Too much Xmas

Too much Xmas,
originally uploaded by FourT.

Cameron put on his new, warm winter coat and began to 'ruminate' on the new dart game he received for Christmas. As it turned out, he was a little under the weather. But, a good time was had by all.

I get these 'read and pass on' emails too many times from too many friends. But the notion of allowing love to pervade your home was too compelling not to share in some way. Enjoy and God Bless.

Decisions We Make

A woman came out of her house and saw 3 old men with long white beards sitting in her front yard. She did not recognize them. She said 'I don't think I know you, but you must be hungry. Please come in and have something to eat.'

'Is the man of the house home?', they asked.

'No', she replied. 'He's out.'

'Then we cannot come in', they replied.

In the evening when her husband came home, she told him what had happened.

'Go tell them I am home and invite them in!'

The woman went out and invited the men in'

'We do not go into a House together,' they replied. 'Why is that?' she asked.

One of the old men explained: 'His name is Wealth,' he said pointing to one of his friends, and said pointing to another one, 'He is Success, and I am Love.' Then he added, 'Now go in and discuss with your husband which one of us you want in your home.'

The woman went in and told her husband what was said. her husband was overjoyed. 'How nice!!', he said. 'Since that is the case, let us invite Wealth. Let him come and fill our home with wealth!'

His wife disagreed. 'My dear, why don't we invite success?'

Their daughter-in-law was listening from the other corner of the house. She jumped in with her own Suggestion: 'Would it not be better to invite Love? Our home will then be filled with love!'

'Let us heed our daughter-in-law's advice,' said the husband to his wife.

'Go out and invite Love to be our guest.'

The woman went out and asked the 3 old men, 'Which one of you is Love? Please come in and be our guest.'

Love got up and started walking toward the house. The other 2 also got up and followed him. Surprised, the lady asked Wealth and Success: 'I only invited Love, why are you coming in?'

The old men replied together: 'If you had invited Wealth or Success, the other two of us would've stayed out, but since you invited Love, wherever He goes, we go with him. Wherever there is Love, there is also Wealth and Success!!!!!!'

MY WISH FOR YOU...

• Where there is pain, I wish you peace and mercy.
• Where there is self-doubting, I wish you a renewed confidence in your ability to work through it.
• Where there is tiredness, or exhaustion, I wish you understanding, patience, and renewed strength.
• Where there is fear, I wish you love, and courage.

Heading to NYC for the holiday

My family and I are headed up to New York to take in the sights and sounds of the city between Christmas and New Year's. I hope to catch up with my friend and jazz mentor, Lewis Fleetwood 'Flip' Barnes, noted trumpet player and all around 'cool cat'.

Hoping to be more consistent and diligent about blogging in 2008.

Peace and Blessings,

Howard

I Just Want it to Work!

The rising chorus of folks citing their already done or impending switch to Macs (Mark Cuban recently did it and Jay Cross is about to do it) as well as my purchase of a MacBook Pro to replace my son's aging PC makes me wonder if it's the ''rising tide lifts all ships'' phenomena or something more powerful?

I'm about to mail back my to mail back my Thinkpad to have it's motherboard replaced. It's the second time for this particular computer (yes..two times within 15 months of purchase!) and it's the third time I've had to do this with a pc purchased from IBM/Lenovo. Er, did I mention I've only bought 3 pcs from IBM/Lenovo? Now, I know this is a quality issue and, by definition, i can't yet speak to the quality of the Mac yet. But everyone I mention this to suggests 'Macs just work.' Beyond the quality issue of the hardware, Windows OS is just driving me nuts with it's slow boot up time (even on a 'newly minted' pc).

Sorry to 'amble' here. I don't necessarily believe the decision about whether to use a PC or Mac is the crux of the issue. 'I just want it to work' and get me to my content, which increasingly I'm finding ways to manage and maintain on the web. I think Jay hits the nail on the head when he writes, ''today the action has moved from the desktop to the web. web connectivity may flake out, but it’s not going to disappear forever as did my PC’s hard drive. relationships (the web) trump nodes (the desktop).'' Again, this really resonates with me as I work to move 'more' and 'more' of my content onto hardware/platform (read pc/windows or mac) agnostic.

One final thing to make the point. I've recently been on two IBM internal calls (er..yeah, I work in a PC-centric place...) where people I respect (a noted and influential community / collaboration blogger and a distinguished engineer) both mentioned that they were working from their Macs.

Great music and great musicians are simply...timeless...

We lost another 'great one' recently when Luciano Pavarotti died. This duet with the ultimate 'great one' (IMHO), James Brown, the Godfather of Soul brought tears to my eyes. Rest in Peace, Luciano. Rest in peace.

''Girl, don't you look pretty in your orange suit''

So sayeth Oprah to my darling wife Coretha upon seeing her in the crowd for the taping today. She even shook her hand. I'm really happy for Coretha as she is an 'Oprah fool'; enjoying her Tivo'd recordings almost daily. You go, girl!

Doubling Pennies - I hate math except when it's cool like this...

I was listening to one of my favorite social media bloggers, Robert Scoble talk about face book here and he referenced ''doubling pennies'' I've heard him say this before, and I intuitively knew the answer, but not the 'why' behind the answer. So a quick google search yielded Dr. Math's simple and concise explanation of the ''Doubling Penny'' Kewl. Now to figure out a way to actually make that happen.

Why ''Blues''?

I love music of all types, but particularly Jazz and R&B. In thinking about a title for this blog, I reflected on something I recall reading in the liner notes of a Wynton Marsalis album (I've got to find that album for proper attribution) that suggested that the Blues reflected more than a 'sad state' of mind, body or spirit. But, the ''Blues'' rather reflected the broad, complex spectrum of feelings and emotions associated with life generally. Interestingly, the widely accepted definition(s) of the Blues , while somewhat clinical, provides a perspective on this diversity.

I hope to periodically capture that spectrum of feeling and emotion and share it here.

Howard