GEL 2005 - Updates coming

Yes, I did get to this conference and it was wonderful.

There will be much to write about on what I heard and experienced there. Unfortunately, my Saturday schedule is full so I won't get to it right away but there is so much good from it, trust me, you might get overwhelmed (but hopefully not bored) with all the updates coming.

My thanks to Mark Hurst and the group for putting together such a "good experience".

Good Experience Live - 4/29/05

I have a quick trip to the Big Apple for this conference tomorrow. I expect it should provide plenty of things for me to blog about after. Stay tuned!

Integrity in the Moment of Choice

Steve Pavlina's posting comes at an opportune moment. I posted yesterday on my running blog about recognizing when you don't have it. You can't dwell on it. You just accept it and get on with it. It is not the end of the world.

Steve elaborates on that point by going into the reasons behind a choice.

This is why clarity is so important — knowing the “why” behind your actions. When you encounter obstacles, you can either press on, or you can find another way to satisfy the same intent. So if your plan was to exercise daily and the “why” was to improve your health and self-discipline, your plan may be thwarted at some point, but your intention need not be.

Integrity in the moment of choice does not mean making excuses upon encountering an obstacle that does not warrant surrender. It means adapting your plan to the situation at hand while still honoring the true spirit of your original intent.

Repeatedly exercising integrity in the moment of choice builds strength of character. Repeatedly failing to do so fosters weakness of character.

Adaptation or refusal to adjust?
Integrity or insanity?
Success or failure?

Your choice.

Go Revs!

Yes, the Major League Soccer season is underway and the New England Revolution are playing really well. They are undefeated through four games, 3 wins and a tie.

This is not like the teams of past years where they were slow out of the gate and managed to make the playoffs at the last minute with a stretch run. Since Steve Nicol has taken over as coach they have come to play some really good soccer. They had a bad stretch of injuries last year but were competitive in every game and closed the season with some really good play.

They have picked up where they left off last season and they are a fun team to watch.

Good team soccer. Pressure up front, tough midfield play with a steady backline and goalie.

If you have not had an opportunity to see a MLS game, see one when the Revs play.

This is good soccer. Go Revs!

Will the jokers get wise?

Great quote from Ronni Bennett:

Right now, mid-life adults hold all the power in our culture and they define old age only as decline and a drag on resources. But the joke’s on them: they will join us soon enough.

Read the full posting here.

If you can think it, to make it real, then aging can be redefined to be a benefit.

Your choice.

Intention Calendar

Elisabeth Freeman has a good posting on her intention calendar.

I think of my intention calendar as a special to do list: The intentions themselves usually start out life more like goals for self-improvement, or ideas that are coming out of vagueness, but aren't yet completely specific, and I don't have specific actions for yet. But, the more I think about them, the more specific they get, and eventually, the actions that are required to make my intentions happen end up as actions on my real to do list. And then they are no longer intentions, but things that really are happening.

So what is it that you want to have happen?

Get going on the right foot by putting it on your intention calendar!

Tell - Paul Muldoon

He opens the scullery door, and with a sudden rush
of wind, as raw as raw,
brushes past him as he himself will brush
past the stacks of straw

that stood in earlier for Crow
or Comanche tepees hung with scalps
but tonight pass muster, row upon row,
for the foothills of the Alps.

He opens the door of the peeling shed
just as some of the apple peelers ---
one of almost a score
of red-cheeked men who pare

and core
the red-cheeked apples for a few spare
shillings --- mutters something about "bloodshed"
and the "peelers."

The red-cheeked men put down their knives
at one and the same
moment. All but his father, who somehow connives
to close one eye as if taking aim

or holding back a tear,
and shoots him a glance
he might take, as it whizzes past his ear,
for another Crow, or Comanche, lance

hurled through the Tilley-lit
gloom of the peeling shed,
were he not to hear what must be an apple split
above his head.



From Moy Sand And Gravel: Poems by Paul Muldoon.

April - National Poetry Month

Bring me a rock

Back from a brief trip to the South Carolina shore, sea shells and shiny beach pebbles are still on the mind so this headline catches my eye. Johanna has this good posting as the third in a series on project schedule games.

This is indeed a game that senior managers play. I would add that you can play at this successfully by respectfully challenging them to the five "why" series.

Why?
Why?
Why?
Why?
Why?

Lite Blogging Alert

Yes, heading for some away from the network time... catch you on the other side

"Petrified Light" by Teresa Cader

A family visit to a museum provides the setting for a transformational opportunity.

Nice work. The link also provides an option to listen to this in the poet's own voice.

For me, that always helps to really get into the poem properly.

Read it once or twice yourself, then listen to the poet read it.

Enjoy!


From this week's poem at Slate.

New problem for blogs

Once categorized, many folks figure all of a kind are alike. Hey, that is why they categorize in the first place. However, we know there is some distribution amongst the category. Blogs for example are not exempt from this issue. There are those amongst us who are journalists, those who just want to have a conversation, those who just want to use the internet to post their daily musings, and now there are those hackers who use blogs to do some nasty stuff.

"We're seeing that more and more of the locations where malicious code is stored is on blog sites," said Dan Hubbard, the senior director of security and technology research for San Diego-based Websense. So far this year, Hubbard said, his lab has discovered hundreds of blogs involved in the storage and delivery of harmful code.

"In particular, keyloggers and other Trojan downloaders and droppers are being stored and updated from blog sites," Hubbard added. A keylogger is the term for a type of spyware that watches for, records, then transmits to the hacker identities surreptitiously hijacked from PCs.

Malware and spyware writers are turning to blogs -- and away from traditional hosting and/or e-mail services -- because they offer large amounts of free storage space, they don't require any identity authentication to post, and most blog hosting services don't scan posted files for viruses, worms, or spyware.

