Cat Love

I love Maru the Cat.

RIP: Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011)

I am a big fan of Steve Jobs.

This is the text of his Commencement address delivered to Stanford University graduates on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960′s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

The Mind is a Beautiful Thing

I've always known  that the difference between "can do" and "can't do" is all in my mind.

Today I ran 7 Km (!) during my normal morning run.  I increased my distance from 6 Km to 7 Km in less than 2 weeks. I didn't plan on doing this when I woke up. I just felt so good during my first five laps and enjoyed running without too much effort.

I could have gone to 10 Km, but I was running (pun not intended) out of time and I needed to get back home to get ready for work.

So the next time you want to do something and a crazy voice in your head makes you doubt that you can do it, just do it. This goes for all things in life, not just running.

Now I have to go back and just do my work, even though I don't want to.

Running Log - Week 19

 Sun 25-Sep-11   - Rest -

 Mon 26-Sep-11 - Rest (Greg away)-

Tues 27-Sep-11  46:28 (6 Km)

Wed 28-Sep-11    47:36 (6 Km)

Thurs 29-Sep-11   47:36(6 Km)

Fri 30-Sep-11  - Rest -


Sat 01-Oct-11  - Rest -

Running Log - Week 18

 Sun 18-Sep-11   - Rest -

 Mon 19-Sep-11    46:34 (6 Km)

 Tues 20-Sep-11   45:51 (6 Km)

Wed 21-Sep-11   - Rest -

Thurs 22-Sep-11   45:53(6 Km)

Fri 23-Sep-11     44:09 (6 Km)

Sat 24-Sep-11   - Rest - 

Running Log - Week 17

 Sun 11-Sep-11   - Rest -

 Mon 12-Sep-11    39:32 (5 Km)

 Tues 13-Sep-11   39:49 (5 Km)

Wed 14-Sep-11   - Rest -

Thurs 15-Sep-11   39:44 (5 Km)

Fri 16-Sep-11     40:39 (5 Km)

Sat 17-Sep-11   - Rest - 

Running Log - Week 16

Sun 04-Sep-11    38:43 (5 Km)

Mon 05-Sep-11    35:24 (5 Km)

Tues 06-Sep-11   38:29 (5 Km)

Wed 07-Sep-11   - Rest -

Thurs 08-Sep-11   38:53 (5 Km)

Fri 09-Sep-11     40:00 (5 Km)

Sat 10-Sep-11   - Rest - 

Practical Career Strategies - 14 Things I Wish I Could Have Told Myself at 25

I will randomly post gold nuggets of wisdom on practical career strategies. Most of them will be based on personal experience and several books I've read in the past. I appreciated these tips throughout my professional life and I'm certain you will too.

My mom sends me lots of emails. I pay attention to the ones that matter. And this one is one of them.

My daughter will be out of university / college by 2015 (fingers crossed), so I will redirect her to this post when the time is right.

Business Advice: 14 Things I Wish I Could Have Told Myself at 25
By Jeff Haden | August 24, 2011 
inShare98 
 
Jeff Haden learned much of what he knows about management as he worked his way up the printing business from forklift driver to manager of a 250-employee book plant. Everything else he knows, he has picked up from ghostwriting books for some of the smartest CEOs he knows in business. He has written more than 30 non-fiction books, including four Business and Investing titles that reached #1 on Amazon's bestseller list. He'd tell you which ones, but then he'd have to kill you.
Visit his website at: www.blackbirdinc.com

*******************************************************************************************************************************************************
Stuff I wish I could have told the twenty-five year-old me (assuming I would have listened):

Everybody wants something. Almost everyone acts out of self interest (especially when they claim they don’t.) Quid pro quo is the order of the day; in fact, the people most eager to volunteer advice or help tend to want the most in return. Assume all career or business assistance is part of an expected exchange, either now or in the future. Then you won’t be disappointed. But keep in mind that occasionally…

What a few people want is just to feel good about helping others. Rarely, but it does happen, someone likes to help simply because it makes them feel good. Those people are hard to find, though, because their names aren’t listed as sponsors on event programs or plastered on the sides of b-school buildings. When you find one, make them a permanent part of your life.

