I always need to be learning. If I’m not pushing myself out of my comfort zone or just plain learning ‘cool shit,’ I just get bored and cranky. This is one of the reasons why I love working at H2O.ai because I’m pushed everyday. Just this past week I was pushed into learning more deeply NLP and coding Python, two topics I’m very interested in. Along the way I’ve learn how to use Git better and solve some interesting use cases. ...
Back when I started blogging in 2005-ish, I had a few blogs that destructed due to bad software or databases. My Sixth World News and Commentary site just stopped working one day and I couldn’t recover any posts. I was a tech newbie so I didn’t know how to do SQL dumps and try to save over a years worth of work. Wordpress came along and changed all that by making blogging more robust and fun. Then the blog explosion happened. We had Blog Carnivals, blog circle links, many new blogs popping up every week. Over time I made many online friends with many bloggers. I had found my tribe. I posted about the markets, Forex, investing, and machine learning. Suddenly my blog took off because of my RapidMiner tutorials and the rest is history. ...
I found this interesting article on Pocket about writing. The gist of it is that successful writing is about rituals. Every writer is different and the rituals are different, it’s all about finding out what works best for you. Location and physical environment also play a role in maintaining a sustained and productive workflow. Bob Dylan, for instance, extolled the virtues of being able to “put yourself in an environment where you can completely accept all the unconscious stuff that comes to you from your inner workings of your mind.” Reviewing the research, Kellogg echoes Faulkner’s memorable assertion that “the only environment the artist needs is whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at not too high a cost” and notes that writers’ dedicated workspaces tend to involve solitude and quiet, although “during the apprenticeship phase of a writer’s career, almost any environment is workable” — most likely a hybrid function of youth’s high tolerance for distraction and the necessity of sharing space earlier in life when the luxury of privacy is unaffordable. via Pocket ...
Writers gonna write! February is shaping up to be a big traveling month for me. I was in Mountain View at the end of January for Sales Kick Off and then stayed for H2O World in San Francisco at the beginning of the month. Topping that off so far was a trip to Orlando for HIMSS last week. All incredible events but my traveling isn’t done yet! I plan to be all over the eastern seaboard in the coming week! ...
The best startups have a ‘Do It Yourself’ attitude. When a problem arises, no one get’s assigned the task to solve it. The team jumps right in and gets to work. There’s always a sense of ownership and a sense of pride. They build new things because it’s cool. They think of ways to make things better and make it happen. They are the ‘Makers’, and for lack of a better word, they make $hit happen. ...
Writing. I have such a love hate relationship with it. I try to write things of interest to my readers but I’m struggling to reconcile what to write about it. So I focus on writing tips and the process. I love the process of writing so much that it gets in the way of actual writing sometimes. Damn. In order to share with my readers, I have to write. In order to write, I have to sit my butt in a chair and start writing. This was something I used to do it religiously back in 2007 to 2010. I would write a post every morning, mostly on the markets and applying machine learning to predict the stock market. I had a routine and it served me well. I’m slowly easing back into that routine. It’s quite simple. My preferred method is wake up at 5:30AM, make some coffee, and put fingers to keyboard. If all goes well, I’ll have a rough draft of a post ready to go before the entire house wakes up for the day. For years I fell out of that routine and I think I became dumber for it. I made all kinds of excuses but the problem was really me. Hell, I’m loathe to say that I blamed my writing utensils as well! My computer was too slow! My laptop was too heavy. You get the picture. ...
I’m going to preface this post by saying that lately I’ve been pretty emotional. I’m not sure why, but perhaps it has to do with the fact that in a few short years I’ll be a half century old. I’m starting to look around me and catch glimpses of my mortality in the rear view mirror. Oddly, it seems to be gaining on me every time I look. For those that know me, I have a favorite saying. When I’m asked “how’re you doing?” I reply, “I’m living the dream.” Sometimes I get a chuckle, sometimes I get a sigh, and sometimes I get “Yah right, more like a nightmare.” I’ve come to find that I can learn a lot about a person by how they answer this question. ...
Dear Friend, I’ve been meaning to write about the importance humility and equanimity in sales. From my personal past observations, it seems these are attributes only a few sales people have. What is humility and equanimity? Humility is defined as: “a modest or low view of one’s own importance; humbleness.” Equanimity is defined as: “mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation.” The Monkey Brain Recently I was enlightened by a sales colleague about the concept of the Monkey brain. It was from a book he read. ...
I find this somewhat older post fascinating. It would appear that more and more millennials are waking up and realizing that there’s more to life than just overworking. Sure they get big $ but they’re burning out too. “I wanted to travel more — I didn’t want to have to ask for time off and grovel for extra days, you know?” says Solomon, now 25 and living in a rental house in Kauai, Hawaii, overlooking the beach. I’m seeing this trend first hand. My niece and her husband are leaving South Africa to travel and work on the road. Of course, they have no children or pets to tie them down, so I’m all for it. Do it while you can, experience the adventure. While travel may be uncomfortable at times, it’s an adventure. ...
Good Morning. My name is Tom, it’s April 2018 and I’m done laying low. It’s time to download all this ‘stuff’ that’s been on my shoulders for so long. I feel like I’m just coming out of a long funk that has had the combined effects of burnout and a mild depression. Yes, I was/am burned out and mildly depressed. Why? It’s probably because of several tumultuous years, both professionally and personally. ...