I was in Seattle a week ago visiting a friend. I was dressed quite well, social pants, good shoes, button shirt and a pullover. It was late morning on a Monday and the weather was quite nice so I took the bus downtown.

 

I was waiting for the bus to head back to the Eastside when I received a call on my cell phone. Downtown was noisy so I walked to a service alley and, as the conversation was taking a while, I sat down on a ledge. The funny thing is that I would never enter a back alley down in Brazil - that would be asking for trouble :)

 

So I'm sitting there looking like a pack of crackers when two huge black guys walk into the alley. They were dressing crappy clothes and looked quite poor. They looked at me and headed to my direction. And I'm on the phone having an intense conversation. They look straight into my eyes and changed direction towards me in a straight line. I continued on my conversation without much thought. They got really close to me... then turned and continued walking down the alley.

 

Then I heard the following dialog that cracked me up:

- "That was weird."

- "Yeah, I know.  He should have run."

 

I thought of two dozen come backs in two seconds. But I was on the phone ;)

 

There is nothing like feeling useful, at least, not at work. There is no amount of money, perks, ass-kissing, or gifts that can make me happier than the feeling of being useful and contributing to something worthwhile.

Fifteen years ago I crossed a threshold regarding money. My wife and I saved enough money to buy a washing machine. We would not have to wash our clothes in cold water anymore. One year earlier I started making enough money to eat three times a day and that was pretty good too. After I left my parents house I went by with money my parents gave me, a lot of help from my friends, and hard work. Later on, my then girlfriend and her mother helped more than I can ever repay them.
I never felt as happy with anything material ever since, and I had my quota of prizes and rewards. My house is so big I can play soccer with my daughter in our living room. That washing machine was it for me.

The monetary reward I’d need to affect my happiness level at this point would suffice to retire (hiring companies out there: I’d settle for paying my mortgage).  And that pretty much defeats the purpose of offering the money. Don’t get me wrong, my education is leftist, and I would not tolerate exploration from whoever owns the “Produktionsmittel” on principle alone. More than once I took a job that would pay less, but had a fairer ratio between the value I produced and what I took home.

Right now I’m not feeling particularly useful at work and that makes me miserable. That has a bigger effect on me than living on this depressing, rain-soaked corner of the planet.

 

I know you will not believe this, but it is true. There is no Photoshop or any image editing involved on this one.

 

I was born on a place called Ponta Grossa, somewhere in the Brazillian countryside. It is a sad medium sized city that I don't see since my grandfather passed away few years ago. The two dominant features of the region are Vila Velha, a set of rock formations right outside the city, and a very pretty tree called Araucária by the locals.

 

The mayor of Ponta Grossa decided to hire a sculptor to create a statue that would merge both things. He paid U$200k and the result is - how can I describe it? - a flying turd.

 

I wrote to my brother and his comment was '^%$@#, this thing is ugly... but strangely appropriate'. I have to agree. I keep imagining the sculptor sitting next to the fireplace sipping from a glass of good wine and laughing.

Next May 10th an event sponsored by Nokia will bring together videos taken by amateurs from all over the world together in what promises to be a great web event. If you want to know more, please check their site: pangea.org.

 

If you want to understand the title of this post, check out this short video about North Korea from one of my favorite video sites (TED). The reason is at the very end.

Ah, what the heck. The last post is too sad. This one is funny:

 

 

 

Michael Monsoor won a Medal of Honor this week - the highest honor a member of the military can receive in the USA. His family picked it up on his behalf and Michael died in Iraq a couple of weeks ago. He ran against enemy fire to rescue another soldier, risking his life when no one else would. But that was not the reason he received the Medal of Honor, or the reason he died. He received a Silver Medal for the rescue, the third highest honor a member of the military can receive.

 

Michael received the Medal of Honor because he used his body to cover a grenade thrown by insurgents in Iraq into the room he was in. He was next to the door with a clear path to run and save himself, but not the others around him. So he decided to sacrifice himself. I have been close to die four times in my life, and I have no explanation how I escaped two of them. There is an infinite amount of time to think under extreme stress. You might wonder if he acted on instinct - I know he thought about it.

 

I have nothing clever to say. I just cannot comprehend how someone like Bush, who is directly responsible for Michael's death and hundreds of thousands more, is not in jail. See a more professional account about his story here.

 

Experience is not the most important asset a professional can have - talent is. If you try to name the contributions and achievements that most impressed you, I bet the list will not contain many coming from experience. Experience does not get you to the moon, create the light bulb or discover Penicillin, talent and perseverance do. Sheer luck is more important than experience in most of those discoveries and inventions.

 

And yet, experience is very important. It helps you to focus and to avoid mistakes while improving existing things. If one million monkeys type for one million years, one of them may write one of Shakespeare's books, or so goes the popular say. But it takes one million monkeys, a lot of time and bananas. Experience tells me that if I want one of Shakespeare books I can buy one or make a copy on the nearby Kinkos much faster and cheaper. Of couse I cannot create something original that is as good as Shakespeare, but one of the monkeys might get lucky.

 

Good judgment comes from experience, as well as talent to learn. Experience, on other hand, frequently comes from bad judgment. When Microsoft launched Vista they decided to change the driver model. The old model allows third party companies (and Microsoft itself) to crash and mislead the user to blame the operating system. The new model is unnecessarily incompatible with the old model and that is unexplainable bad judgment. We have been through this before so the opportunity for bad judgment is past.

 

When one of our customers buy Vista and install it, there is a chance some or most of their equipament won't work. In my case that meant my scanner, sound board and advanced printer options. I cannot send my scanner, printer and sound board back, and I also cannot send the software I bought back. I have them for multiple months. I can, of course, return Vista - it has a 30 day money back guarantee.

 

Experience tells me the users are more likely to blame Vista than any other piece of software for new failures. After all they were working before the upgrade. What puzzles me is that we should know better, it was the same thing with XP. Do we have the talent to learn?