Oct 5 2008
Happy Talk
Happy talk, keep talkin’ happy talk,
Talk about things you’d like to do.
You got to have a dream,
If you don’t have a dream
How you gonna have a dream come true?
General
Sep 16 2008
Don’t Fear Innovation
Seth Godin hit the nail on the head today with his blog post, The small-minded vision of the technology elite. One passage sums it up nicely,
When an engineer has a proven ability to ship stuff, to keep things humming and not crashing, it’s easy to fall into the trap of rejecting anything that hasn’t demonstrated that it can work, that hasn’t proven itself in the market.
Far too often we get comfortable with the technologies we use daily and stubbornly refuse to use something better that may come along, which is not necessarily a new product but it could also be a major update of an existing product.
I’m seriously considering writing a CMS because the ones I use now don’t meet my needs. Many people are telling me that I shouldn’t reinvent the wheel, but the problem is that the current wheels do not get me to where I want to go.
You don’t make much progress while sitting in your comfort zone. Real change occurs when you step out and take chances.
Aug 19 2008
Money Quotes to Think About
Money and Your Soul
For the love of money is the root of all evils, and some people in their desire for it have strayed from the faith and have pierced themselves with many pains.
Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one.
You have not lived a perfect day, even though you have earned your money, unless you have done something for someone who will never be able to repay you.
Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
Money is a goal pursued by most people. Its not for paying bills, or supporting yourself and your family, its mainly because of greed to possess material things and to raise yourself among your peers. The 1 Timothy 6:10 quote is a great truth in how lusting over money leads to many evils in trying to obtain it. Wealth can bring true happiness if its used to bring happiness to others, especially those who can never repay your kindness. Your worth more than money can buy. Don’t lose your soul pursuing something which doesn’t have eternal value.
Setting Priorities of True Value
When I chased after money, I never had enough. When I got my life on purpose and focused on giving of myself and everything that arrived into my life, then I was prosperous.
Money will buy you a fine dog, but only love can make it wag its tail.
Money is like love: It kills slowly and painfully the one who withholds it, and enlivens the other who turns it on his fellow man.
It’s good to have money and the things that money can buy. But it’s good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven’t lost the things that money can’t buy.
Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.
Pursuing money to fulfill materialistic desires will leave you empty and cynical. Sharing your wealth and yourself will give you peace, happiness, and a sense of purpose in life. Money is just a tool to be used as a part of accomplishing great things.
Its nothing more.
Focusing on Goals
All riches have their origin in mind. Wealth is in ideas, not money.
Lack of money is no obstacle. Lack of an idea is an obstacle.
You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you.
Money never starts an idea. It is always the idea that starts the money.
Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.
Everything that you see around you began as an idea: the computer you are using now, the light bulb shining above, the ink in your pen, the roads outside, and the buildings along side them. Some entrepreneur had an idea to build these things, even before the money was made available to create them. Its wrongly believed that money makes money. This holds many people back from pursuing their dreams because they don’t have the money in front of them to start the processing of fulfilling them. Our creations begin with a thought and are fueled by the faith to persevere and to make them a reality.
The Business of Money
Oppression of the poor (Exodus 2); defrauding labourers of their wages (James 5:4).
I don’t pay good wages because I have a lot of money; I have a lot of money because I pay good wages.
If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
Have you felt cheated by your employer in wages? This can be working overtime for free or without the appropriate rate, not being paid a fair salary, or being promised money for a job and never getting paid for it. Businesses will prosper if they treat their employees well and pay them fairly. A poorly paid employee doesn’t care about their job and will have a negative impact on the business. One only needs to look at the carelessness of workers in fast food restaurants. Their minimum wage hardly inspires them to go the extra mile and results in countless of mistakes in fulfilling customer orders. There is a saying that we programmers have, “garbage in, garbage out”. Bad data that goes into software will produce bad results. Treat your employees poorly, get poor results. Treat them well, and they will take care of your business and customers with outstanding service and products.
Jul 21 2008
Noam Chomsky and Blogging
If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for
people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.
This is a great free speech quote from Noam Chomsky. Bloggers should be free to say what they want, as long as its not immoral or offensive. The interesting thing is what standard do we use to determine morality?
Judeo-Christian values have stood the test of time and are a good guide for living a moral life and moral conduct in business. An important thing to keep in mind is that a wide range of people may be reading your blog, who can be from 5 to 105 years old. Write content that won’t teach bad values to small children.
Jul 14 2008
McCain and Czechoslovakia
Being born in Czechoslovakia, I have to comment on this. Today at a press conference, presidential hopeful, Sen. John McCain made the following comment:
I was concerned about a couple of steps that the Russian government took in the last several days. One was reducing the energy supplies to Czechoslovakia. Apparently that is in reaction to the Czech’s agreement with us concerning missile defense …
Source: Politico.com
The problem is that Czechoslovakia hasn’t existed since January 1, 1993, when it split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. He also referred to Czechoslovakia in a debate last year in October.
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| Source: Wikipedia |
I personally don’t have a problem with mistakes like this, because they are just that … mistakes. Is this the result of McCain’s lack of knowledge of the region, or the people who write and research his speeches?
There should be a quality assurance team working with McCain to prevent things like this from happening, or educate him to prevent it from occurring in future speeches.
This makes for great entertainment by the press and it takes people away from focusing on what the candidate stands for and what they want to do for their country.
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