Inspired by this entry from The Sun BabelFish blog:
My blog is worth $2,822.70.
How much is your blog worth?
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Inspired by Skrocki's Blog ;-)
| Your Theme Song is Back in Black by AC/DC |
 I've been too long, I'm glad to be back" Things tend to get really crazy for you, and sometimes you have to get away from all the chaos. But each time you stage your comeback, it's even better than the last! |
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Ever since the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics I have read comments on Twitter, Facebook and on some blogs that basically can be summed up into this: "Boy, London 2012 are sh...... their pants, they are in major trouble".
And I can't wonder why that should be the case...
For me, the opening and closing ceremonies of any Olympics, or any other sporting event for that matter, are very much a supporting event. They are not important to me to decide whether the event is a success or not. If I watch a sporting event, I watch it for the sports. Period.
Let's hope that if you ask folks in 1 year time what they will remember about Beijing 2008, they will say names such as Phelps, Bolt, Hellebaut. Added a link for the non-Belgian readers. If someone talks about the opening and closing ceremony they are not sports fans in my very humble opinion.
Even though I realise the chances are small the London 2012 organisers are reading this entry, I would like to tell them that they should not worry about topping the opening and closing ceremonies of Beijing 2008. Let's just take our hats off for the organising committee in Beijing, and say "Job very well done!"
What I am looking for in London 2012 is a good organised event that supplies the best infrastructure for the athletes to compete at their top, good public transportation, excellent Olympic village, and if possible more medals for Belgium.
I'm interested in your view(s), what do you think?
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Maybe this is an odd time of the year to start doing something about my general physical condition, after all, just after New Year is the usual time to start doing something. But I guessed it was never a bad time to start improving your health.
So about 3 weeks ago I decided to start running. And rather than just going at it wildly, I decided to follow a program that was hugely popular a few years ago on national television: Start to Run. So I got myself an iPod Shuffle, downloaded all the podcasts and went for it. Aim after 10 weeks: run 5 kms or 3 miles.
Lesson number 1 looked easy enough on paper: 2x 1 minute running, 1 minute walking, 2x 2 minutes running, 2 minutes walking, and then 1x 3 minutes running and 3 minutes walking for a total of 18 minutes. I have to say I did not manage the last 3 minutes of running, had to quit earlier.
At that point, I was not optimistic to say the least about being able to run 5 kms.
However I have to admit that sticking to the schedule of 3 sessions per week, each building up, has done marvels to my physical condition. I was able to complete lesson number 7 without problems yesterday which was 1 minute running, 1 minute walking, 2 minutes running, 2 minutes walking and them 3 times 3 minutes running and 3 minutes walking.
At this point, I am feeling really good, and am looking forward to another lesson. I feel I can do more than the lesson, but I will stick to the schedule. I can recommend this program to anyone who wants to improve their physique.
Let me know if you want to find out more!
Will keep my audience update about the program!
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This is one conversation which can only happen if you work from home:
Caller: "Hi Marc, can I ask you to look at something I am doing"
Me: "Certainly, but I am not in front of a computer right now"
Caller: "Ah, when can you take a look"
Me: "I'm in the office right now, I can take a look when I am back home, in about 45 minutes"
People who are not familiar with working from home, would probably go "Huh?"
Did you also have similar conversation? Leave a comment if you want to share some of these.
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Yes? Then you are in the same position as I was until last week. I was guilty of this not so safe practice as well, as it literally is not possible to have different user names and passwords for all of these. But then I came across an application called 1Password from Agile Web Solutions. It allows you to use safe password combinations, and nicely integrates into Safari and Firefox so you don't have to worry anymore about remembering passwords. These would be impossible to remember anyway!
Here is a video with some additional information:
Here is the product information page on the Agile Web Solutions page. There is also an additional video.
This has changed the way I approach internet security, and so far I am loving this application. Let me know what you think, and whether this could be something for you!
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Last week on Thursday I presented to the GSS Customer Operations team on Social Media, what it is, how powerful it is, and also gave 4 examples on how the members of the team can be part of the Groundswell, and more importantly, can benefit from the Groundswell. If you are not sure what the Groundswell is, here is a link to the blog.
As the first part of the presentation is a story demonstrating how the community acts in the age of Web 2.0 I decided to record a video of this presentation, so you get the narrative behind the slides.
The video can be viewed here:
As the links are not available from the video, I have also uploaded the PDF version of the presentation:
You will need a Sun Online account to view both presentations on Sun's Learning eXchange.
The "live" presentation had a lot of interaction and Q&A, and I am sorry this was not captured. But I do want to offer you the chance to ask questions, post your comments. Foremost, I am looking for your feedback: what did you like, what did you think can be improved for future presentations.
Do let me know by leaving your comment(s) here! Looking forward to the interaction!
It's been a little bit quiet this week on this blog, but there is a good reason for this: Sun's Elite Sales Academy where we have 500 employees in a California hotel for a 3-day conference. As I am part of the team that puts this together I can assure you that there is quite a bit of work to prepare this. I would much rather go to a conference than organise it. But it is very gratifying to see the positive feedback coming in. Should you be at this Elite Sales Academy, and have any advice on how we can improve next year's edition, do let me know.
Later this week on Thursday and Friday, the team will have its first F2F meeting in 2 year's time. Being spread out all over the world makes it quite difficult (and expensive) to meet on a regular basis. I'm looking forward to interact with the other team members in real life, versus over the phone or a WebEx session.
At this meeting my director has given me the opportunity to present Social Media, and talk about ways our team can use some of the Social Networking tools that are available. I am very excited about this opportunity. I am very passionate about social media and how it can be applied to be more efficient, and to communicate using new ways.
