Tech Support: Yes ... how can I help you?
Customer: Well, after much consideration, I've decided to install Love. Can you guide me though the process?
Tech Support: Yes. I can help you. Are you ready to proceed?
Customer: Well, I'm not very technical, but I think I'm ready. What do I do first?
Tech Support: The first step is to open your Heart. Have you located your Heart?
Customer: Yes, but there are several other programs running now. Is it okay to install Love while they are running?
Tech Support: What programs are running?
Customer: Let's see, I have Past Hurt, Low Self-Esteem, Grudge, and Resentment running right now.
Tech Support: No problem, Love will gradually erase Past Hurt from your current operating system. It may remain in your permanent memory but it will no longer disrupt other programs. Love will eventually override Low Self-Esteem with a module of its own called High Self-Esteem. However, you have to completely turn off Grudge and Resentment. Those programs prevent Love from being properly installed. Can you turn those off?
Customer: I don't know how to turn them off. Can you tell me how?
Tech Support: With pleasure. Go to your start menu and invoke Forgiveness. Do this as many times as necessary until Grudge and Resentment have been completely erased.
Customer: Okay, done! Love has started installing itself. Is that normal?
Tech Support: Yes, but remember that you have only the base program. You need to begin connecting to other Hearts in order to get the upgrades.
Customer: Oops! I have an error message already. It says, "Error - Program not run on external components." What should I do?
Tech Support: Don't worry. It means that the Love program is set up to run on Internal Hearts, but has not yet been run on your Heart. In non-technical terms, it simply means you have to Love yourself before you can Love others.
Customer: So, what should I do?
Tech Support: Pull down Self-Acceptance; then click on the following files: Forgive-Self; Realize Your Worth; and Acknowledge your Limitations.
Customer: Okay, done.
Tech Support: Now, copy them to the "My Heart" directory. The system will overwrite any conflicting files and begin patching faulty programming. Also, you need to delete Verbose Self-Criticism from all directories and empty your Recycle Bin to make sure it is completely gone and never comes back.
Customer: Got it. Hey! My heart is filling up with new files. Smile is playing on my monitor and Peace and Contentment are copying themselves all over My Heart. Is this normal?
Tech Support: Sometimes. For others it takes awhile, but eventually everything gets it at the proper time. So Love is installed and running. One more thing before we hang up. Love is Freeware. Be sure to give it and its various modules to everyone you meet. They will in turn share it with others and return some cool modules back to you.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
My Netbook is 90 years old
…or so it seems.
Just a few weeks ago I was shouting to the world the great and many advantages of such little pieces of leading edge technology. I was about to post something related to the Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader for more on magazines and newspaper ideas… and then Jobs announces the iPad.
My Netbook is in agony… my mind is suddenly empty… and my IT world seems to be nicer every time.
Now, if we could link somehow the iPad to solving the warming issue…
Just a few weeks ago I was shouting to the world the great and many advantages of such little pieces of leading edge technology. I was about to post something related to the Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader for more on magazines and newspaper ideas… and then Jobs announces the iPad.
My Netbook is in agony… my mind is suddenly empty… and my IT world seems to be nicer every time.
Now, if we could link somehow the iPad to solving the warming issue…
Monday, February 1, 2010
Silence is good for business
More than a year ago I was at a friends’ house enjoying a small party. They were leaving the city back to their country of origin. Most of the guests were from a different country too, so we felt the communion and understood to a very good degree the feelings of our hosts.
At some point during the conversation I noticed that most of my input was practically non-existent. Nobody would respond to my questions and/or they continued talking to each other with a different topic as if my words were some kind of momentary noise. I felt embarrassed and obviously started to try to remember anything that might have offended anybody. I recalled nothing.
Last weekend, at a friend’s birthday party the conversation centered on newborns and mainly the pains of going through a difficult labour. This time quite the same happened, after I opened my mouth and said something that hugely overrode and diminished whatever any of the present women went through in there, in terms of time length and pains of such an event.
Then it struck me: that other time I explained that by sheer coincidence I went to 3 famous restaurants in 3 different cities within a week. It was just incredible that somebody brought up the names and places and I had just recently visited the 3 disparate places and ate in such restaurants within a 7 day trip.
This time, what I said was also kind of incredible. Nobody in that other occasion believed me, and neither did anybody now. Despite the fact that everything I said was true and I can prove it with my expense report, credit card statements and hospital records; it is in fact quite incredible, especially for people that do not live a similar lifestyle or have been anything close to what was described at the hospital.
