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A novelist's vice usually resembles his virtue, for what he does best he also tends to do to excess.
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Bought some things to make my own magnetic bumper stickers (the 12" x 4" magnets, legal-sized labels, and laminate).   I was thinking about making storyboard panels and making a 4-panel cartoon, using 4 magnets. I dunno. But this way, if I feel political one day, I can put that up and change it around, depending on my mood and thinking at the time. |
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Saw the movie and I have to say that the already exceptional Pixar is getting even better graphically. The first 20 minutes of the movie, if you didn't know any better, it'd be tough to know if you're watching something real or something created. The movie opens with a Pixar short that had Austin, Jacob, and I laughing - a lot. Just great physical comedy. Tamara, who enjoys a good slapstick routine, would love this and so when Tess gets here, I'll go see it again with them. I won't give away the plot of the movie, but I will say that the theme into which it evolves is getting a bit tiresome. Once I suspended my disbelief, I went back to enjoying the movie, which was wonderfully done. We all liked it and heartily recommend it. While the younger boys and I were in one theater, Tamara, Tate, Aaron, and Bari were in an adjacent theater watching Wanted. Very vulgar, I hear, but fun with fabulous effects. It's been a good movie summer thus far. Up next for me: Batman and Hellboy II. Not really interested in seeing Hancock. I normally like Will Smith, and it seems like a decent movie, but something about it has me questioning. I'll wait to hear from others. Tamara wants to see The Mummy, so I'll be watching that when it comes out. We saw the trailer for Bolt, a Thanksgiving cartoon from Disney about a dog, and the trailer had us laughing. We'll watch that. |
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My Internet connection is back up, though I am now buried in a bunch of things that need doing that I couldn't do while down. So I'll move through one of those items now: a post. Some observations: George Bush saw some very critical success this week. South Korea dismantles its nuclear weapons program. Two down, one to go? Iraq, of course, being one of the items gone, and frankly the success is going so well these days that news of it has all but disappeared from the headlines. The Supreme Court voted to uphold the Second Amendment's proclamation that every American citizen has a right to keep and bear arms, and not just for the purposes of militia. The vote was 5-4, and were it not for the constructionist justices put forward by Bush, that decision might have gone the other way. (As evidenced by the braindead decision to not allow the death penalty for the morally corrupt who rape a child. That too went 5-4, but the wrong way. More reasons to support McCain, who pledges constructionist justices...) Speaking of McCain, good for him to suggest a $300 million prize for technology that helps us gain energy independence. Smart, looking to boost the private sector and not a permanent government solution. I received George Will's new book in the mail, and in the introduction, he says this: "For all the fascination with new media, I believe that books remain the most important carriers of ideas, and ideas are always the most important news. Hence books themselves are often news." I love that... "ideas are always the most important news." Yes, absolutely. Of course. And for that reason, I'm watching the McCain campaign with a measure of admiration, because McCain is beginning to promote workable ideas, such as drilling. You know... supply and demand and all that. At least he gets the concept, and doesn't want to punish the companies that produce what we need more of. Finally, on a personal note: my son, Nick, leaves for college tomorrow. I'm going to miss him. He's grown into a good man, who treats his girlfriend with respect and love, who works hard to be responsible for himself and carry his own weight, and who has a pretty easy way with people. He'll be successful in what he does. You know that when you meet him. It's a privilege to be his dad, and a week from now I'll drive north to Minneapolis to bring a few more of his things to him. We'll have lunch together that day. I'll look at his new pad. He'll be on his own. In a similar vein, my daughter, Bari, called me last night to tell me that she received her first insurance card through her work. It was hers, and she was proud of it. She's been living on her own for a couple of years, and this was kind of a big moment for her. One of the treasures of being a dad is being ringside for the greatest show on earth: watching your kids move through life and make their own decisions and enjoy successes and rise up from stumbles and engage people and send their ripples across this big pond of life. I don't know what the future holds for them, but I love to watch them steer toward it. |
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I just got the news that a friend and business colleague of mine, a man I respected a great deal, passed away while running the Hy-Vee Triathlon due to a heart attack. Jim Goodman was a really good guy. This really sucks. Best wishes to his family, his friends, and business associates. ETC: I feel a need to go a bit deeper. I was with Emerging Growth Group when Jim came on. My old company, Newsletter Ease, was floundering around and Jim came in and breathed some fresh air into the whole effort. We were throwing around names one day when he said said he was all about customers, and so Customer Ease was born. One of the guys there said that Jim was "the hardest working man in show business." Jim was a high energy, uncommon sense enterpreneur. He always saw through the clutter and drove to what would make money and be fun to do. A quick wit, he was always in a good mood and smiled easily. I saw Jim last week during a meeting and he looked great. My last words to him were that he really made a difference in the things he did. Emerging Growth Group was better for him. The people around him were better for his influence. Jim lived - in every sense of the word - every day. |
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Sometime on Thursday evening, my Qwest DSL modem was unable to connect to the Internet, and when the tech came out on Friday, they informed me that it would cost me $300 to fix it. No thanks. Not worth it. That's 6 months of Internet at my house. I should mention that I've been very happy with Qwest, up until now.
