Wednesday, October 25, 2006

I am free!


Today I submitted my resignation to Landmark.
(click here for the letter)

So, after 6 years, my banking adventure has ended.
I learned a lot, and enjoyed working with the other Founders.

Out with the old, in with the new.
Onward and upward.
Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Wait till you see what I come up with next!




Tuesday, October 24, 2006

New Business Adventure


I have started up a new business adventure
doing internet delivery of innovative health solutions.

Time I now spend mentoring and serving on boards
will be redirected solely to this new business.
In addition, my pool tournament activities will cease,
and the time, including many hours of practice, will be
put to good use in the new business.

The thing I find most attractive with this new business
is that it helps people with health issues.
So, as the company grows, it will be an indication
of the number of people we have helped.

Another thing that is important is that
I am the major stockholder and CEO,
so I will have significant influence
in the success of the business.
And, that should be a lot of fun.
Especially if it is helping lots of people.

Right now, the details are being kept quiet.
But you can be sure that when the word gets out,
it will be announced right here first.
Stay tuned...




Busy new moon days


Just upgraded my computer speakers today.
All my favorite music is sounding so much better!

Lunch with Kat today,
to celebrate her birthday.
Excellent meal, great company,
and it got me out on the road, top down,
for the first time in a week.

I gave her the Corinne Bailey Rae CD.
What a great persona!

Today autumn got serious fog.
I love the fog.
Just plain love it.
Muffles sounds.
Creates an intimate feeling.
Spiritual.
Bring on the fog,
months and months of fog before summer.

Working... (gasp! did I day that word?)
on a new project with great potential
and every step of the way it helps people.
The ultimate combination for a business model.

I have been documenting, researching, recruiting,
and all the stuff that needs to be done to get
a new business from mental to physical.
Exciting stuff, of course,
but I keep coming back to the need to do this
with consummate style: no stress.

Lots of new activity on
The Art and Science of Success in Business
Taking the lessons of mentoring situations and
documenting them to create product.
What is the Latin for "from all things: product"?
That should be carved in stone
above the columned entrance to the
Global Headquarters
building.

My New Dimension PC is coming along nicely.
Today the speech recognition software was installed,
so now I'm off on a new software challenge.
It seems slower than I had hoped.




Tuesday, October 17, 2006

The Art and Science of Success in Business

Announcing:

The Art and Science of Success in Business




Saturday, October 14, 2006

MX Revolution: Mouse Heaven


Logitech got it right with their new MX Revolution mouse.

1. Hyper-fast and super smooth scrolling. An instant favorite which I can now not live without.

2. Good feel in the hand. Light. Moves easily.

3. Programmable buttons. I use one to Zoom in on small print.

4. One touch search button launches new Google search window. Saves a lot of keyboard/mouse repetitive actions.




Friday, October 13, 2006

Remembering Flipper



(click for HUGE image)


I just ran across this photo from a friend's collection.
It's the original published news photo of that fateful day
February 24, 1994, when my instructor pilot decided to do
a checkout on the biplane after a session in the shop.

Everything worked just fine until the very second he touched down.
That's when he noticed, very abruptly, that the brakes were locked.
The biplane flipped over instantly.
It was a total loss.
Although it looks rather fly-able,
there was no un-bent or un-broken piece on it.

Luckily, the pilot was unharmed.
But he sure was surprised!

From that day forward, we called him "Flipper".
Although, not always to his face...

;o)




Sunday, October 08, 2006

Frisbee encore




Kate is a friend of 25+ years,
a frisbee partner for many of those years.
But she moved away, married, and raised children,
and we only rarely get to play frisbee.

This morning was one of those rare occasions.
We met up at Starbucks Del Mar on Sunday morning --
along with almost everyone else in Del Mar
whose Sunday (or every day) routine includes Starbucks.
The place was jammed, the line reached the door,
but Kate and I never noticed the wait as we
hugged and yakked away like old friends.

It was a great treat to see big chocolate donuts,
(Starbucks is always learning!)
so Kate and I loaded up on sugar and caffein
which is so important to the performance art of frisbee.

The beach, only a block away, was reached after a
too-short top-down drive in the Corvette,
and we arrived in perfect timing to catch the start
of a very colorful lifeguard rescue boarding race,
with at least 50 contestants and many more viewing
from Powerhouse Park.

