I Got The Flu and Fell Off The Truck

Folks–This was a BAD flu. 103 fever for an old guy like me? Painful. But I’ve been feeling good for a couple of weeks now. And so let’s get this baby going again.

The last time I blogged, I shared an aspiration to focus a seven day series called Turn It Down and Turn It Up “on words and terms that express concepts I’m trying to give less power to versus those I’m trying to put more energy into.”

Oh well…so much for that. But I will pick this up again as a somewhat weekly series next week. Meanwhile, although I’m not much of a TV watcher, I certainly root for the Conan. The guy is amazingly brilliant. His timing is impeccable and his comedy writing and sense outstanding. So I side with Conan. And as weird, diabolical and beyond tasteless as the subject matter of this video is, it’s also outrageously hilarious.

Turn It Down and Turn It Up, #1

OK, so let the resolutions begin! I’m starting a seven day series on words and terms that express concepts I’m trying to give less power to versus those I’m trying to put more energy into. I’m hardly a “pro” in any of these, but in most cases I’ve made a lot of progress in the last year or two (albeit, with a lot of progress I still need to make!). The question is: How do YOU measure up in these areas?

TURN IT DOWN
Cynicism: “An attitude of scornful or jaded negativity, especially a general distrust of the integrity or professed motives of others.”

TURN IT UP
Optimism: “A disposition or tendency to look on the more favorable side of events or conditions and to expect the most favorable outcome.”

In my younger days, I guess I thought it was cool to be cynical. The cynics are funny. They’re great observers of life. They’re “sharp” and quick. I’ll always have a cynical streak, but recently I’ve come to look at cynics as more closed-minded, more critical, more of the vein of having an opinion on everything. And so I have to ask, who the hell needs another cynic? Who really wants to listen to them? Sure, shared experiences help connect us, but do those shared experiences invariably have to be negative?

Conversely, in many circles, optimists are seen as exhibiting almost dangerous behavior. “Well heck, if someone is an optimist about everything, they’ll gloss over critical risks and perhaps get themselves killed in the process.” Perhaps at the most absurd extreme this is true, but as a society we’ve got so much negativity embedded in our core that I find this risk to be minimal. Here’s an analogy: If one were to cut her/his daily food intake from 4000 calories to 2000 calories, I hardly think s/he would become emaciated.

And if I compare the downside of being overly cynical to the downside of being overly optimistic — well, it’s really no match. So turn up OPTIMISM and turn down CYNICISM. A simplistic resolution per se, but I’ll bet that moving the needle on this one by even 25% will make a huge difference.

“He Was A Man of ‘Gigantic Enthusiasms’”

Wow. When I die in about 100 years or so, it sure would be awesome to have that soundbite emblazoned on my tombstone.

And it’s essentially what Meryl Streep said about the still very much alive Alec Baldwin in this New York Times article highlighting that Mr. Baldwin is now serving as announcer for the New York Philharmonic.

Perhaps I’m stating the obvious, but Alec Baldwin is one strong cup of coffee. People either love him or hate him. There’s not much neutral ground here. Personally, back in the day I didn’t like the guy a whole lot, but I was wrong. In retrospect, he has proven his acting chops again and again and again. And his Saturday Night Live stints have uniformly been outstanding. But perhaps most importantly, his irreverence, outrageousness, quick wit and self-deprecation is something that I love. He is clearly only slightly short of insane. And so what’s the problem with that?

In short, rock on, Alec Baldwin! And of course watch those phone conversations with your kids.

Handsome Dude ‘At the Whiteboard’

Is this shameless self-promotion, does he have nothing to blog about today, or is it both? Hmmm….

The Magic of a Mac? Time IS Money.

Here’s something interesting. If I had Tweeted a few days ago that I recently bought a brand new Dell laptop, how many comments do you think that would have generated in Facebook? I’d say “zero.” And in fact, for anyone who cared to read the Tweet, they’d probably mutter to themselves, “Who gives a xxxx? Get a life, Diamond.”

Yet the other day, when I tweeted that I purchased a new MacBook Pro laptop and that it cost 350%  more than my first used car, I got 14 comments in Facebook–all of them incredibly positive. Now THAT is brand affinity! Or you can call it ‘customer advocacy.’

Regardless, how does a company with single digit PC market share gain such a zealous fan base, while the lords of the PC market typically create enmity, thanks to Microsoft? Well, I’m about to find out. Admittedly I’m a late adopter. Former co-workers like Troy T. back at Inktomi were carrying around Macs seven-plus years ago.

But what drove me to spend $1,500 more than what I probably would have had to, if I had purchased a Windows laptop, was the following. And it’s not that Apple is cool, or that I want to look cool, or that I want to “think different.” So why why why?

