The Importance of Weddings

I'm at a wedding now. It's time where the children of my friends are starting to get married. This brief post is about community. Marriage brings together community. It reinforces the extended networks of that community, and shows each other who that community consists of.

Despite my general preference for staying home, i see the value and I'm honored when invited to weddings.

BRAVE ROBOTICS

This is the first time i've ever seen anything close to a true Transformer.  Its almost scary.   

Look at the work it took - 10 years!   BRAVE ROBOTICS  


http://www.braverobotics.com/movie_en.html

I did robotics in college..  Soldering. Yuck....

A Mission that Doesn't Suck

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20121120182236-3855351-be-on-a-mission-that-doesn-t-suck

I grabbed the last half of it...so it doesn't vanish.  a great article...

If you’re job hopping, serially starting companies, or constantly burned out, ask yourself: why is this happening? Chances are, it’s as simple as not being on a mission that you care about. When you’re really doing something you love, stress can actually improve productivity (this isn’t necessarily founded in science, just personal observation), whereas when you’re drudging along, stress compounds an already adverse circumstance.

In many volatile but financially rewarding markets (finance, technology, etc.), this effect is often even more pronounced. It’s "easy" to flock to the latest hot startup or company only to discover the primary reason you’re there is for the potential to cash out. This (sometimes) works great when things are going well, but is the surest way to discover your true intentions (or lack thereof) if things head south.

So what makes a mission that doesn’t suck?

The best missions, it would seem, are those keep you cranking day after day. They’re ambitious, improbable, and fundamentally thrilling. Some of the loftiest are missions that can never quite be fulfilled. Google’s famously is “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Starbucks wants to “inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.” Whole Foods believes that“companies, like individuals, must assume their share of responsibility as tenants of Planet Earth.”

This is some weighty stuff for companies that writes software, serve coffee, and sell organic food. But it works. JFK's mission in the 60's was to "commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."

In these wordings or otherwise, it gives all its participants (employees, partners, customers, citizens) a profound sense of what these organizations are all about. Best of all, a great mission will attract like-minded individuals that want to go on the same journey.

Missions deservedly should be a little absurd and out of reach – if you could wave a magic wand, what would you have accomplished? And if your mission can be accomplished without such a feat, it’s probably not going to inspire you throughout bad times.

Whether for your company or your career, your mission is the ultimate North Star. It’s the framework that allows you to make decisions of what direction to go, why you want to be there in the first place, and perhaps even how you’ll get there. And it works universally; if you're in healthcare, energy, banking, manufacturing, technology, or any other industry, just make sure you're on a mission you care about.

In other words, be on a mission that doesn’t suck.

Quote Details: Hugh Macleod: Question how much freedom... - The Quotations Page

Quote Details: Hugh Macleod: Question how much freedom... - The Quotations Page: Question how much freedom your path affords you. Be utterly ruthless about it.
It's your freedom that will get you to where you want to go.
Hugh Macleod, How To Be Creative: 11, 08-22-04

Quote Details: Scott Westerfeld: Not everything made you... - The Quotations Page

I've never heard a more succinct rebuttal to Nietzsche!   Well done!

 

"Not everything made you stronger. It was possible to survive, yet still be crippled for your trouble. Sometimes it was okay to run away, to skip the test, to chicken out. Or at least to get some help."

Scott Westerfeld, Midnighters: Blue Noon, 2005

The matrix

google is crazy cool.   The developers never even need to know what they're ordering when they ask for storage.

ff_googleinfrastructure2_large.jpg (2500×1667)

Tough for an author

"An author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do."
W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge, 1943


Only thing I say to this is ... months?  

John Lancaster Spalding

"Leave each one his touch of folly; it helps to lighten life's burden which, if he could see himself as he is, might be too heavy to carry"

Happiness

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
"Pleasure is an important component of the quality of life, but by itself it does not bring happiness. Pleasure helps to maintain order, but by itself cannot create a new order in consciousness."

nice quote - joefec@gmail.com - Gmail

"If you're here for four more years or four more weeks, you're here right now. I think when you're somewhere, you ought to be there. It's not about how long you stay in a place, it's about what you do while you're there, and when you go, is that place any better for your having been there?

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Rodney King dead at 47 - CNN.com

I'm saddened by the death of Rodney King... with quotes like this.

Rodney King dead at 47 - CNN.com: ""Yes, I've forgiven them, because I've been forgiven many times," he said. "My country's been good to me ... This country is my house, it's the only home I know, so I have to be able to forgive -- for the future, for the younger generation coming behind me, so ... they can understand it and if a situation like that happened again, they could deal with it a lot easier.""

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Today is worth a million dollars

I still use a screen saver.  Its true.  I have my photos scrolling and of course that's the only reason I still use it.  I love my screen saver. Its like a time machine that you trip into accidentally and are instantly whisked away to a more innocent time.

