We have a rule in our house: no Christmas music before Thanksgiving.
Except it wasn’t really a rule. It was one of those sayings you say is a rule, but everyone knows it’s not. For many years my kids were in choirs. Choirs perform at Christmas time. They have to practice prior to Thanksgiving.
One year I was the church choir director. We had multiple practices before Thanksgiving. My kids teased me about it. . .every time.
This year, of course, there were no choirs. At least in Utah we are still permitted to sing in church. . .with masks, of course. In Washington, singing isn’t permitted at all. At least it wasn’t when I was there this summer.
My kids are mostly grown now. A few still live at home, two are finishing high school. One is performing a local service mission. One’s getting ready to go on a mission to Indiana. For the holiday my college students came home for Thanksgiving. They haven’t had any symptoms and we kept the size of the group at 10.
The kids helped preapre the Thanksgiving meal. I cooked the turkey and the potatoes. The kids made salads and vegetable trays and more. And they played music. And were their own rules enforcers.
Turn it off.
Why?
No Christmas music before Thanksgiving!
But, it is Thanksgiving.
No, you have to wait until tomorrow. AFTER Thanksgiving.
And today it’s after Thanksgiving. Christmas starts at our house today. We finished putting up Christmas lights outside. Tomorrow we will decorate inside the house. We’ll uncover the Christmas village that has permanent residence on top of the pantry. A white sheet keeps the dust off and keeps it out of site for most of the year. Tomorrow it will be back.
We’ll set up the tree. We have enough ornaments for a dozen Christmas trees. We’ll pick a selection to hang on this year’s tree.
We won’t have any grandkids over this year. COVID, you know. So, we’ll probably put the train up. It’s an old style big one with lots of track.
We’ll hand Santa pictures on the walls and put up the army of nutcrackers on the shelves in the living room.
Oh, and we’ll play music. . .Christmas music, because it’s a rule.
Stay safe
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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I got the book Choose for free. It was a giveaway at a conference I attended back when we were still allowed to attend in-person conferences. Honestly, I had never heard of the author, Ryan Levesque, nor his #1 Best-Selling book Ask. I would have never purchased Choose on my own. Certainly not for the suggested retain price of $24.99.
You know what? I would have missed out. Rarely have I been so surprised by my reaction to a book, and especially a free book.
Choose is aimed at entrepreneurs. They are the target audience and Levesque goes straight after them (you) in the opening. His prelude is called “Start Here” and opens with the question,
What’s the single most important question you should ask before you start your business?
Don’t worry, Levesque answer that question for you and then takes you through a simple method for answering the question. “Choose” is part autobiography, part tutorial and part cheerleader. Unlike many other similar books, the author doesn’t claim some hidden secret knowledge. Instead he claims that through his experience he discovered how to identify markets and gauge competition and market size.
Levesque then lays out how to do each of these tasks. He also takes you through the process of establishing your market and a market strategy. One of the strategies he introduces you to is the concept of IN/UP/MAX. It’s a process you see in many successful businesses. You have the IN product offering. That’s what get’s the business. Then, you have UP, that’s your upsell. The extra offerings you can give to those who are willing to pay more to get more. Think of Patreon, or a leather-bound edition, or a video offering in addition to a printed book.
The third tier is the MAX level. This is for those customers who really want to pay for your expertise. A personal coaching session, a personalized experience, something unique.
Levesque offers examples from his own experience and numerous examples from his students and clients. Each of them appears completely reasonable and grounded in reproducable results.
What I Liked
Honestly, I liked a lot. His writing style is very easy to follow. Almost like a conversation. The writing is clear and grounded in everyday conversation. His examples are relevant and draw on tools readily available from Google and Amazon.
The book offers a step-by-step approach that is simple in execution, but brilliant in concept. Included are worksheets for each step and links to online resources. All available for the price of the book.
As I said, it was one of the most surpising books I’d ever read.
What I Didn’t
Levesque is very optimistic. Sometimes overly so. Entreprenuership comes so easily to him that he seems incapable of identifying with those who are less inclined. Reading through Choose it appears that anyone could go into business and start and run a successful startup.
What It Means To You
It’s possible that you are one of the the people who is interested in starting a business. If you are, then Choose is going to be an invaluable tutorial. As a writer who hangs out online with other writers, I realized that the concepts that Choose taught were also applicable to writers. IN/UP/MAX applies well to my friend Dave who runs a writer’s group. The IN is buying one of Dave’s books. Some are on writing. Most are fantasy. The UP is membership in Dave’s writer’s group. The MAX? Attend one of his in person workshops. Regardless of your business, there are lessons to be learned from Choose.
