May 6th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Wow.
I was lucky enough to find the site of Ronald Jenkees. He is a musician that produces some really great upbeat music. His home is at http://ronaldjenkees.com/ and hist YouTube channel is at http://www.youtube.com/ronaldjenkees . His music just amazes me and I find it very uplifting.
But the thing you should really focus on in his videos and in some of his writing is how happy he is. He absolutely loves what he is doing. He is not doing it to be popular, famous or make a lot of money. It just makes him feel good. And when you see someone doing something that makes them feel good it tends to make you feel good also. That is what I get out of watching him play, and that is what I hope you get also.
So… have you ever been as happy as this man? Will you ever be? If you are not happy right now then what are you doing to get onto the right path? Are you doing anything?
If not… then StopDoingNothing. Get to it.
But before that go enjoy JamMaster Jenkees.
February 27th, 2008 at 2:31 am
February 26th, 2008 at 12:32 am
A bit of good news we received this week. My company, Focus Information Technology Solutions Inc will be featured not once but twice in upcoming editions of the largest newspaper in our state the Daily Oklahoman. This came about after just being in the right place at the right time.
I attend a local venture forum group on regular basis. Last week I happen to sit next to a reporter that is respnsible for the business beat . He likes to local interest stories on businesses that live and prosper in Oklahoma. BAM! I am his man. He also wanted to do a story on local technology ventures that are run by African-Americans. BAM! I am his man again.
Once these stories are published I’ll share the links to the online version of the articles. If you are here as a result of those articles - welcome.
February 15th, 2008 at 6:57 am
(Wow. I actually started my thoughts about this on Valentine’s Day a year ago . I have had this post in draft mode for a year)
I am cynical person. And because of that I think that celebrating Valentine’s Day is a crock. I see absolutely no reason at all why everybody should choose the same day to celebrate a day of love.
As a matter of fact - I’d go out on a limb and say that the people that go really all out for Valentine’s Day are trying to make up for 364 of days where they did not spend enough time on the relationship with their love interest. Here is the typical Valentine’s Day mindset and response (You can see it my local grocery store): “I have to get something real quick to bring home to my wife so she knows I love her. Oooo look. A box of chocolates. Right here. In the front of the store. All ready for me. On the table labeled ‘quick love’. Ohhh. A teddy bear made in China. Even better - A couple roses. If I buy all three of these that will mean I love her even more!”
Bullshit. Get a clue!
If you really want to show your love interest… love (I guess maybe that is where it came from) celebrate your love the 14th of March, April, and May. And the 11th of November, and the 6th of January. Basically do it on several random times and days of the year. And don’t make it sappy and announce it. Just do it. If they ask why the answer is always “just because”. If you truly, madly, deeply love the person you are going to bed with tonight then the reason is either just because, or the reasons are to numerous to list. Make it a point to do nothing on 2/14. Because you should not have to. Because you were taking care of business the other 364 days of the years.
Now get off the damn computer and go tell somebody you love them.
February 6th, 2008 at 5:24 am
Saw this little gem of a post over at DLM and it reminded me of some of the great things I’ve learned about networking:
http://www.dumblittleman.com/2008/02/stop-networking-and-start-building.html
1. Do not seek out people to sell them something. Also known as - Make friends and then sell your friends something if they are interested. Friends last a lot longer that pipelines, quotas and sales. You need friends to make more friends. You need friends to grow and learn. Just like it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village of friends and luck to raise a business. Focus Information Technology Consulting (http://allaboutfocus.com) continues to experience amazing growth every year because I take the time to learn intimate details about all of the people that I meet (and I meet ALOT of people). And then if the oppourtunity ever presents itself I might have a chance to do business with these friends that I am making. But work on the friendship first. It will last a lot longer than the sale ever will.
2. Network like crazy. I seek out every business event, social event, VC event, etc in Oklahoma City and make it to every one I can - Even if it means I need to sacrafice my hourly income. My goal is to meet as much of the Oklahoma City business community as possible. Not just know their names. But know their faces, their families, and their needs and desires. I track all of these details in various places, but mostly in my CRM system. These people are going to introduce me to other people that I don’t know, etc. ,etc. ad nauseum. In the long term I want all of these people to know what I do in case they know anybody that ever needs my services. I am throwing alot of spaghetti against the wall every single day. More of it is sticking every day.
