Bud LaCombe

One of the best remakes available. Old School.

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 15:21:19 -0500

One of the best remakes available. Old School.

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where..."

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:07:25 -0500

““It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.””

- ― Theodore Roosevelt

"When you have more past than future, then you will learn…"

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 21:30:24 -0500

“When you have more past than future, then you will learn…”

- Bud

WildBlue, Viasat, Exede Experience

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 11:56:57 -0500

Three weeks ago, I made the decision to purchase the newly launched Exede, High Speed Satellite service offered by Viasat (formerly WildBlue). Unfortunately for me, my home requires a signifcant expense to hook up to the local cable service. I have been suffering along with a fairly decent DSL connection (3 down .75 up). After learning about Exede however, I thought it would be worth a shot. They offered excellent download speeds (12 down 3 up) and based on some test users reviews, latency wasn’t too bad.

I writing to tell you, not only is latency an issue, it makes the service nearly unusable. Granted, I live in Michigan and we have weather issues, but our HD Directv almost never fails. And it pushes the same KA band as the Exede broadband service. I don’t know enough about the technical issue behind Sat Broadband, but I have given this service a 3 week test run and can say with great certainty, the service is so unrealiable, that its unusable. Oddly enough, when I called WildBlue to discuss the termination process, the woman I spoke with, very pleasant and sympathetic, suggested I document and or call every time I have an issue (which would have been 12-15 times a day). Because, she said, maybe they could work with you when you terminate. I guess she was suggesting they would not charge me? Didn’t matter, I knew all the term and conditions when I bought the service, so I know I have to eat the loss. I am canceling the service on Feb 25 and making the $$$ investment to have cable run all the way back to my home.

In fairness to Viasat, their service is delivered via Satellite. Satellite’s are 22K miles into space beaming a signal to my house, of course its gonna have issues. I didn’t expect it to compete with Cable. I did however expect it to be usable for $129/mo.

Some other very notable issues. I bought the 25GB package (yup, its capped). With a 3 member family, moderate users, 25GB is simply not enough. So what happens when you hit the cap? Your services is throttled down to completely unusable speeds.

So the expensive lesson here? Don’t accept “no money back guarantee” when you can’t test drive it. That’s right, I had to spend $400 to try the service. And now that I am canceling, I have to pay a $350 termination fee ($15/mo for remaining months). So $750 to experience Viasat - Exede and the experience was ABYSMAL.

Myself and 4 others expect to race well enough this year to...

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:34:24 -0500

Myself and 4 others expect to race well enough this year to qualify for Kona…

"I don’t know what the world may need, but I’m sure as hell that it starts with me And..."

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:37:02 -0500

“

I don’t know what the world may need,
but I’m sure as hell that it starts with me
And that’s a wisdom,
I have laughed at.

I don’t know what the world may want,
but a good stiff drink it surely don’t,
So I think I’ll go and fix myself a tall one.

‘Cause what the world needs now
is a new kind of tension,
‘Cause the old one just bores me to death.
Cause, what the world needs now,
is another folk singer
like I need a hole in my head.

I don’t know what the world may need,
but a V8 engine’s a good start for me.
Think I’ll drive to find a place to be surly.
I don’t know what the world may want,
but some words of wisdom could comfort us
Think I’ll leave that up to someone wiser.

‘Cause, what the world needs now
are some true words of wisdom
like “La La La La La.”
‘Cause, what the world needs now
is another folk singer
like I need a hole in my head.

I don’t know what the world may need,
and I never grasped your complexities—
I’d be happy just to get your attention.
I don’t know what the world may want,
but your long, sweet body lying next to mine
could certainly raise my spirits.

‘Cause what the world needs now
is a new Frank Sinatra
so I can get you in bed.
‘Cause what the world needs now
is another folk singer
like I need a hole in my head.

”

- Cracker

See, the 90’s did produce a song worthy of play…

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:29:00 -0500

See, the 90’s did produce a song worthy of play…

I know I’m getting older… cuz they don’t make...

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 09:26:00 -0500

I know I’m getting older… cuz they don’t make music like this any longer. Talent.

