IFX Group 2002 Web Log

2002 Blog Entries

1. Time. (January)
2. Update. (February)
3. Dead Words. (March)
4. Resource Truth. (April)
5. The Atomic World. (May)
6. IPADCON. (June)
7. How much is enough? (July)
8. Service? (August)
9. History and Legacy. (September)
10. Happy Trails. (October)
11. Are We There Yet? (November)
12. Relativity. (December)

January, 2002 - Time.

It is interesting to contemplate time, if you are not too busy to take the time. Some people say that it is a commodity. That time can be stolen, saved, borrowed and spent. Most people will agree with the saying that time is money, or at least that money is the closest tangible equivalent to time. This seems like it is missing something important by limiting the point of view.

What if time were nothing like money? What if it really was just a way to gain another perspective of yourself? This would mean that the only relation that time has to money is in us and how we use them both.

You can learn a lot about a person by watching how they relate to money. To one extreme is the person who refuses to pay one cent more than they absolutely must for anything - pursuit of the best price at any cost. To the other extreme is the person who frivolously spends without regard to cost or value - spending for the sake of spending. Is one better than the other? In the end, everyone must choose for themselves.

How much can you learn from watching how a person relates to time? Possibly more than watching them use money. Watch the priorities they place on their time. To one extreme is the person who schedules everything down to the second so no real life can intrude. To the other extreme is the person who refuses to conform to any plan, instead not doing anything with their time just because they can. Is one better than the other? In the end, everyone must choose for themselves.

We have instituted a new look for the site this month. This is a fairly big change from our previous format and in some respects it is a trial for ideas and concepts that have not been fully proven yet. We thank all of you who have written with comments (both positive and negative) on how the new look is perceived. As always, suggestions are most welcomed.

 

February, 2002 - Update.

The navigation section of the web site (upper right-hand corner of your browser) has been totally reworked. This should open up the possibility for much more expanding content while still allowing quick access to the information you need. There is still some content in the image section that is not online yet. We hope to have the listed links and much more available very soon.

Many thanks go to those who have offered comments and suggestions for improving this resource. Your input is appreciated very much.

 

March, 2002 - Dead Words.

The death of a family member or close friend has an odd way of squeezing the sweetest words and sentiment out of even the most bitter heart. Are complements really something so hard that it requires an extreme event like death to make us say nice words?

Why wait for someone to die? Say the nice words now where they can hear how you feel.

 

April, 2002 - Resource Truth.

Two contented cows were grazing in a field when they looked up and saw a shiny, handsome milk truck drive out of the dairy lane. On the side of the truck was painted: FRESH MILK: pasteurized, homogenized, irradiated, vitamin D added.

One cow said, Did you see that truck?
Yeah, mooed the other. Makes you feel rather inadequate, doesn't it?

Sometimes it is easy to think that useful software comes from clever programmers or some large corporation far away from here. This is simply not true. For a program to be useful, it must address needs that you have. If you do not express those needs, there is little chance those that write software can meet them. Even though it may seem like a small thing, voicing your needs is where the whole process starts. And without that key part, none of us will be here very long.

 

May, 2002 - The Atomic World.

Many natural phenomena seem to repeat on scale. It is amazing few people appear to notice. This could be a problem of perception or possibly simply a side effect of being too busy with daily life to notice.

Most of the educated people in our society know that this planet orbits the sun along with many other planets. They also know that atoms have protons and electrons flying around in ultra microscopic orbits. Some even know that on the very large scale, the spiral arm of this galaxy is orbiting around with many other planetary systems. Everything is spinning and rotating on some great or small level.

Doesn't this make you wonder how many times this same pattern is repeated down to the infinitely small scale or up to the infinitely large scale? Our planet could simply be a tiny spec in the atomic structure of a molecule that is a microscopic part of a world so large we could not comprehend.

Now that you have this image as a perspective, are your relationship problems really that bad in the great scheme of things?

 

June, 2002 - IPADCON.

One of the most important conventions for any owner or operator of an IPAD-OS based product is the IPADCON. This year is going to be unique. The most important difference is that the IPAD Owners Association is currently out of debt and is free to do a large number of things not possible at past conventions. This means more of the resources will be going into the convention and into assembling the best and the brightest available to help make 2003 a better and more profitable year for you.

If you are the least bit curious about how to get an IPAD, what to do with your IPAD or where to go from here, this is a very important event for you. The IFX Group founder, Casey Sprangel, will be there this year with presentations that have been almost 13 months in development. Only those who attend will be able to see what they look like in person. This is also an important event for those who are considering the purchase of an IPAD-OS product because it will allow the most candid one-on-one and conversation with those who live with an IPAD every day. There is no better place available to get this kind of concentrated information. We will see you there in October.

 

July, 2002 - How much is enough?

Colorado is having a drought. This is not quite the tourist attraction for people as it is for the forest fires that are visiting the state this summer. They appear to be enjoying their visit way too much. This makes the topic of water come up often in the local news and leads to thinking about water and how much is enough.