3. If you have business cards sitting around you are wasting money. I actually heard this from somebody once “I am very careful about giving out my business cards because they were expensive and I need to keep them for as long possible”. Are you kidding me? Every business card sitting in the box is wasted money as long as it keeps sitting there. I give them out the EVERYBODY. Cashiers that take my money at Starbucks, people I meet at nightclubs, my bankers (even though they want MY business). I even give them out to people I already have contracts with. When I get a new set my goal is to get rid of them as soon as possible.
As I finished off number three I realized that I have about 100 more in the back of my head. Sounds like I need to do some more posting about this. I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts via comments below.
February 4th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
I don’t know about you, but I am sick and tired of the press running the election. I am sick and tired of Wolf Blitzer telling me what I think. I am sick and tired of MSNBC telling me that among 6 foot tall white males with one peg leg 32% of them are worried about healthcare. In short I am sick of the media telling us what we are worried about, what we care about, and giving us so many stupid statistics that after awhile the numbers are meaningless.
So… if you go out to vote on Super Tuesday volunteer to take any exit poll you are given. Then… lie your ass off. Lie on every question on there. Make up crap. Lie about your income, your age, your cares and concerns. Since the media will take any bone you throw them let’s throw me a big bone.
TAKE AN EXIT POLL AND LIE YOUR ASS OFF !
January 8th, 2008 at 7:02 am
I was one of the few lucky people to get a Beta invitation to WhyGoSolo. This means I filled out their form and begged for it. Well I was finally able to sign in this past weekend and take a peek. It appears to be a great product, but unlike other sites this one will not grow just by you connecting with random people. This site will require WORK on the users part for it to be of any value.
WhyGoSolo is a very different type of social networking site. It is not focused on helping you make virtual connections (LinkedIn has excelled at that and I have all kinds of neat random people of no value in my ‘network’) . It appears to me that it is focused on helping you make REAL live flesh and blood people connections. In a nutshell - You are going to the basketball game. I am going to the basketball game. Let’s plan it out and go to together. Now just take this concept and apply it coffee shop meetings, business dinners, conferences, poker games, etc. WhyGoSolo means “why go to that place or event by yourself.”.
Once you join and sign in you have the usual places to list your occupation, sites, hobbies, location, and passions. But the great part about the site is the ‘Community Board’ section. It is here where you can go search for events (not the weak online type. The real human type.) that are happening in your country, state and city. They have the events broken up into different sections so it is easy to find poker games vs. church meetings vs. off broadway shows, etc. As I check right now their list of events is starting to build. There are none here in Oklahoma City planned except my one test one. But the events list in the large cities on the East coast are starting to grow.
My open suggestions for improvement in a future version or versions:
1. You should gather the users zip code in their profile. This will allow you to prepare for…
2 . As the site grows I don’t think city will be enough of a drilldown. You should get it to show events within X miles of Zip Code 12345. The events might have to be added that way also.
3. Once you get #1 done incorporate Google maps so I can see where the events are in my city relative to me.
4. Allow for recurring events.
Overall I am pretty happy with the site. But like I mentioned earlier this site needs ALOT of input to be useful. User contributed content will be vital for this site to succeed. The WGS development team has busted their butts to bring us something pretty darn cool. So go over there and get your signup so you can add your events. In other words - Stop Doing Nothing!
Have a great week.
Patrick
P.S. Are you using WGS yet? If so post some comments of your first impression. I know the authors read this blog so any suggestions for improvement are welcome here also.
January 6th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
A fellow developer friend of mine, Keith Casey, has launched WhyGoSolo this past weekend (He did not launch it on his own. He is part of the team) . This is a new social networking site. I don’t have any information about it so I cannot post a review yet. But I believe passionately that Social Networking is key to personal and business success. Get over there and get your signup. Based on my knowledge of Keith and the quality of his work I am sure this is a good thing for you and I.
Patrick
P.S. And Happy 2008. Don’t make any overly optimistic New Years resolutions. But do make some kick ass life resolutions.
December 10th, 2007 at 8:10 am
I’ve been in business for myself ~10 years so I consider myself pretty wise when it comes to running my business and keeping people happy. We’ve experienced steady growth, have good commercial and government contracts in motion, and our customers are very pleased with the work that we produce.
But I learned a hard lesson recently. I dove into a project and forgot some of the basics. And I got just what I deserved - an unhappy customer. There are few things in the world that get me more upset or depressed than a displeased customer. Whether it is our fault, their fault, or nobody’s fault in particular. It just makes me sick.
