FlexRex: Fictional Blogger

The principle for Day #7 on the 101-day book report says: "Seek happiness for others and you will find it in yourself."

My neighbor's car died the other night and I hooked it up to my trickle charger. No trouble, really, but she was thrilled that she didn't need a tow.

Today a four-pack of Guinness appeared on my doorstep. When I put it in the fridge, the top two shelves were already full of various micro brews.

And then I realized, I hadn't purchased any of it.

The principle for Day #6 on the 101-day book report says: "Forgive yourself."

Today I tried to let go of regrets, second guessing, and guilt. As the book suggests, "Just tell yourself it's over." Guilt is wasted energy because the past no longer exists.

According to Jack Handy, women are much better at this forgiveness thing:

"Women will forgive anything. Otherwise the race would have died out long ago."

That lesson seems timely as my eX is getting married this weekend. I haven't even been on a date. And between the lines, I listen closely as all the questions of where I went wrong fall silent in grace.

The principle for Day #5 on the 101-day book report says: "Experience silence."

It really helps to take a little time each day and just shut down the the inner dialog for a while, but there's another side to silence.

I've been working on a new Flex Rex video and today I finally got to to the rough-cut stage. Then I brought the DV video over to my PC so I could transcode it to Real Player format.

While the video was converting, I thought of the principle for the day and took 20 minutes for some quiet meditation. But later, when I played the converted movie, the audio died halfway through.

I watched the little cartoon character chattering away on the screen. No matter how much commotion he made, he just couldn't break through the silence.

And I wondered if my own intuition feels like that sometimes. Unheard behind my windows of awareness, does it ever surrender before the mercies of sleep?

The principle for Day #4 on the 101-day book report says: "Draw your inner energy from the beauty that surrounds you."

I wrote that down last night and sat outside at a local pub just to appreciate the stars. Then a strange man came by and tried to sell me flowers.

So I went inside and watched hockey. The only art to appreciate was a velvet Elvis, but my team won and that inner energy was just a 'flowin. Beauty, eh?

The principle for Day #3 on the 101-day book report says: "There are no accidents in our intelligent universe."

So here we have the concept of synchronicity, which is really a fun idea to think about.

I read this book a long time ago called the Celestine Prophecy, where this guy runs around finding secret scrolls and stuff. Anyway, one of the ideas in there was that when coincidences happen, they are trying to tell you something. And the more you pay attention to these coincidences, the more often they will happen.

I was looking everywhere for coincidences today, but I don't have much to report. I thought of a couple of people and they ended up sending me email. OK, no biggie. But we all seem to have stories of when the stars were all lined up for us.

So then after drinking the philosophical kool-aid for the day, I turned on NPR. As I listened to the latest news from Iraq, I decided that there may be no accidents in our intelligent universe, but there sure are some train wrecks.

The principle for Day #2 on the 101-day book report says to: "Look inward for the solution to your problems."

Actually, I've been trying to live according to this principle for while. It's kind of the salt and pepper of self help and I've always felt that it applies to corporations as well.

And then I came across this blog from a disgruntled Microsoft employee. While he calls for heads to roll for the recent slip of Windows Vista, I think the really interesting part is the comments from his inward-looking co-workers:

* "It’s OUR fault that this company is a disaster."
* "Vista is the biggest software development failure of all time, outside of the federal government."
* "Vista - I wouldn't buy it with someone else's money. Then again What do I know, I've only been testing the dog for the last 2-3 yrs..."
* "Bill (Gates), get rid of the Windows mafia, or be ready to lose your good employees. This is just unacceptable. It can’t be happening. It can’t be real. This is not Microsoft. I need to see people getting fired."
* "Being a 10+ year vet I feel ashamed and sad. This company is a mess on so many levels."
* "As a lowly "in front of customers all day" sales rep, I just have to say this is a huge, huge, huge embarrassment and disappointment."
* "We at MSFT are like Metallica. We used to do Kill 'Em All and Master of Puppets, and now we're doing Reload and St. Anger."

And that's the thing about looking inward--there's just so much more to see when your options are underwater.

So I decided to review this book called 101 Ways to Transform Your Life over the course of 101 days.

To keep it simple, every night I write down the "way" for the next day. And when I wake up, I live the principle as best I can for an entire day.

Day 1: "Know in your heart that there is an invisible, divine intelligence within everything."

I guess the author does not believe in baby steps. Anyway, I woke up this morning when my six year old son jumped on the bed and gave me a big hug. Divine indeed.

Being a secular kind of guy, I sat up telling myself that the little voice inside me was divine. It pretty much just wanted coffee. And then it was really, really into the idea of taking a nap after lunch.

I had better luck seeing the divine thread in the world around me. I went shopping and everyone just looked different somehow. They were milling about in focused consumerism, yet peaceful, patient, and orderly like those people on the "Landru" episode of Star Trek.

I have to admit my day was going pretty well. And then on my way home, a lycra biker ran a stop sign ahead of me and nearly got schmucked by an SUV. It made me wonder--will I still believe in pervasive, divine intelligence tomorrow?

I may have to settle for notion that Nature weeds out the stupid.