My lesson?
DO NOT open your mouth that quickly. I remember most of my best financial, business and professional successes have happened after a long silence on my part. Strange: sometimes because I am trying to find the right words, sometimes because I do not know the answer and most of the times because my mind is blank but trying to articulate a sentence. It just worked to my advantage.
Sometimes the truth hurts or makes you look like an idiot. That truth is being tried to be conveyed with your own words! Do NOT do it. Keep silent when what you will say is very distant from the center and normality of what everybody is focusing on. Better to prepare with facts and figures and present them, instead of simply open your big mouth, no matter how small it is.
Enjoy the silence.
At some point during the conversation I noticed that most of my input was practically non-existent. Nobody would respond to my questions and/or they continued talking to each other with a different topic as if my words were some kind of momentary noise. I felt embarrassed and obviously started to try to remember anything that might have offended anybody. I recalled nothing.
Last weekend, at a friend’s birthday party the conversation centered on newborns and mainly the pains of going through a difficult labour. This time quite the same happened, after I opened my mouth and said something that hugely overrode and diminished whatever any of the present women went through in there, in terms of time length and pains of such an event.
Then it struck me: that other time I explained that by sheer coincidence I went to 3 famous restaurants in 3 different cities within a week. It was just incredible that somebody brought up the names and places and I had just recently visited the 3 disparate places and ate in such restaurants within a 7 day trip.
This time, what I said was also kind of incredible. Nobody in that other occasion believed me, and neither did anybody now. Despite the fact that everything I said was true and I can prove it with my expense report, credit card statements and hospital records; it is in fact quite incredible, especially for people that do not live a similar lifestyle or have been anything close to what was described at the hospital.
My lesson?
DO NOT open your mouth that quickly. I remember most of my best financial, business and professional successes have happened after a long silence on my part. Strange: sometimes because I am trying to find the right words, sometimes because I do not know the answer and most of the times because my mind is blank but trying to articulate a sentence. It just worked to my advantage.
Sometimes the truth hurts or makes you look like an idiot. That truth is being tried to be conveyed with your own words! Do NOT do it. Keep silent when what you will say is very distant from the center and normality of what everybody is focusing on. Better to prepare with facts and figures and present them, instead of simply open your big mouth, no matter how small it is.
Enjoy the silence.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Getting easier every time, thanks to IT
As Internet connectivity becomes faster, new technologies are better and more integrated than before, social networking is becoming commonplace, both on the Web and inside the buildings; we can do so many things remotely now that we simply could not just some years ago.
Nowadays we can connect to the office seeing on our screen exactly and almost 100% with the same clarity everything we have on our computer. It is becoming simpler to connect, faster to work on, and cheaper to implement.
I remember some years ago the fuzz and all the outrage from some of us regarding the “IT does not matter” article. Most of us did not understand the paradox implicit in such document.
What company, big or small could ever survive without IT today?
What would you be doing instead of reading these lines on your screen?
Exactly.
Now please forward as appropriate, use as many methods as you can: post, tweet, blog, email, txt message, facebook, your choice -or all of them-.
See? There are so many now! And all are cheap, fast and easy. :)
Nowadays we can connect to the office seeing on our screen exactly and almost 100% with the same clarity everything we have on our computer. It is becoming simpler to connect, faster to work on, and cheaper to implement.
I remember some years ago the fuzz and all the outrage from some of us regarding the “IT does not matter” article. Most of us did not understand the paradox implicit in such document.
What company, big or small could ever survive without IT today?
What would you be doing instead of reading these lines on your screen?
Exactly.
Now please forward as appropriate, use as many methods as you can: post, tweet, blog, email, txt message, facebook, your choice -or all of them-.
See? There are so many now! And all are cheap, fast and easy. :)
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Kids’ play
Watching kids at soccer practice, I just realize how sometimes we adults do not understand the rules of the game and therefore perform a very poor role in the organization. On top of that, those of us that do understand the rules sometimes lack the ability or intelligence (or both) to play better than we in reality could.
I'm not trying to convey the message that we all should be experts on technology or a specific device or tool, or business processes, but trying to make an analogy so that I remind myself we can always improve via training, practice and paying attention.
The game the kids are playing and specifically the exercise the coaches implemented for them to learn has not real implications for those that are here just to have fun. For the ones that will become soccer players, at least on a semi-professional level, this day will be somehow ingrained in their memory for life.
In a business environment, there is implications, complications and grave consequences when those rules are not known, followed, or implemented at least to minimum requirements.
