I Like Dynamic

I have been working with a new advertising agency for the last few months and I have come to realize that I really like dynamic designs. I don't like printed materials that look static. I want to see movement conveyed in the design and any photography that is used. I just feel that static-looking designs are dated.

The problem is that I am having trouble communicating this to my agency. I don't have all of the answers for how they can achieve the look I desire. I expect them to come up with the ideas for that part of the work. I just want them to be a little more creative with their designs.

I am creative enough and involved enough in the work that is created for my company that I think I can be a pain for an advertising agency. I may be difficult to work with because I have somewhat of a vision of what I am looking for and I definitely know what I like and dislike. I always wanted to be an advertising executive because I feel that I have good taste. I can make good decisions on what is a good design.

This is what makes me a bad customer for a graphic designer or advertising agency. I can't change, but I can work on better communicating my thoughts with the people I work with. That is my challenge.

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The Resistance

Linchpin is a great book full of some really good insights. I have already found myself talking about many of the points in the book. Just last night The Queen and I were talking about education and whether it is worth it for her to pursue a master's degree at this point. I told her that she needs to fight the resistance and get over her anxiety and do what she wants to do.

Seth focuses a lot of time in the book talking about the resistance. Some of what he says is a little counter-intuitive, but once you have a chance to sit back and digest it it becomes a little bit easier to understand. The resistance is what your lizard brain constantly does to try to protect you. It keeps making excuses for you to not do the things you want to do. It convinces you that you will fail if you try, therefore you should just not try. It is trying to protect you from this failure.

As I think back, I encounter the resistance all the time. There have been many things that I have wanted to do and most of the time I give in to the resistance and just decide that I can't do those things. It is really painful to look back and realize how often this has happened to me. I have not been in total control of my decisions and this is bad.

I would like to say that now that I am aware of the resistance I will not let it control me, but as Seth points out in the book it is not that easy. You have to put yourself in uncomfortable situations. You need to think about the things the resistance is telling you. If is difficult to overcome. It takes a lot of effort, but in the long run it will pay great dividends if you can overcome the resistance. I need to make a conscious effort to overcome the resistance before it is too late.

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Fat & Happy

I will admit it. My company got fat and happy. Management, including myself, got complacent. We let our guard down and now we are paying the price for our mistakes. My company is going through a rough patch. This trouble came to us much later than most companies because we had done a fairly good job before the recession. But we are dealing with it now.

Within the last few weeks we have laid off a hand full of employees. Our overhead is increasing and we are struggling to ship product. The layoff was the right thing to do to help our overhead issue and it should not affect our ability to ship product. It is just a minor readjustment that was long overdue.

Sometimes a company has to make the tough decisions. When times are good, companies sometimes put these decisions off. This is a really bad thing. It is important to continue to make the tough decisions even when times are good. We did not do ourselves any favors by putting these decisions off. If an employee is not carying their weight you need to cut them loose. A company cannot afford to absorb the overhead of an unproductive employee.

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Contemplating My Life

Two things this past week have made me think about my life. On Sunday we went to my Uncle's house because another Uncle and Aunt were in town from Oklahoma. Last night we visited one of The Queen's co-worker's children in the hospital. These two things have made me think about my life and life in general.

The visit to my Uncle's house was something I really wanted to do. I have not been to his house in many, many years. I think I have only been there twice and he has lived there for a long time. The reason for this is that when I was still a kid a rift in the family happened. I don't know the reason to this day. All I know is that I was pretty close with my cousins and then all of the sudden we never saw them. It changed my relationship with there family forever.

Visiting their house again on Sunday really made me think about my family. Both of my parents have interesting relationships with their families. Obviously, my mother's family had the problem above with her brother's family and another problem with her sister. My father has one brother who lives locally who we only saw a few times growing up and the rest of his family lives out of state. I guess every family has those members who are a little weird or do not fit in with the rest of the family. I just started to wonder if it was my parents who were the weird ones or if it was their siblings.