So as a public reminder to you, me and anybody that lives and dies by customer satisfaction and referrals let’s get back to the basics of what it generally takes to keep people happy on both sides of the engagement.
1. We plan our work. We work our plan - what the heck does that mean?
We layout the work that needs to be done, when it will be done, and what the end objective is. And then we stick to it. If it needs to be changed I need to clearly explain to you what you are asking for . And you need to understand the impact of the change. Mr Client - don’t trip me in the middle of running around the bases and expect me to make it to home plate when I said I was. Understand that every little change you request affects something else.
2. An unplanned event on your part does not mean an emergency on my part.
Unbeknownst to me my client had an internal deadline. I thought we had plenty of time to code, test, QA, validate results - you know all of the normal stuff you do on a project. Then I get a call on a Monday morning “I just cut us over to the new site. We can fix things on the live site as we need to”. Are you kidding me? I am sure now you want my time. But it just so happens that when you called over and committed me (in your mind) to supporting your live site I was onsite with another client where I planned to be doing work I had already planned for the day. Please don’t expect and demand a kneejerk reaction to something you did not warn me about earlier. You are not my only client. I am trying to keep other people just as happy as I keep you.
3. We are not magicians.
Application development is not rocket science. After doing it for this many years I can do alot of it on spare brain cells. But it is also not duck soup. We cannot do the impossible, so please don’t demand the impossible. Especially when I have told you up front that the possible is impossible. When I say it cannot be done or it will take a lot more time - trust me ; I usually know what I am talking about. That is why you are paying me. If you knew how to do my job you would not need me. Take my advice. You are paying me good money for it.
4. You have to test EVERYTHING we do. Even after we test it.
You and I are in a client-contractor relationship. What this means is that you are paying me for a certain expected result. If we have both communicated properly then I have a pretty good idea of what you want. But it is not up to me to determine what you want and when it is done. That can only be done by you. It is your project. So when we say something is complete and it needs to be tested. IT NEEDS TO BE TESTED. There are a myriad of ways we can miscommunicate and I can misunderstand what you want . When I think about somebody testing my results I always think of the phrase “I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant”
5. Do not use anything that we produce until you AND I have agreed it is ready.
I know this sounds contrary to #4, but to me it is definitely different. Just because you do your part and test my work please check with me before assuming that it is ready to go live. There are a myriad of reasons for doing this. We programmers have a lot thinks going on behind the scenes. Maybe you are using test data and we need to load live data before you go live. Maybe we put some testing hooks in our code. Maybe we don’t think our own work is done. It really does not matter. Communicate with me when you want to use what I produce.
There you have it. Learn from my mistakes. I sure hope I have.
October 17th, 2007 at 5:53 am
Big giant fitness goals are hard. Little tiny fitness steps are easy. Here are 5 things you can do today that will cause you to burn more calories than you did yesterday. FYI… more mouse movement is not one of them.
1. Don’t drink your morning coffee - drink water instead: When you wake up skip the morning joe with the cream and sugar and get yourself a big giant glass of water instead. It will quence the dehydration state that your body went into overnight, and it will start your metabolism churning to burn the upcoming calories.
2. Don’t drink anything but water all day long - Keep up #1. For today and today only do no drink anything but water. No coffee. No juice. No soda. No tea. Keep a constantly filled small water bottle with you at all times. At the end of the day you probably won’t be dragging. And water will keep that metabolism churning.
3. Park as far away from your office as possible - Don’t park in that all close coveted spot - even if you have a reserved spot. Park in the boonies - where you have your choice of spots. Take advantage of the good weather you might be having and enjoy the nice leisurely stroll across the lot into work. Think of all of the door dings you won’t have! And instantly you have burned more calories than most people have by this point in time in the morning. For extra points - offer your reserved spot to somebody who normally has no choice but to park in the boonies.
4. Get up once every two hours and walk around the building - If you need to get up for that hourly break don’t go shoot the BS with a coworker or drink a soda. Head outside and walk all of the way around your building. Really hustle and do it twice. Buh bye calories.
5. After dinner go for a walk - Clean up the dishes and head outside around the block. Do it twice like you did at work. Do NOT plop down in front of the TV with the remote. And do not come back in front of the computer. Grab a family member and head outside.
I double dare you to do any of these and let me know how you feel at the end of the day.
