Sarah had her wild horse reined in. She had to let it go to free herself.
Mine was let loose. It was too free. I must rein it in to gain control. I let left the gate open because I resented being cooped up. Being controlled.
It cost me a lot.
Today’s my birthday.
According to Wikipedia December comes from the latin “decem” which means ten. December was the tenth month in the Roman calendar.
This month seems to be bringing a couple of changes.
First, we had to shut down our coffee shop, Spro, only after 5 months of operations. Things didn’t go as we expected. I had high expectations and they were hardly met. Oh, they did say we were the best coffee in the city but no one came.
Coffee just is not good enough.
My brother feels the loss more than I do. And why not, he invested a lot of time and his money on the coffee shop.
I learned a lot and I might blog about it soon.
Second, I’ve submitted my resignation. Nothing major, right? Not if you consider the fact that I don’t have a job to plop on to after I’m done with my current job. That’s right. No job waiting for me after February 2008.
Stupid? Yes it is. My boss thinks so, too.
I learned too late that one essential ingredient in quitting is a good exit and another good entrance. In my case, I botched up both.
I did a really stupid exit and I don’t even have a new door to stick my head in. Well, there’s is that business venture that some of my friends are thinking of but that really won’t bring home the bacon for me.
I have been considering going back into residency training and perhaps the time I have off will let me prepare for it.
Been telling myself that I’m just looking for my niche. I wonder how much more bullshit from me I can take.
Third, I’ve almost entirely stopped blogging except for a few snippets here and there, mostly here. I’ve decided that I really am not cut out for blogging and it is eating a lot of my time and effort. Maybe I’ll get delusional again soon and think that I may after all be one heck of a writer. Til then, no more blogging for me.
Fourth, I’m trimming the fat off my social networking particularly Facebook. It is a time waster and as I type I am deleting apps on Facebook already. Maybe the incident at Warbook left a bad taste in my mouth. Then again, perhaps the closing down of Spro, quitting and the ugly realization that I’m a fucktard of a blogger made me realize what a time sink Facebook is.
That’s it. Go ahead. Rationalize.
This is a disturbing trend for me.
Exactly two years ago I also decided to quit my Radiology residency. It was for health reasons. My neck was killing me. Also I was a bit under stressed then. I did have fun in Radiology. I was good training. That’s why I’m considering it along with Neurology as the specialties of choice if I do go back to training.
But that time I had a job waiting for me. Or so I thought. Things didn’t actually go according to plan but I did manage to get the job I’m currently in. I’ve learned a lot from my boss and I owe her a debt of gratitude.
Ends here. Ran out juice.
It’s easy to criticize or complain. We do this every now and then.We complain about services, personnel or food that does not meet are requirements or standards what we have placed on the establishment or business.But when was the last time you complimented someone for a job well done? Giving compliments is much harder than criticizing it seems to me.Businesses should not only make it easy not only in receiving complaints but in getting compliments, too.Damn, I wish I’d Thought of That has tips on how to make it easier for customer to give compliments to your business and your crew.
- Post customer comments on an “Employee Thank You” wall. Put slips of paper, pencils, and thumbtacks next to it.
- Let customers vote on Employee of the Month.
- Add a PROMINENT feedback form on your site.
- Re-word your post-purchase surveys to explicitly ask for free-form feedback. You’re not going to get praise from a multiple-choice question.
Right now I feel everyone’s thinking I’m a traitor. A turncoat. Benedict Arnold.
I feel like they are thinking that I have jumped shipped. Abandoned them. Betrayed them.
I’m sorry.
I feel I have been betrayed first.
First off, the decision to quit had nothing to do with other people’s decision or urgings. I quit because I feel I am no longer able to carry out the capacity that I willingly too charge of. I feel I am no longer an asset to the company and to the people in it.
What pushed me over the edge is I no longer am sure what direction everyone was heading.
When the shipped first left port everyone had the vision. Wait. I do not want to be so presumptuous as to think I know what everyone was aiming for.
My vision was to provide the best education. The best training so as to produce one of the best in the industry.
I was too ambitious. I was too proud. I was too ignorant.
Let me ask forgiveness for overreaching. For thinking I could do all that I imagine I could do.
However, I felt that the search for excellence, for quality was compromised because the company had to keep afloat.
I understand that in order for a company to keep going it needs to have its fuel and the fuel is money.
So we took them in. We took them in because we thought they could make it. But we also took them in because we needed to.
What was not readily apparent to most was that every one was not made to cut it. Just like not everyone is suited to become an engineer or an astronaut or a designer; not everyone was made to do this job.
We made them think that they could do it; that anyone can do it.
And I resented that.
I don’t like lying to people, especially not when it comes to their future.
Sounds like I am washing my hands. Perhaps I am. Perhaps this is to cover my obvious inadequacy when it comes to the task at hand.
