Geek Wisdom

 You've probably heard it from a health professionals, in ads or from that local gym.  Can I eat some chocolate? How about a bag of chips? Everything is okay to to eat... in moderation.. right? I am fortunate have been born in a part of the world that values human rights and freedoms. One of these in particular is the 'right' to free speech. We have the right to say what we feel and think, positive or negative, to share our thoughts with others - this is an important aspect of society. Just follow one of the many tweets from Elon Musk, and you can see how much he believes in Free Speech, or for charges brought against others who have attempted to the hinder free speech of others In our world, we are constantly inodiated with information, with the free speech of those around us, and the responsibilities that come with it. There is a man I admire greatly, who gave a lot of talks over his lifetime - his name is Dr Wayne Dyer. He gives one speech about an orange, that truly cha

In an earlier post, I talked about the importance of not taking life too seriously , one of the more interesting occurrences I have found in in life is when their is a 'mismatch' on the volume level of seriousness. In this article, I talk about the 'flipside' of that volume meter. "Getting along with others", in conversation or otherwise requires all of the involved parties to hold some level of trust between one another. That trust is easily misplaced, when one or more parties have the seriousness dial turned way up, and others have it way down. In a recent episode  of Seth Godin' s"Akimbo" - The Hedonic Treadmill , the start of the episode is an interview where the interviewee talks about an amplifier that has a dial of "11" ? Why - because if they want it to be louder they can go 'past 10' all the way up to '11'. The interviewer asks, well 'Why don't you just make the "10" louder?" and the awkwa

  The first time I ever saw a Pizza in my life, I was like 'You want me to eat that?", Come On...It looks like someone vomited on a piece of dough..that is disgusting ! No - this isn't another post about judging a book by its cover , it is about the idea of 'mindset', and the ability to change it. I was so sure - without tasting it - that the pizza had to be disgusting, I put my foot down 'NO WAY - AM I EATING THAT THING!!'.  Of course this came with the age old parent adage 'Try it..you'll never know if you like it until you try it'. But I was sure, I would not "like it", and my mind was made up - It wasn't going to happen, no way - 'No Way - Nuh Uh' Growth requires the possibility of admitting, just maybe, perhaps - You could be  wrong. Influence is what happens when we slow down - push aside our own mindset, listen to another perspective and think (even for a microsecond) - you know what - maybe you are right! ..and in t

  Some days it seems like everyone has a "side" and everyone believes his/her side is the 'right' side.  The smallest consequence of this leads to a lot of un-necessary rudeness, at the worst, down right fights, and wars. In the middle of all this people exclaim like "they are just being honest" and "it's just how I feel"  What happens next? - we get a world wide pandemic - a crisis that forces everyone to put aside their differences and work together. In a not so recent Lifehacker podcast episode ( How to Deal with Rude People ), I loved the way comedian Danny Wallace put it... if you are speaking out and telling yourself that "You are just saying what everyone else is thinking" - if that is your excuse for being rude, perhaps take a minute and ask why it is that those who are thinking it have made the choice, to keep it just as a thought, and not speak it out loud. ? Commitment vs Being Committed Many people will tell you commitment

The other night I had the opportunity to watch "A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood"  a story about Mr Rogers, but not exactly the movie I had expected it to be.  The movie is not as much about 'Mr. Rogers' as it about the man Mr Rogers is trying to help  Lloyd Vogel. The story centers much more around Lloyd with Mr Rogers being more of the "guru" figure that helps him. As I watched it I sort of imagined a gentle - kinder version of 'Socrates'. What prompted me to write this entry is the way he 'ends his show' telling children - 'You've made this day a special day, by just 'being you', and I like you just the way you are.' What an amazing message! right. ??  We don't have to grow up to 'be something' we already are something, we already matter !! What is particularly interesting about the 'just being you' attitude is that it has the pre-conception that you know "who you are". To discover thi

 I have often heard people say "It's okay to make mistakes, as long as you learn from them", other versions include  - those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it., and  Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it The quote is a good reminder, that we improve both as individuals and as the human race by making mistakes, by failing. The best example of this was watching my children learn to crawl for the first time.  It is basically a trial and error process.  My kid gets up, tries to push forward a bit, and falls, tries again and..falls...and again...you get the idea.. until eventually, the child is now moving so fast around the house you barely have time to put gates up around the house for safety. I fully admit I make mistakes, probably around a hundred or so before I even drink my first tea at breakfast, and I am very confident I have made the same mistake twice. Recognizing mistakes isn't really the problem - knowing how to prevent?, a