I called Mediacom and they're going to set me up with connectivity (something called Online Max, which is supposed to be up to 15mbps), but I have to wait until next Thursday morning. In the meantime, I'm frequenting Panera, which works fine. Crazily, when I called Qwest to cancel my account with them, they wanted to give me the $300 service for free. Why not offer that up front? Why offer me that when I'm ready to leave? Kinda silly. |
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Occasionally, I hear the phrase, "We don't want to reinvent the wheel here." It's always used in reference to some pending effort where a project team must work to achieve a result, and someone senior wants the team to leverage an existing, but partial, solution. It's perceived to be a leg up, a jump start. The senior exec posits, "Why should we waste time and money when we don't need to?" It's a means toward getting it done faster, using "proven" methods and "best" practices. I'm here to tell you that the wheel should be reinvented. A lot. The one thing that always, without fail, bites a project in the ass and sets it behind schedule is the assumption. Somebody somewhere along the line made an inadequately informed assumption. Assumption: the methodology before us will allow us to meet the project's goals. Therefore, we should use that and build on top of it. But you know, unless you deeply understand the previous methodology (rare) and unless it's completely open to you to manipulate and change as required by the solution (also rare), there is no way that the methodology can give you a leg up. In fact, if anything, it gets in the way and requires workarounds. In other words, only in rare cases, in my experience, do you not need to reinvent the wheel. (Keep in mind that the "wheel," in my reference here, is not a tool or materials.) Innovation happens when we change it up. We mix, we adjust, we play. We do the unconventional. Innovation doesn't happen by doing it the way others did it. Innovation is reconsideration. It is new methods, new practices, new processes. Innovation happens when you reinvent the wheel. Look at some market examples: The iPod didn't borrow from previous MP3 players.
Google didn't try to do it like Yahoo.
Dell didn't make computers like others.
The Tesla doesn't run like other cars do. Yes, these are big, well-noted, game-changing products. "But our project is not trying to change the world." Fair enough. But shouldn't any idea worth implementing deserve the consideration of its own application without driving down the narrow straits of previous implementations? What if this needs to be different? Look different? Behave differently? Wouldn't that require, then, a different approach? Maybe the vehicle doesn't need wheels. Reinvent the wheel? Forget the wheel. Fly.
Swim.
Burrow. No wheels required. Might that be your project? Maybe. Have you stopped to consider that? In painting and in writing, I've learned that the best way to a great result is to wipe the slate clean and start over. The secret to great writing is rewriting. Re-painting forces you to re-learn the subject and leave your assumptions behind. It forces you to see things anew. Magic happens when you reinvent the wheel. ETC: This post was mistakenly titled "Rebuild the Wheel" and Rich, who I think knew what I meant to say, comments about the difference between rebuilding and reinventing. He makes a great point... he says: It seems most of the success stories follow this model - Bill Gates did not invent the computer; Henry Ford did not invent the Car... I think your post might point out the difference between innovation and invention.... Invention certainly takes innovation, but I don't think innovation always leads to invention. I think invention is the successful outcome of innovation, and not all innovation succeeds. And perhaps that's what senior execs try to avoid by using previous "best practice" methodlogy: time-wasting, money-wasting failure.What Henry Ford did invent, like Dell, was a new and improved process. Henry didn't invent the car. Michael didn't invent the computer. But their processes were innovative. (Bill Gates, in my opinion, is personally lousy at invention. Tim Paterson wrote DOS. Paul Allen finished hand-writing the BASIC interpretter that got him and Bill started while on the plane to Texas. He didn't write Windows. Visual Basic, the macro language that powered a generation of programmers and helped so many Windows apps, was fathered by Alan Cooper, a genius of design. What Bill did do very, very well was employ his aggressive opportunism, be it in fostering productive work environments or cementing deals with big companies.) Rich asks, "Should you be on the bleeding edge or just a fast follower?" I'm not sure innovation that leads to invention requires bleeding edge. Bleeding edge, in my experience, usually happens when a company tries to make use of a new methodology developed by someone else, and it's not quite a fit. Hence the blood loss... What I'm trying to advocate, and perhaps I didn't do it so clearly, is a hesitation to simply adopt what others have done before in the sometimes false assumption that it will work here too. By taking a bit of time to reconsider the problem and what would work best, reinvention might be the best route and deliver the most efficient result. (I've seen Rich himself do this successfully before, and I appreciate his illumination of my use of the wrong word.) What this approach requires is a deep trust in the design skills of the assembled team to get it right. Right innovation involves excellent design skills and a lot of attention paid to the end-user/audience. Once that's done, then the implementation can begin. The right design leads to obvious and successful implementation. |
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I'm working on 247, and I have one critical page to complete that, when completed, will prove out the concept of this revision. It's going well, and if I can complete it this weekend, I'll have what I need in place to start beating up on it with sample data. Testing with LocalsGive should begin this week. Yayy! ETC: The work is intricate...
