Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Landmark Profits




Landmark National Bank
breaks into the black.
Big gains in assets, loans, deposits.
See the story at
Yahoo Finance

I was one of the original founders of this bank,
and continue on the board of directors,
an advisor to the Technology Committee,
and Chairman of the Marketing Committee,
as well as a significant stockholder.
So, it's great to see us turn the corner.

If you would like to upgrade your bank relationship,
we have a great group of highly experienced people
to help you and/or your business.

(blog top)



Sunday, January 29, 2006

Headstand



I was lured out of my Fortress of Solitude last night
to attend the birthday party of good friend Deb L.
During the socializing, it was mentioned by Sean
to his new girlfriend Reydeen,
that I was a yogi of some skill,
capable of doing a headstand,
which I suppose he feels is remarkable
because of my advanced age.

Reydeen was quite impressed,
incredulous, even,
and probed further into this claim,
asking if I could in fact do a headstand,
a freestanding one,
without assistance, without a wall, etc.

"Of course", says I,
remembering my hundreds of headstands,
as if they were yesterday,
but suddenly realizing that I could not remember
when I did the last headstand,
it was so long ago, possibly a year or more.

This shook my confidence a bit.
Could I really do one at will, right now, she asked?
"Of course" I claim, offhandedly bluffing,
knowing that the setting was inappropriate,
that it was Deb's party, not mine,
and wondering if the several margaritas I'd consumed
would have an effect on my balance.

My bluff was not called last night, thankfully.
But this morning I woke with Doubt, but also Determination.
I wondered how it could be that so much time has passed
without me doing my beloved headstands,
how such a cherished habit could be lost without knowing.
I remember a time when a day would not be complete,
without the joy of inversion.

So this morning, I went to the mat,
stretched for some time, breathing with focus,
and visualized my headstand,
Doubts flashed through my mind,
and were banished just as quickly:
Would I get up? Of course, with ease.
Would I fall? Of course not, I am invincible.

Soon enough, the moment of truth arrives...
I roll over into Child's Pose,
transition to Dolphin,
ascend into Headstand with ease,
stretch fully vertical,
and hold for some time,
smiling.

I am surprised at how effortless it was,
in spite of the time since my last headstand.
Muscle memory, visualization, affirmation, determination,
all came together to create a magical moment.

It is said that Headstand pose ("Sirshasana")
creates droplets of immortality,
and is called the King of Asanas
Learn more about the Headstand, click here.

When I first started learning yoga,
I chose the headstand as my chief goal,
and sweated bullets for months,
under the compassionate supervision of yogini Lisette,
conditioning my body and mind to achieve it.
Once I had achieved it,
it was like passing through a veil of knowing,
and it became effortless.

It was less like Achieving,
and more like Discovering.

We are all capable of so much more...
Henry Ford said it so perfectly:
"If we think we can, or if we think we can't, we're right."

Namaste'

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Wednesday, January 25, 2006

My Name is Mike, and I'm a Google-Whore

Hello, my name is Mike, and I'm a Google-Whore.
Yes, I admit it.
There are millions of us out there, of course.
It's our dirty little secret.

I am in a race
with every other Michael McCafferty on the planet
(and there are a surprising number of us)
to rise to the top of the search engine pages
when anyone looks for our name.

There are so many
people named Michael McCafferty:
a Canadian politician,
a movie star,
a colorectal surgeon,
a tattoo artist,
a cunning linguist,
a lawyer in Australia,
a Canadian rockabilly double bassist,
a gaggle of Micks in County Donegal in Ireland...
I could go on and on,
for our numbers are legion.

If only I were named something like
Framistan Rumplestiltskin
then I would be a Google-Whack
and my life would be so much simpler.
I could rest easily in my hammock,
knowing that there are no others
plotting to overtake my top position in search results.

I am thinking of joining a 12-step program,
just as soon as I beg one more link back to my site,
or find some way to rig the system in my favor.
I know those others with similar names
are doing the same...
Oh, there is no sleep for the weary.