"It's partly the storage, partly the ease of use [of blogs], and partly a stability issue. Hacked machines, for instance, can easily go down if the actual owner discovers his computer's being used, but the blogs are always there," said Hubbard.

So a call to the blog hosts to tighten the account creation process, to limit the file upload capabilities, and to scan for the bad stuff would be a good thing to do.

In the meantime, be aware of the potential.

InformationWeek provided this link.

What's with the gas prices?

Yes, I keep seeing the increases. I understand supply and demand but I don't understand this situation. I lived through the previous "gas crisis" in the late 70's. This recent spell of price increases has raised gas prices to record levels and yet we have no "crisis"?

One aspect in particular, the variability of the prices amongst the different stations and different brands. (All prices are for regular grade, 87 octane.)

I have been traveling from MA to NH averaging one trip a week for the last four years. The gas prices in NH were always 4-6 cents cheaper than down here. So when it made sense, I filled up while in NH either on my way in to the office, or before I came home. Saving a few cents along the way.

Locally gas prices varied within 4-6 cents amongst the stations with the lowest price always at the local BJ Warehouse. The member prices were the lowest in the area. It paid to be a member.

Until recently. This last spate of price increases has reduced the variability of prices.

NH prices are in the same 2-4 cent range as in our area of MA. Only one station in our area deviates from this price range on the low side.

Hmm. How does this occur?

What are the factors that have reduced the variability in the prices?

Have you seen anything like this in your neck of this land?

I am curious.

How to work creatively under pressure

Kathy Sierra has another good post, this time on dealing with creativity under the presssure of a deadline.

When it comes to being creative, you have to make the first
move!

Plenty more good ideas here.

This is why we do it

Rich at Hello World notices the trail of connections.

Strangers.
Continents apart.
Collaborating.

One month, start to finish...!

The posts were made to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Blogosphere, my joint venture with Troy Worman.

I happened to be in the center. How cool is that?

Quote: It is not a workout, it is sports to regenerate the brain and body for science.

From a profile on Dorothee Kern published in the Boston Globe today.

She played basketball on the unified German national team and is advancing science today in nuclear magnetic resonance imaging.

''It is not a workout, it is sports to regenerate the brain and body for science."

Read the full Globe article here.

What makes work meaningful?

Curt Rosengren is asking this question and looking for your answers here.

I'll compose my response and post it later.

Graceful humility - Xeni Jardin

Xeni says:

... as flattering as the phrase might be -- I'm no "self-made woman." Until they sell those handy self-cloning kits we've all been waiting for (and I'm keeping an eye out for 'em on engadget or gizmodo), that's just not possible. Each of us are the product of families and mentors. Communities of people who gave because the act of giving was imperative. People who gave when they didn't have to, even when the act might go unnoticed, or come at personal cost. People who gave because generosity is part of what makes us truly human beings, and is of itself a life-affirming act.

In response to a flattering review in the LA Times as mentioned a BoingBoing posting.

Xeni, that was well said!

Running postings at "Passionate Runner"

I have two running focused postings at my other blog: Passionate Runner.

For the runners amongst my readers, click through and enjoy!

The Lace World - Monica Ferrell

From Slate's poetry entry this week comes The Lace World by Monica Ferrell, a delicate gem.

I'll be puzzling over

... that word which would end everything ...

for awhile.

What do you think it is?

Top25 Moments from Sesame Street - Mike

Via Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing I find this link to the Top25 moments from Sesame Street according to Mike.

I remember many of these.

How many do you recall?

Gee maybe that's why?

I am not as old as the study group reference in this posting by David Pescovitz on BoingBoing but I do like to go to bed with some classical music on the radio.

I use the sleep button which gives my 59 minutes of music before it shuts off.

It allows me to settle in and drift to sleep. My wife can be reading her book or stack of magazines with the light on and I'll still go to sleep easily.

With the music to concentrate on, I can zone out of the turning pages
and the light, and just drift away.

She doesn't like to read with music in the background but she tolerates it
as a trade off for my letting her read while I go to sleep.

Once she hears me sleeping, she turns the radio off.
She claims it usually takes all of 20 minutes or so.

I would have to agree.

The Blessing of Stuckness - Evelyn Rodriguez

Evelyn, great post!

I read Zen many years ago and have been meaning to get back to it. I recall that it helped form my thought at the time and I have been wondering what the years since would have done to its insights?

Do they still stand up?
Or will they wilt of old age?
Or in the eye of the older wiser me will the book be good
only for those who are young and inexperienced?

After this, I am more inclined to take the book off the shelf and dig into it right away.

Thanks for the incentive!

REAL--Compared to what? The Pale Imitation

Seth Godin has a good posting today on this difference between REAL and real.

Ronni Bennett has a good posting on the aging process with a good quote that fits here:

“…getting old…can be wonderful, and everything that isn't happens gradually enough to get used to…” [emphasis added]

Will the ring tones that Seth mentions merely remind us of the way things were?

Yes, for those of us who may have been around long enough to have seen/heard/experienced the original.

But for the "youngsters" amongst us, they may not know the difference.

Viva la difference!

When you have a dream, are the characters in your dream conscious, or are they projections of your own mind?

One of many questions that are posed as "food for thought" by Steve Pavlina today.

Problem solving series

The Lazy Way to Success is running a series of posts on problems solving.

Too often folks jump to the conclusion
without identify whether a jump is required,
or in what direction.

And Fred closes Day 5 with a great quote that is very much applicable
and well worth repeating:

“The significant problems we face can never be solved at the level of thinking that created them.” Albert Einstein

You can find them here:

Day one
Day two
Day three
Day four
Day five

Or just go to the home page and read them scrolling up.

Good stuff!