I participated in NaNoWriMo during 2010 and 2011. In 2010, I crashed at burned at 38,000 words and change. In 2011, I crossed the finish line at just over 50,000 words (the standard benchmark). In both cases, I ended up with a horrendously disorganized collection of material, nowhere near ready for publication. What I learned [...]
Archive for April, 2012
Credit Card Security
April 27th, 2012 
dave A few years back, on a business trip to Brazil, my friend showed me how he got a text message on his cell phone every time someone charged his credit card. Every time we were at a restaurant or a store, it would go off like clockwork, about five seconds after the charge was approved. [...]
Posted in Uncategorized 
Tags: business ideas, credit card, credit card fraud, credit card security, finance 
1 Comment »Throw Ideas Away
April 24th, 2012 dave Recently, I took inventory of the books I’ve started and not finished. I discovered that I had started a total of 28 books, containing over 300,000 words of content. All of these half-written books are sitting on my hard drive. That doesn’t include any of my articles, my short stories, my old college projects, or the [...]
It’s All Greek
April 21st, 2012 dave No two people ever speak the same language. It’s been said that to a carpenter, every problem looks like a nail. I would take this analogy further. Anyone who’s spent any time working as a carpenter will start speaking the language of hammers and nails. That is a foreign language to anyone who’s never been [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Tags: communication, communication barrier, communication gap, language, language barrier, understanding 1 Comment »“I Know a Blog Post You Should Read”
April 18th, 2012 dave Most of us still recommend books. There’s nothing wrong with recommending books, but what about recommending blog posts? A blog post takes five minutes to digest, if that. Recommending a book as the solution to a problem is the shotgun approach. It will probably work, but in many cases, it may not be necessary. For [...]
Creativity vs. The Dark Side
April 15th, 2012 dave Every day, I find myself struggling with temptation to go back to old ways of doing things. I find myself wanting to go pick up some fast food and some ice cream. I find myself wanting to spend every spare second laying around and sleeping. I find myself wanting to mindlessly surf the internet with [...]
Fiction to Read: The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
April 14th, 2012 dave My cousin’s fiancé gave me two fantastic books this past Christmas. One of these books was The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. (The other was Hard Magic, which I’ve already posted about). It kept me up reading long past the hour when wisdom dictated putting it down. I’m going to have to read [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Tags: book review, fantasy, fiction, literature, patrick rothfuss, the name of the wind No Comments »Dead People Shouldn’t Be in Charge
April 9th, 2012 dave Have you ever met anyone who still held a grudge against their long-dead parents, continuing to get angry on a daily basis over things that happened decades ago? Jim Collins, in Good to Great—no, I won’t shut up about that book; just read it—shares a story about the A&P grocery chain, and how they lost [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Tags: A&P, Constitution, Founding Fathers, Good to Great, history, Jim Collins, Kroger No Comments »Quid Pro Quo
April 6th, 2012 dave Modern culture is deeply ingrained with the concept of “quid pro quo.” I’ve found this to be a bit of a nuisance with the not-so-secret initiative I’ve been spearheading of late. The idea of “paying it forward” seems incomprehensible to a lot of people. I’ve mentioned the idea to a number of well-meaning, honest people [...]
What if Employers Encouraged Entrepreneurship?
April 3rd, 2012 dave This Harvard Business Review article raised some good points about the relationship between employers and employees. It seems that no one really expects employers to provide “job security” any longer (or at least no one should). It also seems like employers don’t demand the same kind of loyalty that they used to. I remember when [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Tags: employment, entrepreneurship, HR, human resources, workforce 2 Comments »