We visited the hospital last night because T-Bird's co-worker's daughter had to have a heart procedure. This is the second time she has had to have it and the doctor said that it did not work this time. She will need to have open heart surgery in a little over a month. One of her arteries is smaller than it should be and is going to restrict her growth and cause some other problems unless it is corrected by surgery.

It was hard to watch a little child laying in bed with wires and tubes attached to her. From time to time she would get very frustrated that she had to lay there in bed. At one point she even started trying to pull everything off of her hand. She could not even get up to go to the bathroom and this really annoyed her. She did not want to go to the bathroom in a bed pan. She tried to get out of bed several times to go to the bathroom.

I cannot even imagine what her parents are going through thinking about the surgery that is coming up. The doctor told them that they do about fifty of these surgeries a month, but that does not ease your mind when you are in that situation. I just wish the best for everyone involved and hope that they can just enjoy life a little while they are waiting for the surgery.

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Brainstorming Change

The Queen works for a school in a low income area of town. Many of the parents of students are involved in gangs. Many parents are not home very much, so the kids are on their own a lot of the time. There is a church that is located in a an upper middle class area of town that supports the school with whatever they need. They have one person who is there every week.

This church inspires me. They really support the kids and families of this school in everything they do. If they kids need something, all the school needs to do is ask and the church does there best to get those items for the kids. For example, every year the church supplies many, if not all, of the students with back packs and school supplies. When one of the teachers started a Saturday academy for the kids, he asked the church for shirts and they provided them.

Last year The Queen had this girl in her fourth grade class who was behind in every subject. She could not read or write, but she tried really hard and wanted to learn. Everyone thought she might have some learning disabilities, so they tested her. It turned out that she did not have any disabilities, but was affected because her family moved a lot when she was younger. She was just always behind so she never learned the things she was supposed to. I really wanted to help her and mentioned it to The Queen a few times, but I never acted on it.

Last night we were sitting in one of our favorite Mexican food restaurants and I told her that the book "Linchpin" was really motivating me to do something. I told her that I would like to volunteer in an after school program at her school. We were talking about it for a while and she told me that she thought something involving computers would be good. I said that was fine, but I would like to make it very unstructured so that the kids could choose what we did.

I mentioned that it would be great if we could get a company like Apple to donate some laptops and maybe a company like Canon could donate some cameras. We could then have weekly assignments for the kids to look for. They could find their own solutions to problems like intersecting lines. I think it would teach them to look at their world in a different way. It would show them that beauty can even be found in their own neighborhood. I got really excited about this idea. Now all I have to do is find some way to get some laptops and cameras so I can move forward with this idea. I think this is too much to ask of the church.

I also mentioned to T-Bird that we can't rely on teachers alone to run after school activities for the kids. We need to get the community involved. We need to get local graphic artists to come in and teach the kids about art. We need to get local business people to come in and talk to them about entrepreneurship. We need to get the local college to come in and talk to them about opportunities for education. We need to try to open their eyes to the possibilities that are available to them.

Now comes the hard part.

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Am I a Linchpin?

I am reading the book "Linchpin" by Seth Godin. His writing style does not keep me riveted, but it is a fairly easy read.

The book is very interesting to me, but I am constantly wondering if I have what it takes to be indispensable. Can I be a linchpin? I think I have a lot of knowledge that makes me very valuable to my company. I just don't know if I can be a linchpin.

I don't know how to be a linchpin yet. That much I do know. I need to figure that out.

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Happy Birthday O! Wretched Mortals!

Today is the one year birthday of this blog. My first post was short and sweet. It explained why I chose the name of the blog and a few alternatives I considered. Since that time, I think this blog has changed dramatically. It was originally just an exercise while reading the book "How to Think Like Leonardo DaVinci." Now it it a blog about my thoughts on many topics.

This has been a good exercise for me. I am not usually a person who likes to share my emotions with people. I consider myself almost devoid of emotion on most occassions. This blog has allowed me to explore my inner feelings and put them out for someone else to view, or read. I have grown a lot this year and look forward to more growth in the future.

