http://www.eetimes.com/General/DisplayPrintViewContent?contentItemId=4215094

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A radical pessimist's guide to the next 10 years

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Take what you need and let the rest go! 

1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.

2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.

3.. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.

4. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and parents will. Stay in touch.

5. Pay off your credit cards every month.

6. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.

7. Cry with someone.. It's more healing than crying alone.

8. It's OK to get angry with God. He can take it.

9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.

10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.

11. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.

12. It's OK to let your children see you cry.

13. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.

14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it.

15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don't worry; God never blinks.

16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.

17. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.

18. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.

19. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.

20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer.

21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.

22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.

23. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.

24. The most important sex organ is the brain.

25. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.

26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words 'In five years, will this matter?'

27. Always choose life.

28. Forgive everyone everything.

29. What other people think of you is none of your business.

30. Time heals almost everything. Give time time..

31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.

32. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.

33. Believe in miracles.

34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn't do.

35. Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.

36. Growing old beats the alternative -- dying young.

37. Your children get only one childhood.

38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.

39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.

40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back.

41. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.

42. The best is yet to come...

43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.

44. Yield.

45. Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift.

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Interesting article from Tom Friedman about a banking startup in India. It deals with a couple of themes besides banking. Go read it. I will wait right here! Then, I will tell you why I found it amusing.

Do Believe the Hype

About 100 years ago, my grandfather came to America to work in the coal mines of Bellevue, PA (at the ripe age of 14). After working for about 2 years and surviving to 2 cave-ins, he decided that his fortunes lay elsewhere.

He eventually opened a small general store. After installing a safe, he acted as "bank" for fellow immigrants who needed to send money back home. He also offered a letter writing service for those who could not read or write so they could stay in touch with their families.   

In reading Tom Friedman's article I think its safe to assume that my grandfather would have understood EKO India Financial Services perfectly.      

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Article from Mr. Wilcox might be a little over the top but I do like this paragraph:

"Microsoft lumbers along, avoiding risks, clinging to Office and Windows revenues.  Meanwhile, companies without Microsoft's existing monopoly-bound customers drive change, and they are willing to take risks. The mobile-to-cloud service platform is to the PC what the PC was to the mainframe: It extends computational and informational utility to more people and places -- and for lower cost. The Windows era is giving way to the anytime, anywhere, on-anything era. The most dynamic innovations are occurring outside the Windows monopoly." 

The Windows era is over

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I found the following line in one of my old journals:

I wrote this before the WWW took hold.

May, 1984

"What readers, like myself, preceive to be common knowledge probably means that it won't be really accepted for about another two years."

But is this true, any longer?

Or, do the Readers still have an advantage, however small it may be?

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Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine

.......

"Actually, I doubt that it was "progress" that most interested Richard. He was always searching for patterns, for connections, for a new way of looking at something, but I suspect his motivation was not so much to understand the world as it was to find new ideas to explain. The act of discovery was not complete for him until he had taught it to someone else.

I remember a conversation we had a year or so before his death, walking in the hills above Pasadena. We were exploring an unfamiliar trail and Richard, recovering from a major operation for the cancer, was walking more slowly than usual. He was telling a long and funny story about how he had been reading up on his disease and surprising his doctors by predicting their diagnosis and his chances of survival. I was hearing for the first time how far his cancer had progressed, so the jokes did not seem so funny. He must have noticed my mood, because he suddenly stopped the story and asked, "Hey, what's the matter?"

I hesitated. "I'm sad because you're going to die."

"Yeah," he sighed, "that bugs me sometimes too. But not so much as you think." And after a few more steps, "When you get as old as I am, you start to realize that you've told most of the good stuff you know to other people anyway."

We walked along in silence for a few minutes. Then we came to a place where another trail crossed and Richard stopped to look around at the surroundings. Suddenly a grin lit up his face. "Hey," he said, all trace of sadness forgotten, "I bet I can show you a better way home."

And so he did."

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As the farce known as Health Care takes a breather, do your mind some good and read the following. 

Despite the titles, these are not "feel good" articles. 

They ask a lot of hard questions and you really have to think about the answers you want to see. 

I don't agree with all their observations, but they do make you think about problems, actions and consequences.  

And we do need more thinking in the world.

Especially, in Washington DC.

How America Can Rise Again

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/01/how-america-can-rise-agai...

Keeping America's Edge

http://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/keeping-americas-edge    

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I mean, come on!

Its almost 2010!

I 've been waiting 44 years (12 year old Boomer with high aspirations!)

Enough already!

We already put a man on the Moon!

Oh, well. The following is dedicated to all my fellow Boomers.

At least somebody got the dream right and keeps it alive!

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Thank you Mr. Cochrane !!!

How did Paul Krugman get it so Wrong?

"So what is Krugman up to? Why become a denier, a skeptic, an apologist for 70 year old ideas, replete with well-known logical fallacies, a pariah? Why publish an essentially personal attack on an ever-growing enemies list that now includes practically every professional economist? Why publish an incoherent vision for the future of economics?

The only explanation that makes sense to me is that Krugman isn’t trying to be an economist, he is trying to be a partisan, political opinion writer. This is not an insult. I read George Will, Charles Krauthnammer and Frank Rich with equal pleasure even when I disagree with them.  Krugman wants to be Rush Limbaugh of the Left."

...

