Author Archives: Admin

eyes or ears

How do you take your information?  Through the written word, through the spoken word, through the personal interaction?

Some folks don’t like one but prefer the other, some are more balanced, and some don’t listen at all.  How you relate information to others is important if you want to catch their attention.

I sometimes find that I am more successful in conveying my meaning if I just alter the method of delivery.  I don’t change one word but if I write it down the message gets across where otherwise it might be ignored or it might not make the impact that I wanted to.

In today’s business and social media world we all need to be fluent in all methods of communication if we want to make an impact on those around us and we need to be able to switch methods almost instantly.

More and more I find that the successful people out there are successful not necessarily because they are the best or most innovative or brightest person in their field but what they really are is successful communicators.

Tomorrow’s world will belong to the media savvy.

Everyone has a unique balance of how they prefer to take in ideas or information.  For me its a 40% spoken/ 40% personal/ 20% written

getting ready

Some people obsess for weeks before a trip and get frazzled over every tiny detail.  Others throw stuff into a suitcase the night before and take off.

I’m somewhere in the middle.

I used to be one of those persons that just tossed whatever clothes were at hand into a suitcase (whatever suitcase) and just left the next day.  Somehow it always seemed to work out.  I was never caught short lacking something vital and I never had to buy something from some overpriced airport shop.

Lately though I have been taking more care and planning things more carefully.  In a way it’s fun.  I like thinking about my trip and what I will need to take and what I have that will work or what needs to be replaced.

I am also taking more care in my vacation and allocating my time more wisely.  I could spend half my trip traveling by car here and there and not get any relaxation done.  But this trip I am planning on plenty of just plain relaxation time.

I find that as I get older that relaxation time is harder and harder to come by so I am planning out my trip more and more so I can maximize this scarce resource known as free time.

Story Shard – A matter of scarcity

 

Michael woke up in the dark.  The nightmare he woke from seemed so real that he was shaking.  He could still see the shiny black bumper of the German sports car as it knocked him over on the street corner.

He reached for the bedside lamp but couldn’t find it  He pawed and pawed and got frustrated and sat up.  The lights slowly came up by themselves and an old man in a white gown carrying a clipboard was looking at him.

“Hello Michael”

“Who the hell are you?”

“I’m a sort of reception committee.”

Michael suddenly thought about the dream and felt a cold lump form in his gut.

“you mean I’m dead, right?  You’re like St Peter, right?'”

The old man chuckled.

“Let me answer the second part first.  I am a representation of what you expect to see, I really have no physical form or name.  If it helps you can think of me this way and call me Peter.  As to the second part, well not dead yet.  You are in a bit of a coma right now and you will be waking in a few hours.  But we wanted to have a talk with you while you were out.”

Peter helped Michael off the bed and started walking.  The walls of his “room” seemed to dissolve.  They seem to be walking down an office corridor.  On either side young men and women hovered over what seem to be combination computer stations and drafting boards.  One or two of them looked up at him and seemed to regard him as junk yard dealers regarded a wrecked Maserati.

“you see, it’s about you an a matter of scarcity.  Have you ever thought about what went into making you?”

“I suppose carbon, and hydrogen…”

“Oh no not the physical aspects, but your characteristics, how you think, feel, what makes you scared, or brave?”

“No, not really, Don’t really get what you’re saying”

Peter sighed.  They walked on and past all the tables and seemed to now be walking on a catwalk over a lab of some kind with several tables and technicians working with vials and what looked like gas cylinders.

“you see we made you here.  Everything from the physical parts of you to the undefinable qualities that make up your character.  You were designed out there and built on one of these tables years ago.”

Michael tried his best to take it all in but was still stuck back at the part of being in a coma.  This had to be a bad nightmare of some kind.

Peter saw he was facing some resistance.  He walked to a large monitor and showed Michael a collage of images from his childhood, to youth, to his adult life and little by little he felt Michael coming around.

“Some qualities like bravery, genius, charm are rare.  We have limited reserves of these.  Back before you were born we were expecting a minor Armageddon breaking out just as you would reach adulthood.  We needed heroes and brilliant scientists, and leaders fighting for the side of good, but do you know how “expensive” those can be?”

Michael shook his head

“Yet we needed minor leaders, and heroes, and so on to take up the fight as well, and that’s where you came in.  We had tagged you as a minor hero and imparted some rare qualities into you in small amounts.”

Michael and Peter walked over a table where a finished human received the last of his qualities before being sent out

“But as sometimes happens. these Armageddons sometimes get called off.  Bad scheduling, mystical misalignments, who can say?  Your career as a minor hero got called off and we tried to fit you into a humdrum everyday existence as an accountant.  Long and short of it is, that we want those rare qualities back.  As I said those materials are rare and this was too good an opportunity to pass up.  You won’t wake up the same as when you went into the coma but you will be happy.”

 

Jacks

I’ve always known that I was  Jack of all trades.  I was never one to specialize or master any certain field.  In school I could pick up new concepts easily enough but soon other kids mastered them and surpassed my understanding or skill level.  My strength however lies in the fact that I can assimilate and accept various different skills sets from various disciplines.