1) I equate an hour of my time with a dollar value. Heck, my employer does, so why shouldn’t I? To that end, a few weeks ago I spent 12 hours trying to create a 30 second video with output from my Flip HD camera on my 2 1/2 year old work laptop. And I couldn’t do it. 12 hours. Wasted. I then thought, “If I had a Mac, I probably would have been able to do this in two hours max.” Now of course I could also do this with a current generation Windows laptop. But I’m the one who has to install the video editing software. I’m the one who has to learn how to use it, etc., etc. And no, Windows Movie Maker does not cut it. With a Mac, iMovie is included. I don’t have to deal with virus crap, as many re-boots, “Are you sure you want to INSTALL this software and RUN this software” prompts, etc.?

2) Did I mention that I equate an hour of my time with a dollar value? Well, I also equate an hour of someone ELSE’S time with a dollar value, and that’s the dollar I have to pay THEM to provide ME with value. At the time of purchase, Apple offers this nifty service package called “One to One.” For $99 you get a year of unlimited access to pre-recorded video training sessions. Or you can block an hour of one-on-one time with an Apple trainer each week at an Apple Store. Or you can block a longer period of time if you’re OK with working with other folks in a small group setting. So I’m going to modestly assume that I’ll avail myself of 20 one-on-one sessions in the next year. And oh, I will! I’ll conservatively estimate that it would cost me $80 to PAY for each of these training sessions. That would be $1,600. Subtract out my initial investment and I’ve just paid for the price difference between a Mac and a Windows laptop. Oh, and a year from now I’ll be a master of Final Cut Express, etc., etc. Not bad. BTW, the folks at the Apple Hillsdale store (San Mateo, California) are on notice. I haven’t received my Mac yet but I’m doing a ‘drive-by’ this weekend. A highly caffeinated drive-by. Yippee!

3) I’ve been told by many people that Apple’s latest OS requires much lower overhead than its Windows equivalent. Thus an equivalent Intel processor and 4 MB of RAM on a Mac screams compared to its Windows sibling. I’d like me some of that.

So there you go. Now, if you look at this post and conclude, “This guy is simply trying to rationalize spending a bucket load of money on a depreciating asset,” I won’t correct you. But I hope to have some fun along the way. And save a LOT of time.

A Little Bit of Revolution and a Lot of Passion

In the “Don’t tell Me It Can’t Be done!” camp comes Revolution Foods, which is aiming to bring healthy wholesome, whole foods lunches to school kids for less than $3 per meal. I’m sure you’ve heard murmurings from companies like these before. But you may not have seen companies with both the street cred and passion this management team appears to bring. The fact they recently garnered some primo “ink” in USA Today doesn’t hurt either.

Girl Scout cookies OUT. Revolution Foods IN.

Great Quotes

I’m a sucker for great quotes. Sure, Twitter is turning into a giant inspirational quote machine thanks to a growing quadron of automated tweeters. Yet there is still some good stuff out there.

But for anyone who regularly works out at LA Fitness (I do not–there are none in my area), they’ll likely run into this large wall poster, which I love.

A Day to be Thankful

Today is a day to be thankful, to be grateful for all the wonderful things in your life.

This morning I woke up very early, went to the gym, got a fantastic workout, took a few very deep post-workout breaths, and then, as I was arriving back at my mother’s house in South Florida, I had a very profound thought of gratitude that I’d like to share with you now.

I said, “Today, I am very thankful that I am not a turkey.”

So to speak….Happy Thanksgiving!

Great Leadership Lessons, Including Fewer Rules

Because I am most definitely into personal development, I’m absolutely more impressionable than the average bear. Be that as it may, this Q&A with William D. Green, Chairman and CEO of Accenture, is outstanding–a true keeper.

Here a few great quotes:

“It isn’t how many degrees you have. It’s what you can do…What that says is, it doesn’t matter what you look like, what you talk like, where you went to school, where you came from, any of that stuff. What matters is what you’re capable of.”

“…there are three things that matter. The first is competence — just being good at what you do, whatever it is, and focusing on the job you have, not on the job you think you want to have. The second one is confidence. People want to know what you think. So you have to have enough desirable self-confidence to articulate a point of view. The third thing is caring. Nothing today is about one individual. This is all about the team, and in the end, this is about giving a damn about your customers, your company, the people around you, and recognizing that the people around you are the ones who make you look good.”

“What critical behavior interviewing does is get at people’s character, and you get to see where work fits in their value system, where pride fits in their value system, where making hard decisions or sacrificing fits in their value system. I mean, you sacrifice and you’re a victim, or you sacrifice because it’s the right thing to do and you have pride in it. Huge difference. Simple thing. Huge difference.”

Great stuff! (Have I written the word “great” enough in this post?) Read the whole interview here.

What Do I Like? Learning Stuff I Didn’t Know