Electronics is our friend (C. 1970).
Good Pans Are Worth the Money
A few tidbits of wisdom and humor
Browsing the archives for the Wisdom I Have Learned category
https://manageknowledge.us/blog/?p=486
Family are the people you can count on to hurt your feelings when your friends are too busy.
https://manageknowledge.us/blog/?p=483
…Take it!” Wise words from Yogi Berra. You can see more here. I was thinking of this one as we discussed a young man tonight who was in a university program he didn’t like and that didn’t fit his interests, but was afraid of his parents’ displeasure were he to switch. Also, he might not get their support. He has a definite artistic bent and they’ve shoe-horned him into a business school. Is this his “fork in the road”? Must he take it now or miss a productive, satisfying life that may be awaiting him, or will there be another “fork” later that will come on like a steam locomotive heading for the coal yard.
My limited experience is that it’s the small “forks” — the small decisions — that decide our fate, not the big ones like what to study in college or what religion to follow. OK, I know for Thomas Merton it was becoming a Catholic and later joining the Trappists. In my case the biggest decision in my life was based on my liking blue suits more than brown suits (had never had a brown suit by that point in my life). I was late to a group of pitches given in college by the Army and the Air Force R.O.T.C. programs aimed at gaining recruits. I wanted to join one of them, because I didn’t want to be drafted out of school. For the reason given I joined the Air Force ROTC, went to California where I met my wife and ultimately settled. Everything that has happened in my life since that day has flowed from that day. That was my biggest “fork in the road,” yet I had no idea of its importance that day.
P.S. Believe me, any young guys who are reading this: one of the biggest decisions you’ll make in your life will be whether to use a condom some certain night — and you won’t know ahead of time which night will be your “fork in the road.”
https://manageknowledge.us/blog/?p=473
If using your mind to think logically doesn’t scare you, doesn’t represent your worst nightmare, then you should be able to handle this series of eight videos. It starts out seeming to be only about the growth in world oil consumption — and maybe about economic growth itself — but it becomes about something even more important. Oh yeah, it seems to rely heavily on mathematics, or at least on arithmetic. Viewing all of it takes about 80 minutes, but you don’t have to it all in one sitting.
https://manageknowledge.us/blog/?p=441
You’ve heard that. You know it’s true. You may even have done it, or at least think you have done it. This has become an especially important topic for those of us who have a WordPress blog (such as this) or a personally maintained photo gallery, such as Gallery2.
It seems the first thing that’s emphasized is the importance of backing up the system’s database. Most packages provide specific instructions for doing that. If you have done that you figure you’re done. After all your blog or gallery is the same thing in your mind as the database. The trick here is that the database is a particular thing used by web systems to enable them to function. It’s not your data — your content — it’s data about your data. After you have backed it up you still have not completely backed up your blog or gallery.
Your blog or gallery consists of three things:
- the content (the wise words in your blog or the great shots in your gallery)
- the program package that tells it how to work, and
- the database that describes its structure so it will work
The entire system resides on a web server somewhere. To back up the database you follow instructions explaining how to use mySQL to back it up and download it to your computer where you store it somewhere safe. Now, if anything happens to the system as it resides on the far away web server you would have a copy that can be used to restore the database, but you cannot necessarily “rescue” the programs nor your content.
To backup the programs and your content that are on the web server you need a FTP capability — a package such as FileZilla — to download them to your computer where you can store them.
There is one further consideration about backups that goes beyond what is needed to backup a blog or a photo gallery. What about any files that are stored on your computer that you do not want to lose? Have you backed them up onto something that is stored away from where your computer is, so they will be safe in the case something happens to your computer or its location?
In the “old days” we did not have many of these files so we could store them on floppy disks or later on CDs. They didn’t take up much room and we could keep them at some other location we felt was secure. Now there are many more files and they have become quite large. Furthermore we’d like to back them up frequently and immediately move the backups “off site.” Two packages that can be used to accomplish this are Mozy and the new S3SystemBackup. One final decision you will need to make if you decide to use such a package is whether and how much to backup backups you have stored on your computer of your blog or your photo gallery.
https://manageknowledge.us/blog/?p=420
16 May, 2009
Recently I remembered a story, told me as a joke when I was a student at Fordham, that I came to view as containing wise information.
It seems a Jesuit and a Dominican were on a retreat. The retreat master was a Franciscan. During free time when they could talk they both said they’d like to have a cigarette or two during the Meditation Hour, so they thought they should each seek the retreat master’s permission.
The next day during the Meditation Hour the Jesuit was smoking, but the Dominican wasn’t. Afterwards the Dominican asked the Jesuit how it was that he was smoking.
“Father gave me permission,” the Jesuit answered.
“How can that be?” the Dominican asked. “He wouldn’t give me permission.”
“What did you ask?”
“I asked whether I could smoke while meditating and the retreat master said he didn’t think that was such a good idea.
“What did you ask?” the Dominican wondered.
“I asked whether it was okay to mediate while smoking,” the Jesuit responded. “And Father said he thought that was a great idea.”
https://manageknowledge.us/blog/?p=313
26 Mar, 2009
It’s natural to want to reach out for the grass that appears greener on the other side of the fence, but sometimes problems arise.
Grass Is Greener on Other Side of Fence
If there is a problem often help will arrive, but it may not be the kind of help wished for.
Too Eager To Help
https://manageknowledge.us/blog/?p=282
22 Mar, 2009
Los Angeles has been my home for many years. One thing I learned years ago when persons who had accepted invitations to dinner didn’t show up was that “LA is the land of the better offer.”
People here will say they are coming in response to your invitation, and they really intend to come, BUT if something else comes up, well, LA is…
https://manageknowledge.us/blog/?p=278
https://manageknowledge.us/blog/?p=137
22 Jan, 2009
In the back of my mind I wasn’t so concerned about the NSA sniffing
Plato sniffs
my phone calls and emails — and even this blog — as I would have expected to be. I always figured that anything sent electronically wasn’t completely secure. If I ever wanted to communicate something confidentially, I would do what the terrorists have probably figured out to do, I’d communicate it by snail mail.
https://manageknowledge.us/blog/?p=135
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