"Krugman wants people to swallow his arguments whole from his authority, without demanding logic, or evidence.  Those who disagree with him, alas, are pretty smart and have pretty good arguments if you bother to read them. So, he tries to discredit them with personal attacks.

This is the political sphere, not the intellectual one. Don’t argue with them, swift-boat them. Find some embarrassing quote from an old interview. Well, good luck, Paul. Let’s just not pretend this has anything to do with economics, or actual truth about how the world works or could be made a better place."

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Jason Calacanis is upset at Apple. Ok, I read the post. While reading, all I can hear is the sound of a baby crying in the background. And, if its not a baby crying, then its a tired old fart, muttering. Sorry Jason, I'm just not feeling it. I will give you point #5. I would like to see some resolution also.

And you, dear reader, can decide for yourself by reading it here: The Case Against Apple–in Five Parts

If you managed to get through it, do youself a favor and read the following two links. You'll feel much better. I did!

The Case Against Apple Is Just As Much A Case For Apple

Planet Calacanis

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Great insights from John Gruber!

Microsoft’s Long, Slow Decline

"I’m not arguing that Microsoft will collapse. They’re too big, too established for that to happen. I simply think that their results this quarter were not an aberration, but rather the first fiscal evidence of a long, slow decline that began several years ago."

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How Rich Countries Die

Depressing, but interesting.

"One thing an individual can do is choose where to live and in which industry to work.  The logical conclusion from reading this book is to prefer a new state to an old state, a newly stable state to a long-stable state, and a new industry to an old one.  The worst thing that a young person could do, for example, would be to move to Michigan to work for G.M.’s automobile division.  The second best thing would be to move to Alaska or an up-and-coming foreign country and work to extract some new kind of energy.  The very smartest choice would be to move to Washington, D.C. and work as a lobbyist for a decaying industry that is bleeding the U.S. economy and taxpayer…"

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Book by Leander Kahney.

There's about 8 or 9 books written about Steve Jobs. And I never read any of them until this one. Why?  Because most of them were crap. Why? Because Steve,  in my opinion, was still on his journey.  

I’m glad I waited to read this one.  I will admit that the title kind of turned me off.  But it's good. Jobs might be a maniac. But after reading this book you will understand why.  And why Apple is such a success. And will continue to be a success long after he is gone.

BONUS: Each chapter ends with Lessons From Steve.  Yes, folks, there is a method to his madness.

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Tried to watch new MS add with Lauren but it required Silverlight.

Meh.

Microsoft does not make PC's.

They make operating systems.

Steve Ballmer mightly proclaims that the tide has turned! Why pay that extra $500 dollars!

I had to smile.

Schumpeter was almost alone in arguing that the most vital competitive weapon was not lower prices but new ideas.

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Wolfram Alpha is Coming - and It Could be as Important as Google

Wolfram Alpha perhaps represents what may be a new approach to creating an "intelligent machine" that does away with much of the manual labor of explicitly building top-down expert systems about fields of knowledge (the traditional AI approach, such as that taken by the Cyc project), while simultaneously avoiding the complexities of trying to do anything reasonable with the messy distributed knowledge on the Web (the open-standards Semantic Web approach). It's simpler than top down AI and easier than the original vision of Semantic Web.

...

I think there is more potential to this system than Stephen has revealed so far. I think he has bigger ambitions for it in the long-term future. I believe it has the potential to be THE online service for computing factual answers. THE system for factual knowlege on the Web. More than that, it may eventually have the potential to learn and even to make new discoveries. We'll have to wait and see where Wolfram takes it.

I think this is going to be BIG!

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The Dash by Linda Ellis

I read of a man who stood to speak
At the funeral of a friend
He referred to the dates on her tombstone
From the beginning to the end

He noted that first came her date of her birth
And spoke the following date with tears
But he said what mattered most of all
Was the dash between those years

For that dash represents all the time
That she spent alive on earth.
And now only those who loved her
Know what that little line is worth.

For it matters not how much we own;
The cars the house the cash
What matters is how we live and love
And how we spend our dash.

So think about this long and hard.
Are there things you'd like to change?
For you never know how much time is left
That can still be rearranged.

If we could just slow down enough
To consider whats true and real
And always try to understand
The way other people feel.

And be less quick to anger
And show appreciation more
And love the people in our lives
Like we've never loved before.

If we treat each other with respect
And more often wear a smile
Remembering that this special dash
Might only last a little while.

So when your eulogy is being read
With your lifes actions to rehash
Would you be proud of the things they say
About how you spent your dash?

http://www.lindaslyrics.com/

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After 10 years of wonderful service, my iMac DV has finally died.

Only things I ever had to replace were the keyboard and the mouse.  

I think the power supply finally bit the dust.

An amazing machine.

Dell can only wish !!!!

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/stats/imac_se_dv_400.html

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http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/003511.php

Unlike most waterproofers, Nikwax Aqueous Wax can be applied when the leather is wet. On one particularly nasty dog sledding trip, I tried reapplying Mink Oil and Sno-Seal, but the leather was already soaked and neither would penetrate. The rest of trip was miserable. For my toes at least. Not an issue with this stuff. Since Nikwax Aqueous Wax is water soluble, it naturally concentrates in areas which are more porous and prone to leak. It's available in brown or black, and more or less restores your boots to a factory look, not greasy at all.

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