Mostly my shock is over seeing my three children and my families kids (about 18 in total).  How they change marks my years: birth, crawling, walking, new teeth, school, dresses, swords, missing teeth, height, awards ceremonies.  Every image that fades in an out of the 20 inch monitors flashes a new mile marker in my life, and completely out of sequence.  There's  Brianna at 5...now she's 13...now she's 15.

I always wish I could jump in there and re-live that very moment.  So much so, I find myself saying things like, " I'd give a million dollars to go back to that moment, to kiss that little cheek, to play with them again."  I assume this is only going to continue and likely get worse.  With my first a teenager, my second almost one, and my third acting the part, I long for the innocence of extreme youth. 

I've recently come to some conclusions about this, summed up in one thought. I don't have to jump into my monitor or travel in time, because in 5 years I'll look back on pictures I took today and remark on how I wish I could be there.  Future me would give a million dollars to be where I am right now. 

Therefore it follows that today is worth a million dollars - that every frozen moment of time laughing with the children, today commonplace, will be a treasured jewel in the future.  The trick of course is to find that million dollar moment in the moment that you're living it.   When I was changing diapers, or cleaning the same 3 square feet of counter space five different times in an hour - that's not usually a moment that makes it onto screen savers.  People take photos when they're having fun or something great is going on. They want to capture it to remember it because its special. 

Photos are a signal that something cool is happening, that this moment may be one of those million dollar events. How do we get the value, then, of our life right now rather than yearning for it later?  Can we simply create or find that special moment in this very day? 

There would be a special benefit to doing this.  Allow me to explain. I read once that you only remember about 7 days in your life. I'm not sure I buy that.  I think you're mind stores a good deal more than that.  I'm of the camp that people are really an amalgam of all of that we've read and experienced.  Everyday you're new, even if you can't remember what you had for breakfast yesterday.   The quality of what you've put into your life affects what comes out as your personality.  Thus if we are intentional about creating our everyday moment, they aggregate to create a better you ( more positive, more actualized, more fulfilled.)

Not every moment of our lives is photo worthy.  I read also about folks recording every moment of their lifes for whatever reason.  This is mpractical as it is uninteresting.  Who wants to relive the mundane spaces between photos?

So, photo moments compress time as well as reflect it.  That birthday party 10 years ago is relived by just a few photos.   That toothless grin of your chubby child - compresses all that was sweet about those days, and filters the unpleasantries of modern day life.

All of this is work then.  We must both take the time to have photo-worthy moments as frequently as we can and then we must understand how incredibly valuable they are while we're living it.  I believe that this will build us up to make it through the mundane, while still making a nice mile post for future envy.  It is your activity and attitude that makes the difference.  Your future self is jealous as heck that you're here, with your kids, and everyone is younger and beautiful and healthy.  Absorb that value now. They call this living in the moment, but its important to note that we have to create them before we can live them, and capture them so we can live them again and again. 

-Joe

Dreams

""Be open to your dreams, people. Embrace that distant shore. Because our mortal journey is over all too soon."  "

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Dreams

""Be open to your dreams, people. Embrace that distant shore. Because our mortal journey is over all too soon."  "

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Quote Details: Charles Victor Cherbuliez: What helps luck is... - The Quotations Page

Quote Details: Charles Victor Cherbuliez: What helps luck is... - The Quotations Page: What helps luck is a habit of watching for opportunities, of having a patient, but restless mind, of sacrificing one's ease or vanity, of uniting a love of detail to foresight, and of passing through hard times bravely and cheerfully.
Charles Victor Cherbuliez

Courage

iGoogle: "Courage is the power to let go of the familiar"  -

Raymond Lindquist

Orison Swett Marden: We lift ourselves...

We lift ourselves by our thought, we climb upon our vision of ourselves. If you want to enlarge your life, you must first enlarge your thought of it and of yourself. Hold the ideal of yourself as you long to be, always, everywhere - your ideal of what you long to attain - the ideal of health, efficiency, success.
Orison Swett Marden
(1850 - 1924)

Type Faster! -Asimov!

What would I do if I had only six months left to live? I'd type faster.

Isaac Asimov

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Quotes

Quote Details: Randall Munroe, xkcd: You don't become great... - The Quotations Page: "You don't become great by trying to be great. You become great by wanting to do something, and then doing it so hard that you become great in the process.
Randall Munroe, xkcd, Marie Curie, 2011"

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Viktor Frankl

iGoogle: "Don't aim at success - the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue... as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a course greater than oneself

Anais Nin Quote

iGoogle: "Anaïs Nin
"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.""

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old age

Quote Details: Carol Matthau: There is no old... - The Quotations Page: There is no old age. There is, as there always was, just you.
Carol Matthau, O Magazine, October 2003

iGoogle

Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change. So suffering must become Love. That is the mystery.

Katherine Mansfield

Jane Austen

A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.

Jane Austen

Science

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

Albert Einstein

Alone or not

Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.

Arthur C. Clarke

Katherine Mansfield

Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; it's only good for wallowing in.

Katherine Mansfield