2011-09-22 Wednesday - How to FAIL at LinkedIn networking

Dear Clueless LinkedIn Spammer:

In the spirit of being a Mentor - here's a little feedback for you:

a) I clearly state on my profile that I only accept invitations to connect from people that I have actually met.

b) therefore, you clearly didn't read my profile very thoroughly

c) I don't know you - so how could I be a person that you trust?

d) You didn't provide any background or context on how we might know each other

e) You didn't provide any background or context on who we might mutually know

f) You didn't provide any background or context on why I might want to accept your invitation

g) You profile indicates that you are a ceo - and yet - you only have three connections - and no recommendations.

h) You did not display a photo on your profile

i) Your profile does not indicate your background or experience

j) Your profile does not indicate your education

k) Your profile does not indicate your interests

l) Your profile does not indicate any shared groups

m) You claim to be seeking a business alliance - or selling a service - but your use of a (yahoo | gmail | facebook) email address leads me to suspect that you are not serious about your profession

n) Your email initial contact did not include any contact information | no signature block | no title | no phone/fax | address

o) You either didn't send me any literature about your service (actually that's a bad idea - don't flood my inbox with crap PDFs - or worse - huge PowerPoint decks).  Better - would be to include a linked to a document you've uploaded somewhere on the net

p) Curiously, although you have over 200+ connections - not a single one of them has posted a recommendation.  And you are trying to sell me on buying your service?

q) You either don't have a web site -or if you do - it looks like a generic template - with no thought leadership / white papers posted.

r) Where is the list of articles that you've published  - how will can I discern what value you might bring to the table?

s) Where is the list of clients you have serviced in the past?  Testimonials?

t) You either don't have a blog | or you have a single [or no] posting

u) If you're LinkedIn profile says you are in the U.S. (say, Tustin, CA) - but I subsequently track your IP to somewhere else (say, Bangalore, Karnataka in India) - then you are really not getting off to a very good start in establishing credibility.  In fact, my assumption would be quite the opposite.

v) If your reaction to this list is defensive, or in anger - then you need to look more closely at what you are doing, how you are doing it - and perhaps why you are doing it.

A THINKING MAN’S GUIDE TO VOYAGES SOUTH

A THINKING MAN’S GUIDE TO VOYAGES SOUTH~the many facets of Caribbean Cruising

http://sail.vedamind.com/www_freecrusingguide/2011/07/24/a-thinking-mans-guide-to-voyages-souththe-many-facets-of-caribbean-cruising/

2011-08-28 Sunday - Adele - Someone Like You VMA 2011 - MTV

2011-08-27 Sunday - 10 Actions to Revitalize Microsoft Shareholder Value

Microsoft (MSFT) closed at 25.25 on Friday, August 25, 2011

Here are 10 actions I would suggest to the Microsoft Board of Directors to revitalize shareholder value.

1.  Fire Steve Ballmer and replace him with an industry outsider.

2.  Cut 10% of the workforce immediately

3.  Target a 30% reduction of the workforce over a 2-3 year period

4. Eliminate low-margin products/divisions

5. Break-up the company and create some spin-offs

• Microsoft Office
• Microsoft Small Business
• Microsoft Consulting

6. Create a new Linux/Cloud Services Division

7.  Create a new Enterprise Open Source Services Division

 2012-04-12 Update: Wow.  Today Microsoft announced 'Microsoft Open Technologies', "a new wholly owned subsidiary"

8. Create a new $5B Micro-cap Start-up Angel Investor funding initiative

•  Quarterly Demo Contests
• $500K each to [0-3] selected winners
• Over time, create 10,000 new start-ups, of which Microsoft shareholders would retain significant ownership.