And you thought you knew the truth about Solyndra.

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 21:31:56 -0500

And you thought you knew the truth about Solyndra.

Take the time and watch this excellent interview and you will...

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 20:21:54 -0500

Take the time and watch this excellent interview and you will learn something powerful.

"We have seen the worst. We are at the bottom. We may hug along the bottom for a while, but we are at..."

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:53:15 -0500

“We have seen the worst. We are at the bottom. We may hug along the bottom for a while, but we are at the bottom. People think housing is terrible, but the early indicators tell you a lot about where it will be in 18 months or so. Supply and demand are rapidly coming in balance. Renting is now more expensive than buying in half of America. We’re adding 3 million Americans a year. In the next 10 years, we have 30 million more Americans. Those 30 million Americans are going to need 15 million homes, or something like that. Household formation has gone so low. You had kids move back home — and, yes, by the way, it doesn’t work for them, either. And household formation we think will have to go close to a million and a half. Once it goes to (that), housing construction will probably have to go up to a million and a half. Two million jobs, and all this shadow inventory stuff will be getting better, not worse. And it’s the rate of change which is important, not the absolute level.”

- Jamie Dimon - CEO JPMorgan Chase

If this video doesn’t blow you away, give your head a...

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:24:24 -0500

If this video doesn’t blow you away, give your head a shake!

Full circle...

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 09:39:41 -0500

Growing up, I was coached by my Dad in all my little league sports. I think one of the toughest times for my Dad was when I entered high school and he could no longer be my coach. Over the past 25 years, I’ve had a very successful, decorated elite level, athletic career, competing in Football, Bodybuilding and Triathlon. And as I reflect back on all those very early days of practices and sacrifices my dad made, I realize now talent or no talent, I wouldn’t have been half as successful, had it not been for my Dad. So here we are 30 years later and my Dad started training with me at the club. I am preparing to race a couple of Triathlons and this season my Dad is going to be one of my coaches. How? By just showing up.

fastcompany: Photo Issue 2011: A portrait of a particular...

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 09:26:45 -0500

fastcompany:

Photo Issue 2011: A portrait of a particular circle of friends symbolizes “the biggest problem in social networking”—grouping the right friends in the right ways.

“How Google+ And Other “Little Versions Of Facebook” Solve Social Media’s “Big” Problem”

Photo By: All Chrome

Time will tell. It’s very interesting to listen to a very...

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 10:37:00 -0500

Time will tell. It’s very interesting to listen to a very well known BEAR and his views of the market for 2012

"Name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have..."

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 09:06:33 -0500

““Name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever.””

- Hitch

Cheers

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 13:09:56 -0500

Cheers

Learning...

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 17:53:30 -0500

Dear Friends:

As we discussed, I am in the process of starting a new enterprise that takes the work that we have done together in the past to the “next frontier” if you will, by putting it in the center of what people need to cope and thrive in the reality of our world today.

I have no doubt that the work we did together in the past, at Action Technologies and Business Design Associates, was world class work. Among other things, we invented The Coordinator, we developed a theory of communication and conversation, we created a discipline for software design rooted in the claim that an enterprise is a network of commitments, and we created a discipline for process analysis and design rooted in the same claim. Many people have experienced the benefits of learning to be what we called “the observer of the observer” and of developing the capacity to design while fully engaged in action.

As you know, the central aspect of our work is the understanding that the world is not a fixed reality. Human beings are not passive Cartesian observers. We are intentional actors, inventors, ‘configurators’, and interpreters of the world.

However, we are not only intentional beings. We are also social and historical beings. We are receptors and inventors of traditions, religions, philosophies, institutions, laws and so forth. For everything, we depend on everyday coordination with others.

Paradoxically, people feel more and more isolated in the increasingly global, interconnected world. As our access to information and web-enabled networks grows, and our capacity to connect to other people expands, people are generally more lost as to how to articulate their identities, build a reputation, develop new offers. Many people realize that they don’t have the skills necessary to navigate in a constantly changing world, but don’t know what to do about it. Hence, many people live in fear and anxiety about the future, and lack confidence not only in their capacity to cope with the reality at hand, but with our leaders’ capacity as well. Over and over, despite the best of intentions, we see our politicians making things worse.