My Rating
Three out of four stars.
Choose is the only book I’ve reviewed that I sent to a family member
Stay safe
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2020 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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I’ve worked in IT my entire career. I started as a telephony tech for WordPerfect Corporation back when there was a WordPerfect Corporation. I worked for Microsoft for nearly a decade. I’m old enough to be able to recognize analog modem startup sequences.
But, while I’ve worked with computers since the PC first became a thing, I’m not what you would call an early adopter. I’m often not even a late adopter. For example, I cannot ever imagine having a Google Echo, or Amazon Alexa in my house. Same for a Ring doorbell. Nope.
So, I resisted the move to smartwatches, for example. But, last year my lovely wife gave me a simple smartwatch for Christmas.
Mostly I use it to track my steps. My goal si 6000. I normally top out around 2500. Oh well. I don’t use my watch as a watch too much. I use it occasionally, but mostly it makes a great flashlight for late night navigations.
I like clocks and watches. My home office is small. You might say cozy. You might even say closet-like. Okay, basically Harry Potter had more room under his stairs. The office is 4×7. And it’s dominated by my old style rolltop desk which is 30″ by 50″. There’s plenty of wall space and much of it is taken up with clocks.
I have this clock above an old picture of my lovely wife and two oldest children when they were our two only children.
And in honor of Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, this clock runs counter-clockwise.
I work with sites across multiple times zones. These clocks represent Central Time on the left, Eastern Time Zone in the middle and Manila Time Zone on the right. That one I have to switch the AM/PM in my head when I’m talking to them.
I have plenty of options for Mountain Time Zone, of course. There’s my already mentioned smartwatch, then my computer and cellphone keep the time. Even my desk phone displays the time in MDT. But, my favorite choice is this tabletop grandfather clock that was made my my daughter. (She’s the youngest one in the above picture)
When she made it she was slightly older than the picture shows.
In addition to clocks, I like watches. I typically didn’t wear one before my lovely wife got me the smartwatch.
In 1995 I was working for Microsoft during the company’s 20 year anniversary. The company gave each of a watch to commemorate the event.
It was a nice gesture, but honestly the wooden box was nicer than the watch. Still, I kept it.
I also collect pocket watches. They fascinate me. This board (made by the same talented daughter that made the clock) contains pocket watches that belonged to my father, my grandfather, some of my old ones and one that belonged to my son.
And yes, there is an old school stopwatch, because. . .it fits. And an Iron Mask because. . .Marvel. My second most prized watch is this one.
It belonged to my great-grandfather. It came to me from my uncle. It’s probably about 125 years old. The watch works. It runs a little fast, ironically.
But, it’s only my second most favorite watch. This is my favorite.
It’s the watch I carry in my pocket. It was a gift from my son. A pocket watch can be useful.
If you are lost you can use an analog watch as a crude compass. You point the hour hand at the sun and halfway between the hour hand and 12:00 is South. You’re not going to earn any orienteering merit badge with it, but it’s better than just guessing.
(I’ve never had to personally use my pocket watch as a compass. I have compasses for that.)
But, that’s not why this is my favorite watch. It’s not the fact my son gave it to me. It’s not the cool eagle on the front. It’s not even the old-school chic that it gives off. It’s certainly not the fact that I can use it as a compass.
This.
This is why it’s my favorite watch. Like Captain America and a hundred different movie characters, I love having a picture of my girl on the inside of my pocket watch.
(But, the compass thing is kind of cool, too)
Stay safe
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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Do you know what the fastest plane in the world is? It’s the SR-71 Blackbird. The Blackbird set the record for absolute altitude record of 85,069 feet on July 28, 1976. The SR-71 also set the absolute speed record of 2,193.2 mph on that same day. Of course, these are the “official” numbers. It’s likely the true capabilities of the SR-71 were never revealed.
Anyway, that was 44 years ago. It’s fair to say that represented the height of aviation technology. But, we don’t use the SR-71 anymore. It was retired for good in 1999.
I bring up the SR-71 because it’s a cool looking plane, but also to show that “cutting edge” isn’t always best.
I own an iPod. That in itself is considered somewhat old school. I don’t play music from my phone. I have enough trouble keeping the battery alive without streaming music. (I do stream baseball games, but they suck my battery.) I recently bought a set of bluetooth speakers.
These are Damson Jet Bluetooth Wireless Stereo Speakers. They have some issues. In fact, I think the 3.3 rating on Amazon is too high. If you get the speakers too far apart (like more than 18 inches) they have an annoying habit of losing the connection.
