Internal Mono(b)log

Jonathan Schwartz (Sun’s CEO) has a great blog entry on the power of the brand:

I spent a good portion of a weekend a few weeks ago with a customer that was having a quality problem. There’s no point in going in to the nature of the customer or the problem, but suffice it to say it was a bad problem, and by far and away the most expensive kind: one that put the customer’s brand at risk. For those that deliver service via the network (or free software), brand is all you’ve got. It’s not an asset, it becomes the asset.

The whole blog entry is great and [available here](http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/what_service_means_to_me)

I had a thought today that I’ll share with you:

A decade ago if you went to buy headphones, your colour choices would have been simple: black, perhaps with some brushed aluminum. Perhaps at that point you would have found the Sony sport headphones in their stunning yellow and black. That was about it. Why were the colours so limited? I have no idea, someone somewhere probably lacked some creativity or thought that people didn’t like colour. Who knows, suffice it to say that a decision was made that lacked vision or foresight.

Today, there are a large variety of colours to choose from, and why not?! Plastic comes in any colour, right?

The thing that I find most notable about headphone colours today is that pretty much every headphone manufacturer now makes white headphones. Why? But of course, the ubiquitous Ipod. First Apple made white stylish, then it became an almost defacto standard. Give consumers a choice and they’ll select what fits their needs the best. Novel concept isn’t it?!

Kind of made me thing of a religious debate I had with one of our desktop support guys the other day. He was trying to convince me that adding Apple to our corporate standard was a bad thing. He, among other questionable stretches of logic, told me that a lot of our infrastructure was geared toward windows and that our standard didn’t include Apple. Of course, none of this made any sense to me since OSX is built upon open standards. His unwillingness to embrace change even in light of reduced TCO, improved employee productivity, and many other arguments too lengthy for this blog left me speechless. His inability to understand that our historical windows infrastructure was built just like the black and aluminum headphones of a decade ago astounded me.

Lets face it, the world has always wanted colour, all that’s been missing is creativity and foresight to make it happen.

Have you ever wished you could just step out of the rat race and start living a simpler, self-defined and more fulfilling life? It’s been a topic on my mind, on and off, for years now.

I envision a life “of the earth”: connected to my surroundings. Living in a low impact way, off the grid and in tune with nature. I’ve read homesteading websites, [Mother Earth News](http://www.motherearthnews.com), various books but nothing seems to tell you how to go from the typical North American norm (demanding job, good salary, mortgage and debt) to my ideal (job is living, almost no income, no mortgage and no debt).

Strikes me that without some large cash influx it’s a challenge that is almost insurmountable. Sure winning a lottery or coming into a large inheritance solves a lot of life’s challenges, but what if you want to make this change on your own power?

Looking at the numbers, it’s depressing:

• sale of house less mortgage (+300k)
• resolution of debts (-25k)
• good sized piece of land to homestead (-100k)
• build an eco-friendly, off grid house (-100k)
• remainder +75k

Assuming a family of 9 (2 adults and 2 dogs, 3 cats, 1 bird, 1 rat) can live, off the grid and with no debt, for $500 month and property taxes are $2500/year, that remaining next egg would last for 8 to 10 years depending on the interest earned on the egg.

Unfortunately $500 a month is probably unrealistic. Things not factored in there are car and home insurance, something I cannot imagine not having when all you have is invested in your homestead. A car/truck would be absolutely required. So maybe that $500/month is really closer to $1000/month. Nest egg now lasts 5 years.

You say garden to reduce your living expenses. Great idea! But if you can generate more than 10-20% of your food requirements for a year by gardening, I’d be VERY surprised. Especially if you’re in central Ontario. Perhaps if you’re in a warmer climate (say southern BC near the coast) you may have better luck.

So it strikes me that you need an income because you’ll have costs that are beyond your control.

I suppose that a small job can fit that bill - perhaps a few days/week unfortunately this is 100% at odds with the stated goal.
Catch .22 :/

Today Dr. Albert Hofmann, the scientist who discovered LSD is 101!!!

Happy Birthday! (and wow!)

Last night Kim and I went to Kensington Market for the Festival of Lights to celebrate the Solstice.

It was *really* nice. But more than that… it was really sincere.

While Kim and I were walking along in the parade along with the drummers, puppets, costumed folks, and other celebrants, I was almost overcome by the simplicity and sincerity of the event. There were no trappings, no ritual, no leadership (per se) - just a bunch of folks making noise and lighting the darkest night of the year.

*That’s* what it means (at least to me) to be Pagan.

Thanks

Thankfully, the OJ Simpson Special _If I Did It_ has [been cancelled](http://www.newscorp.com/news/news_320.html) by the exec’s over at newscorp.

When I first saw the promos for this I couldn’t believe my eyes. Talk about flaunting it in front of the American judiciary and public.

A study published in Friday’s issue of the journal Science makes a dire prediction for the world’s ocean life. According to researchers, there will be no seafood left to catch by 2048

WTF!!! So how dire does it have to get before people change their ways?

[Full story from "How Stuff Works" here](http://home.howstuffworks.com/ref/no-more-fish.htm)

Those of you who know me know that I’m somewhat of a geek, a ham radio operator, and definitely a lover of toys.

For my birthday, [Kim](www.eyecanseethat.com) got me a [RC Helicopter](http://www.e-fliterc.com/Products/Default.aspx?ProdID=EFLH1300) and it’s great fun and a big challenge. I’ve only put about 3 hours on it trying to get a hover going in my dining room - suffice it to say, I’ve spent more time repairing the Heli than flying it due to my space restrictions. I’m either going to have to grow some patience or find a large indoor place to play.

Anyhow…

Found this on the net today: a great convergence of remote controlled aircraft, radio technology and virtual reality goggles.

Check out [this link](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9091545735215129742).

Cherry Beach seems to be one of the targets for the City of Toronto’s ever hungry need for land. Now there are plans afoot to clear cut it for soccerfields and astroturf. Insane!

Please sign the online [petition](http://www.petitiononline.com/scb2006/petition.html) and forward the link to everyone you can think of.

I haven’t rented apartments for over a decade, but [Kim](http://www.eyecanseethat.com/) and I are thinking that at some point our current home (built as a duplex, but currently a single family dwelling), may someday become an income property.

[O'Reilly Radar](http://radar.oreilly.com/) [posted](http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/10/rentometer.html) a link to the [rentometer](http://www.rentometer.com/) which is a pretty nice mashup for seeing if the rent you’re paying is higher or lower than the comparable rents in the area.

Pretty sweet.