I read a story today here that made me think of my previous career. I started typing a response to my friend who emailed it to me and decided to blog instead.
I have a lot of philosophies why the American car companies fail and the Japanese are outpacing us. It seems that whenever GM spun off Saturn they had the chance to right the wrongs that were leading to this point, they could have chosen the clean slate path and created a new company with GM $$ backing the r&d and styling. They even tried to build the saturn family work environment to mirror the japanese companies and if they could only have based pay scales on performance and success of the company it might have worked. Instead they built the plant with all of the same GM corporate baggage including lack of vehicles that anyone wanted. Then they infected the plant with the same UAW that demands the a piece of the winnings without accepting any of the losses.
There are so many other reasons right now that the hands are changing, but the one bright spot is that there are companies that are investing in the American workforce. However, as an American I want to see our companies figuring out how to make things work in the new future. The Japanese companies built their structures on adaptability from the ground to the top. There are so many US corporations that are so topheavy and unprepared for economic downturns that it just seems ridiculous in hindsight.
So here’s to looking forward and maybe some massive changes to some of OUR companies turning the tides and bringing about CHANGE!
I have been thinking a lot about change and how it can affect you in both positive and negative ways. In my life I have ALWAYS welcomed change and I think it is this attitude that has led me to have to make decisions, and with each decision made a lesson learned. The key is to use those lessons to hedge your change risk in a positive direction - NOT EASY. Those who know me know probably realize that learning is what I love and hopefully a life of lessons learned will strengthen me in the future.
I figure that this week starts the 4th most significant change in my life. While the last two years to get to this point have flipped our lives on end, finally the moment we have been working for is here. There are times when I feel overwhelmed with the thought of what is to come for me personally, but I look at all the things that my wife does to keep us afloat and I am amazed. I am truly blessed and owe a great deal to her as she has not complained a bit and is my biggest fan (which makes no sense to me). Her actions are selfless to an extent that I will never be able to reach no matter how many lessons I learn.
So cheers to change, ULSD, my family, and most of all Karen! See you in 4 years :)
Probably because I have had a lot of coffee and manual labor this morning, but here are my thoughts of the day:
- I’m glad I’m not a Roly-Poly bug
- “Viva El Toro” - my lawn mower allowed me to cut the entire front yard on mere fumes, starting to think that if I peed in the tank I’d be able to finish the backyard as well
- I probably don’t operate without coffee, need to check my operators manual or call customer support in India
- I miss my Nashville friends and am glad some are coming to visit at lunch today!
Have a Blessed Day!
I don’t have time to go a million places on the web and nowadays there are dozens if not hundreds of services that grab a bunch of data and spit it out to me in a nice readable fashion. For example rss readers for gathering news, delicious for my bookmarks, etc. And then there are the sites that show me as many at once as possible like netvibes or igoogle or mytrade.
What i want goes beyond this, I want to be able to get ALL of MY information in one place fast, secure, and EASY. This service should be able to put my email, bank info, portfolio status, bookmarks, simple googling, weather, news, to do list, and whatever else that I can think of right in front of me at any time without having to go all over the place to find it.
AND what I really want is to be able to get the info via texting (or mobile web if I used it). Like texting the word USBANK CHECKING BAL to the service to get my account balance, or BROKERAGE to get updated portfolio information, or STOCK GOOG to get a stock quote, or RSS NEWS to get news headlines, DIRECTIONS HOME TO MCDONALDS for directions, or even SPORTS to get sports scores.
I have spent so much time setting up Netvibes and iGoogle to maximize my web efficiency and neither work for me, I still have to go all over the place because most of the widgets just don’t work.
Some of these functions obviously don’t translate well via texting, and alot of this is available via mobile web devices, but I don’t have one so I know it sounds ridiculous but can’t a man dream.
i don’t know what makes us do it, but as adults we run in the direction that we tell our kids to run away from. my kids are too young for sports right now, but that doesn’t keep me from the ball field on a beautiful (albeit stiflingly hot) sunday afternoon for a championship game of five and six year old coach pitch/teeball.
i guess it makes sense in this pc world to try and make up a bunch of rules so that the game doesn’t get too one sided, but i don’t think anyone benefits in the end. rules such as 7 runs/inning, bat around the order, once the ball is chucked into the infield the play is dead, runners can only advance one base on infield hits, limiting the number of bases that a player can take after the play is ruled dead, you get the idea. i would quickly add two rules 1- no keeping score and 2- no tournament, but that’s far too confusing for the parents and grandparents, after all how would they know if their kid won?
what this massive amount of rules did in this game was give reason for the parents to harass the umpire, agitate coaches, nitpick every confusing rule violation, demonstrate to the kids a genuine disrespect for authority, and embarass themselves by contributing to the already growing problem of entitlement.
the bottom of the second inning went 1-2-3, and instead of celebrating three great defensive plays two women in the stands marched onto the field, chastised the 15 year old umpire, and “classily” marched their kid off of the field toting bat and glove, all the while he wondered what just happened.
what do i take from this? i’m going two different directions, first don’t take the game away from the kids. They are more interested in what color slushy they get at the end of the game and trust me they have plenty of time to become crazy like their parents. second on a totally different note, it seems that fewer hard and fast rules and a little better personal judgement may lead us in a better direction.
joe demling passed away yesterday afternoon. for those of you who don’t know, he is my nieces’ grandfather, a legend at trinity high school, and an unbelievable father & grandfather.
in this experience i was able to gain some perspective from the least expected place. i picked up my 3 year old niece and took her to the park to play with my 3 year old daughter and i had told my daughter that her cousin’s poppy had died and that we probably shouldn’t talk about it unless she wants to. i guess i was trying to protect them both, or maybe trying to protect myself from having to answer tough questions. anyway, without my prompting here is a list of statements from a conversation between two 3 year olds:
“why did your poppy die?”; “my poppy is in the sky, over there!”; ”he’s in Heaven with Jesus”; ”how did he get sick?”; ”i can’t see him anymore, but he can see us”; ”if i want to talk to him i just say ‘HEY POPPY’ and he’ll hear me”
every statement very matter of fact, yet always looking for a that glimmer of approval from me. i don’t know if i answered everything perfectly, but as a dad/uncle you are always learning from your mistakes, and there are so many of those to learn from. but as usual i learned a lesson from two 3 year olds and their conversation between themselves and God.