I have struggled many times over this year to keep writing regularly. Early on my goal was to write something five days a week. There were some weeks when I wrote more than five times and there were other when I struggled to write two or three times. I am going through a very rough patch now where I am lucky if I write something once or twice per week. I don't like the fact that this has happened, but I don't know how to get out of this funk yet.

I really wanted to have a nice post for the blogs one year birthday. I thought I could come up with something insightful and deep. Obviously that did not happen. Maybe I will write something great next year on the second birthday.

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Do I Need an iPad?

On our trip to LA this past weekend, we stopped by an Apple store. Meg and I were standing next to each other playing with iPads while The Queen was watching us. Meg really enjoyed using it and was already thinking about how she could use it if she had one.

I loved the interface and the size. I didn't think that the size was right before I actually got to use one, but now I think it is great. I was just trying to figure out how I could justify the purchase.

Meg was playing with it for a while before asking The Queen how much it cost. She really wanted to get one and told her that she had her own money. When The Queen told her how much it cost she said that she needs to count her change. I did not have the heart to tell her she did not have enough money. Instead I told her that there was no need for her to buy one. I told her that if I buy one, she can rent it from me for fifty dollars an hour. She counter offered one dollar per hour. I countered back with twenty dollars per hour and told her that I could not pay for it at the rate of one dollar per hour. She agreed.

I was not being serious with her, but obviously she was really thinking about it. She valued it enough to agree to pay me twenty dollars per hour for using it. Wow! She really wants an iPad. Now I just need to be able to justify it in my mind.

So far, the three major downfalls in my mind are that it does not play PowerPoint presentations, it does not have any ports other than the standard iPod/iPhone dock connector and that it has to be synced with a computer. I think it should be a stand alone device with the necessary USB, firewire and HDMI ports.

I searched a lot this week to see if there was an easy way to convert a PowerPoint presentation to play on the iPad. My presentation has embedded video, so it is not just a bunch of static slides. This makes it much more difficult to convert. I guess I will just have to keep on searching.

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My Independent MBA

I have been thinking a lot lately about my reading list. As I have mentioned before, it is my goal to read one book every month this year. I started to slip while I was reading "The Toyota Way," but I am back on schedule after taking a few trips in June. I got a lot of reading done on my flights to the Midwest and Mexico.

Last week while I was driving back from Los Angeles I started thinking about my reading this year being the first year of my own personal MBA. I have been very open-minded while putting together my reading list and while reading the books themselves. I am focused on learning new ideas that I can implement in my own life. My reading has already been put to use in my career.

I have given a lot of advice to some of my coworkers ranging from lean techniques I learned from Toyota to people management skills I learned from "Delivering Happiness." I even dispensed some advice to my sister last night about making sure your employees are happy. She doesn't think that is her job, so I was trying to show her how valuable it can be.

Last month I finished reading "Rework" and "Delivering Happiness." I have now moved on to "Linchpin" by Seth Godin and I am enjoying it so far. The Queen actually picked it up while we were in Los Angeles and we had a nice conversation about the book on our drive home.

I am going to put a lot more thought into the rest of my reading list for this year to maximize its value. I really want to learn as much as I can from many different sources. Next year will just be my second year of my independent MBA studies.

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Reunion in Los Angeles

The Queen, Meg and I took her dad to LAX for his trip to Tzintzuntzan. Now that both of The Queen's grandparents have passed away, I expected her parents trips to Mexico to stopy. They proved me wrong and are spending the summer in Mexico again this year. I guess they are just creatures of habit.

A few weeks ago I learned that a few of my college friends who live in the bay area were heading down to Los Angeles for the Fourth of July weekend. They were planning to spend the weekend with another college friend and her family. I thought it might be nice to visit all of them for the weekend since The Queen and I had not seen them for about six years. I persuaded The Queen's dad to make his trip work with this trip.

