Breaking Habits

Bad or otherwise...

J. Wentworth was quoted in this posting Breaking Bad Habits at Cultivating Greatness

Making Changes Once you start, do everything you can to help yourself succeed: * Break your goal into several manageable steps so you can enjoy small victories along the way. * Develop new routines and activities to avoid falling into old traps. * Keep track of your progress. * Seek professional help and support groups if you feel the need. * Reward yourself for your hard work!It took time to develop your bad habit, it will take time to stop it. If you look for overnight success, you will likely be discouraged. Some days will be easier than others. If you slip up, don’t let that keep you from trying again.

All very sound advise but the post seems to have overlooked one very important part of the actual process...

As an individual who has worked through a number of 'bad habits' as well as a number of 'Ok habits' I can speak from personal experience. As an individual who has lead recovery programs and worked closely with many others who are dealing with habits I feel that I can speak from applied experience.

Breaking habits, good or bad, is a matter of stopping a behavior, plain and simple. Your feelings, fears, tensions, angst, frustration may contribute to the difficulty but they must be dealt with separately. If you want to quit smoking; just stop. And continue to stopping until you have actually quit. Here is the BIG RUDE SURPRISE - after you have stopped the smoking behavior you will still have all of your feelings, fears, tensions, angst, frustration to deal with.

So, why let all of those 'things' interfere with the cessation of a behavior. Don't allow those things to be the road block in the path to achieving your desired results. Don't choose to honor those 'things' over the clearly defined objective you have set for yourself. Just stop smoking - then address the next issue on the list.

Got a call...

Got a call from the Head Bum... seems there is a one show revival of Rent-a-Bums for Gary Allan tomorrow night. So 11:AM tomorrow we will load in the show.

It seems he is a popular Hat, Buckle and Boots entertainers with a hot number: 'A Feelin' Like That' ... from his album 'Tough All Over'.

He must be really really famous because I don't know anything he has done.

Preview: Slack 11 and the 2.6 Kernel

I mentioned that I enjoy pulp fiction, I likened it to television without the commercials. Well, I just finished Louis L'Amour's 'Tucker'. It is a coming of age novel story - Shell Tucker starts out a know-it-all boy and turns into a mature savvy young man. Classic L'Amour.

When he was interviewed L'Amour said he could write anywhere, anytime. Give him a portable typewriter and he could write in the middle of Hollywood boulevard. Part of it was his simple straight forward style. Part of it was his love of telling a good story. Part of it was writing about something he believed in deeply.

I don't think L'Amour believed in the stories that he made up. I believe he was a man who clearly knew fact from fiction. He did however believe in the values represented in his stories. Clearly he loved the hero, rough around the edges, who stood for Honor, Truth, Compassion and Commitment. He wrote simple action-adventure storys that show us what we can expect from ourselves if we hold to our core values.

Did I mention that the man just loved to write.

So where is this preview?

Slack 11 and the 2.6 Kernel - sounds like the title of an action-adventure thriller, sort of like Ocean's 11 and the Temple of Doom. Now that is a scary movie prospect.

The preview? It is coming to a blog near you. Watch your local papers for times and dates.

The [Short] J Train

John Dodds offers this 'minifesto' which I distilled yet again in red. While not as pioneering as the original M'festos John does brings to the fore a number of important points... My favorite is #9 - less because it about selling but more because it acknowledges what the customer is really all about; buying.

I think number 8 brings the matter into very clear focus - keep coming back to your customers. Get to know them, return to their values, come back to their successes with your product. Keep coming back.

The J Train (A Marketing 2.0 Minifesto).

1. All Markets Are Up For Grabs. Focus: Re-frame the discussion.
   
   
2. Difference Not Differentiation. Minimize the behavioral change you demand.
   
   
3. Don't Disappoint. An informed customer is your best promotion.
   
4. 
   
5. Make Your Marketing Sociable. Build genuine relationships with potential customers.
   
   
6. Interaction Requires Iteration. Community, co-operation and co-creation.
   
   
7. See The Wood For The Trees. Find out what [your customers] are like.
   
   
8. Relate, Renew and Reinvent. You must keep coming back to your customers.
   
   
9. Don't Forget To Sell. Sell - your customers are interested in buying.
   
   
10. Le ROI Est Mort. ROI will rise as your engagement [discussion] intensifies.
    
    
11. Marketing Is Not A Department. It is everybody's job.

The J train that I used to ride from lower Manhattan out to JFK is synonomous for me with expanding horizons and (with its echoes of those trains called clue and hugh) it seemed an aptly contrived title for my rough draft minifesto on this evolving thing we call marketing 2.0.

posted by john dodds @ 2:10 AM

I'm tired... And the good news!

