Just Said It

I don't think we have seen anything yet when it comes to the total digital integration of our society. Ford is now releasing a new line of cars with a unique WIFI integration hotspot. And yes, you guessed it, there will be an App For That.

Please comment, where will integration invade next?

Check out this video.

Summer 2010 is winding down and I am watching the kids swim in the pool on a cool August day. The weather is fun too say the least. On one day you would swear that Global Warming is real and the next you would think it a silly notion with many parts of the world enduring record lows.

Who is right? Can it be so simple a fact that the earth goes through constant change in cycles that are impossible to predict with the degree of accuracy required to claim that the world has warmed one degree over hundreds of years?

Let's assume it is true. How can you reconcile the fact that it is man made with the fact that much of the country was under a glacier of ice long before man created the first campfire to cook the meat of a prehistoric Mastodon.

That is not to say that reducing pollution is a not a good thing. Strike that. It's a great thing. No doubt about it.

How about we go back to a simple goal which no one will debate and stop wasting energy debating an unprovable theory. Do we really need anything more than . . . Give a hoot, don't pollute.

Just said that

Location:Seawatch Cove,Virginia Beach,United States

I must be extra inspired by the Boy Scouts right now.   I just found myself watching several videos on YouTube that talked about Boy Scouts.  There is a lot of traffic on the subject right now with everyone following up on the 2010 National Boy Scout Jamboree.

Unfortunately, there are also a lot of comments from those that have to call names and make negative  judgments.  I don't think that Sir Isaacc Newton would have thought that his third law of physics would apply as much to politics as it does to physics.  You know the one I am talking about.  "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction."   It would seem that for every person who made a positive comment about the Boy Scouts supporting their country and talking about what it means to be a scout that some other idot  would find a negative in it.

Great Boy Scout Video


How can so many people look at a 12 year old boy doing something he enjoys and find a negative in it?   What in the hell is wrong with these people that they can't just listen to another point of view and shut up about it.  How can someone judge that the Boy Scouts have a negative influence when they have done so much to build character and to help people?

Well, forget those people.   Don't bother reading their few comments.  My mother always said, " If you don't have anything good to say then don't say anything at all."

Well . . . I just said that again today.

Until next time.

My 13 year old son came home from the Boy Scout National Jamboree today. This is the 100th anniversary of the Boy Scouts In the US so this event, held only every four years, was special and I am ecstatic he was able to be there. There were 45,000 boys there and I highly recommend you check out there website at www.bsajamboree.org for great pictures and video.

I have a lot of reasons to be proud of him. At 13 he raised about 1/3 of the $1,500 cost himself by collecting aluminum cans. He learned to deal with adversity by having to share a tent for 10 days with a boy that he only just met. He met and traded patches with boys from Puerto Rico, Malaysia, and many parts of the US. He has already reached the rank of Life scout and will likely complete his Eagle rank well before he turns 15.

By coincidence I also had a Facebook chat last night with a friend who I shared my Boy Scout experience with from age 7 until I left the Scouts at age 16 to pursue different opportunities . . . aka girls.

In our chat we both agreed that we owe a lot about who we are today to the Boy Scouts and to the men who were our leaders. The leader I owe everything to just happened to be my friend's dad. He passed away several years ago and we all miss him, but I will never forget what he taught me.

The moral of the story is . . .

The Boy Scouts teaches teamwork and leadership. If you can't get involved directly then please take a moment to support them with a donation at www.scoutingfriends.org.

Seven score and seven years ago today, President Abraham Lincoln delivered a two minute speech in the farmlands of Pennsylvania which is considered to be one of the most important dedications in our country's history. In these times of civil disagreement, a corrupt political establishment, and government sponsored social change, it is much easier to see the parallels of history that led to that day.

How can you improve on these great words . . . .

The Gettysburg Address
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Project Manager's, Sales People, and Engineers all need to be personally accountable. But what does personal accountability mean in today's team based environment where even the simple projects require multiple people with specialized skill sets? How do you separate items of personal accountability when everything is so inter dependent? For the manager today it can be a real challenge to manage the goals and objectives of each team member, but its even more difficult to attach singular accountability.

This is made even more difficult when you have to ask 10 follow up questions to get to the point of a simple answer.  Many of us today seem to be adept at answering around a question?   Perhaps this is a trait spurred by watching 24 hour news where politicians and media personnel seem to never be able to answer directly.

Here is an illustrative video to make my point . . . .

I believe we are at an Inflection Point in how we will utilize computing technology in the next few years. An inflection point is that point in which there is a significant change in direction. The speed of this change is still in question and the precise direction it will take is also somewhat unclear. But the fact that a change is looming close cannot be disputed. The change I am referring to is the emergence of Cloud Computing to take over the enterprise computing applications which drive every business and the proof of this prediction is in cloud computing's quiet ability to begin taking away market share from the dominant Microsoft office applications of Word, Excel and Outlook.

Could this be possible? In 1985, I remember the so called dumb terminals where we completed word processing on a remote mainframe computer with an orange lettered screen as the only interface. The emergence of the IBM PC and the client server revolution was the inflection point at that time which freed us from that old main frame computer.

Can it be that 25 years later we are close to giving up the desktop applications and moving back to that dumb terminal strategy? Where does this leave the Dell PC and software vendors such as Microsoft?

You may not agree, but I think this change is real. Stay tuned for more dialog on this issue and please feel free to disagree and comment below.