My friend Kelly's family recently purchased a condo near downtown Los Angeles at the corner of Wilshire and Western, directly across the street from the Wiltern Theater. She offered for us to stay at her condo, but we decided to get a hotel instead. I found a pretty good rate at the Wilshire Plaza hotel. It was just down the street from her condo and the reviews were not too bad, so I booked it. When I was booking it online I got a good price, then as soon as I booked it my confirmation showed a price almost fifty dollars higher in price. I had to call them to get the rate corrected. They told me that the price was correct, but that I should send them and email. I did and a few hours later they adjusted my rate back to the correct rate.

We ended up having The Queen's dad drive to the airport in his Caddy. We just thought that he would be more comforatable in it than in my Prius. After dropping him off at the Crowne Plaza, we headed to the hotel to check in. The hotel was in a pretty good area and looked good from the outside. We we got into the lobby, I was pleasantly surprised. It look pretty nice. We checked in and headed to the elevator. The room I booked was supposed to be a "view" room, so when we got to the sixth floor I could not wait to show Meg the Hollywood hills.

The room key did not work at first. It took several times sliding the card in and out before the door finally unlocked. I opened the door and was very dissappointed. The carpet was stained and in horrible shape. I walked in and looked around and discovered that one of the access panels in the ceiling was hanging down and that the ceiling had a large water stain. I pulled back the drapes to see the view and got a view of the building next door and a slight glimpse of the Hollywood hills. I was not very happy at all, but we did not have time to complain.

We got ready and headed over to Kelly's condo. We got there and had to call to the reception desk to get into the parking garage. We headed up to the reception desk. From there we had to be escorted to another elevator and out to the pool deck. We walked across and finally saw our friends in the function room. It was great to see them all and meet a lot of new people. Kelly and her husband were in the pool with their two daughters, so we walked out there to say hi. We talked a while and then went back in to catch up.

I found out that my college room mate is still living in Oakland and now has a son and a daughter. One of my other college friends who most people thought was gay is now married with a fifteen month old son. The other two friends I saw on the trip are still single with no marriage in sight.

We hung out and talked most of the evening and then we started playing Trivial Pursuit. I have never been good at that game. The Queen and I struggled along and Meg really started to get bored. We played a little longer before deciding to go back to our hotel.

I initially thought that my friends had all changed a lot. After thinking about it some more, I guess I am the one who has changed. They were still doing everything that we did when we used to spend a lot of time together back in college and after we graduated. I guess I just find it boring now. They are really into movies and TV shows, just like they were then. I just don't have the patience for those discussions anymore since I don't watch many movies or TV show.

I really need to give them another shot in a smaller gathering to see if we can reconnect.

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Yosemite

It had been a while since we had visited Yosemite. We used to try to go every year, but when The Queen started school full time we found it much more difficult to go. They last trip we made was when one of her classes took a field trip there. Meg and I took my parents there for their first time. That was about four or five years ago.

We were due for a trip to Yosemite and I wanted to try to stay in Yosemite Valley. We had never done that before. I started trying to book our stay in February. I really wanted to try Housekeeping Camp, but it was booked so I opted for Curry Village. I didn't know much about it before we got there. All I knew was that it was located near the Vernal Falls trail head and that we would be staying in tent cabins. The tent cabins have a wooden floor, frame and door and canvas walls and roof. As our trip got closer I read online that they include cots, linens, towels and pillows as well as a bear locker.

When we arrived on Friday, we were greeted by our neighbors almost immediately. They told us that the night before there was a bear sitting on our bear locker. That got us a little excited, but I did not completely believe them.

We saw six deer in the meadow just outside our campground on Saturday evening. They did not care that people were all around them taking photos. When we returned to the campground, The Queen and Chels saw a bear walking through.


The view of Half Dome from the Curry Village parking lot.

This is Lower Yosemite Falls.