But, it works well enough. The iPod has 128Gb of memory. There are about 7800 songs on it. I don’t use it for much else besides music. The battery would drain long before even a portion of the songs were played.
While many of the songs came from my CD collection, even more were downloaded from iTunes. Before downloading and streaming CD’s were how we all got our music. Prior to that was cassette tapes. Before cassettes were ill-advised 8-tracks. And finally prior to the venerable 8-track was records. There were multiple formats, LP’s were long play. they rotated at a speed of 33 revolutions per minute. There were 45’s and 78’s.
I remember listening to my brother’s Beatle’s White Album. Rocky Raccoon was my favorite track. There are two major problems with LPs. The first is the sound. They work by a needle on the record vibrating to grooves that make the sounds. The problem is that stuff happens, dust, dirt, wear and tear. And albums had an issue with pops and cracks. The second problem is that they were made of vinyl. They were plastic. And plastic scratches. And if you scratch it too badly, the needle cannot follow the track and the record is ruined.
That’s what happened to my brother’s White Album. I was turning it over one day and I dropped it. I put a long scratch along side two. The album was ruined. I had to buy him a new one. But, he bought a tape instead. And it wasn’t even the White Album.
The pop and crack problem wasn’t eliminated when the music industry went to tape. Tapes stretch, they scratch they have similar, but slightly different issues as vinyl albums.
CD’s were the final ultimate solution. The recordings were perfect. No pops or cracks. Exactly as the artist and the producers envisioned. Streaming does the same thing. Digital perfection. Perhaps even the height of recording technologies.
But, there was a new problem. What would you rather look at, a digital portrait or a painted one? Something out of a 1200 dpi printer, or something created from oil and canvas?
Perfection has its place, but music may not be the place for it.
I inherited a record player from one of my kids recently. And last week I went and did something I haven’t done since I was a kid. I bought an actual record. Last year vinyl sales exceeded CD sales for the first time ever.
Among those 7800 songs on my iPod is not only the Beatles White Album, but an album by John Coltrane called A Love Supreme. It was originally released in January 1965. I was a one month old baby at the time. It was obviously released on vinyl.
A friend of mine who is an expert on Jazz music suggested A Love Supreme as one of the five most influential Jazz albums. I downloaded it to my iPod on his recommendation. I listened to multiple times. I liked it. I don’t understand it, but I like it.
When I went to restart my record collection, I decided I wanted to start with a signature album. An album that was designed to be listened to on an old style record player. That’s why I chose A Love Supreme.
The store, admittedly had a limited collection. They did not have my first chose Kind of Blue, by Miles Davis. (Oh, and no White Album.)
A funny thing happened when I bought an album that I already own a download copy of. I found the notes inside the album.
A Love Supreme was written as John Coltrane’s attempt to put in music our relationship with God. The “supreme” he’s referring to is the ultimate Supreme. And suddenly, the album started to make sense.
I still listen to my iPod. It’s great to hook it up to the bluetooth speakers and play it in the garage while I working on cars or woodworking projects. And I still love my Jazz collection.
But, it doesn’t compare with putting a record on the record player and listening to it as the artist intended it to be listened to, pops and crackles and all.
Stay safe
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2020 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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Over the past week you may have noticed a hashtag trending on social media.
#givethanks
It’s typically found at the end of a post where someone is expressing gratitude for something, or someone. It’s the brainchild of a man name Russell M. Nelson. He’s the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons. He is regarded by the faithful as not just the president of the church, but a prophet. Yes, like Moses or Noah, or Abraham, or even Peter, James and John, the apostles. Last week he gave a worldwide address and prayer. His message was simple.
GRATITUDE
He asked faithful members to flood social media with expressions of gratitude for the next seven days, and use the hashtag, #givethanks. Expect to see these posts up through the holiday this week. Thursday is Thanksiving in the United States. A holiday typically focused on expressing thanks for the things we have.
It’s been interesting to see the reaction of people online. Some are cynical. Some are amused. Many, of course are sincere. And why not? We’re still in the middle of a deadly pandemic. Thousands die every day. In the United States, we’ve just completed one of the most brutal elections in recent history. So brutal that the loser is still refusing to concede.
Why not a little positive energy to counter the negativity washing over social media? Personally I think it’s a good thing.
I posted pictures of my family,
#givethanks
My lovely wife,
#givethanks
and a post without pictures.
Youngest grandson came home from the NICU today after spending his first three weeks there.
#givethanks
Many of my friends posted similar thoughts and pictures. And I found myself pressing LIKE on a lot more posts than I do normally.