9.  Implement an "UP or OUT" Annual Review process. 

10.  Hire me as a Shareholder Value Creative Consultant

2011-08-26 Friday - CNBC Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge

Today I registered for the CNBC Million Dollar Portfolio Contest 


http://milliondollar.cnbc.com/
 
Starts: September 19, 2011 at 9:30:00 ET

Ends: November 25, 2011 at 4:00:00 ET

2011-08-12 Friday - Weekend Reading Links

Java run-time monitoring, Part 1: Run-time performance and availability monitoring for Java systems
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/j-rtm1/index.html

Java run-time monitoring, Part 2: Postcompilation instrumentation and performance monitoring http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/j-rtm2/index.html

Java run-time monitoring, Part 3: Monitoring performance and availability of an application's ecosystem
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/j-rtm3/index.html

 

 

 

The Art of ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE PROGRAMMING

http://www.arl.wustl.edu/~lockwood/class/cs306/books/artofasm/toc.html

Programming from the Ground Up
An introduction to programming using linux assembly language
http://programminggroundup.blogspot.com/2007/01/programming-from-ground-up.html

http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/pgubook/

Neo4j Tutorial: The Power of the Daleks
http://nosql.mypopescu.com/post/8771740065/neo4j-tutorial-the-power-of-the-daleks

Build a Python app for parsing shared memory dumps
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2l2B5b/www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-parse-memory-dumps/index.html?cmp=dw&cpb=dwlin&ct=dwgra&cr=twitter&ccy=zz&csr=pythonlxdumpanalysis

2011-08-12 Friday - Faster Isn't Always Better

I received an email today...which reminded me of Aesop's fable of the Tortoise and the Hare.

http://www.bpminstitute.org/roundtables/past-round-table/article/pmi-mortgage-insurance-co-s-roadmap-to-business-agility.html?m=e&s=dcevent&c=wspreview&k=bpm&v=all

"Case study about how PMI used rules management and process management to achieve business agility i.e. better, faster and cheaper changes to achieve business results. Also discusses how IT collaborated with business as facilitator and enabler."

...which reminded me of this recent news item...

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Mortgage-insurer-PMI-Group-apf-2378822000.html?x=0&.v=4

"Mortgage insurer The PMI Group Inc. warned investors on Thursday that it may be unable to continue selling new policies and could shut down."
(...)
"Like other mortgage insurers, PMI has been able to sell profitable policies in recent years, but the gains from those sales hasn't outpaced losses from policies sold during the bubble."

...from which one might draw a conclusion that going "faster" maybe isn't always such a good idea?

What if by adopting a Business Rule Management System, they were able to be more agile - and thus make fundamental changes to their core business model "faster"?

Which eliminated the benefit of a slower pace - that would have allowed more contemplation of a suggested change.

And as a consequence of that - they destroyed shareholder value, employee careers, and killed their company?


Technology isn't always the right answer.

Sometimes, technology can simply be a weapon that magnifies your mistakes - to the point of being the instrument of your destruction.

2011-07-09 Saturday

Chanos: China Bubble Ready to Burst
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POGX8_UDhh4&feature=related

 

China is the biggest Bubble in History
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8E0VzbuP7M&feature=related

China's Ghost Cities and Malls
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPILhiTJv7E

Waiting for Gravity to Hit LinkedIn
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/09/business/gauging-if-linkedin-signals-a-social-networking-bubble.html

Auditors: Army's huge SAP project 'at high risk'
http://www.itworld.com/software/181379/auditors-armys-huge-sap-project-high-risk

 

Robotic "Singularity Drive System"
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/diy/youve-never-seen-a-drive-system-like-this-before

http://robogames.net/symposium/
9th annual games will be Fri-Sun, Apr 20-22, 2012. 
http://robogames.net/events.php

2011-05-26 Thursday - My response to Cody Willard's Trillion Dollar post

http://blogs.marketwatch.com/cody/2011/05/26/facebook-apple-and-google-will-each-be-worth-a-trillion-dollars

"I read an article today that took my $100 billion price target for Facebook a bit further and predicted that Facebook — not Apple and not Google and certainly not Exxon or GE — would be the first trillion dollar company. And why not?"

Here's my reply of why not:


1. Competition

2. FTC

3. Legislation

4. No "moat" - see #1

5. Lack of a product that consumers "need".  Want? perhaps...for a season...

6. Is Facebook more of a business - or more of a fad?  I'm inclined to vote fad...you know how those end, don't you?

7. Saying "a Trillion dollars" is easy.  Reaching it? Not so much.

8. Natural selection.  These companies live in a vibrant business ecosystem.  There are predators out there too.  The ant is everywhere - and a very efficient biological machine - but they don't rule the world either.