On Friday evening we watched a presentation and slide show given by Lewis Kemper, a photographer who worked with Ansel Adams. It was a great slide show that really made me think about light and composition. At the end he mentioned that between eleven and twelve o'clock that night a moonbow would be visible at Yosemite Falls. I decided to try to photograph it. He also mentioned that he would be leading a photo tour the next morning at eight-thirty.

I went out that night at about eleven-thirty and had absolutely no luck seeing the moonbow. I went back to our tent cabin and decided I would go to Lewis's photo tour the next morning.

I woke up in time and got ready to go. I ended up leaving later than I wanted to because I was talking to The Queen. I drove out of the parking lot and searched for the Ansel Adams Gallery to no avail. I just did not know where I was going. I gave up and decided I would take the tour on Sunday morning instead. We found the gallery on Saturday afternoon and I signed up for the tour.

On Sunday morning I woke up in plenty of time. I decided to take the free shuttle to the gallery. I had a long wait of about twenty minutes. Some of the deer were back in the meadow, but I resisted taking more pictures because I was running low on memory card space. The shuttle finally arrived and got me to the gallery in plenty of time.

Canon in the park was working the tour in conjunction with the Ansel Adams Gallery. They were allowing people to try their camera bodies and lenses free of charge. I decided to try the Canon 5D Mark II and a 24-105mm lens. I was very impressed with the camera.

The tour was just around the meadow near the gallery, but I think I took some great photos. At the end of the tour they let us print a few photos for free and then let us know that they would email us all of our photos. I can't wait to see them all.

I love Bridalveil Creek and Bridalveil Falls. The area is just picture perfect. The only downside is that it is the first waterfall you see when entering from the South so it is always busy. It is a very easy hike to the falls and to the creek. I usually get pretty good photos in this area, and Sunday was no exception.

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New Lens for Mexico

I have been looking for a new lens to replace the kit lens that came with my Digital Rebel camera. The Wednesday before I left for Mexico I stopped into my local camera shop and they recommended a lens to me. I ended up buying the Tamron 18-270mm lens from Amazon because my local camera shop was sixty dollars more expensive and they would not budge on price. They even quoted me a lower price on Wednesday and then when I went back in on Thursday they told me they gave me the wrong price and told me a higher price. They have always been dificult to deal with.

I rushed to purchase the lens after reading reviews on line because I wanted to use it on my trip to Mexico. I thought I might have time to take a tour to Teotihuacan and I wanted to try out the new lens. Here are some photos from the trip.

This is where pulque comes from.





The Avenue of the Dead. Notice all of the people trying to sell items to tourists.

Detail in the Temple of the Feathered Serpent.

I bought some obsidian figures of the sun and moon that this man carved.

Piramide Del Sol.

I climbed all the way to the top of the Piramide Del Sol.

View of the Pyramid of the Moon from the Pyramid of the Sun.

I ended up at the Pyramid of the Moon.


This was a great trip. I would recommend Teotihuacan to anyone who is planning on visiting Mexico.

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Teotihuacan

As long as I have been coming to Mexico there have been two places I have wanted to visit, Teotihuacan and Chichen Itza. I can now cross Teotihuacan off my list. As I posted yesterday, I took a seven hour tour to Teotihuacan.

Teotihuacan was the largest pre-Columbian city with a population of more than two-hundred thousand people. All of the records of the city were destroyed by the Spaniards when they conquered the area, so nobody knows exactly who the people were who inhabited the city.

Our tour started at the Citadel. Our tour giude gave us a brief introduction to the site and then set us free to explore for two hours. I made my way to Templo de Quetzalcotl, or the Temple of the Feathered Serpent. It was only thirty-nine steps to the top, but at more than seven-thousand feet above sea level I was breathing hard when I reached the top. Archeologists were working around the temple, which was very interesting.

From there, I started my 1.6KM journey down the Avenue of the Dead to the Pyramid of the Moon. After going up and down many steps, I was approached by at least one hundred people trying to seel me something. I finally gave in and purchased obsidian carved figures of the sun and of the moon from the man who claimed to have carved them. They are carved out of the same local obsidian that I wrote about yesterday. It is not pure black, but has a goldish tone to it.