As I said, not everyone is pleased with the #givethanks movement. In fact, some are almost hostile. But, if you listen to their objections, it makes sense. They are not objecting to my post. They are not objecting to my friends’ posts about family and people important to them. No, they are objecting to what one friend called bragitude.
There is another group online posting online. They’ve always posted, but now they are co-opting the #givethanks hashtag. These are the people posting,
I’m so glad we made it back from Aspen in time to be at my niece’s ballet performance. She’s dancing the lead!
Oh. . .#givethanks
Basically, Bragituders “give thanks” for stuff. Stuff they are happy to tell you about. Or, they talk about experiences. But, not ordinary experiences. Experiences that, like the description of their stuff, they are happy to tell you about. And throw in a #givethanks. . .because you know, they aren’t bragging.
I was hesitant to participate in the #givethanks campaign at first. And then I realized it was for the very reason my friend’s objected to. I didn’t want to be a Bragituder. (Bragitonian? Bragidacio?)
Once I realized my ojbection, I felt better about my choice to post something.
Because I really am grateful. For my family. For my friends. For many people. But, most of the stuff? Nah, it’s just stuff. Stuff can be replaced. People can’t.
Stay safe and #givethanks
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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Ancient test of insanity:
Subjects are present with a pond and given a bucket to drain the pond. Those that start bailing water out of the pond are deemed insane. Those who first divert the stream feeding the pond are deemed sane.
I’ve never had to drain a pond. And I actually think I’m good enough with water and trenching that I could get the pond drained. And I would probably think to divert the stream. . .maybe.
But, that’s not why I’ve decided I’m insane.
First, let me point out that I am not making light of mental illness. My sister suffered from bipolar II. I have other family members who struggle with it. So, not that kind of insanity.
Just the average run-of-the-mill insane like a guy who keeps trying to use a bucket to empty a river.
Working from home, I spend most of my day sitting in front of my computer. I’m not alone, of course. I’m logged into Microsoft Teams. I have three different phones that I use throughout the day. I send and receive texts. And, of course, I have email. . .lots and lots of email.
In fact, I get so much email that I sometimes play a game to help motivate me to get through it. I’ll write down the number of unread and total emails with a time next to it, say 8:00. Then, I’ll focus on my email, using it as a very inefficient task list. At 8:30, I’ll again record how many total and unread emails I have and start on the next half hour stretch. The goal is keep the trend going down. It never gets to zero, of course. I mean, that would be crazy right?
Last night when I went to bed, the numbers were 62 unread and 80 total email. This morning I had to work through outages and meetings. I didn’t get to start on the email. And like an unrelenting stream, it kept coming in. At noon it was 137 unread, 156 total. By 4:00 it was. at 173/190. It currently sits at 177/194.
I have some maintenance that I need to login for tonight. So, I’ll sit in front of my computer some more. And I’ll work through my emails. I’m hoping I can at least get them back down to the 62/80 I was at last night. In addition to the test of insanity, there’s a definition too.
Definition of insanity: Repeating the same action and expecting a different result
Yep, I’m totally insane.
Stay safe
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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My social calendar filled up very quickly tonight. You might think there’s not much to do on a Thursday night in Utah. . .in the middle of a pandemic. You’d be right. The events on my calendar weren’t in Pleasant Grove or even in Utah.
COVID changes everything.
The three events I had to choose from were a piano bar in Nashville, a football game in Seattle, or a book reading. .I think in Russia. Well, the reading was probably not in Russia, but the book was War & Peace, and it’s set in Russia.
The football game started at 6:00, the other two at 6:30.
Of course, all three were virtual events, online events. I realized I couldn’t attend all three. But, it’s all virtual, right? I watched the Seattle Seahawks taking on the St Louis Cardinals. At least I think the Cardinals still play in St Louis. I don’t follow football a lot.
But, football can be watched without sound. So, I tuned into my friend Rachel’s Virtual Piano Bar. I watched the football players crashing into each other to a sound track of “Don’t Stop Me Now,” and “Black Velvet,” and other songs.
Rachel did Virtual Piano Bars from March through July. She then started doing live shows, in and around Nashville and St Martin in the Caribbean. The live gigs have been mostly put on hold again. Weird that I wouldn’t be able to see her perform live, but the fact that restrictions are back in place means I can.
The football game, like all games was held without fans. The sound was pumped in. Even the booing for “bad” calls.
I enjoyed both the concert, and the game (Seahawks won 28 – 21.) I was disappointed I didn’t get to go to the book reading. They were going to explain War & Peace. I’ve read it. I don’t understand it, but I did read it.
