, New Guinea)?

I always liked the David Lee Roth Land's Edge lyrics:

Now take the traveler and the tourist
The essential difference is
The traveler don't know where he's goin'
And the tourist don't know where he is
Small world till they lose your luggage, tho'

Yet, another part of me thinks it unfair to completely leave the "natives" out of the culpability calculation. This world's disparity of wealth makes it only reasonable for a guy in Thailand dragging fat-assed Russian tourists around in a rickshaw to dream of the day he has his own car (aka CO2-belching taxi) and strive to "re-distribute" some Russian rubles into his pocket of bhats?

That giant sucking sound.....

...is the Internet wasting your time.

Thanks to a splurt-buddy, I just stumbled into a teasing theory of McCain not being a legal citizen constitutionally qualified to be US president. It started with an email splurt regarding Obama's citizenship status, and from there into the McCain stuff and ever deeper into the Obama non-citizenship charges. Well, since Senators Clinton and Obama have already passed judgment on McCain's legitimacy, that leaves Obama for me to decide on. You can't totally trust anything you read on the Internet (or anywhere for that matter), but I think this will be good enough for me to lay the Obama theory in the bullshit category.

But, it isn't any worry of their Constitutional legitimacy that prevents me from voting for either of those two, it's the reality of the evisceration either of them will be doing to the Constitution come 1/20/2009 and beyond.

Federal Healthcare - The customer service of the TSA, the cost-control-management of the Department of Defense, and the efficacy of FEMA.

Clever, introspective, and like all "we" bloggers, self-indulgent

http://clevergirlgoesblog.blogspot.com/

"Individuated Publications?" Puh-LeeZ!!

Individuated Newspapers?



I like having a good PAPER periodical in hand during each shitI take, but the trend of electronic publishing compared to paper publishing makes this look too little too late in my never humble opinion (IMNHO).



How 'bout I just use my news page on Google News and read it on my iPhone (which has the nice advantage of still working when some dumbass turns the bathroom light off when he exits and I'm still in the stall). Oh, and these should be banned from bathrooms if they can't sense stall occupants. (Note to self: Put that on the When-I-Become-World-wide-Dictator Legislation List.)

Thailand Vacation Anyone?

Stumbled on mentions of Koh Samet (aka Koh Samed). Sounds relaxing, though a bit of a jog to get there.



Though after turning 40 and going on my first all-inclusive resort vacation, I fear I'm turning into an ugly American (e.g. "Where the fuck is the Starbucks?) not that interested in negotiating the price of a rickshaw ride with people who make in a year what I earn in a week. But I haven't aged enough to not still be able to entertain romantic, idealistic thoughts of time with the honey on a secluded beach with only 8 hours of electricity a day ("Oh, my how we are roughing it, dear!").



So, anybody got thoughts on Inclusive versus backworlds basic seclcusion, Mexico/Caribbean v. Asia v. ??

Who owns Coward Yellow?

" 'Post-It' and the color canary yellow are trademarks of 3M."

Ok, as a big "L" libertarian I'm all for the concept of intellectual property but it's time to confess my discomfort with the ownership of colors, naturally occuring gene sequences, and immortal Disney characters.

"While the banks get fat

And the poor stay poor

And the rich get rich

And the cops get paid

To look away

As the one percent rules America"

Adobe Flex

Previously posted to 3t internal blog:

So Nicole's husband (John) is a user of Adobe Flex. She was talking about his efforts (ok, his and the WIFE's efforts) in the Flex developer community which made me curious. I didn't realize that this is an outgrowth (actually a rebranding post-redevelopment) of Macromedia's Flex Data Services. I know, Duh!, right?

Anyway, this looks really cool. Check out this quick demo video.

The 3.0 version looks to have greatly simplified the required component stack compared to the software needed back in 2004 for v1.0.

When you couple the simple set-up app the guy builds in the video with an SQL Server web service endpoint serving up xml data, you could build nice looking Web apps that are visible only as a Flash movie to external users. I'd be curioius to hear what the Big Tree developers think of this software compared to using MS products such as ASP.NET + AJAX (Atlas?) and Silverlilght.

9/11

Oops, it's noon and I haven't put the flag up yet. Shame!

NASA Remembers

"The world changed today. What I say or do is very minor compared to the significance of what happened to our country today when it was attacked." So said Expedition 3 Commander Frank L. Culbertson, upon learning of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center.
This image is one of a series taken that day of metropolitan New York City by the International Space Station's Expedition 3 crew that shows a plume of smoke rising from the Manhattan skyline.
Upon further reflection, Commander Culbertson said, "It's horrible to see smoke pouring from wounds in your own country from such a fantastic vantage point. The dichotomy of being on a spacecraft dedicated to improving life on the earth and watching life being destroyed by such willful, terrible acts is jolting to the psyche, no matter who you are."
Image credit: NASA

Jumping Ship...sort of.

So my experiment in "daily" blogging has been mostly successful. But since I wasn't focusing on direct work-at-hand items on my 3t internal blog and occasionally felt like I needed to refrain from various comments due to the host of that blog (i.e. my employer), I've decided it's time to step out and find purer parchment.