A person standing in the middle of a rain storm is only able to hold a relatively small amount of water in their hands. They could possibly drink many times more than they could hold in their hands, but there is a limit before they are full. What happens to all of the water that the person can't consume or hold in their hands? The land will naturally guide the remaining water to create streams and rivers while feeding the plants and trees along the way.

Those who get their water from the rain know that it is not available all the time. Those who get their water from a river may not know about limits.

Some people don't even think about how they use water until it is not available. Washing is acceptable until the water is restricted, then washing yourself is different from washing your car. Watering plants is acceptable until the water is restricted, then watering your vegetable garden is different from watering your lawn. Drinking is likely the only thing that will survive after everything else has become unacceptable.

What if money were like water? Some people put a lot of effort into gathering as much money as possible with no apparent concept of enough. What if it were restricted? What would still be acceptable and what would not? Somewhere in the answer to that question is enough.

 

August, 2002 - Service?

There are two states out of the 50 members of the Unites States of America that prohibit a customer from pumping their own auto fuel. The two states have simply passed laws to require full service stations to still exist in an age when the majority of stations in the other 48 states have long since converted their full service lane to self service and sealed their lone remaining employee in a service-proof glass booth. Legislated service seems to be a topic of debate for those who have not grown up in full service states. The major complaint is about the cost of this service when looking at the few extra cents per gallon at the pumps.

What is the cost of service? If an employee at a restaurant gives you service by taking your order and brining your food, does that rate a tip? Normally yes. Would you rather save that small amount of money by writing down your own order and picking up your food when it is ready? That sounds like the method of food service we call fast food, that most people view as a lower class of establishment based not just on the food, but on the level of service. If a kind waiter can make the difference between a low class restaurant and a nice place to eat, why can't the same be said of service outside of the food industry?

There have been rumors for almost 10 years that all of the small Internet service providers are going to be pushed out of business by the big telecom corporations. Anyone who has been forced to deal with these large corporations knows that they fail miserably at service when compared to the little guys. Maybe it is because the large corporations are only offering fast food.

 

September, 2002 - History and Legacy.

What does the word history mean to you? It appears that some view it as a dirty word, a subject they were forced to learn in school with no relation to modern times and are glad that it doesn't get used in the real world. Others embrace it as the key to their future. In fact, the most visionary and forward thinking people in the world are often outstanding students of history.

History is like the wake in the water behind a large ship. Always marking the path traveled, but if ignored may be crossed one or more times without realizing how things got so turned around. The wake can even be used by the amateur observer to tell if things are holding a fairly straight course or not.

The word legacy is a term in the technology industry often used in a derogatory way to describe old or outdated things to be discarded with all haste. Legacy is the history of the industry. Discarding all legacy things with the hard fought lessons learned along the way is a unique self-imposed blindness unfortunately too common in corporate leadership. It appears the price of covering up the wake is the cost of going in circles and repeating the mistakes of history over again as their direction loops back on itself unpredictably.

Ask about history and legacy observing if they are topics of shame quickly avoided or if they are embraced and valued as lessons learned.

 

October, 2002 - Happy Trails.

Is it possible to measure the value of a person based on the way they look, or the way they speak, or anything we can detect at a moment with our human senses? Not Likely. Stephen William Hawking is just one of many examples of the outside concealing the great value inside.

Instead, it takes time and careful observation to see what is different in the world as a result of that person. This implies that every person leaves a wake behind them as they go through life. This wake moves the original placement of the world in both physical and non-physical ways sometimes in good ways, sometimes not.

What is behind you?

 

November, 2002 - Are We There Yet?

The political push is on with advertisements bloating all forms of public media and even spilling over into promotion arenas that are illegal for everyone else such as roadway median signage. You would think with all of the money, professional promotion staffing and slick production values that someone would figure out how to keep the focus on the benefits each candidate brings rather than stooping to mud slinging. After more than 200 years of elections, this sadly appears to be a well established path with very few willing to attempt deviation. This seems quite the model of childish behavior from those who should be the most grown-up in our population. But are we are expecting our leaders to be more than what we are willing to be?

Children often speak of what they want to be or do when they finally grow up and most adults listen very carefully. Not because the adults are that interested in the children, but because the adults realize that they have not yet reached grown-up and want more clues on what it will look like when they get there.

What if this thing called grown-up does not exist but instead there is only a journey that may aim in that general direction. If it is impossible to ever become grown-up, would it be better to invest our resources into things other than the unobtainable goal? Or is the effort to reach for the goal still worth the time? Maybe it is better to look at it from another perspective. How much time in your own life has been wasted being childish and even mud slinging when things would have been very different if you acted like a grown-up? Somewhere in that answer may be the key to unlock the mystery of actually being grown-up.

 

December, 2002 - Relativity.

Everyone by birth or by law has collected some number of relatives. Given enough time everyone also has been at odds with one or more of those relatives. It seems that the closer and more frequent the contact with those relatives, the greater the chance of being at odds. Then again, the closer and more frequent the contact, the greater the chance of repairing the situation and getting back to being even with each other.

The quickest path from odd to even is listening.