AP NewsWire: Portland, Oregon.

FlexRex, Fictional Blogger today announced plans to review a self-improvement book in daily entries over the course of 101 days. The book, entitled 101 Ways to Transform Your Life by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, was painstakingly selected from 83.3 million Google references to the phrase "101 ways."

"This may be the world's first book review that ends up being longer than the book," said FlexRex. "I was looking for an editorial calendar for my blog and I thought, why not try each one of these principles a day at a time and then write about it?"

Another twist to this story has to do with the fact that FlexRex is a fictional character. "What we have here is a pathetic cartoon character who works in his bathrobe from home," said a reader of FlexRex who asked to remain anonymous. "If he really wants to change, who are we to tell him not to believe in Gipeto?"

You can follow FlexRex on his 101 day journey starting Saturday, March 25.

Coffee shops offer a place to be around people when you're alone. They see you there with your headphones on, content in your experience like a child hearing the silence of angels. And there you might as well be a projection, save for the scurried depression of your laptop keys.

On this clouded afternoon I find myself blogging as a verb in the Pharmacy Cafe. As funny as it may sound, my words serve up my living in a diary-for-hire of corporate propaganda.

At first, I felt out of place working here amongst those who see coffee as recreation. The other soldiers of solitude here seem to forget themselves, collectively unhappy in their staring poses of concentration. At times I feel my face tense up in-kind, so I try to smile on the completion of every sentence that keeps me employed.

It's after five o'clock and I finish my entry for the day with the satisfaction of hitting the "publish" key. As I stand and wrap my cords, I see a young Hispanic man at the counter. The co-ed clerk is telling him that they only give water to customers. Her arm-folded co-worker stands beside her with a glare.

I feel myself inhale with the notion to chew these kids out, but they seemed locked at the elbow behind the counter of non-compassion for this man. He stands there for a moment, letting them look into his sad, cloudy eyes for the moment that takes no for an answer.

I walk out and the man is on the corner with his hands in his pockets, looking around for a destination. His back is to the bubbling water fountain by the walk light, so I point it out to him with my broken Spanish.

I'm feeling a profound sadness as I stand there and think about what I've just witnessed. The light changes and I make my way to the bar across the street and the smoky happy hour that offers a chance to leave the day behind.

When I get to the bar, the man is somehow there before me asking for a glass of water. I walk by on my way to the bathroom and wonder how I lost this race in my preoccupation.

Then I enter the bathroom and turn to close the door. The man is standing there outside, smiling.

"Thank you, Rick." he says. I nod in my puzzlement and feel the hair on the back of my neck begin to stick up.

And I'm thinking that's the secret penance of man's inhumanity to man. Of course we know that there are needy people ahead, behind, and beside us. We just live with that. But the real terror is that they know who we are.

Yesterday I blogged about IBM's statement that there will never be a Next Big Thing. Thankfully, my heros at Guinness have already proven them wrong with the invention of the Surger.

With this hypersonic gadget, us flex workers can enjoy a creamy pint at home. In fact, with inventions like this, a whole new working class of flex pub-crawlers can't be far behind. All we need now is some global e-business so we can get these darned things outside of the U.K.

In the meantime, I think I better go out tonight and do some thorough market research and then see how bad I feel in the morning. It can't be worse than waking up with thousands of patents in the closet and realizing I don't have an ounce of imagination.

Some poor VP over at IBM got quoted that there will never again be a next big thing. Just stop looking, people. All the big ideas have been thunk already.

Now, you'd think that a big 'ol company like IBM would have all kinds of people working on the Next Big Thing, like say, quantum computers, HAL, or batteries that don't suck maybe. Nope. It's incremental improvements from here on out.

How could this possibly be? Well, the answer might be the process IBM has for employees with ideas. It's called Thinkplace, a global forum where "anyone in the company can suggest ideas, comment on them, refine them, express support or even explain why the idea might not work."

In my experience, every room full of people has a naysayer. Put any idea on the whiteboard and someone will say that it will never work. Now multiply this concept times 300,000 IBM employees and you'll wind up with a process like this:

"Behind the scenes, a global network of subject matter experts use data mining tools to track the most promising ideas and help manage top-rated ideas through the formal review processes. Additional business methods then carry the idea forward for implementation."

You have to hand it to IBM for believing that "business methods" have ever carried an idea forward. You couldn't even invent gravity this way.

I'm still looking forward to the Next Big Thing. And come to think of it, I never expected it to come from IBM anyway.

With recent revelations of the President's domestic eavesdropping program, we Americans are having to get used to the idea that someone is always listening. If you're cool with that because you have nothing to hide, would you feel differently if the eavesdroppers were from another country?

This really hits home when Sun's prognistications, post-it notes, and proverbial "what ifs" are published in The Register.

The fact that this is a UK publication not withstanding, I imagine Peter Piper pissed off a peck of prickled product planners.

I can't help but wonder what Steve Jobs would do if someone leaked his product plans, right or wrong, for 2008. I wouldn't even want to be in same building. In any case, I would like to invite the pinheads who are talking to the Register to go work for Apple and find out for sure.