Everything before “but” is bull. “I don’t meant to be critical, but…” “I’m not trying to tell you what to do, but…” “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but…” Yes you do, yes you are, and yes I will. Disclaimers are anything but, indicating the true meaning behind what is said.

Boring people win. The people who achieve the most do a lot more of the boring stuff. Routine, rigor, attention to detail, churning away day after day… that is how you will succeed. Every elite athlete, entertainer, and successful business person you will someday know has put in thousands of hours of practice and effort. They are successful mainly because they are willing to do what other people won’t. Learn to enjoy the mundane and you will quickly outdistance the pack.

Stop brainstorming and start borrowing. Most people try to be original — and want to be perceived as original — primarily out of ego. Results are all that matter. Stop trying to think of something new. Someday you’ll spend two hours in a bottling plant and bring back more great productivity and quality ideas than you can implement in a year at your book plant. The store, the restaurant, the factory, the school… ideas you can borrow — ideas that you can see actuallywork — are everywhere. Borrow freely and often.

The women you really want to meet don’t care about the kind of car you drive. Darn it.

Training is great; advice is not. Advice is what you ask for when you already know the answer but wish you didn’t. Always ask, “How do I…?” because “how” leads to training and knowledge. Ask, “Should I…” and you get opinions often colored by individual perspectives. Always ask to be shown or taught. When you know how you can decide for yourself whether you should.

Visibility is everything. The people who get promotions and opportunities are the people who are seen and noticed. Spend the majority of your time doing great things, but spend at least 10% of your time getting the attention of the people who matter. Customers, partners, media… no one will discover you on their own.  You absolutely must help them find you.

Always take out something. Initiatives, projects, decisions… you’ll constantly be tempted to add one more thing to make them even better. Addition almost always results in subtraction. The more you eliminate the more you can focus on what remains, so the stuff you leave out is as important as the stuff you leave in.

The people who say the least have the most to say. Bragging is a mask for insecurity. Truly confident people are quiet and unassuming. Hang around them. When they do speak you’ll be glad you were listening.

Your parents are a lot smarter than you think. And they only want the best for you. And they’ll always be there for you. And they won’t be around forever. So will it hurt you to call once in a while?

Always learn on the fly. Waiting until you’re ready means waiting forever. When you’re “preparing” there are millions of reasons to delay a little longer. Trust yourself. Learn a little and then jump in. Make mistakes, adjust, adapt, and develop greater skill by doing. You’ll save time and achieve more.

Don’t expect to get back what you give. Favors will not be returned. Sacrifices you make for others will not be rewarded. All the people you mentor, develop, promote, and work with will not call to see how you’re doing when you are suddenly let go years from now. When you give, give because you want to give; then you’ll never be disappointed.

You will only regret what you decide not do. You won’t regret broken bones from motorcycle racing; you will regret not taking a shot at a higher level of the sport. You won’t regret taking a particularly crappy job; you will regret turning down what was probably a great job. When you look back you will only regret a few of the things you did. (The rest, even if they were mistakes, will help make you the person you become.) What you will regret are things you decide not to do due to lack of confidence or fear of the unknown — like the businesses you should have started and the joint venture you turned down. Safe, in your life, will almost always equal sorry. Take intelligent business risks and trust you will be able to work through any challenges. If nothing else, you’ll have more fun.

Microsoft Word, Grammar and Apostrophe Abuse Rants

Nothing enrages me more than improper grammar use and apostrophe abuse, especially in the corporate world.

I mean.... seriously? You will be mocked and ridiculed and not respected if your written communication is anything like the examples below.

Here are the basic rules thanks to the Apostrophe Protection Society:


The rules concerning the use of apostrophes in written English are very simple.