MORE ETC: More thought and scenario work has me tweaking the data model to arrive at a more elegant and robust solution. 247 started out as a flexible, user-friendly search engine capable of handling any number of attributes. It's become a potent decision engine that I will make available to SME's for free. It will likely be a late night. |
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Throughout my life, I've had a on-and-off relationship with processed sugar. White sugar. The stuff is addictive. Several times in my life, I've been able to go cold turkey and give it up. When I do, I lose weight - without trying to lose weight. Maybe it's the choice of foods, but no sugar = less of me. Over 3 years ago, I gave up sugar. I lost 60 pounds. And then I did what I always do - I tell myself that I have achieved some sort of resistance and it's okay to eat [apple pie/cake/ice cream]. You know, treat myself. When I do, that's it. I then start to gain weight again because I keep eating that stuff. And so two years ago, I started eating sugar again. I gained back 40 of the 60 pounds I'd lost. Stupid... Four weeks ago, I gave it up again. I'm exercising more. I'm sure the weight will come off. I'll do a few things different this time. - I will never eat processed sugar again. Period. I can't be trusted with it.
- I won't weigh myself. It's not about the number - it's about the health and it's about how I feel.
- I'll try to change myself from being a late night eater to avoiding food late at night.
I gotta tell ya... as I age, it's starting to hit me that I need to be careful. For example, I recently switched to reading glasses. Friends of mine tell me that it was in their mid-40's that they too had to get reading glasses. I just started finding it harder and harder to focus on things close up. For some reason, this adjustment and constant limitation of my body is hitting me harder than it probably should. I guess we all pick our "good lord, I'm getting older" moments. This is one of mine. Health, as a result, has become pretty darn important to me now. It's the Brett-preservation program, to the joy of my wife, who tells me that it took her long enough to find me... I'd better stick around or she'll kick my butt.No processed sugar. Exercise. Better eating habits. Whole foods. It's always the right time to focus on one's health. |
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 It recently came to my attention that more people than I knew read my little web site here. I'll call them Gladys Kravitz. And for a few reasons, I'll be making some changes to beatcanvas.com.
What's the purpose for this web site? I don't write and post and create here to drive traffic. Not my goal. I'm smart enough to know how to do that if I chose, but my purpose is more personal. Some day, my kids and my grandkids and all of their kids will wonder more deeply who I was and what drove me. A few of them will be interested to have this time capsule of my thoughts and activities and read through it. I hope to give them the value of my insights. Principles, considerations, provocations... what I wrote and all of the comments bundled up for them to peruse when I die. Personally, my greatest joy about the web site is with those who comment. PR, Bella, Kelly, Annette, Rich, Jeff, IC... I love the conversation. And so, at some point in the next few months, the blog portion of beatcanvas.com will disappear behind a privacy wall. I'll let each of you who want to be a part of the conversation not only comment, but post here as well. The purpose will be to dig deep and really get into it. Conversation. Exploration. Creativity. For those who want to join, I'll give a request form on the site and if I choose, you'll be allowed in. I'll give a custom RSS link if you choose to view and interact via RSS, but I'll be monitoring that to ensure that it's not a shared link. My goal is not traffic or to boost my street cred. My goal is to pass along to my subsequent and inevitable generations a lot of well-considered and passionate thoughts. To spur them. I want them to know how I love Tamara and how greatly I cherish family. To learn what I find successful in life. I want them to know PR's thoughts, Bella's optimism, Kelly's wit, Annette's bravery, and so on. And others who wish to join in for honorable and honest reasons. More than a simple diary, I want this to bring forth my life to them as much as I can. A portfolio, if you will. What I don't want is to catalyze a reason for me to not be me. And at the appropriate time, I'll surface a new and public blog for a different purpose. It's not time now... but even after that, the discussion and sharing at beatcanvas.com will continue. |
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I chose to spend my Father's Day with each of my kids who are home right now, individually. An hour for each, I played tennis with Tate, played tennis with Austin, rode bikes with Nick, went exploring in the creek behind our house (mosquitos!) and played Taboo with Jacob, and something yet to be determined with Aaron. And my daughter, Bari, will be coming over after work. Tyler called me this morning from Virginia Beach where he is skateboarding and wished me the best. Each of them gave me a great card and thoughtful gifts, though it's the gift of them that I truly treasure. I love being a dad. My family is everything to me and I really can't fathom how some men abandon their kids and their families. In reading through the news, I found that Obama gave a speech, and the sections I read I heartily applaud. We need fathers to recognize that responsibility doesn't just end at conception. That doesn't make you a father. What makes you a man is not the ability to have a child - any fool can have a child. That's doesn’t make you father. It's the courage to raise a child that makes you a father.I resolved many years ago that it was my obligation to break the cycle, that if I could be anything in life, I would be a good father to my children; that if I could give them anything, I would give them that rock, that foundation, on which to build their lives. I connect with that pretty well, as I grew up with an alcoholic step-father, who demonstrated more how not to be a man than how to be one. Good for Obama in calling fathers to action.The reward for me is that I have the most amazing children. In our 8-kid blended family, everyone gets along great. No one gets into trouble. All of them want to be responsible, respectful people and they show that. That's humbling to me. It's a privilege to be their dad. Today, like just about every day, I am extraordinarily thankful. |
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