I walked up and down many more steps before I reached the Pyramid of the Sun. I was taking many photos along the way. At the Pyramid of the Sun there is a ramp at the base and then two-hundred and forty-five steps to get to the top. Actually, you do not reach the top until you walk up a mound that is about five feet in height. At that point I tried to take a picture of the view and found out that my camera battery was dead. I switched to my iPhone at that point. I was very dissappointed that after all of that hard work I could not even get any photos. I guess that means I will have to go back.

I walked back down all the steps and headed back down the Avenue of the Dead. The structures along the avenue were much more intact between the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon. It was a great experience walking down the avenue. Our tour guide told us that we would not be able to walk to the top of the Pyramid of the Moon because archeologists are excavating inside of it. I still had to walk up as high as I could, which turned out to be forty-eight steps. I could not even get to the halfway point of the pyramid.

Archeologists are excavating inside the pyramid to see if they can find anything that will give them clues as to who built Teotihuacan. They have also left the lower fourth of the Pyramid of the Sun on the north side covered in grass the way it was found. It is interesting to get a glimpse of what the site looked like before it was excavated.

I really enjoyed my trip to Teotihuacan and would recommend it to anyone. I really made me want to visit Chichen Itza though.

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Long Day

Father's Day was exhausting for me. I exercised, mowed the lawns, went to my parent's house, went to The Queen's parent's house then took a short nap. And after all of that, I hit the road to the airport headed to Mexico City.

I got to my hotel at about ten o'clock local time, went to my room to freshen up and then went downstairs to meet my tour guide. I went on the "Pyramids and Guadalupe Shrine" tour, which turned out to be about seven hours long. It was great, but I must say that I am now really exhausted. With me on the tour were our guide Angel, our driver Albert, an older couple from Colombia, a young man from Israel and an older man from Norway.

The Guadalupe Shrine is supposedly the third most important religious center in the world behind Mecca and St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican. It is a complex that consists of the Antigua Basilica dating from 1536, several small chapels and the new Basilica of Guadalupe that was completed in 1976. You can read more about the shrine on your own time. I must admit that I really was not that impressed. I was more impressed by the Cathedral in the Zócalo.

The new Basilica of Guadalupe looks like a modern building from the seventies that is just out of date, which it is. There is nothing impressive about the building other than the unique doors and the Our Lady of Guadalupe painting that is supposedly made on cloth from a cactus that should not lost as long as it has. It is also supposed to be the image that appeared on Juan Diego's apron miraculously. I don't know what is true, but there are a series of about five moving sidewalks that take you past the original so you can view it up close and even photograph it.

Our tour left the shrine after a short while and we headed out to Teotihuacan. Before getting there we made a stop at a place that houses artisans who work in obsidian and silver. They gave us a small tour and told us how the artisans work with the unique obsidian of the area and silver.

They showed us the maguey agave plant (cactus) and told us all of the items that the cactus provided for the local residents. You can peel paper from its heart, use the needles for sewing the threads that can be peeled away from the plant and even make a fermented "wine" named pulque. Then we got a chance to drink some pulque and tequila. The pulque had a sweet, easy drinking flavor. We were told that it is more watery now because of all of the rain they have had lately. When the weather gets hot, the pulque gets a lot more milky and has a strange texture. I liked it.

After that we got the hard sales pitch in their store. They kept following each of us around and commenting about how nice the piece was we were looking at. I resisted temptation and did not purchase anything at their store. They kept telling us that you cannot by any obsidian or silver anywhere else that is the same quality. We left after a short while and headed to Teotihuacan.

Teotihuacan was amazing. I will write another post all about it tomorrow. I was taking a lot of photos, but by the time I reached the Pirámide del Sol, my camera battery was dead. I started taking photos with my iPhone, hoping they will turn out OK. We spent over two hours at Teotihuacan and I walked more steps than I ever have in my life.