Music is a good example.  I trained on the recorder, a flute like instrument, and although I picked up the keys alright I could never get them to work properly or as fluidly as some of my schoolmates.  My fingering technique was not fluid enough so I was relegated to the woodwind section while others did solos.

Some might feel anxiety over this concerning their job prospects but I’ve never been too worried.  I’ve always understood my role as a supporting player and have used this to plug myself into many different job situations.  So while I am no master salesman I can do an effective job at it and while I am not a certified image analyst I can still do some good work in that field.

What I can’t do is displace a specialist in their own field.  But again this is not a worrisome prospect as I can do many things that those specialists can’t.

Unfortunately it’s a specialist world these days as far as jobs.  We Jacks have to take what we can get and there is no social or professional club for us to congregate.  I hope however that if any other Jacks out there read this that they realize that they’re not alone and that there is hope in the job market for them.  Don’t give up, don’t stop expanding your skill set.

Jacks can be valuable team players when given the right opportunity.

working to live, living to work, striking a balance

You’ve probably heard the old question “On your deathbed will you regret not spending more time working or living your life?”  To which most folks will choose to spend more time living naturally.

But thinking about it, work is very much part of our lives.  For most of us work helps define who were are.  The money generated by work determines what we wear, eat, drive, and where we live.  Work provides us with acquaintances, contacts, friends, and in a few cases spouses.

We like to think that “living” is something we do when we’re not in the office or at the work place but seriously who works a full 8 hours exactly?  Even in the most controlled of workplaces there is laughter, there is gossip, there is living going on.

Another thing that many people have heard at one time or another “If you do what you love for a living then you never work a day in your life”

Most of us will never get to test this out.  Truthfully most folks don’t really know what they like.  Oh. they have ideas but nothing too certain.  Nothing that they can quantify.  Those that do know always come up with an excuse or reason why it wouldn’t work as a job.

Those lucky few out there that do know and did take the gamble to turn it into a profession, do you think that they’re not living?

Like anything else we can overdo work and I think that’s where the problem lies.  Sometimes people use work as an excuse to not socialize, some obsess over work as other obsess over a hobby or even as a drug.

We know that the warning signs are all around us.  Sometimes people close to us try to warn us and we turn away.  Learn to listen, look around.  By no means quit working but put it into perspective.  What is it you really want to achieve with your life?  Is work getting you there?

future possible #2

The world’s resources are running perilously low and the human population is at an all time high.  Every human being on the planet, no matter what the nationality, religion, race, or location needs so many resources to continue to live.  When these needs are not met and affect large populations conflict is almost a certainty.

Rather than investing in new technologies and in education to uplift the population, the world powers scramble to secure the most resources possible triggering a series of regional wars and conflicts.  Alliances and trade cartels attempt to concentrate resources for the top strata of the ruling elite.

Using inadvisable methods, more hydrocarbons are coaxed out of the ground, compounding the climate change problems of the world and polluting more water sources.

Economic inequality continues to spiral out of control.  The ruling elite turn to technology in the form of drones and mass media propaganda to control the masses and force them to accept lower standards of living by distracting them with entertainment programs and using low quality mass-produced foodstuffs.

Arable land begins to diminish due climate change.  Fish schools exploited for food collapse due to harvesting pressures.  The last of the great rain forests felled.  Air quality begins to suffer worldwide.

The last nonaligned countries are subsumed into the trading cartels.  The large alliances have no other choice but to turn on one another.  The mass media entertainment used to control the ever-growing lower classes begins to lose its appeal as food shortages begin.

Small scale clashes begin between the large powers for control of more resources.  Small scale nuclear exchange.  Mass revolts begin worldwide as people protest wars and food shortages.  Self nuclear strikes as ruling elite try to curve revolts.

Mass starvation as distribution network collapses due to strife and fuel shortages.  Large cities begin to depopulate as people flee to the countryside.

Technological reversal as the hydrocarbon economy ends and the animal powered economy restarts.

World human population collapses to 20 million.  Planet begins process of regeneration that will take tens of thousands of years.

future possible #1

I spend way too much time watching TED talks.  But it’s a bit of an addiction of mine.  I like to listen to all these ideas and concepts so well presented and so thoroughly explained that you would at times believe that anything is possible.

A presentation last week got me thinking.  This TED talk was about growing meat and leather in test tubes and culturing these for human use.  The speaker speculated on a future where ranches didn’t exist and we just “brewed” meat and leather.  But then that got me thinking, how would such a world work?

So I’ve been making mental notes on possible futures and in this installment I would posit a future that takes us away from primary resource gathering.

Professions such as mining and ranching are a thing of the past.  Robots take the place of miners in dangerous and strenuous mining jobs.  Ranching is of course replaced by cultured cells creating meat and leather.  Farming is mainly automated and some of it is accomplished in factory type settings using vertical and airponic techniques.

Heavy  construction and factory jobs have been supplanted by robotic labor.  The only real human positions in these fields are supervisory positions.