If you can think of any advice on what to include, let me know. My presentation is finished but I can always look at alternatives to include. I will not share the presentation yet, because some of my colleagues might read this blog, and I want to have the premiere :-)
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Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam is my favourite airport. There are a few reasons, but Burger King is one of the most important :-) Also I like the short transfer times. Even when taking a bus it usually takes me about 15-20 mins from arrival gate to departure gate. So far I have not yet needed this short time, but whenever I have to run for my next flight, I hope I can rely on Dutch efficiency again.
There is one thing that I have only heard at Schiphol so far. Every few minutes you will hear an announcement that goes like this:
"Passenger XYZ, flying on XYZ to XYZ, please proceed immediately to gate XYZ. You are delaying your flight. We will proceed to offload your luggage"
The first part is not unusual, however the offloading of the luggage is something that is unique to Schiphol. At least of all the airports that I have flown to.
One thing that I would like to know is how many times they actually proceed with the offloading of the luggage. In other words, in how many cases does the passenger actually miss the flight?
My guess is that this does not happen too often, I would say 1-2% of the time. What is your thought?
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In the past two days I have had two "aha interesting" experiences, and I am not 100% sure to qualify them as good customer service or Big Brother watching me. Here are the stories:
So now I am thinking about how I should classify this: good customer service, or as another indication of the kind of information that is floating around, with serious privacy and security implications. At this point I am leaning towards the good customer service, as I did register this card with Apple. If this were to happen at a store that I don't have an account with, I would definitely lean towards option number 2.
What about yourself? Do you have any examples of this happening to you, and how would you classify this?
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So much of the experience of a 10-hour international flight depends on your temporary neighbours, so I was a little anxious when finding out that the 2 seats next to me on my flight from Amsterdam to San Francisco were occupied by a mother with her 2 young kids. From experience, I know that the noise level can be quite high.
It turned out that this was quite OK, apart from some crying during take-off and landing (as expected), the kids were fairly quiet. However, that did not prevent them from being quite a nuisance. Both kids (I estimate at 4 and 2 years) were running around often, constantly bumping into me, the boy was swinging the headset, and hit me on a few occasions. I am pretty certain that he did some damage to the tray table on his seat.
And it was not only me who was bothered with this, as I saw stewardesses tell the mother to keep the children from wildly running around on at least 2 occasions.
Here's my dilemma: at what point is your tolerance point exceeded? When do you start to complain to the mother? At some point I was very close to talk to the mother, but then I saw how exhausted she looked, and I decided against it. I kept it to a few very stern looks at the boy. After all, it looked like the mom had more trouble than I had, and it was only 10 hours of my life.
What would you do in a similar situation? At what point do you decide to take action? And also, how high (or low) is your tolerance level for adults on flights?
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At this moment I am packing for a 10-day business trip to California. I have lost count somewhat, I think it is trip number 14, but I'm not sure. But that is not the topic of this post, so let's not digress.
What do people take with them on a business trip (and increasingly on vacation as well)?
Unfortunately all these devices need juice to run, so without escaping, there is no alternative to pack all the chargers, and the travel adapters. So what have I now just realised? There is a way to cut down on the number of chargers, lower the weight of the plane, and thus lower the carbon footprint of your travel. What is it?
Buy everything from Apple :-) I am packing a MacBook Pro, iPhone and iPod, and I only need 1 charger for all of those, as my iPhone and iPod can be charged from my MacBook Pro, so that saves me the packing of 2 chargers. Actually, only 1 charger, as I don't want to risk loosing my only charger, so I pack 1 spare. I can't stand the thought of a 10 hour return flight without my iPod! Now all that Apple needs to do is bring a camera and e-book reader to the market, and we can all live with 1 charger :-)
So what do you usually pack on a (business) trip? Do you see other ways to save on our carbon footprint?
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As I announced in an earlier post, my uncle, aunt, wife and me went on a 4-day trip to Normandy in France. The primary objective was to visit as many of the sites and museums as possible, and we succeeded, much to the occasional despair of the ladies. However, there still remains a lot to be seen, but that can always be arranged.
Here is an overview of the sites and museums we visited:
All of these sites were amazing, and I learned a lot of new things from seeing the pictures, models, the personal belongings of the soldiers back then, and so much more. During these visits I was so enthralled in what I saw and heard, that I hardly took any pictures. Fortunately my wife was not so impressed with everything, so she did take the most of the pictures I can share via my Facebook page.
There were a lot of things that crossed my mind, but the one thing that I always kept wondering is how it must have been back in June 1944 for the thousands and thousands of men that jumped and landed into Normandy, and for the defenders of the coast. There is only one thing that consistently came back, and that is respect.
And this feeling was most present when I was standing on Omaha Beach itself, and looking up to what the US soldiers faced that day. If you look at the picture above with the current scene, and try to imagine what it must have been like approaching the coast under enemy fire, it makes one very very silent. And hence the title of this post, as it currently takes 104 steps to climb back from the beach to above, and my respect for the liberators of Europe only grew with each step I took.
Amazing experience, and one I will always remember...
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Street names in the US are often similar (East, North, 1st, 2nd, ...) in multiple cities, and this also is the case in Belgium, albeit less frequently. The street I live in has several cousins in multiple towns, so sometimes this can lead to the following dialogue, over the phone:
Supplier: "Hello, I'm standing in front of your front door, can you come and open up?
Me: "OK, I'm coming"
Opens door, sees nobody...
Me: "Hello, where are you, I don't see anybody"
Supplier: "In front of number 43 at the Weggevoerdenstraat"
Me: "No, you're not"
Supplier: "Huh, don't you live in Wilsele?"
Me: "No, I live in Herent. Congratulations, you're the second delivery person who is in the wrong town"
Supplier: "Damn, will come "back" later"
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