Are your teammates playing by the rules and to the best of their abilities?
Then you should win 3 – 0.
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL!!!
I'm not trying to convey the message that we all should be experts on technology or a specific device or tool, or business processes, but trying to make an analogy so that I remind myself we can always improve via training, practice and paying attention.
The game the kids are playing and specifically the exercise the coaches implemented for them to learn has not real implications for those that are here just to have fun. For the ones that will become soccer players, at least on a semi-professional level, this day will be somehow ingrained in their memory for life.
In a business environment, there is implications, complications and grave consequences when those rules are not known, followed, or implemented at least to minimum requirements.
Are your teammates playing by the rules and to the best of their abilities?
Then you should win 3 – 0.
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL!!!
Monday, January 25, 2010
Cloud Computing gaining strength
A lot of smaller companies and new products have started sprouting in the last couple of years. Almost every day now we get news about this new on-line backup solution or the new offers on hosted email and document managers from new and old companies.
Even Microsoft wants to start offering such products on top of the existing consumer-targeted and free Live features; this time gathering brokers and ISPs to push their products on the business space.
Seems to me like this is the start of the real social Internet: we pay right now for some services while most of the really useful ones are still free. I am envisioning a free-internet for all in the near future: the plan is that we all share our existing equipment in a way so that computers and servers are intelligent enough to find, assemble and provide functions from different places and supply those to the ones that need it at that moment. The unused computing power, idle at 12:00 GMT would be helping those whose time zone is 0:00 GMT, and vice versa. A quid pro quo environment that makes use of all the interconnected computers in the globe.
Now, that’s the real Cloud Computing concept.
Even Microsoft wants to start offering such products on top of the existing consumer-targeted and free Live features; this time gathering brokers and ISPs to push their products on the business space.
Seems to me like this is the start of the real social Internet: we pay right now for some services while most of the really useful ones are still free. I am envisioning a free-internet for all in the near future: the plan is that we all share our existing equipment in a way so that computers and servers are intelligent enough to find, assemble and provide functions from different places and supply those to the ones that need it at that moment. The unused computing power, idle at 12:00 GMT would be helping those whose time zone is 0:00 GMT, and vice versa. A quid pro quo environment that makes use of all the interconnected computers in the globe.
Now, that’s the real Cloud Computing concept.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
One month after Xmas
WOW! So much to do, so little time... or so it goes.
After what seems like an eternity there is a feeling of void for being so separated from the writing world.
Not that there is no intention, simply that with so much work and all the latest developments globally, one but wonders what is important and what is not.
After sharing tears and thoughts watching the Haiti scenes on TV and Web, trying to please clients as best as we can, asking ourselves how come kids still insist on a different colour or style of shoes when everything else is way more urgent that such demand.
Trying to keep a “normal” life balancing everything that is going on in our micro and macro environment is sometimes an open question. Why do we do our job? What's the purpose of taking kids to school, go to work, return exhausted to continue with evening activities... always waiting for the weekend, that comes and becomes shorter every time...?
When will it end!?
Then, while trying to make sense of it all, we get distracted by work, family issues, health matters... social events, … never to come back to our train of thought to fully figure out our purpose in life.
Or at least a better, easier or faster way to get to the next mark.
Oh! well... I'd better get back to my email... there are 6 urgent messages I have to reply to among other 100 not-so-important that I still have to address.
Keep me posted if you find something close to an explanation of what really matters in this planet.
Phone ringing, gotta go.
After what seems like an eternity there is a feeling of void for being so separated from the writing world.
Not that there is no intention, simply that with so much work and all the latest developments globally, one but wonders what is important and what is not.
After sharing tears and thoughts watching the Haiti scenes on TV and Web, trying to please clients as best as we can, asking ourselves how come kids still insist on a different colour or style of shoes when everything else is way more urgent that such demand.
Trying to keep a “normal” life balancing everything that is going on in our micro and macro environment is sometimes an open question. Why do we do our job? What's the purpose of taking kids to school, go to work, return exhausted to continue with evening activities... always waiting for the weekend, that comes and becomes shorter every time...?
When will it end!?
Then, while trying to make sense of it all, we get distracted by work, family issues, health matters... social events, … never to come back to our train of thought to fully figure out our purpose in life.
Or at least a better, easier or faster way to get to the next mark.
Oh! well... I'd better get back to my email... there are 6 urgent messages I have to reply to among other 100 not-so-important that I still have to address.
Keep me posted if you find something close to an explanation of what really matters in this planet.
Phone ringing, gotta go.
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