As Scott McNealy used to tell reporters, "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." Maybe being right wasn't such a good idea.

Now the reporters are telling Sun that it has no privacy either. Somebody call the Karma Police.

I spent the week in Menlo Park and I seemed to keep running into two kinds of people: optimists and pessimists. I didn't take a poll or anything, but they all seemed collectively pissed about the cold weather. Maybe they started the day neutral and let the traffic, talk radio, and tea leaves define their outlook for them.

In such a climate, I think one has to make a conscious decision to remain optimistic. Thankfully, google is ripe with 19 million entries for seeing the doughnut and not the hole:

There is Learned Optimism, which is kind of a neat idea. If you could make Wall Street a Skinner Box, a $40 share of SUNW could be yours at the sound of a bell.

Then there is Blatant Optimism, which sounds to me like walking around a universe based inside an Orange Juice commercial.

Power Optimism sounds pretty good--you get "a vital ingredient for a life that is creative, productive and enjoyable." Or you can just take Viagra.

Dynamic Optimism is probably more what we need in a world so full of things that bring us down. It promises "An Extropian Cognitive-Emotional Virtue"--no doubt like the kind you can only get in South Dakota these days.

If none of this is working for you, a visit to Camp Optimism might just do the trick. At this summer residential camp for disabled and physically challenged children, you could just catch on to the fact that all limitations are self-imposed.

I think maybe I need to hear this stuff as much as any of you. Because in the end, nothing is going to improve around here unless we start to believe that things can be better.

Found this on Sun.com today. Just in case you were wondering, looks like Sun co-founder Bill Joy has made a change in career maybe.

Someone pointed out to me the other day that some blogs look different if you type in capital letters in their URL. Look at this example using lower case hpc versus this upper case HPC blog.

Like a good blogmeister, I've "flushed the cache" on these examples and the problem seems to come and go on any given day. In fact, one or the other seems to be confused as to which day it really is.

So I've been working on a theory:

What if the reality we experience is a stream from some cosmic cache somewhere? In such a model of the universe, cache coherency would be really critical, don't you think?

Going further, what if some little trick like mixing in capital letters could mess things up? You could have parallel realities co-existing. The bar would look like the BAR and the beer would look like the BEER. But something would be different if you just paid enough attention.

Try this experiment the next time you find yourself in a situation where things don't seem quite right. Close your eyes for a moment and think of the object in question in all-caps.

Who knows? In the blink of an eye you could switch us to a reality where the CUBS could win a World Series. I, for one, would even settle for an alternate reality where the girl on the next barstool thinks I'm only a lower-case loser.

I heard a story on NPR about the junk we accumulate in our lives and our reluctance to get rid of it. Then someone said, "We are what we won't throw away."

This quote is really alarming to me because I have the following stuff I just can't seem to part with:

* Several hundred music CDs in a box somewhere. They were once important, but I haven't played them in years.

* A copy of If the Buddha Married. Won't be needing that unless they come out with If the Buddha Got Amnesia first.

* A copper Viking helmet from Mexico. With real bull horns!

I could go on, but you get the picture. According to the saying, I am, in essence, well, junk!

And who knows? If we really are what we won't throw away, maybe our only lasting value is the dreams we keep.

HP had a big webcast Thursday. I thought just maybe they would talk about Scott McNealy's offer to help converge HP-UX and Solaris. So I tuned in.

While HP's CEO Mark Hurd did not mention Sun's gracious offer (or my letter of encouragement, for that matter), he did grouse about "what you might hear from some of our competitors" three or four times in the course of an hour. I'm afraid that Sun's olive branch just made him grumpy.

Anyway, maybe I missed it, but I'm pretty sure that they didn't announce anything other than that they were continuing their Itanium platform and oh, by the way, Oracle runs on it.

Larry Ellison made a cameo video appearance wearing a fleece vest. Maybe he was on an expedition hunting elk with Ted Nugent or something. Go figure.

I kind of drifted off for a while. And then Mr. Hurd started talking about a $1 Billion dollar investment in integrity. And everything he said after that just made pefect sense. As an audience member, I felt like I could really get behind any company who valued integrity so highly.

When it was all over, their web page informed me that “Integrity” is the name of their server line. What a let down! But then, since Katrina, I’m thinking all the integrity in the world can’t help a product called Superdome.

Hi Mark:

By now someone has probably read this email to you from Scott McNealy inviting you to converge HP-UX with Solaris 10. While Scott makes a perfectly good business case, I think you should also consider the possibility that this proposal represents your One True Destiny.

Sometime during the latter portion of the Carly Administration, an HP employee told me that his company was dying of a broken heart. Maybe no one told you this until now, but now you have a chance to accept an olive branch and start the healing process.

I read this on your web site today: "Growth comes from taking smart risks, based on the state of the industry—that requires both a conviction in studying the trends, but also in inducing change in our industry."

Mark, there is no smarter risk than converging HP-UX with Solaris. Do something Carly didn't have the Cahounies for. And while you're at it, consider that "inducing change" is nothing more than the long-toothed rhetoric of fallen dictators.

Cheers,

FlexRex