Won't you help me and put a link to
www.MichaelMcCafferty.com
on your website?

Oh, God, deliver me from this affliction!

(ok, for those of you who can not sense sarcasm,
this is what it looks like)

(blog top)

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Ferrari Formula One for 2006





Ferrari has announced their 2006 Formula One car.
And check out the steering wheel,
which gets more functions every year.
Talk about fly-by-wire!
Simply amazing how a human being
can drive it at 250mph
and work all those buttons
and stay on the road
and WIN...

Click one of the photos to go to
The Ferrari F1 website.

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Wednesday, January 11, 2006

The Rainpure Adventure Begins



Good News...
I have just enjoyed the last few days
with some friends from Australia,
who visited me to share news of their
patented new water purification system.

Check it out at www.rainpure.com.au

This system has substantial resources behind it.
To date, over $20 Million has been invested,
in development as well as a
specialized manufacturing plant in China,
and in more than a year of
marketing/sales success in Australia.

And now this new system is ready to come to America.
The Chief Operating Officer of this well-financed business,
my friend Michael Lappen, is none other than the man who did
such a masterful job with the distribution of my
TeleMagic software in Australia.
He wants me to be his US advisor
for this great business adventure.

Needless to say, water is a huge opportunity.
Especially with a completely unique
and patented purification system.

This initial notice is simply to let you know "what's new".
And if you would like more information on this opportunity,
please contact me and we will continue to the discussion.
If you know someone in the water (or related) business
who should know about RainPure, please
let me know and I'll send them more information.

We are still forming the business for North America,
and there may be a way for you to participate
as an investor, team member, or otherwise,
so I'll keep you posted on our progress...

(blog top)

Monday, January 09, 2006

Motivation in Red - Ferrari 599 GTB





(click for bigger photos)

It's almost enough to make a guy go back to work!
Here's the factory propaganda:

With the release of the 599 GTB Ferrari is presenting its most powerful V12-engined production car of all time.

Amedeo Felisa, Ferrari's Vice General Manager, officially announced the new model in occasion of the opening of the Detroit Motor Show on the 9th of January.

The new car is a concentration of Ferrari's most innovative and technologically advanced engineering solutions applied to a mid-front engined two-seater coupe. The result is a new benchmark for performance, driver involvement and design.

The Ferrari 599 GTB boasts class-leading power thanks to its 5,999cc V12 - derived directly from the Enzo Ferrari supercar - which produces no less than 620hp at 7,600 rpm for a weight/power ratio of just 2.6 kg per horsepower.

Ferrari has adopted the latest evolution in its tried and tested all-aluminium construction technology for the body and chassis.

The unmistakable Pininfarina design gives the Ferrari 599 GTB aggressive yet elegant lines which are perfectly integrated with the advanced aerodynamic solutions adopted to reach the performance figures attainable.

This new model is the symbol of Ferrari
's production - the V12 berlinetta - and represents the latest interpretation of a theme that has seen such classics as the 250 GT, the 275 GTB, and the 365 GTB4.

The Ferrari 599 GTB replaces the last in that great line of berlinettas, the 575M Maranello, of which - together with the 550 Maranello introduced in 1996 - no fewer than 5,700 have been produced, a record for this type of model for the Prancing Horse.

The new car will be officially unveiled on the 28th of February 2006 at the Geneva Motor Show.



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Saturday, January 07, 2006

A Life Lived Perfectly - Do Good Now


When I was at the absolute bottom,
with no car, no money, no job,
and no idea what to do about it,
I felt there had to be some way out.
I felt strongly that I was not destined to be a failure.

I thought long and hard about my situation.
I felt strongly that I could reason my way through.
I felt there must be some Secret Formula to Life,
which I had been violating that put me where I was,
and which, if I lived in harmony with it,
would put me back on the Path,
and keep me there,
and apply to every step of the way to Success.

