Snow Day!

Southeast Michigan is getting a little bit of a snowstorm right now. Looking out my office window I can see the snow flying past in the light of the street lamps. It's been falling since around three this afternoon.

The funny thing is, I've had several meetings set up for this afternoon and evening. All of them canceled due to the inclement weather. Suddenly I found myself with unscheduled time. I had a Snow Day! I don't think I've had one of those since high school. U of M never closed. In the twenty-one years that I either attended classes or worked there, I don't remember a single official inclement weather day. If we didn't think we could make it in, we either arranged to work from home or took a day of precious vacation.

Now, of course, as a self-employed person, I don't really have a true Snow Day. There's always work to do. Still, it felt a bit like one. Before the snow got too bad, I went out to run a few errands and took some time to sit and enjoy a chat with Lisa. Not quite the hours of sledding I would have indulged in as a kid, but still kind of a fun release.

Ironically, tomorrow is supposed to be our next Leadership Ann Arbor class -- Education Day. If the snow keeps falling like this all night, I may have a Snow Day tomorrow, too!

So, when was the last time you had a Snow Day? What did you do?

Up and Running Again

I should have added to my list of lessons from Hawaii that it isn't necessarily a bad thing when your notebook computer has both its battery and its AC adapter die on you. OK, yes, I will admit it, I took my computer with me to Hawaii. There, I discovered that my battery could only hold about five minutes of juice and that the AC adapter had been damaged en route. As a result, I was just able to squeeze off a short message to one of my clients that I wouldn't be able to do anything until I returned from vacation.

After that I just relaxed.

Of course, when I got home, I still had to get this old beast running again. Since I work mostly on web servers which run some flavor of Unix (as opposed to Windows), my desktop machine does the same. Still it is nice to have a machine booted into that other operating system for testing purposes. Since most of the world runs Windows of some description (not that it's a monopoly or anything, no-o-o-o), I figured it would behoove me to keep an eye on how my systems run under that benighted excuse for an operating system.

Oops, am I standing on my soapbox again?

Anyway, I remembered reading on the lifehacker blog about some ways to save money and one of them involved buying your computer peripherals from Ebay. So, I decided to check them out. I am glad I did. I easily found several highly-rated sellers on Ebay selling what I wanted at a comparative discount. The AC adapter cost me about $20, including shipping. The battery, a much higher capacity one than I had purchased originally ran about $60 with shipping.

Just for grins, I thought I would compare that to buying from the manufacturer. Unfortunately, my machine is so old that apparently the manufacturer doesn't sell the parts anymore. Checking around other sites online, though, I found that the AC adapter alone could sell for as much as $50 and the battery that I chose could easily go for well over $100!

Now, might I end up regretting buying these lower-cost parts? Maybe. But that's one of the benefits of the Ebay rating system. If a seller has thousands or tens of thousands of sales and still has a better than 99% positive rating, there's a good chance that you're safe. Heck, I "won" these auctions on Friday morning and they arrived on Monday afternoon. Not too shabby on the customer service side, either.

So, if you find yourself in need of widgets for your computer, you might want to check out Ebay. It's a cheap and relatively safe way to go.

So, what was the last thing you bought on Ebay? How was your experience?

Adopt an Attitude

While I was vacationing in paradise, I brought along a couple of books to amuse and edify me. One was a "business" book, Jeffrey Gitomer's "Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude" and the other, one of my old favorites, Robert A. Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land".

Now, at first, one wouldn't think that these books have much to do with each other. One is a guide on how to achieve a positive attitude and then take it one or two steps further. The other is a classic science fiction novel of a young human, raised by Martians and returned to Earth and his strange and wondrous adventures on our planet. Yet, as I was reading them over the same few days, I seemed to catch echoes of one in the other and vice-versa. How could that be? What was the link?

Well, I sat and thunk for a while and I think it finally came to me. In Gitomer's book he recommends approaching things as a child would, with all of the enthusiasm and joy for discovery that we all had at one point in our lives. Valentine Michael Smith, the protagonist of Heinlein's epic, does just that. He has no preconceived notions of how things are supposed to be and therefore approaches all aspects of life on earth with a curiosity and an eagerness to understand which is almost childlike.

What a wonderful way to be. Fearless in exploration. Curious in all things. What would life be like if we lived that way all the time? How many new things would we discover? How many old things would we rediscover?

Sometimes, when we go through our everyday lives, we don't really look around us to see the opportunities at hand. For those of us who want to take our lives in powerful directions, whether through our careers, our education, or our relationships we have to open ourselves to those possibilities.

Perhaps it would behoove us all to be a bit more childlike (or Martian) at times.

So, how do you keep yourself open to new possibilities?

Lessons Learned in Paradise

Lisa and I just got back from a wonderful, if all too short, vacation on Kauai, the "Garden Isle". I knew it would be a magical visit when, my body still on Eastern Standard Time, I awoke at 4am on our first night there and light from the full moon streamed through our open window.

While there, in between hikes and our many adventures, I had time to just sit quietly and stare off at the horizon and contemplate whatever thoughts entered my mind. From this time, and in no particular order, I came up with some life lessons learned from our trip:

• There are times to "do" and other times just to "be". I loved my moments of just sitting on our balcony, reading a pleasure-reading book, and just appreciating the particular sounds and scents of where we were. I also wouldn't have missed going out on our sunset cruise to see the humpback whales.
• Sometimes you have to miss a little sleep to find the beauty in life. One of the mornings we got up early to drive down to the beach, climb the cliffs and watch the sun rise over the Pacific. While we enjoyed the golden spectacle of the sun clearing the horizon, we also witnessed whales off cavorting in the distance.
• Don't give up when the storm gathers. The sun is just on the other side. One of the peculiarities of the Kauai weather was that if it rains on one side of the island, the other side is quite often clear and sunny.
• Dabbling is easy. Commitment, while ultimately worth it, is a challenge. As I said, we loved visiting Kauai. In chatting with some of the locals, however, we discovered that living there can be quite a challenge. Due to the high cost of living, many have to hold two or three jobs just to make ends meet.
• When you are someplace new and strange, it helps to have a guide. We stayed in a great B&B called Marjorie's Kauai Inn. Our hosts, Daniella and Michael, took time the very first night to make recommendations on places to see and food to eat. Daniella pointed us to our amazing sunset cruise and even helped to arrange everything.
• For the best experiences it helps to have the right tools. On our hike into the Waimea Canyon, we would have been "challenged" without a good map and hiking boots. Being a person of occasionally poor directional sense, having a GPS built into my cell phone took that particular stress off my shoulders.

I'm sure some other lessons popped into my head, but that's about all I can think of for right now. Funny thing is, I could take those same rules and apply it to having my own business, too.

So, when was the last time you took a moment to just "be"?

I'm Off!

In a few minutes I'm heading out the door to begin my Hawaiian adventure. I may post from paradise, but probably not. At any rate, I will be back on the 7th. Aloha!