We left Teotihuacan and went to have lunch at a restaurant near by. The Moctezuma Restaurant was another tourist trap that our tour guide took us to. He suggested we order the especial, Molcajete Moctazuma. The fix a mixture of meats, onion, nopales and a special sauce that uses pulque in a molcajete. They serve it to you in the molcajete along with corn tortillas. You then make your own tacos. It was a lot of food, but it was pretty expensive at one-hundred and eight pesos. For comparisons sake, I can get a steak sandwich for less by ordering room service at my hotel. I was not able to finish all of the food, but it was really good. About three quarters of the way through our meal, a man dressed as an Aztec indian started dancing around and singing while his wife was banging on a drum. He finished and left us alone, but he did ask for a tip as we left.

We headed back on our hour drive back to our hotels. I got to my room at about six o'clock and about a half hour later it started pouring rain. It is a thunderstorm like we do not see back home. The thunder is very loud and continues for hours while the rain alternates between a downpour and a consistent rain storm. It is great weather as long as you are not out in it.

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Am I An Apple Fan Boy?

I bit the bullet and preordered the iPhone 4 yesterday. But let me tell you, it was not easy. I started doing some research on Sunday in anticipation of the preorder date. I did a little more research on Monday evening to try to figure out what time the preorder would start. Nobody knew for sure, but the iPad preorder started at 5:30 AM, so that was what I went with.

I woke up and went for a run in the morning. I got back home at about 5:30 and jumped on a computer. The post it note saying they will back soon was up on the Apple site. I jumped in the shower. While getting ready I jumped back on the computer and saw that the Apple site was back up. It was not working correctly though.

I went to work and kept trying both the Apple and AT&T websites with no luck. I was checking for updates on Google as to the status of preorders. I finally noticed that there was a new Apple Store app that allows you to order hardware so I downloaded it at about 10:00. I tried it and it did not work, but it gave me a number to call at Apple. I called the number and actually got to speak to someone within about five minutes. He told me that the AT&T site was having problems so they could not verify accounts. He took my name and phone number and said he would call me as soon as everything was back up. He never called me back.

I kept trying the AT&T site and was soon able to preorder my iPhone 4. The process was slow, but it did work. At least I hope it worked. I got a confirmation and received a confirmation email message within an hour. I just checked my order and it is being processed.

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Another Year Down

I know this blog title may seem odd as New Year's Day was six months ago, but my birthday was last week. So in reference to age, another year has come and gone. As I think back about my thirty-ninth year, I believe it was a pretty good one.

As far as family is concerned, the year was great. We did not have any major emergencies. Nobody got hurt too badly. We actually made the decision to add another child(ren) to our family. I think we grew a lot as a family this past year.

My career remained on track. Nothing major happened. I think I am becoming a much more integral part of the company in my boss's eyes. He has really leaned on me for more decisions this past year. I feel good about where I am in the company, but would like to move higher. I guess that will be my goal for this year.

I feel like I have grown a lot in my personal life. I really started to exercise seriously this year and I feel much better than I have in a long time. I am in better shape than I have been since about 1996. That is a big accomplishment for me. I just need to stay on this path and continue to feel even better.

I have also been able to maintain my goal of reading twelve books this year. So far I have read five books and listened to one audio book. I have been reading the newest Intellectual Devotional as well. I am on pace to exceed my goal and even have the audio book as a bonus.

I have learned a lot from the books I have read. I have even been able to use some of my new found knowledge in my job. I have been acting as a mentor to our Assembly Manager. He comes to me for advice about the operation a lot. He just came to me again this last Friday. I told him that I may not have all of the answers, but I can give him an opinion based on a broad knowledge base and an open mind. I really think he appreciates my advice.

It was a great year. Here is looking forward to an even better fortieth year!

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I'm Exhausted

It has been a long week for me. I was in a great meeting all day Tuesday. When it was done I ordered some great Chicago-style pizza and worked out. I actually worked out before eating the pizza. Giordano's is the best Chicago pizza I have had. It was a little birthday gift to myself.