I reasoned that Thinking alone was not the answer.
I needed to DO something.
That much was absolutely true.
Nothing happens without some Action.

But what should I do when my options are not clear?
After much meditation on the question,
the answer was, simply, GOOD.
It is the Law of Karma.
Doing Good, in any form, brings Good in return.
It is Cause and Effect.
The scientific principle that rules the Universe.
But, what Good, exactly?

The amazing answer I found was
Any Good.
Any Good is better than No Good.
Better to do some Good instead of doing nothing.
Even if the Good is seemingly insignificant.

The last element of the Secret Formula for Success,
as I had discovered it, is
NOW.

Any Good, done Now, is always better than a Good done later.
Any Good, done Now, is always better than a planned Good.
The simple reason for this truth is that
life is lived one moment at a time...
a moment lost is lost forever,
and one of these moments will be the Last one.
That's why THIS moment is so important.

Do Good Now.
That's it.
What more could I need to know?
It told me that I must consume my time with Doing (Action),
rather than merely thinking, planning, and Intention.
It told me that I must be Doing Good.
Do nothing negative... Do nothing trivial.

And it told me that I must be Doing Good NOW.
And Now again, and this Now, and all the Nows following it.
A continuous, unrelenting parade of Nows without end.

Do Good Now.
If I could keep those three words in my mind,
and live my life according to that simple principle,
I felt that failure and confusion and pain
would never darken my life again.

A most amazing discovery followed...
As I progressed in my practice of Do Good Now,
I noticed that I stopped feeling bad.
It was at this time that I found
that you cannot feel bad when Doing Good.

This discovery was Epic for me.
Further experimentation with this concept
proved all sorts of benefits.
Actions beget Feelings.
Feel bad? Do something Good.
You will feel better.
You can not feel bad when you Do Good.

Do Good Now.
It is the secret to a Perfect Life.


Click here for a free, easy, and highly effective System
which will help you solve problems and achieve goals.

(blog top)



Thursday, January 05, 2006

A Life Lived Perfectly: The Prequel

To more fully appreciate
the source of the concept of The Ideal Day
we need to visit a time when
every day was less than ideal.
In fact, the days were
far at the other end of the Ideal spectrum.

My midlife crisis included
Awakening,
resolution,
divorce, cancer,
success, fame, fortune,
failure,
bankruptcy,
depression,
hitting bottom,
Awakening again,
making a plan,
committing to it,
and then acting on it.

From that point of Taking Action,
According To A Plan,
there was never any doubt in my mind.
It was just one day at a time.
That's all the time I had to deal with.



Just make Today the best it can be.
Things start getting better immediately.


As you progress
through your days,
each day with the resolve
to make today the best it can be,
you will look at each thing that happens,
and comment to yourself
how Tommorow could be improved
with more, or less, of it.

And Tomorrow,
should we be so fortunate to get another Day,
we Learn from Yesterday.
We Grow and each day Improves.

When we think this way,
we see our lives as a continuation of
ever increasing pleasure.

Be actively involved
in creating more of what you love in your life,
and avoiding, like the plague,
all of the things which drain energy.

Dealing With Negativity

If there is any hint of negativity,
the most effective thing you can do is
to move away from it.
Physically move your body in a direction
directly away from the source of the negativity.
Keep moving away from it
as long as the negativity persists.

Transform Your Space

Remove from your space
all items which have any negative vibes whatsoever.
Fill your space with
only positive images, colors, fabrics, shapes, textures, sounds, scents.
This includes everything:
people as well as possessions.

Each day remove more negatives.
Each day add more positives.
Soon enough,
you will have some spectacularly good days.

I am reminded of this story:


The Three Stone Cutters

A traveler came upon three men working with stone.
Curious,the traveler approached the first worker and asked,
"What are you doing?"
The worker replied, "I am a stone cutter and I am cutting stones."