This has been one of those days... I am tired.

And the good news is....(* Drum roll please *)

Performancing Firefox posted correctly to beta.blogspot.com on the very first try!

Oh yeah! Well done Performancing.

powered by performancing firefox

My neighbor's obnoxious sodium vapor street light

Singapore teen charged with stealing wireless internet access

Let me state for the record that stealing is wrong.

Now, lets examine the real nature of the circumstance...

My neighbor put up one of those obnoxious sodium vapor street lights on a pole that is close to my property. I will readily acknowledge that he is completely within his right to do so. Even if the light is an obnoxious eyesore. But here is the point of my rant...

Can my neighbor stop me from using the light emitted from his obnoxious street light? Hardly. He cannot control where the light goes. So I can sit out in my yard in the middle of the night and read the paper using his light if I want to...and he cannot stop me. Can my neighbor stop me from using the deterrent effect of a street light, his street ligtht, to reduce the possibility of crime in my neighborhood?

If my neighbor didn't want me to use his street light then he better direct it specifically on to his property. Or he should set the light to shine at a frequency that only he can see. Or he should turn the light off when he is not using it. Or...

My wifi network? Protected with a shared WEP key? Well, yeah... so what is your point?

I need to get a life...

I was curious so I signed up at Second Life. Learned to walk, talk and fly. Managed to stumble and tumble around for a while and then it hit me...like a ton of virtual bricks... allow me to elucidate...

05:00 Pager goes off - sent by my primary network management system - "Wake up call." Serves as my programmable alarm clock _and_ tests the paging system.

05:30ish...
First thing in the morning I usually check my PDA for my daily schedule and then wifi for my gMail. A quick read of the gNews followed by a check of my gReader feeds... kiss my lovely wife (the Saint) and then dropping teenagers off at highschool. Yes, I did remember my laptop, my cell phone, my PDA and my pager, thank you very much... "Make sure you e-mail me if your mother is going to pick you up after school."

07:00ish
Visual check of the Simplex Fire Alarm system on my way across the lobby, green is good. Check the snail mail. Checking for 'red-light' messages on printers, fax machines and copiers as I wind through the office. Through two locked doors to access my office and the network operations center.

Check the status of the network. Hobbit reporting which systems are on-line, which have system messages, which PCs have recently been rebooted. Hobbit also displays Server status - CPU loads, disk utilization, tcp connections and more. MRTG generates traffic graphs for key network connections. This big peak means the back-ups ran on schedule last night. This long sustained peak means that Sally is trying to send Halloween pictures to her sister again.

Fire up gReader on my main Slackware system (v.11 running KDE 3.5, tight) start in on the professional blogs...Trade Slicks (magazines) for the 21st century. Dock the laptop and fire it up... corporate e-mail - good the spam filter is working. Load the CCTV application - double check that all the cameras are on-line, good. Generate the Internet proxy report for last week and send a copy to the boss.

07:25 Pager goes off - sent by secondary network management system, "Morning staff meeting." Snag my first cup of office coffee then off to the morning briefing...

I need to get a life...yeah right, just what I need, a Second Life.

New Business Computers

Business computing is not evolving as fast as the technology of PCs.

Take Joe Clerical for instance. An evaluation of his PC usage shows that he spends 10-15 minutes per day on company related e-mail. He works with an Access based program (front end for an SQL database) for 4.75 hours and he is allowed to surf the Internet on his breaks (2 x 15 min.) and lunch half-hour.

Were it not for the advances Microsoft has made with Active Directory and Domain management Joe might still be using Windows NT on a Pentium I. It is very difficult from a business perspective to reconcile buying Joe a new PC complete with OS and a new Office suite when his job requirements have not changed in the past four plus years.

Perhaps Microsoft should take a long hard look at their B-to-B model. By forcing upgrades they are pushing business folks to the very edge of their patience. This could be particularly dangerous when the competition, albeit immature and scattered, cost so very little by comparison.