9. Things that rocket up - usually crash hard

10. The Meeks Dark Energy Conjecture: the internal politics of an organization will begin to tear itself apart as it approaches a market cap equal to the combined market cap of GOOG, AAPL, and IBM.


Note: Today's combined market cap is roughly $679.02B
AAPL - $310.76B
IBM - $201.86B
GOOG - $166.70B

 

2011-07-28 Update:

Geoffrey B. West, “Why Cities Keep on Growing, Corporations Always Die, and Life Gets Faster”

http://blog.longnow.org/2011/07/26/geoffrey-b-west-%E2%80%9Cwhy-cities-keep-on-growing-corporations-always-die-and-life-gets-faster%E2%80%9D/

2011-05-14 Saturday

I'm reading some very diverse material this weekend.






Edward Thor's e-book: Beat The Market
http://www.edwardothorp.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/beatthemarket.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion

The original manuscript written by J.L. Kelly, Jr. in 1956, "A New Interpretation of Information Rate"
http://www.racing.saratoga.ny.us/kelly.pdf


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Petersburg_paradox

SymPy: A Python library for symbolic mathematics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympy
http://sympy.org/
http://code.google.com/p/sympy/
http://planet.sympy.org/

mpmath: Python library for arbitrary-precision floating-point arithmetic
http://code.google.com/p/mpmath/

2011-04-17 Sunday - The Wisdom of Greenspan

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-17/greenspan-says-bush-era-tax-cuts-should-be-allowed-to-expire.html

Greenspan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” today, calling the economic crisis “imminent and dire.”

 Greenspan said it will be hard to rein in the budget deficit because data show that if a disproportionate amount of the change come from tax increases “it won’t work,” while the impact of cutting back on spending is “almost insignificant.”

So let me see if I've got this right:

Greenspan says that if we simply increase taxes, that won't work - and if cut back on spending - that won't help much either.  But, if we stick it to the people who can least afford it, well, everything will work out just fine?

I would suggest that eliminating waste and fraud and useless bureaucracy - and ending land wars that we have no business starting - might be good places to start....before raising taxes.  I have no problem paying taxes, raising taxes, etc.  - I just happen to believe that there are miscreant monkeys mismanaging the affairs of our collective national financial house.

Before assuming that Greenspan is some kind of an expert on economics - it might be enlightening to review a few of his more incorrect thoughts on the housing bubble.

Another article today notes the following: "the amount of marketable debt outstanding has risen to $9.13 trillion from $4.34 trillion in mid-2007".

2011-03-19 Saturday - Nevada the Future for Job Creation?

Premise: More jobs are going to be created in Nevada in the next 10 years than anywhere else in the country. Rationale: Increase in taxes in other States will drive business to relocate to non-burdensome tax States.  

http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/topic/42.html

2011-02-19 Saturday

I'm still in the desert...abiding here for a little while longer...thinking of a place that I once called home...

2010-09-28 Monday - Memories From My Childhood

Over 40 years ago I was a young boy, growing up in the country outside of a small town in Arkansas.

We lived on a dead-end dirt road - with 10 acres of crudely fenced woods defining our land.

As is often the custom in Arkansas, young boys receive a rifle as one of their early birthday gifts - and mine was a fine .22 Remington long rifle.  The ability to hunt - to put game on the table, if you will - is a very old tradition in the culture within which I was raised.  Knowing one's way in the woods and mountains, another.

Another custom, a boy and his dog, was also practiced in my family.  Mine was a Great Dane.  He was my faithful companion, my protector, and my ally in many adventures in those days.

We were fortunate in that quite a few creeks and streams crossed our property.  After a hard rain, the creeks would rise and the waters would flow quite strongly.  Some of my fondest childhood memories involve the adventures of finding new ways of crossing those creeks...but always aware of the dangers of water moccasins, copperheads, and rattlesnakes.  There were several close calls in my childhood involving close encounters with snakes...but that is another story, or two.

While walking through the woods with my rifle and my dog - I often imagined what life was like for the frontiersman in the early days of our country:  Daniel Boone, Davey Crockett, Wild Bill Hickok, and Buffalo Bill.  Those were my imaginary heroes as a child.

The feeling of peacefulness that settled into my soul, listening to the wind passing through the trees, is something that I can remember with perfect clarity even today.  Now that feeling of peace is hard to find though - with the hustle and bustle of life.  There's too much noise, too many people, and cities give me a feeling of being crowded in a bit too much. 