But realize that it pains me to see people fail. Pains me to see them struggle but later on realize they aren’t not made for the job at hand. All those time and money, wasted.
I am leaving under my own volition. It is my own decision based on the fact that I am no longer able to perform at the 100% I expect of myself. I am no longer able to give the students that instruction that they rightly deserve.
I am a traitor. I have abandoned everyone.
I am doing this out of my insecurity, out of my laziness.
More importantly though, I am doing this because I felt betrayed. We planned to stand for quality but we slipped.
I see this as my fault. I was thinking of quality above else. But how can I deliver quality when I myself do not know its meaning or implication.
Traitor. Failure.
I’m giving up all of these so that they can have a better chance at this than I could ever offer them.
According to McAfee’s report “What’s In A Name: The State of Typo-Squatting 2007” typo-squatting is
the practice of registering domains using common misspellings of popular brands, products and people in order to profit from consumer typing errors.
An example of typo-squatting is misspelling www.youtube.com to www.yuotube.com or www.outube.com.
Typo-squatting is dependent of on errors such as swapping of characters, replacing or inserting of characters, deleting of characters and removing the dot between “www” and the domain.
What surprised me was you’d think the companies that fall prey to this would not tolerate such practices. It turns out that companies like Microsoft are advertising on these squatters.
Find out more about this at McAfee.com.
If you are you’re most likely to choose MySpace over Facebook.
Read/WriteWeb posted about research faberNovel Consulting research paper that showed Facebook as being “reality identity” while MySpace as being “fantasized identity”.
Another difference between the two social networking sites is that Facebook allows users to have a “Dialog space” wherein users can interact with other users thru applications. MySpace has been labeled as “Monolog space” where the applications are limited to personal space. However, with MySpace joining in the OpenSocial things might just change.
The research also looked into other social networking sites such as Flickr, LinkedIn, and Xing.
faberNovel’s research paper “Social Networking websites:best practices from leading services” can be downloaded here.
MacBreak Weekly 68 was the most awful, most boring episode ever.
The entire first twenty minutes of the show was dominated by Andy Ihnatko’s long winded, tiresome rave about Amazon’s Kindle.
I didn’t listen to entire first one-third of the show.
I couldn’t. It was too painful. I wasn’t able to stand Mr. Ihnatko’s mind-numbing monologue about the Kindle during the first two minutes. I had to fast-forward.
Don’t get me wrong. I like reading Mr. Ihnatko when he writes for either the Chicago Sun Times or MacWorld. I also enjoy listening to him other podcasts like the MacNotables. He is funny and articulate and knowledgeable. If I were having problems with my Mac and I was given the power to call anybody, I’d pick him.
But on MacBreak Weekly 68 he was being intolerable. Well, for the first twenty minutes, that is.
Maybe I’m not being fair here. Things for the past few weeks have stressed me out and there hasn’t been much Mac related news lately.
But I did feel sorry for Christopher Breen and Brent Larson. They had to sit in the sidelines while Ihnatko ranted.
If I a, to rate this MacBreak Weekly episode I’d give this 0.5 out of 10.
My brother wants an external drive and he wants it NOW. There has been a drought in 320GB IDE drives here and he needs an external drive for Time Machine. So he told me this morning to go online and find the best deals in external hard drives.Problem is, I don’t know much about hunting the best deals on the net.It was Twitter to the rescue.Chris Pirillo twittered a link to his blog about online shopping.What I got from his blog post was ClayValet (“We shop for you™”), an online shopping service. I was very intrigued.I signed up and asked help for finding the “most affordable 300 to 500GB external hard drive preferably with Firewire 400 interface.”I will have my answer back in a couple of hours. The service does limit the number of requests to five per week.How does this it work? According to ClayValet the service works by sending a request to real people.
They will research it on various shopping sites and recommend a good product for you.
The result of my query will be emailed to me.I’ll post the results later.
Lewis Green has given me something to think about if I’m ever going to go into another venture (this time I’ll do it by myself).The premise is that Americans (and perhaps other people as well) want to have business experiences that will make them happy. Green defines “happiness’ in his book Lead With Your Heart
- Business is people-centered. People come before profit in every instance.
- Its values talk to making the world a better place to live and work.
- Business understands the wants, needs, and desires of it employees and its customers.
- It creates products, services, value, prices, and most important, experiences that meet or exceed people’s wants, needs, and desires.
I hope I’ll have these four things etched in my mind the next time.
I found this on a tweet by Guy Kawasaki on Twitter. This Blip.tv video is a keynote by Marco Montenegro about “Italian myths about Internet and Web 2.0 opportunities.”There are two things of interest here:
- Montenegro pulled off one very cool keynote and;
- From the presentation, what I’m getting is Italians are afraid of the internet or they don’t really use it much. Surprising since I consider Italy as an advanced nation just like most of Europe.
Enjoy the presentation. I hope you find it as intriguing, entertaining and informative as I did.