They are used to denote a missing letter or letters, for example:

	I can't instead of I cannot
	I don't instead of I do not
	it's instead of it is

They are used to denote possession, for example:

	the dog's bone
	the company's logo
	Jones's bakery (but Joneses' bakery if owned by more than one Jones)

... but please note that its, which is usually used as a possessive adjective (like our, his etc), does not take an apostrophe:

the dog ate its bone and we ate our dinner ... however, if there are two or more dogs, companies or Joneses in our example, the apostrophe comes after the 's':

	the dogs' bones
	the companies' logos
	Joneses' bakeries

Apostrophes are NEVER ever used to denote plurals!  Common examples of such abuse (all seen in real life!) are:

	Banana's for sale which of course should read Bananas for sale
	Menu's printed to order which should read Menus printed to order
	MOT's at this garage which should read MOTs at this garage
	1000's of bargains here! which should read 1000s of bargains here!
	New CD's just in! which should read New CDs just in!
	Buy your Xmas tree's here! which should read Buy your Xmas trees here!

Note: Special care must be taken over the use of your and you're as they sound the same but are used quite differently:

your is possessive as in this is your pen
you're is short for you are as in you're coming over to my house


And now, for a hilarious rant regarding Microsoft Word, thanks to a post on Craigslist. I've edited to keep this blog PG-13:


Dear Microsoft Word,

Here are a few tips for you:

1) Don't ask me if I want help when I'm writing a letter TO YOU at 2:48 am.

2) Don't do that stupid auto-format sh*t you just did when I hit enter after I typed "IA-1a." That always messes up my outlines because apparently we don't have the same style. I go "I." then "A." then "1." then "a." OK? I don't want to print my f*****g outline at 5 am after I've worked on it all night and suddenly notice that my sh*t is all f****d up and you literally WON'T let me fix it. I have to have to wrestle you like a psycho b*tch to get you to let me type how I want to. I get As in school, ok? Teachers like my outlines the way I do them. I'm sorry.

3) My teachers want one inch margins. I know, it sucks, but they think I'm a slacker when you slyly auto-f**k with my margins. YOU'RE the slacker, a**hole!!!

4) If I'm writing a ten page paper about, oh, say rhetorical discourse, and I'm on page nine and we (you and I) have been working together for about five hours and I suddenly type "rheotoric," can't you REMEMBER that I have correctly typed "rhetoric" nine thousand times by this point and just f*****g fix it for me? I have a laptop. Right clicks on those are annoying as sh*t.

5) Your dictionary/thesaurus is missing SO MANY f*****g words! What's up with that?

6) When I hit "print preview" you really should let me actually EDIT there, too. Print preview means, ok, I'm gonna look it over one more time and see if it's all good. When I notice something's f****d up, I have to close print preview to go back and search for it to fix it? C'mon.

7) When you say something is spelled wrong but really it's just a word you haven't learned yet, (it's ok) and I fix it for you before I type anything else, you switch it back to being wrong! F**k you is that annoying!

8) Sometimes, I am just right with the grammar and you're not.

9) Is it going to hurt my eyes to see the whole damn menu if I click on File or Edit? What are you ashamed of?

10) I'm sorry I have been such a rude b*tch. We have had great times together, and overall your thesaurus has made me sound much smarter than I am in many, many papers. Also, I love it when you track my changes. That's so sexy. And who can forgot Courier New, to turn a seven page paper into ten! Thank you! 

Fear and Loathing in Toronto

Source:lovesagame.com

I have a few silly fears. Wikipedia describes fear as follows (excerpted version):

External fear is caused by something outside or inside of you which you are strongly motivated to avoid, for example: fear of spiders.

Internal fear is something inside of you that you link a negative emotion, for example: fear developed out of low self esteem.

• Fear is widely considered to be the worst emotion of all, it varies from mild caution to extreme phobia and paranoia. Fear is related to a number of additional cognitive and emotional states including worry, anxiety, terror, horror, panic and dread. Experiences of fear can remain long after exposure in the unconscious mind, where they may then manifest as nightmares, or, in an even stronger form, night terrors. Fear may also be experienced within a larger group or social network, and may be compounded by social influence and become mass hysteria. Some pathologies related to fear (defined by persistent and irrational fears) can include different types of anxiety disorder which are very common, and also other more severe illnesses like the extreme phase of bipolar disorder and some kinds of schizophrenia.

