Quite an interesting article on the length of time it took to grow many of the major firms in technology. This shoots a lot of holes in the glory myths of overnight success where in two months you are worth a billion five, PDiddy is inviting you to his house, and your enormous mansion has a 30 million dollar toilet so you don’t even have to wipe your own butt anymore.

Gold fever and hubris is a huge danger in life and in business. It is just like basketball. Don’t worry about winning, worry about each play and build on it, success takes care of itself.

[IPO Dashboards]

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Anyone who has ever been sailing, or took to the open seas in any type of marine craft knows mother nature often has plans of her own when you are out there. This video is a testimonial to that.

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So in the final end the supercomputer dubbed Watson lost in Jeopardy to humankind, but demonstrating the underpinnings of what the future might hold with machines and man. Maybe it is time to dust off and reread that Bill Joy article in Wired again.

[IBM]

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Originally published by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt in 1975 this deck contains 100 cards which are sort of a set of working thoughts designed to refocus or open up creativity which is often squashed by a variety of factors like time deadlines, being to close to the problem, etc. The idea is fairly simple, shuffle the deck, pick up card, read it, and act on the idea it presents. There are also numerous computer versions out as well. Hey Cold Play used it on La Vida La Viva and look what they did. Ooo rah!

Here is a small sampling of some cards:

Steal a solution.

Describe the landscape in which this belongs.

What else is this like?

List the qualities it has. List those you’d like.

Instead of changing the thing, change the world around it.

[Oblique Strategies]

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A long time ago I was hanging out with some fellow Linux users having a Fight Clubesque moment saying, “The first rule Linux Club, you do not talk about Linux Club, The Second Rule of Linux Club you do not talk about Linux Club…” You get the idea. Interestingly enough the conversation drifted over to the idea of Linux filtering its way into everyday gadgets like the ever promised but yet to be delivered on a useful mass scale smart fridge, smart toaster, smart microwave and so on and so forth and when I mean smart I am not talking about some generic term referring to a shiny interface and other window dressings, I mean smart! I am talking about anticipating my needs before I do. That kind of smart!

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I sometimes get inspiration while roaming through stores looking at products. For me it is almost like walking through a park as shapes and colors and items tend to spur on thoughts. The other day while shopping I passed a Hannah Montana lunch box display in the store and it reminded me that I always love to embrace new things, new trends and new ideas, as new ideas are the life blood of the world. Why Hannah Montana reminded me of this I am not sure but I think it had to do something with being a different age and then thinking “what would it be like to be that age again? No I didn’t buy the Hannah Montana lunch box, in case you are asking. Lol. Still it tends to remind me though that through trends, fads, and movements there are times when you look back over history, be it your own or others and say “what was I thinking?”

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There were many like it but this was mine.

Couldn’t resist throwing up a pic of my first computer I ever owned. I remember being 12 years old back in 1980 and working all summer bailing hay and pulling weeds in people’s gardens to earn enough money to plunk down the $399.00 to get my hands on one of these. I mean 4k RAM!! Wow! lol. For its time is was so exciting. I used a small old black and white tv my parents had, a tape deck to store my applications(yes you heard right. A tape deck!) I wrote in Microsoft BASIC, like a cheesy flight simulator I slapped together that essentially was, “don’t crash into the side of the tunnel and press the fire button at the end.” Physics engines be damned! Still it was so much fun and I spent hours and hours programming on it. Loved that computer.

Actually while writing this, I was thinking of the ending of the film “Jarhead,” about Anthony Swofford’s tour of duty in the first Gulf War. Of course I had to modify it slightly…

“A story: A boy uses a TRS-80 Color Computer for many years, and he goes to write code. And afterward he turns the TRS-80 in at the local thrift shop, and he believes he’s finished with the TRS-80 Color Computer. But no matter what else he might do with his hands, love a woman, build a house, change his son’s diaper; his hands remember the TRS-80 Color Computer.”

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Ok I couldn’t resist starting this blog with the title of Kinks Album..”Give the People What they Want.”

So you came this far. Perhaps you would like to come a little further? First off let me tell you one of my personal agitations life. Bad customer service. Many companies think that the idea of customer service is sticking you, the customer, into a system that was designed with the best intentions but ultimately leaves you with a sense of, “why did I come here at all.” I myself even in my daily life always notice how I am being treated as a customer. Even the largest companies in the world are only as good as the service they provide. Everyone of us has had nightmare stories of long waits, catch twenty two bureaucratic loops and employees living with the idea of “just get this person off the phone with his blah blah blah and I can go home.”

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Before we get really rolling here in blog land I wanted to take a moment to share about something I have been doing in terms of health. Yes the concept of healthy eating and technology don’t often go hand in hand. Our business simply is not often conducive to health, with pizza, chips, cookies, and all sorts of other goodies calling like sirens from the shores of all night coding sessions, bug fixing, server deployments and all the other wonderful things that go along with this chosen profession. Not surprisingly I turned into a chunky monkey because of this.

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