Random - disconnected thoughts on turning 45.

Today I turned 45. It was a slow process. It took me 45 years to get here. It just proves that I have patience.

45 - Half way to 90.

For some reason, the old joke about farting dust comes to mind.

It’s amazing how old one day can feel. 45 seems so much closer to 50 than 44 seemed.

I realize that I’m only as old as I act but seriously - doesn’t 45 just sound old?

You know you’re getting old when you have to look below your glasses to read. Time for an appointment.

In my mind, it goes - 45, 50, 55, 60, 65. Skipping all the years in between.

I just went to the dentist last week. No cavities! Sounds great until it dawned on me that as the years go by, fewer and fewer of my teeth are real.

I only have 20 years to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.

According to my high school yearbook, I was supposed to be a millionaire 15 years ago.

At least I can find solace in the fact that I know that there is someone reading this calling me a young pup.

As many of you know, I have been losing weight since January 2007. I was morbidly obese (5′ 11″, 350 pounds) and I needed to lose lots of weight. My first goal was to be able to lose enough weight to be able to fit on the roller coasters at Silver Dollar City when my family went on vacation in June. I achieved that goal and was able to ride every ride that I wanted. The girls had a blast riding with their Dad.

Next, I set my goal at losing 100 lbs. That was the next logical step in my weight loss. Finally, after 10 months, I broke through that wall! As of my official weigh-in last night, I have lost a total of 104.2 pounds! I was really stressing this week prior to the weigh-in. I knew I was close but was afraid I would miss it. I blew right past it!

So, what is my next goal? I’m currently at 244.8 lbs. so my next goal will be to get down to 200 pounds. I haven’t been there since I was in the Marine Corps! I would eventually like to be able to fit into my Marine Corps dress blue uniform again.

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him. - David Brinkley

Among the many books that I am currently reading is John Maxwell’s, “The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader“. It’s a short book and I’ve committed to read a chapter a day. Today’s quality is Passion.

Passion is something I have longed for. I don’t really have passion for anything - at least not in the “keep you up at night” sense. I enjoy doing a lot of things but nothing really keeps me up at night. I may have bursts of enthusiasm but it quickly fades and I’m back to being Mister Even-Keel. Never too excited about anything.

So, I’m not happy with that part of myself. How do I change it? The book gives me a few suggestions:

1. Take your temperature - How passionate are you about your life and work?
2. Return to your first love - sometimes events in life distract us from our true calling.
3. Associate with people who have passion - it’s contagious.

I’m currently at step 1. Trying to identify step 2 and looking for people in step 3.

What is your passion? What keeps you up at night? If you have developed a passion for something, how did you do it? I am interested. I’m ready to lose some sleep!

A few days ago, I had a discussion about how some people are reacting to this whole global warming issue and Al Gore’s book and movie in particular. I heard about the hotel in California that was going “green” and was replacing the Gideon Bible with Al Gore’s book. I made the comment then that Global Warming has become the new religion of the left. Today I read a blog posting that talked about one of Al Gore’s recent speeches in San Antonio. The actual quote that caught my attention was

“It’s in part a spiritual crisis,” he said. “It’s a crisis of our own self-definition — who we are.

That is just amazing to me. To equate Global Warming with spirituality? Maybe I wasn’t so far off in my supposition.

I suppose, to continue the analogy, Al Gore is the prophet - Proclaiming - the end of the world is near!

I wonder who their messiah will be? Bill Clinton?

And now for a brief geek moment.

If you haven’t already heard, a programmer figured out the encryption key for the new HD-DVD and Blu-ray formatted DVD discs and posted it on a forum. Here’s a link to a story about it.

Now, Cali Lewis of GeekBrief.TV and Geoff Smith teamed up to produce a music video of the “code”. It’s a funny video and a great song Geoff!

Posted here for your enjoyment!

With the popularity of digital music and digital photography and digital video, I just realized that I have terabytes of digital content stored on various portable hard drives, internal hard drives and DVD’s. In fact, as I digitize my music and video collection, it is becoming almost unmanageable. My quandary began this morning when I realized that I have no way of backing up that much data! As hard drives have gotten larger and larger, other types of storage haven’t kept up. How expensive is a 5 terabyte tape backup? Does it even exist? What kind of backup strategy should I adopt to make sure I don’t lose any of my digital content? My first thought was to back it up on DVD’s but at only 4.7 Gig per DVD or 9 Gig on double-layer disks, it would take me 250 regular DVD’s or 125 Double-layer DVD’s to back it all up. Most digital content is already compressed so I wouldn’t even save space by using compression.

I’d love to hear your suggestions. What are you doing to back-up all of your digital content?

Everyone I talk to asks me if I am going to upgrade my computer to Vista - Micro$oft’s new operating system. I say no. From reports that I have heard, it is a resource hog. I don’t want to have to upgrade my hardware just to get a fancy user interface that everyone agrees is a cheap copy of Apple’s operating system. Then I saw this picture in the NY Times

The caption is: From left, Kevin B. Rollins of Dell, Sean Maloney of Intel, Steven A. Ballmer of Microsoft, Hisatsugu Nonaka of Toshiba, Hector Ruiz of Advanced Micro Devices and Todd Bradley of Hewlett-Packard helped kick off the Vista operating system Monday in New York.

Do they look excited to be there? Is this the new and exciting operating system everyone has been waiting for? If this is their reaction - why do I want it? There’s not a smile in the bunch! They must have been up too late fixing all of the bugs!

What was most funny when I read this article was the other picture on the same web page: A picture of the Hindenburg.

Apparently I’m not the only one who won’t be getting the “Wow!”

Growing up in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Montana, it seemed as though we were always doing “outdoor” things. One of our activities was to go out to the range and look for Indian artifacts. We often found arrowheads in fields. We also looked for crystals and other stones that we could polish up and add to our collection. We went through a lot of plain ‘ole rocks before we found an arrowhead or a crystal but once we found it, it made the tedious search worth it.

Hiring a good employee is a lot like looking for a prize in a pile of stones. You have to go through a lot of people until you find that one person that consistently goes above and beyond what is asked of them. Once you have found that person, it is imperative that you treat them well.

1. Compensate them well. A good employee or business partner is worth his/her weight in gold. Compensate them accordingly or they will take their skills elsewhere.
2. Give them opportunities to grow. A person who consistently goes above and beyond what is asked is also the person that will appreciate opportunities to grow. Volunteer to pay for continuing education. Help them develop a specialized skill.
3. Give them more responsibility. As they demonstrate that they are dependable and hard working, give them more responsibility. Solicit their opinion on a project.
4. Practice random acts of kindness. Nothing promotes loyalty more than an employer that shows that they respect and appreciate the hard work of their employees. Treat them to something special. One example I know of was an employee had put in numerous hours of overtime to meet a deadline. The project was successful and the owner of the company gave the employee a long weekend at a resort (all paid for) for him and his family. Another employer I know of allowed one of his top programmers work from the hospital where his wife was on bed rest prior to the arrival of their triplet daughters.

Loyalty goes both ways. It’s the golden rule - Treat your employees as you would be like to be treated!