This description makes sense but it is a bit too scientific for me. Here are my fears, in no particular order. You be the Judge Judy.

Warning: As I write about my fears I get all hyperventilated and anxious. My writing may not be as top notch as I probably won't want to edit and re-edit. Okay? And limited images to accompany each fear... sorry... because I don't want to pass out. I'm about to pass out right now just thinking about this.

Fear of circular patterns (ex. honeycombs, potholes, soil at the bottom of a plant pot, little pebbles stuck in between the soles of my running shoes, holes in the sand, dirt)

I am not 100% sure where this comes from but I am going to take a guess. When I was a child growing up in a third world country, my school bus used to go past a particular area where it was dirty with a lot of potholes. It freaks me out. I also remember having to use a dirty ass washroom in one of my in-between houses when my parents were out of the country working and I was being taken care of by a gangsta uncle. It sucks. I hate it. I can't write about this fear anymore.

Fear of anything Catholic-ish, conservative evangelical Protestantism and zealot religious stuff (ex. exorcisms, religious icons and paintings depicting suffering and hell, stigmata, fanatics in the deep South bible belt)

I was raised as a Catholic and went to catholic schools my whole life. I'm sure my fear (abhorrence) stems from this because we were always made to feel guilty and scared about everything. Needless to say I stopped practicing awhile back.

Remember this guy? Wouldn't it be nice to have him as your neighbour?

Source:fanpop.com

Anyway, I don't loathe all organized religions. I'm a big fan of Buddhism and Taoism fundamental belief system and consider myself a spiritual person very much aware of the out of control ego/id/superego. I know there is something out there higher than the physical plane.

There's a book from Stuart Wilde called Infinite Self and reading it changed my life in 1999. I am not exaggerating here. If you read it, it may just change your life as well.

Fear of evil malicious spirits, human or non-human. 

I am not afraid of dying itself as I know that it's part of the universal cycle. It will be interesting to find out what is on the other side (aka the non-physical plane or not the world as we know it).

What creeps me out is that I am very much aware and hypersensitive about energy emitted by people, places and things.  I can walk into a room and can immediately sense if something is a amiss. Ditto for people.

It's creepy because most of the time I want to be blissfully ignorant of my surroundings, but it's just not in my DNA. I don't see dead people like Cole in the Sixth Sense (M.Knight's only good movie and he should stop trying to top it - exit with flare M.Knight!).

But I can definitely feel and sense all sorts of energy. I can tell what a person is about in less than 30 seconds of meeting them for the first time. I feel it when a place or a thing is bad news.

Bad feelings are not good.

Fear of people.

Clarification - I don't fear people, I would just prefer not to be around them so much. I am bombarded by people all day in my professional life. I value solitude. Or triaging who I need to spend time with.

If I were Chuck (Tom Hanks) in Castaway, I wouldn't have needed a Wilson.

How about you, what do you fear?

Running Log - Week 15

Sun 28-Aug-11   - Rest -

Mon 29-Aug-11    40:04 (5 Km)

Tues 30-Aug-11   39:22 (5 Km)

Wed 31-Aug-11   - Rest -

Thurs 01-Sep-11   38:47 (5 Km)

Fri 02-Sep-11   - Rest -

Sat 03-Sep-11   - Rest - 

Running Log - Week 14

Sun 21-Aug-11   - Rest -

Mon 22-Aug-11    39:27 (5 Km)

Tues 23-Aug-11   38:50 (5 Km)

Wed 24-Aug-11   - Rest -

Thurs 25-Aug-11  38:30 (5 Km)

Fri 26-Aug-11    39:06 (5 Km)

Sat 27-Aug-11   - Rest - 

Love and Hate

Love

Karl Urban as Kirill in Bourne Supremacy

Hate

Boo...hisssss

No Limits - Expedition Impossible

If you want to be inspired, watch these guys at work.  I have been following them on Expedition Impossible and I have to say - they have inspired me to tell my whiny little self to just run the damn 5 Km already. Over the last 3 months I have been holding steady with my 4 Km run, 4 times a week.