During one of "infamous" my lunch time walks, I was pretty excited to hear "MBA213" - Mastering Business Analysis Episode 123 "Applying the Theory of Constraints What was even more interesting is the person talking in this episode  Clarke Ching  tells a very similar story to how he got into the Theory of Constraints (TOC) as my own story. For me, it was around 1999, when I first came across "The Goal" in audiobook format. It was also my first experience with the 'business novel'. The Goal was written by Elijah Goldratt and Jeff Cox, and is an amazing story of Alex Rogo a 'middle manager' of a manufacturing plant, and he interactions with "Johah" his old college professor giving him his sage advice. I absolutely loved the book and at the time was working in a quasi-manufacturing company, I was also learning to be a quality assurance manager, and the two fell hand-in-hand. The key concept in all of Goldratt's business nove

Everyone in life has different *things* which cause frustration.  For me often the primary source of frustration is around language and communication. A recent lifehacker podcast "How to get Your Point Across Online"  reminded me of how easy it is to fall into the trap of 'You should be able to do that...' There are many things I am not very good at, at least not in the not so humble opinion of others. I am not a multitasker, I cannot listen to/respond to more than one conversation at  time. I cannot remember things well (or where I put them) without prompts or reminders, and I quickly become anxious when confronted with a new situation that scares me, and it takes time for me to process my emotions. It is so easy for others to dismiss my 'quirkiness' as a flaw either in my ability as a person or in my personality. I suppose in people's mind we setup a "personna" of what every person should be able to do, and if they cannot just 'do it',

It is odd how we make decisions, sometimes really big decisions are made not based on logic or careful evaluation but on less important almost meaningless characteristics. Consider selling your house, you go to your realtor, perhaps he comes in an looks around and suggests some options.  Some of these options may include 1) Having your house professionally staged (rented furniture and accessories brought in, which are not part of the sale but make the house look nicer 2) Painting the walls a 'neutral' color to attract buyers 3) Having the scent of fresh baked cookies in the house as potential buyers walk in. Of course, none of the options above have  anything  to do with the house, the house could be beautifully constructed built to last 200 years or thrown together with some DIY project by a couple of guys on a weekend, and yet the advice is the same. Now - look at it from the other perspective. Ever go house shopping?  You walk into the house look around with your partner, on

One of the strengths of community over individualism is the varied nature in which individual values come into contact with each other. Let us suppose for example, that you were to 'rate' your values on a list, with the most important value on top and the lesser important ..well near the bottom. Let us further imagine that at the top of that list is the value of "respecting other people's property", and another value slightly down on the list is to 'be empathetic with others and always willing to lend a helping hand' So your out for an emergency grocery run one day, and you notice a car next to yours seems to have left his/her trunk open, no one is around...You find yourself in a bit of a dilemma What do you do? If you hold great respect for respecting other people's property, and you feel that closing that trunk would be disrespectful (it's not your car, you have no authority to touch it), you might not even think of closing the car, and c

"Well, the Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together." ―Obi-Wan Kenobi — When I was a child my parents tried to teach me a lesson, it is an old lesson.. "It is better to give then receive". But when your a youngster, it feels a lot better to receive, and it can be hard, if not impossible to truly understand what this means. Later in life things get more complicated when you realize that doing something for others, makes you feel good, but wait, am I doing 'it' for others or because I want to feel good? During my early years working as a consultant, I worked with a great bunch of people.  Folks that showed faith in me, and in my abilities.  Colleagues who showed gratitude when I gave a helping hand or made suggestions for improvement. When you find yourself in this kind of environment,  you feel like anything is possible, you will w

The Illegal Operation In the world of software we have the concept known as an 'illegal operation'. You may remember this from the old Windows 95 days When this happens it is usually due to the application attempting to access an area of memory already reserved by another application, or by the operating system itself. The operating system acts sort of like a 'COP' recognizes the instruction and calls it out of play (closing the program down). Now we use the term 'illegal', but not in the strict sense of the word , no laws were broken, the real police aren't going to show up on your doorstep . It is more like if you accidentally "stepped on someone's toes" at work by preforming a task that was their responsibility and not yours...and this is where the analogy becomes particularly interesting. When the computer program 'steps out of bounds', it has zero  'awareness' of its actions. It was just following the code t

Recently, I have come across the book " Leadership Step by Step: Become the Person Others Follow ". Unlike other books, this book seems to be more of a practical workbook on building leadership, specifically it appears to be a set of exercises, like drills to practice leadership techniques. The reason I say "appears", is that I am only at Exercise #1 which is to write an essay on what leadership means to me and why I would possibly want to be a leader? When I left university, all I wanted was to be a computer programmer. I attended university with the goal of getting a degree in computer science so that I could spend my life writing software programs. Programming will always be a huge passion to me and forms a large part of my core identity, but my first job was far from "just programming".  I was encouraged to become the companies "quality manager", and I had no idea what that would entail. The job had a lot of challenges, in particular I had