In more recent years I discovered a comparable peace to be found at sea - far from land.

The world would be a much better place, if we all had a few acres to call our own - to walk in the woods with a dog - and to listen to the stillness of trees dreaming...and to listen to the teachings of the wind blowing in the branches of the trees.

2010-09-22 Wednesday

During this evening's Spanish class, we were assigned a task to research the various languages that are spoken in Central/South America and the Caribbean...I found these resources to be helpful:

Official and Spoken Languages of the Countries of the Americas and the Caribbean
http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/american_languages.htm

 

The University of Texas at Austin has a program that provided some additional interesting information:

The Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America
http://www.ailla.utexas.org/site/la_langs.html

 

 

2010-09-16 Thursday - Somber Thoughts

There are days when I worry about what the future may hold - and days when there are frustrations that may arise from whatever task may be at hand - or the interactions with some particular person may cause me to speak harsher words than I intended - all of which may foul my normally cheerful disposition.  It is so easy to be consumed by insignificant matters- and to lose sight of that is which is noble...to lose sight of the work-in-progress that is the painting of life-being-lived.  Tonight I had a stark reminder - A friend shared with me the tragic loss over the death of his brother.  As I ponder life tonight with a glass of wine, I will try to remember to keep my priorities straight, to remember what is essential, for the morrow.

http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/091210/obi_706947100.shtml

http://stagesofchange.blogspot.com/


"On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux."
- The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

2010-09-05 Sunday - NIall Ferguson - Roots of Sovereign Debt Crisis

This video is a must-see:

Niall Ferguson's speech to the Peterson Institute for International Economics (May 13 , 2010) examined the roots of sovereign debt crises, and how they have plagued states since the birth of the bond market. Ferguson also made clear, that such crises have brought down some of the world's biggest empires, and there is no reason why it won't happen again. [pdf]

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/niall-ferguson-empire-2010-5#ixzz0yhbz85aU

2010-08-17 Tuesday - The Power of Intuition

I trust my intuition. 

Here's an example of why....

True Story:

1987...working at a bank in downtown Little Rock.  Walking the few blocks each day after work to my car...I usually passed by a bus stop.  This time, from a distance of two blocks, I sensed that one person among the crowd waiting for the bus - just. isn't. right.  The feeling of tension grows.  A sense of approaching danger.  I shift my briefcase from my right-hand to my left-hand...timing my motions so that as I come abreast of the fellow, the motion of my arm will be on an upswing.  As I pass, he leaps up from his seat and throws a wild kick toward my face.  I continue the momentum of my arm - raising the briefcase to block his kick. Perfectly timed.

Here's the thing.  In that instant - a flash of thought and intuition told me that if I turned...and acknowledged his presence...he would continue his attack...but if I cleared my mind and took one more step...removing any emotion/thought - his negative energy would evaporate.

And so I did. And that's how it ended.

2010--08-10 Tuesday - Financial Tsunami, Part-2

In early 2007, while sitting with friends at the marina clubhouse in Mazatlan, I raised a concern of a looming financial disaster that I compared to a terrible tsunami that could be seen on the horizon.  Last year, I heard from my friend in Mazatlan - that the local businessman sitting at the table with us on that day still remembers that conversation quite vividly. 

The financial tsunami I see now looming on the horizon will dwarf that one by orders of magnitude. 

We still have a little longer for the music to play.  But keep your eye on the chairs and the exits.  Prepare now.

U.S. Is Bankrupt and We Don't Even Know: Laurence Kotlikoff
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-11/u-s-is-bankrupt-and-we-don-t-even-know-commentary-by-laurence-kotlikoff.html

Taleb Says Government Bonds to Collapse, Avoid Stocks
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-11/-black-swan-author-taleb-says-he-bets-on-collapse-of-government-bonds.html

The Long-Term Budget Outlook June 2010
http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=11579

2010-08-08 Sunday - Signed-up for a Spanish language class

Signed-up for a Fall 2010 evening class at Glendale Community College to improve my Spanish language skills...one of the items on my checklist of skills to improve before taking off on another voyage! 175 days to go...

http://www.glendale.edu/