So on 19-Aug-11, I ran 5 Km. And I ran 5 Km this morning. This is my new benchmark.

PS - there is this crazy skunk (a real skunk) that stalks me every morning at the track. He scared the bejesus out of me the other day... I almost got skunkified (yes I just made that up). So I tell Greggy to run ahead of me and check out whether he is just there waiting for me... and scare him away before I get close to where he is.  Bad bad skunk.

On the other hand, I think we are infringing on his territory. He's probably been at the track for a long long time before we came along. I'd be mad too.

And for my final random thought for today, I want to let everyone know that I want to go to Morocco SO BAD.

Running Log - Week 13

Sun 14-Aug-11   - Rest -

Mon 15-Aug-11    32:41 (4 Km)

Tues 16-Aug-11   32:36 (4 Km)

Wed 17-Aug-11  3.8 Km (forgot watch)

Thurs 18-Aug-11  - Rest -

Fri 19-Aug-11   39:02 (5 Km) Breakthrough!

Sat 20-Aug-11   - Rest - 

Running Log - Week 12

Sun 07-Aug-11   - Rest -

Mon 08-Aug-11    31:56 (4 Km)

Tues 09-Aug-11   32:54 (4 Km)

Wed 10-Aug-11  - Rest -

Thurs 11-Aug-11  - SICK -

Fri 12-Aug-11   32:20 (4 Km)

Sat 13-Aug-11   - Rest - 

Practical Career Strategies - There Are No Bad Bosses

I will randomly post gold nuggets of wisdom on practical career strategies. Most of them will be based on personal experience and several books I've read in the past. I appreciated these tips throughout my professional life and I'm certain you will too.

I've long admired the writings, insight and practical advice by the insanely funny and authentic Penelope Trunk.

One of the greatest tips that I have remembered over the years is this: There are no bad bosses.

You can read the chapter in her book, Brazen Careerist, or look at the crib notes here.

The key is knowing how to manage up:

Figure out what matters most to your boss, and what motivates him, then align your own priorities accordingly.

Determine her communication preference - does she like email? Does he prefer in person, 1:1 conversations?  If your boss prefers to communicate by email, don't walk into her office every hour trying to get her attention, or to have a "chat", especially if you know her day is planned at least 24 hours in advance. Save this moment for the really urgent stuff - and you will have to force yourself to prioritize what you need to discuss with your boss.

When explaining something, think of words as the bullet points in a Power Point presentation. Be concise and executive-level appropriate. Do not pull him into the weeds unless truly warranted, or if he does not request details. Your boss likely has only 30 seconds before he starts being distracted by other conflicting priorities. Tell him the bottom line within the first minute of your conversation, and be clear on what you are asking him to help you with. Most importantly, be ready to provide a recommendation or options to resolve the problem, or tell him what you're doing about it and at which point you will need his help.

Know your boundaries (and hers), be clear about it.  For example, if you have to leave early on Wednesdays and Thursdays because you have to pick up your child from day care, then manage her expectations accordingly and propose that you work later during the other weekdays, or come in earlier on the days you have to leave early. If he wants to assign you another project but you are already working 50 hour weeks, then let him know. And ask him to prioritize his requirements for you so you can provide him with recommendations and options - see point #3 above. If her inappropriate jokes or comments make you feel uncomfortable, then for crying out loud don't laugh at them - keep your face neutral, as if she didn't even say it. Silence works wonders.  

Be likeable, dependable, and not-so-needy. Bosses prefer those who are more independent and autonomous. Do not escalate for the sake of escalating, make sure you have done all you can at your level before you punt problems up.

Check your self-entitlement issues at the door. Unless you have proven yourself and have earned the trust and credibility of your organization and peers, nobody cares if you have an MBA.

So there you have it. I'm not saying that there are no bad bosses out there, lord knows I've had my share over the last few years. But if you are struggling with your boss, see if one or all of the above will help.

If all else fails, then maybe it's time you leave.