Shipping is going to be automated as high-speed rail and automated trucks bring goods either to local distributors or right to the home.

So what are people doing then?  Well there are still many service and light construction jobs available.  Even in the distant future things like plumbing and electrical repairs need to be done.  Roads need to be repaired and some construction specialties can’t be automated.

But the real growth will be in the intellectual and information sectors.  A heavier emphasis on using your mind to create new designs, new programs, and new entertainment content will increase the gross national product without involving the use of more resources.

This will mean that we will work, play, and live more online than ever before.  Commuting will become less and less necessary, work schedules will be more flexible, health rates will rise as people feel less stress and take more time to relax and improve themselves.

This increase in the number of people working on new technologies and in science will lead to more and better inventions intended to curve energy use and to create new sources of cheap reliable energy.

Living standards will rise worldwide as this model spreads through the globe and larger and larger parts of the world formerly set aside for agriculture will be returned to pristine wild states further helping to alleviate global warming.

 

I know, a really, really sunny and bright outlook and somewhat improbable.  Next time I will go to the opposite end of the spectrum.

source of the Nile

Bit of a rant this time.

The other day someone was reviewing a straight to video movie called “Solomon Kane”.  He called it a derivative version of the earlier movie “Van Helsing” starring Hugh Jackman.  Oh how Robert E. Howard might have shuddered.

I informed this person that it was in fact the other way around.  That the character of Solomon Kane had in fact existed decades earlier and that the look of the Van Helsing character was almost a direct copy of Solomon Kane.

It’s not the first time that this has happened.  So many good pieces of literature and older movies get co-opted and reworked to make “modern classics” that it makes me sad.

“Fugitive” from 1993 and starring Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones is loosely based off “Les Miserables” by Victor Hugo

“Crocodile Dundee” is partially based off “Brave New World”

“Four Brothers” with Mark Wahlberg is actually a John Wayne movie called “The sons of Katie Elder” just reworked for the 21st century

Same thing for the Clint Eastwood movie “Gran Torino” which is a remake of “The Shootist”

I guess the thing that bothers me is that the original writers and artists don’t get the proper respect that they merit for their work.  Specially when someone is not well-informed and says that this so-called new classic is being ripped off by the original source of the material.

Chile’s September 11th

Chileans remembered their own September 11th last week.  40 years ago the government was overthrown and a dictatorship was installed that would last for 27 years.

It’s a divisive issue that in some ways haunts the country to this day.  Some claim that liberty died that day and was never restored, some say it was necessary to restore democracy and some think the country should just move ahead and forget the past.

People sometimes ask me how I feel about it as I was born in Chile.  Honestly it doesn’t make me feel anything at all.  Even though I was born in Chile I was registered as an American citizen and have never been anything but an American.

My family’s involvement with the coup was that my father was an American living in Chile and running a successful business before the coup and the local socialist party lads came round and told him that they were thinking of nationalizing his business and taking everything from him.  So he closed shop, left the building and equipment in the care of a partner and took his money out of the country before they could confiscate it from him.

My parents told me about the family sneaking out of the country through the desert in the middle of the night.  I was just an infant at the time so I don’t know about any of this.

The coup happened, my father returned and found that his business partner had liquidated the company and taken all the money for himself.  He could do nothing about it.  He got jobs working for various multinationals in South America and we started our trek north through Ecuador and Colombia and we would eventually end up in Houston in ’77.

I returned to Chile a couple of times during the dictatorship years to visit relatives during the 80s.  Was it an oppressive environment?  Not really.  I mean there was an increased police and military presence in the airports and on the streets but were people being bullied and rounded up? no.

My mother is a proud Pinochet supporter.  Although on most other things she is firmly left of center she thinks the coup was a good thing.  She remembers the local rationing boards that the Allende government set up, the confiscations of property,

My own view is that they have to move on with their lives.  They have too many challenges ahead of them to keep living in the past.  Chile could become the first Latin American country to make a leap out of the third world and into the first world.  But first they have to resolve their past and put it away before they can go on into the future.

doldrums

Everybody gets that out of energy funk once in a while.

I don’t mean that “I’m tired” feeling that you get after a long workout or a hard day at work but a general lazy feeling that lasts for days. You have no urge to do your regular work, exercise, or take up your hobbies.  You’re just listless.  You have to justify your daily routine to yourself and half the time you really can’t.

It started last Sunday morning.  I used the excuse of coming home late to skip my run, and then Monday I woke up two minutes late.  Now again this morning.  Didn’t even try to excuse it, just turned over in bed.

I’ve experienced it before and the only thing that works is to get out there and will myself out of it.  These doldrums have come in the past and usually this was the remedy.  Of course I will try again but it seems to be harder and harder as I age to do this anymore.

Maybe it’s a part of my natural cycle?  Last week I did have a couple of high energy days after all.  Maybe it’s food related?  Some vitamin or mineral lacking in my diet?

Whatever the cause I have to break out of it.  Too many things going on in my life for me to let these doldrums continue.