We visited the nearby headstone of our friend long gone,
"Derek Blake - Artist, Surfer, Friend"
and then moved on to our purpose
the pure and unadulterated celebration of Life: Play.
Kate was the first to utter those immortal words:
"To Fris' is to Be!"

With the high tide, we chose the park grass to do our thing.
And it was good.
Like Time had stood still,
while we slept for so long,
and we wake and play frisbee
as if it was only a nap.

We warmed up with simple throws and catches,
then moved to our tricks.

And then, too soon, it was over.

A final good-bye hug and Kate was gone again.




Thursday, October 05, 2006

October afternoons


There is something extraordinary about October afternoons.
Warm sun, crisp air.
Puffball clouds drift quietly by.
The classical guitar music gently wafts across the room
from the speakers of my amazing new PC.

With my old PC, I could never have heard the music
over the noise put out by the PC fans and disk drives.
My new PC is silent, as in completely silent.
Not a peep.
And yet it works away at blinding speed
without making the slightest sound.
Except for my music.
(Pandora)

But I digress, this was all about
October afternoons by the sea.
With hammock.

I'm getting a lot of good thinking done...


Here's a little gift,
for those who read this far:
Click here for a Buddy Holly tune!




Sunday, October 01, 2006

New Page One Photo




At a moment like this,
it is natural to want to preserve it,
to put it into a bottle,
so we can open it up later,
to breathe it in again,
and to drink fully of it one more time,
and to share it with friends,
all over the world,
to enjoy as much as they want,
forever,
and yet never use it up.

That is the power of photography.





Short videos with global importance


This video is just amazing to watch,
and the information presented is important.

Re: Health, Statistics, Internet, Data Animation





Re: Education






Google Gmail


Compelling reasons to use the Google Gmail service:


1. Gmail has the best spam filters I've seen. Period.


a. You don't have to do anything to make it work, and it doesn't upset your friends by bouncing their emails and making them register with some service before they can get through to you.


b. If a bit of spam does get through you can "report" it as spam (and delete it with the same click), which improves the Google spam filter even more. Imagine millions of users reporting their spam so that you don't get it. That's the value of a user community, and something that Bill Gates just doesn't get, yet...


2. Gmail is a far superior email handling program.


a. it is browser based, so you can access your mail from any computer on the Internet, which means you don't need Outlook Express, or Outlook, or even Windows, and it works great with either Internet Explorer or FireFox browsers. (FireFox is my favorite for lots of reasons)


b. Gmail gives you lots of ways to reduce the workload of dealing with your mail, so you get it done much faster, and with a lot less hassle. One of the main features of Gmail is that you have lots of keyboard shortcuts which eliminate need for the mouse (which is a huge time waster and aggravation when you already have your hands on the keyboard and then have to move to the mouse for just one click. This single advantage is HUGE.


c. Gmail gives you very good "search" capabilities to find past emails in your archives. You would expect this from Google, king of search.


d. Gmail gives you new ways of dealing with "conversations" (threads) of emails with the same subject. You really have to see this to appreciate it.


e. Gmail gives you a better database of contacts, and even allows the person's photo, as well as other user-defined fields.


f. Gmail gives you easy ways to get your email on your cell phone.


g. Gmail allows "labels" for a much better way of organizing your emails than the Outlook method of "folders". For example, with Outlook, you can put an email into only one folder, but with Gmail, it can have many different "labels" for retrieval under any/all. Google was really thinking straight when they developed this.


h. Gmail auto saves drafts of email as you compose them, just in case something horrible happens that might otherwise cause you to lose your work (power failure, spill your coffee, great looking redhead with pigtails walks by and you click the wrong button...)


i. Gmail has Anti-Virus built right in, (incoming and outgoing) so you don't need Norton, McAfee, etc.


j. Google CALENDAR integration. And if you haven't checked the Google Calendaring system, you have GOT to check that out. I have been using it for many months, and it is outstanding.


j. I could go on and on. This Gmail critter is first class. However, did recently find something I do not like: there is no direct way to add an image into the the body of the email. It can be added as an attachment. I expect that this oversight will be fixed very soon. Google moves fast.


3. Gmail is free, but you need an invitation to join. I have 87 invitations left, so just let me know if I can send one your way. No obligation of course. I don't get anything out of it except a warm fuzzy feeling that I have helped a friend.