The traveler approached the second worker
and asked the same question. and got the reply:
"I am a stone cutter and I work to support my family."

Still searching for some meaning to their work,
the traveler asked the third man, who announced proudly:
"I am a stone cutter and I am building a cathedral.

Three men - performing the same task -
each with different perspectives of
what they were doing.



Live Each Day as
the Builder of a Cathedral
(your life).

Some of the negatives I removed:
newspapers and TV.
An important replacement for these things
is good positive reading material.
I discovered
"The Greatest Salesman in the World"
by Og Mandino,

and it was a major help.
It gave structure to my plan.
Today, 20 years later,
I still carry in my wallet a piece of paper
with the 10 principles in that book.
I highly recommend it.

If I can live a day,
with those principles guiding my actions,
then that day must be Ideal.

Each day lived according to these principles,
helps build a greater likelihood that tomorrow
will be even better.

Click here for a free, easy, and highly effective System
which will help you solve problems and achieve goals.

(blog top)



Wednesday, January 04, 2006

A Life Lived Perfectly: The Ideal Day, Every Day

It may take me a few words to get to the point,
because it is important for you to understand first
that this story is probably the most important one
I have ever told.

I have been keeping a secret for years.
The life I've been living is far more than it may seem.
And it is the product of a plan
I have been working on for more than 20 years.

In 1983 I started working on a plan.
This plan, when you learn of it,
may seem completely outrageous,
and impossible for any human to achieve,
and even if possible to achieve it one time,
it may be incomprehensible to achieve it day after day
for years on end.

I must now confess that this is, in fact, what I have done.

The goal that I have achieved is
beyond the realm of human experience.
For if it is the human condition to suffer,
and I do not suffer,
then I have achieved inhuman status.
If it is human to have needs, to want,
to feel any negative emotion,
and I feel only the most joyous of emotions,
then I have trancended the human condition.

In fact, my hours, my days, each and every one of them,
pass in complete comfort and joy.
Each day is different of course,
and each day is perfect.

I can sense your disbelief.
But do read on...

Such a goal, at the time I conceived of it,
also seemed to me to be outrageous, impossible.
However, I adopted it as a goal
knowing that the closer I got to it,
the better things would get.
Even when I miss my goal, I still win.
And, I like a good challenge.

The idea was to see if I could live every day as an Ideal Day.
Each day so filled to capacity with Time Well Spent.
A day so wondrous that if it were my Last Day,
that I would depart from this world with a smile
for having lived just one such Ideal Day.

And to do this, every day, day after day, all year long,
for as long as humanly (inhumanly) possible.

I felt it to be a worthy and unique goal.
I am unaware of anyone else
who has had such a goal.
And certainly unaware of anyone who has achieved it.
And that's a major reason why
I have not mentioned this to anyone else.

Another reason is because I felt a bit superstitious.
I didn't want to jinx the string of Ideal Days I have going.
But I feel I have to take that risk.
Here's why:
First of all, I am human, and all things must come to an end.
It is important for me to pass on
my discovery of this Ultimate Good Thing,
and how to achieve it.

If more people could trade their lives of need,
disease, pain, dependence, and fear
for lives of plenty, good health, pleasure, independence,
and confidence,
the world would be a better place,
there would be an end to hunger and war,
there would be so much less suffering.
We could live up to our Potential.

So it is with risk of jinxing my own Perfect Life
that I reveal what I've got going,
and how I got it going,
and how you can get it going for you too.

No charge.

Let us begin.
First of all, the disclaimers.
  1. Your mileage may vary.
  2. Some restrictions may apply.
  3. Assembly required.
  4. Results take time.
  5. No refunds. That's because it's free, remember?

Step one is to define Perfection.
Everyone's idea of perfection is different.
It's important to write it down
because it helps to get it clear in your head
when you write it down.
It also helps to simplify things,
and makes it easy to make improvements as you go along.
And if you write it down,
you will know when you have achieved it.

For speedy results,
here's an advanced hint:
"If you can't be with the one you love,
love the one you're with."
There is a Zen principle that says that we
do not need to seek happiness.
We are already happy,
or priorly established in that which is Happiness Itself.
It is un-Zen to go in search of Stuff
as the pre-requisite to an Ideal Life.

However, this advanced hint
will be disregarded by virtually everyone,
and certainly I learned of it only
after many years in the pursuit of Stuff.
The Stuff in my case was toys like
Ferraris and Airplanes and Big Houses.
I went for, and got, all that Stuff.
And don't get me wrong, it was good, and fun
but it can get lots better.

So if your idea of perfection includes a few toys,
then by all means add them to your list,
because you can have all you want.

And with your thinking of the Stuff you will Have,
think deeply on the things which will be gone from your life:
worry, need, stress, etc.
Think deeply on how you want to Feel.
Think of the Feelings you want to have,
and the ones you want to be gone from your life.

Begin immediately to move in the direction of your Plan.
Let me remind you of these immortal words of Thoreau:

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams,
and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined,
he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
He will put some things behind,
will pass an invisible boundary;
new, universal, and more liberal laws
will begin to establish themselves around and within him;
or old laws will be expanded and
interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense,
and he will live with the license of
a higher order of beings.


and these words by Goethe:

Begin It Now!

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy,
the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.
Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation),
there is one elementary truth,
the ignorance of which
kills countless ideas and splendid plans:
That the moment one definitely commits oneself,
then Providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one
that would never otherwise have occurred.
A whole stream of events issues from the decision,
raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents
and meetings and material assistance, which no man
could have dreamed would have come his way.
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has Genius, Power and Magic in it.
Begin it now!


Some people need a higher authority than someone such as me.
I hope the above advice supports my case.

So with your plan of Perfection in your hands,
start immediately creating your life to include
as much as possible of the way you want to feel,
and avoid the negative feelings.
Repeat.

Periodically you will want to make changes to the plan.
That's a good thing.
You're learning.

That it.

I know, you feel cheated.
You need more details.
You need some Secret of the Ages.
Some magical dust, or ointment.
You want to buy something to make it easy, and instant.

I'd like that too.
But such is the stuff of illusion.
What I speak of is as real the sun setting every day.
And just as reliable, I've found.

It performs according to the Laws of the Universe.
It is based on the Scientific Method.
Cause and Effect.
Without Fail.
I have experienced it so, and do, every day.

Right now, my Ideal Day is coming to a close.
The hour is late, and I am looking forward to a good night of sleep.
The final reward for having lived another Ideal Day.

One of the more spectacular accomplishments of today
is that I have written this confession.
My gift to the human race.
I will sleep soundly.

We'll talk more on this again, I hope.
But if not, you have the general idea.
Good luck.


Click here for a free, easy, and highly effective System
which will help you solve problems and achieve goals.

(blog top)



Monday, January 02, 2006

Google Will Rule The World, And That's A Good Thing





Google will rule the world.
Because we will want it to be that way.

Google is giving us a free addictive drug.
We call it "content",
and it comes in the form of words and pictures and video.
They have already become the monopoly for words and photos.
And they recently announced their intentions to rule video.

Google is becoming a benevolent dictator
who builds a perfect kingdom
where everyone is happy and making money.
We willingly assist Google
because it is the path of least resistence for us.

Google is ingesting and monetizing content
at an ever increasing rate.
Critical Mass has been achieved,
and the conclusion is inevitable.

see also: Google Video - Huge Business Opportunity
and this one: 7 Reasons Why Google Will Rule The World


(blog top)



Sunday, January 01, 2006

New Year Resolutions


Before noon on the first day of the new year,
I had already reviewed my performance in 2005,
and made my plans for 2006,
for Pool.
I guess that shows what my priorities are.

If I learn from my own good example,
I'll soon do the same for all the other areas of my life.

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