It is really hard to get motivated to exercise this week because I am travelling. The good thing is that I have been alone on this trip so far, which means I have had a lot of time to think about not exercising.

Every morning I wake up exhausted, but I have managed to exercise every day except today. My schedule just did not have any time in it. I started the day with an eight o'clock meeting in Green Bay. From there we went to Neenah for two meetings. We ended the day with a customer visit in Milwaukee.

I try to stay on California time when I travel so I don't have to adjust much when I get home. It usually works pretty well. I guess I will find out tomorrow if it worked this time.

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A Lot of Information

My meetings here in Rosemont have been very good. I am learning a lot that I can take back to my company. I have met a few customers that are great contacts to get us in the door of a few target companies. It has been a very productive trip.

This year the meeting have focused a lot of time on marketing, in particular internet marketing and social media. I know there is a lot more that I can do in both of these areas, it is just hard to carve out the time and to justify it. I have learned some things this week that should help me with both of these.

Last week I had a conversation with my advertising agency and was about to throw in the towel with regards to social media. I had a bad attitude about it and I think my account manager felt that and just went along with it. Our meeting turned into a trash talking session about what social media cannot do for my company. I admit that I was not seeing any potential. I came to my meeting this week all ready to dismiss social media as a waste of time.

Two sessions really changed my mind. One session was led by a marketing person from a company in my industry. He focused more on web site analytics, but he started to change my perspective. The second session was led by a consultant who works with companies to establish their social media presence. I think that he convinced me that I am not wasting my time and need to actually spend some more time on social media. I really need to get other people in the company involved with blogging, Facebook and Twitter. He told us that we cannot do it alone. It needs to be a company focus. I agree.

I am planning to get started with the implementation of a social media strategy when I get back into the office. I am already thinking about who in the company will buy into the strategy and really work to make it successful. At this point I only have about two people who I have identified.

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I Love Chicago!

I really do love to visit Chicago. It is one of the cleanest big cities you will find. My only problem is that on this trip to Chicago, I am not really in Chicago. I am stuck in Rosemont, IL which is at the airport.

I am in town for some meetings. The trade association my company belongs to has two days of meetings every year and it seems like it is in Rosemont about every other year. I had to attend because I am a member of a committe that is also having a meeting in the same location. So I get three days of meeting in Rosemont.

The weather yesterday was great. The only problem was that I was stuck inside for most of the day. I did get out of the hotel in the morning and took a taxi ride to Target to get some supplies. I also got out of the hotel yesterday evening and took a 3.3 mile run around the neighborhood. This area looks like the typical Midwest from TV and the movies. The houses are all brick with some rock work and most of the yards have some nice raised planters. All of the grass is green and the flowers are in bloom.

Today the weather is not very good. It has been raining all day. I really wanted to take another run today, but I guess I will have to settle for the treadmill in the fitness center. I am really trying to get back into my fitness program on this trip so I can continue it when I get back home.

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Review of The Toyota Way

I finished reading The Toyota Way on Saturday. This book was packed with so much background information on the way that Toyota operates that it took me a while to get through. I read a book some time ago on Six Sigma, but TPS is totally different.

I learned a lot from this book, but I don't feel I learned enough to implement any of the ideas. I feel like this book was just an introduction to TPS that gave me a background to know what areas to pursue further. In particular, the idea of one piece flow is great. I just did not find any practical examples of how to implement it in the book.

I know my timing with the reading of this book was bad after all of the problems Toyota has been having, but the reaction I get when I talk about it is always the same. Everyone brings up Toyota's recent quality issues. What they don't understand is the level of commitment Toyota has had over the years to recreate their culture in every department in every one of their locations around the world. They do an outstanding job with creating a learning organization. They do so well that I have no doubt that they will bounce back from the recent issues and become an even better company.

Overall, The Toyota Way was a great book. I would recommend it to anyone, and as a matter of fact I have already done so.

I have moved on to my next book already. I have started reading Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. So far so good. It is an easy read.

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