Maybe this is what it’s going to be like now. Maybe we will attend concerts in Tennessee while watching sports in Washington and being disappointed we couldn’t attend a reading in Russia.
That’s the thing about a new normal. We get to figure it out as we go.
Stay safe
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2020 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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One of the best business books every written wasn’t even really about business. It was Dale Carnegie’s transformational “How To Win Friends and Influence People.” I’ve read it multiple times and I never fail to come away a better person.
Carnegie’s central message is pretty simple: be nice. Sure, there’s more to it than that. But, really it’s about how to be a nice person.
Today I was accused of only “pretending” to be nice. It was an interesting accusation. The discussion centered around a public figure. My friends who vote differently than I do are convinced the public figure (not the president, btw) is a terrible, horrible, scum of the earth person. I tried to explain that she deserved respect simply because all people deserve respect.
We disagreed.
This friend is still a friend, but I’ve lost friends during this election cycle. Always because they chose to no longer associate with me. For some reason we’ve accepted the idea that if we disagree we cannot be friends. When did being right become more important than being friends?
My dad used to say, “Do you want to be right or do you want to be Sargent?”
If he were still with us, he might have modify it to “Do you want to be right or do you want to be friends?”
I know which one I’d choose.
Stay safe
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2020 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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Last month I wrote about MAC addresses. (You Have A MAC Address. And it’s The Only One Like It In The World.) I pointed out that MAC addresses are unique and that the first part of the MAC address identifies the manufacturer.
Several unidentified devices appeared on my network masquerading as my son Brian’s iPhone. They weren’t his iPhone and their MAC addresses did not them as Apple devices.
I have teenagers in my house. And I also have pretty good firewalls setup. Over the years my kids have tested my security. Occasionally, they’ve gotten past me for a time. More often, they haven’t made it past the first layer of my multi-layered security.
No one ever fessed up to the devices with the faked MAC addresses. I suspected that they were network devices that once inside my network would attempt to spoof my security. I would remove the devices from my quarantine area. They would almost immediately come back. It was annoying, but if none of my kids would fess up, there wasn’t a lot I could do about it.
And then today happened. My lovely wife has an iPhone. It’s not surprisingly identified with her name. She had some issues with accessing our network. As I was troubleshooting her access, I noticed another iPhone had attempted to join our network. And sure enough, it had a spoofed MAC address.
This was getting really old. But, then I noticed that it appeared the spoofed MAC address was coming from my lovely wife’s phone. That made no sense. She had completely open access on our network. Could it be that one of our ids had sabotaged her phone? Installed MAL-ware perhaps?
I started to have a strange hunch about what might be happening. And like all good IT professionals I consulted my techy-wizard oracle. . .I started googling.
SEARCH: iphones showing two mac addresses
I got a hit on the second link.
Jul 4, 2019 1:29 PM in response to Baanman
When an iOS device is scanned by a network it returns a bogus MAC address to prevent the Wi-Fi router from tracking the phone. If you choose to connect to the network the correct Mac address is returned.
And just like that all those random iPhones with invalid MAC addresses suddenly made sense. The great thing about working in IT is that you are in a field were every 18 months your expertise becomes obsolete.
Stay safe
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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I grew up in the Seattle area. Actually just south of Seattle in the town of Olympia. Well, Lacey, just outside of Olympia. Olympia and Seattle are both on Puget Sound. It’s easy to think of Puget Sound as “the ocean.” It’s not. The Sound connects to the ocean, of course. And it has sealife, crabs, whales, salmon. But, a lake is not the river that feeds it.
One of the differences between the Sound and the ocean is waves. Both, have waves, of course. But, waves in the Sound are small. They are always small. You couldn’t surf even if the water weren’t 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
Just on the other side of the Olympic Peninsula is the ocean, with its waves. Those waves can be small, or they can come crashing down ahead of a storm blowing down from the Aleutian Islands and getting a boost from the Pineapple Express that comes from Hawaii and splits when it hits Northern California.
But, whether they are massive waves crashing on Ocean Shores, or the gentle waves on Alki Beach, the waves keep coming.
Waves also describe pandemics. We are told that the “second wave” is hitting France and other places. Personally, I’m not seeing it. I’m not sure ever I saw pull back. I’m still working at home. I’m still social distancing. I’m wearing a mask. I’m keeping track of who I see and being careful.
So, here we go again. Wear your mask. Pray for and watch out for your neighbors.
The only wave I know that typically isn’t followed by a second wave is a tsunami. But, Hopefully that’s not what we’re looking at.
Stay safe
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2020 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved