Personal

16 Things (I hope to pass on to my kids)...

Gerry Heidenreich — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 06:30:28 GMT

This one is for my girls: The following is a short (and incomprehensive) list of thoughts and ideas that I hope I am passing on to them (It's hard to tell, once you're in the trenches). They are all based on my own personal experiences, and are listed in no particular order:

Note, I consider these above and beyond the usual things like being financially responsible, and looking both ways before crossing the street, etc...

Follow what you love. It will naturally balance out the rough parts through life, and could give you a head-start in your education and career.
[Steve Jobs 'Find What You Love']

Accept and embrace reality, the good and the bad. Practice thinking about experiences from a neutral perspective. Question your own assertions, consider the opposing perspective, learn about and avoid confirmation bias, as well as the other cognitive biases in human nature.
[Critical Thinking]
[List of Cognitive Biases]

Let nature humble you. Appreciate the grandeur in storms and mountains.
[Powers of 10]

Learn how you learn, and exploit it as early in life as possible.
[The 3 Types of Learners]

"Why?" is the 2nd most beautiful question you can ask. Understanding causality in the behavior of others, yourself, and of everything around you leads to a fundamental understanding of the world that pays big returns throughout your life.
[Richard Hamming 'You And Your Research']

"How?" is the most beautiful question you can ask. Complex systems are all around us, like the weather, our economy, the internet, the language we speak, and the cells in our body. These systems are much greater than the sum of the parts they're composed of. Try to think about the fundamental parts, and appreciate the beauty in emergence and synchronicity.
[Emergence 1 of 2], [Emergence 2 of 2]
[Synchronicity] [Scale Free Network Images]

Accept and embrace your imperfections and shortcomings. Work to improve or eliminate them, but never pity yourself for them.
[Self Actualization]

Don't judge others. Appreciate the imperfections and shortcomings of others, as well as your own. Remember that the things that guide them: their circumstances, experiences, physiology, and beliefs are very different than yours.
[ZenHabits: 'A Simple Method to Avoid Being Judgmental']

Don't be manipulated or controlled. Marketing is the science of manipulating you, from billboards, commercials, to all other forms of advertising. There are people that are very good at controlling the actions of others for their own benefit. The earlier you learn to recognize these people and circumstances, the sooner you will be truly independent.
[pickthebrain.com: 5 Ways to Develop Independent Thought]

Help people. If you see someone in distress, help them as if they were your child or loved one.
[World Vision Amazon.co.uk]

Always be improving. Your result is a success or a lesson, but never a failure. Remember your lessons as stories that you can share with others. These stories hold more value, and are more humbling than those of your successes.
[Lifelong Learning]

Get out of your comfort zone. Read a difficult book. Listen to different styles of music. Learn to cook a different kind of food. Speak to a group of people. Jump at opportunities, regardless of how far fetched they seem.
[Evolving Times: '51 Ways to Expand Your Comfort Zone]

Contribute. Join or start a community. Volunteer your skills and time somewhere.
[GiveCamp.org]

Don't be weakened by regret and guilt. These two emotions can wreak havoc on your mind. Learn from your experiences then put them behind you, learn to accept that "it is what it is." You have control over the present as long as you are paying attention to it.

Labels are full of assumptions. 'Republican', 'bi-polar', 'organic', 'nerd/prep/jock'... Labels are shortcuts. They are used as a way to organize things and identify patterns. They increase the amount of information in language, but they also introduce assumptions that go with them. Be aware that labels are only generalizations, and that the implications that go with them may not be true.

Be conservative in what you send, but liberal in what you receive. Let people mis-speak, consider their intent before you assume the worst about their choice in words. Help them out of the hole they're digging. Conversely, there are a lot of sensitive people out there... think carefully before opening your mouth. This principle provides recognized and celebrated benefits in technology, and it holds the same value when applied to people.
[Postel's Robustness Principle]

If The John Galts Spoke Like Steve Jobs

Gerry Heidenreich — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:21:32 GMT

1. I would buy into Brandstreaming (uhhh... if they let the JG-types out of their caves to do some streaming). [Pheedo coins the term] [RWW gives it some love] [Twitter chatter]

2. Mesh [clients/"platform experiences"] could see some serious adoption among regular people, many of which have more than 1 pc, iPhones, Blackberries, Windows Mobiles, and Macs in the family. [Mesh blog] [LiveSide.net blog]

3. Atlas Shrugged would only be 1140 pages and we would all be objectivists. [Amazon, highly recommended] [Objectivism wikipedia]

10 Years!

Gerry Heidenreich — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:29:38 GMT

And here's to 60 more... I love you Jeanne.

They're coming right for us!

Gerry Heidenreich — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:18:34 GMT

Milwaukee news has been going on about cougar sightings, like this one from about a month ago... Lists of local cougar-related news are here and here.

From that article: "According to the DNR, the last known wild cougars in Wisconsin disappeared in the early 20th century."

Today (via Guy Kawasaki on Twitter), a 150lb cougar was shot and killed just south of here, in Chicago.

From the Gospel of Wikipedia:

... large male territories of ...58 to 386 sq mi...

Male ranges may include or overlap with those of females but, at least where studied, not with those of other males...

Cougar is also known as puma, mountain lion, or panther...

I wonder how likely it is that it's the same one...

My thoughts went, "Why did they kill it? Chicago cops should have tranquilizers", which triggers the segue to:
Peppers: She's a beauty, ain't she?
Frank: Yeah, what kind of gun is this?
Peppers: It's a tranquilizer gun. If any of these little f***ers decide to freak out on the kids, I get to take them down. Ain't that right?
Peppers: [yank's on the mule's reigns]
Peppers: Oh, what? That's what I thought. Shut up.
[Frank cocks the gun]
Peppers: Hey, hey. Careful with that. That's the most powerful tranq gun on the market. Got her in Mexico.
Frank: Cool.
Peppers: Yeah, it is cool. They say it can puncture the skin of a rhino from...
Frank: [Frank shoots himself in the neck with the dart]
Peppers: YES! That's awesome!
Frank: What?
Peppers: You just took one in the jugular, man.
Frank: What? I did.
[feeling his neck]
Peppers: YES!
Frank: Oh my god. Is this bad? Is this bad?
Peppers: You better pull that s**t out man. That s**t is not cool.
Frank: Wait. What? Pull what out?
Peppers: You got a f***ing dart in your neck man.
Frank: [laughing] You're... you're crazy man. I like you, but you're crazy.
[imdb old school quotes]

Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Business

Gerry Heidenreich — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:15:21 GMT

The land of opportunity, land of the free. The land of 40 million children between the ages of 5 and 15. The land where 85% of those children go to public schools [1]. 34,000,000 creative, open, trusting, impressionable minds with little or no education in business or financial responsibility.

There is something that occurs in a small percentage of these children. It is unfortunate, in this country, that it is such a small percentage. It is also unfortunate that by the time it happens, they are no longer children. They get the itch. It is opportunity. It begins with an idea, and often ends in a lesson. Whether it is the wrong ideas or the wrong execution, these lessons can be expensive. The expense is some combination of money, reputation, and time. The amount of this expense is proportional to the age of the recipient. The younger the student, the lesser the expense, and the easier the recovery.

Business is not about calculus, sociology, or accounting. For that matter, it is not about reading, writing, or arithmetic. In fact, it adds context to every other aspect of education. Math now has a purpose. Reading, writing, and typing provide communication skills that can be put into real practice. It is engaging, like a child's game. There are risks and rewards, tactics and strategies, successes and lessons. There are no prerequisites to learning these things. The concepts are as effective to a grade schooler as they are to a college student. It is easy to teach that business is about the exchange of money, for goods, services, and information, in a mutually beneficial transaction. It is easy to describe demographics, product positioning, reputation, relationships, profit, expenses, and negotiation in simple terms.

Twenty years ago, our trial-by-fire was the Lemonade Stand. Over a couple summer days, we tossed some lemonade together and sold it for a quarter a cup. The new Lemonade Stand is online. Services like Ebay and Amazon, Lulu.com and Google's AdSense provide an inexpensive, flexible point of entry into business. With a little guidance, any child could set up an account and start selling online.

In the land of the American Dream, opportunity is everywhere. Unfortunately, most people are oblivious to it. I strongly believe that it is our obligation to our children and our country to illuminate the young minds in the ways of business and financial responsibility.

[1] U.S. Census Bureau, http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/education/004214.html

Noun-Verbing!

Gerry Heidenreich — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 13:28:11 GMT

In the spirit of my last 2 posts... things are too serious around here, and it's bugging me...

Deeper In .Net 2008, 7AM tomorrow, Marriott in Waukesha, www.wi-ineta.org for details!

The headline to this video is the best part: Biker Nails A Perfect 380. Been there... concussions, dislocations and all... good stuff. They should have kept rolling, because it's not funny until he gets up and walks away from it.

life hard to any - concept album meme...

Gerry Heidenreich — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 16:26:33 GMT

It was the randomness that sucked me in... I had to try this out.

Found this on Brownie's site, who found it on Jeff's game blog.

Band: Fisterra
Quote: "Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any." - Ralph Waldo Emerson [link]

Back???

Gerry Heidenreich — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 01:52:55 GMT

I had to bring the blog down because the spam was killing me, and I couldn't find the time to upgrade to SubText until now.

The upgrade was a pain in the neck, went smoother after deleting over 11,000 comments I didn't need anymore.

Links referencing the site still work, syndication works...

Strange path issue I have to deal with, and I need to get a good skin going, but I'm happy to be up again.

Webkinz, Netiquette 101

Gerry Heidenreich — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 22:02:00 GMT

So my girls are loving Webkinz, the latest pre-adolescent internet phenomenon. They each have some animals, and are always asking if they can jump on to play. Most play entails competitive games with other anonymous webkinzers for webkinz cash, and spend the cash on cool things for their “house”. Gambling, materialism, and consumerism for the youngsters... We used to have to use our imaginations for those things.

Anyway, my younger, is trying to sneak into the older one's account, because she “knows how to make a bunch of money real fast.” I had to explain that logging into someone else's account is bad manners... thought it was funny.

My Nerdian Archetype

Gerry Heidenreich — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 18:14:00 GMT

Had to try this one out...

The test can be found here. The dork metrics are inaccurate... I'm way more dorky than 3%. Also.. I read all of The Odyssey, The Prince, and Atlas Shrugged, cover-to-cover... that should put my Literature at least over 50%.