Yet, there are a few who are not lost. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, are interesting case studies for us of people who have been able to successfully navigate the realities of the world today. None of these men have PhDs in management — two of them did not even finish college — yet, they were receptive to the world around them, knew how to resonate with situations they found themselves in, and they all invented themselves, and their companies accordingly. As Alan Kay once said: ” the best way to predict the future is to invent it.” But how were these people able to configure the world that they invented? Were they born with this capacity? Why aren’t there more examples of people like Gates, Jobs, Page and Brin?

A simple answer is that our schooling has been focused on the acquisition of knowledge and the application of concepts, but as knowledge becomes a commodity, it is increasingly evident that this is not what we need to cope and thrive in today’s world. Instead, we need new practices that are not trivial — practices that allow us to cope with an increasingly global, constantly changing world, where communication is instant, and our identities are examined and at risk at all times.

As you know very well, practices are new ways of being that evolve over time. To configure and master them requires biological transformation, social mastery and spiritual strength. In our work together, we had some important successes in configuring and bringing new practices to our clients. However, we were limited by the amount of time required to “cook.” Our experience showed that we could produce practical business results for clients, but we could not produce “embodied wisdom” for the individuals we worked with without a significant amount of reflection, a luxury that is not always available for people. On the other hand, reflection alone is not sufficient. If people only study and read about what we are talking about, they will not necessarily learn to act. In the end, learning happens in the body. A person is said to “know” once he or she is able to do something they were not able to do before. As such, immersion in a space where action is required is critical for embodied learning to take place.

Technology today, combined with the work that we have done in the past, opens up the possibility to move people quickly from theory to practice, allowing us to produce a significant breakthrough in the embodied learning of skills and practices that are critical for the 21st century. One of the tools that I have been using to teach people to navigate this new world, for example, is games — online social games. Using these games, we have been able to create virtual laboratories for embodied learning where people learn to:

work with others in teams;

work with other cultures;

work across distances;

create trust and intimacy with others, particularly with people from different cultures; and

develop “mastery of network orchestration,” a new term that I’ve coined to capture the idea of being able to mobilize many resources in a network, external to an individual or to the organization he or she belongs to.

I am leading a conference in San Francisco on February 11th – 13th on the work that I am doing.

I look forward to your thoughts and further conversation.

Best wishes.

Fernando

An absolute heroic leader.

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 13:48:00 -0500

by Juli Weiner

11:45 PM, DECEMBER 15 2011

BY GASPER TRINGALE.

Christopher Hitchens—the incomparable critic, masterful rhetorician, fiery wit, and fearless bon vivant—died today at the age of 62. Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in the spring of 2010, just after the publication of his memoir, Hitch-22, and began chemotherapy soon after. His matchless prose has appeared in Vanity Fair since 1992, when he was named contributing editor.

“Cancer victimhood contains a permanent temptation to be self-centered and even solipsistic,” Hitchens wrote nearly a year ago in Vanity Fair, but his own final labors were anything but: in the last 12 months, he produced for this magazine a piece on U.S.-Pakistani relations in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death, a portrait of Joan Didion, anessay on the Private Eye retrospective at the Victoria and Albert Museum, a predictionabout the future of democracy in Egypt, a meditation on the legacy of progressivism in Wisconsin, and a series of frank, graceful, and exquisitely written essays in which he chronicled the physical and spiritual effects of his disease. At the end, Hitchens was more engaged, relentless, hilarious, observant, and intelligent than just about everyone else—just as he had been for the last four decades.

“My chief consolation in this year of living dyingly has been the presence of friends,” he wrote in the June 2011 issue. He died in their presence, too, at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. May his 62 years of living, well, so livingly console the many of us who will miss him dearly.

Pretty sure this is one of the very few excellent songs to come...

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 20:25:07 -0500

Pretty sure this is one of the very few excellent songs to come out of the 90’s.