You want to be a "world changer". It doesn't come cheap...
I love finding a leader I can be proud of. Someone who leads out of moral authority and not position. Someone who has risen from difficult circumstances and overcome difficult odds. I'm a bit of a history idiot, so please hang with me, but I just found a story of this that I've fallen in love with. I had heard of this guy plenty of times, but never really realized his story.
I just finished watching "Invictus" with Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon, directed by Clint Eastwood. Its a story of how Nelson Mandela was able to help his country begin the process of forgiveness after horrible near-war oppression of blacks by whites in South Africa.
My chin is still on the floor! This was a freak'n-awesome movie and a story that I had to know more about!! Even my son Jonathan was glued to every minute. I couldn't believe how awesome Nelson Mandela's character was in the movie. Every few scenes, the message of "Forgive those who persecute you" was beautifully portrayed. This movie was truly inspiring -- I had to know more. A guy like that had to have some connections with Jesus to understand that kind of forgiveness. Instead of taking the opportunity to get revenge, he forgives those who were his enemies.
How in the world could this guy, Mandela, get put in prison for 27 years, roughly from age 24~51 and have such a forgiving attitude!?! I couldn't believe it so I had to do some research to find out if the movie was accurate in that area.
Mandela bio:
http://www.answers.com/topic/nelson-mandela
Religious views of noble peace prize winners:
http://nobelist.tripod.com/id3.html
Mandela reminds me a lot of Martin Luther King Jr. Wow! What a life of suffering and responsibility -- What a calling. He spent 27 years in prison for believing that blacks should have the same rights as whites in his country. He mined limestone and harvested seaweed from Prison during the part of his life when the rest of us are raising children and "living the good life". His prime life was literally stolen from him. He lived in a tiny cell on a prison island for much of his term -- with only a bed on the floor for his early twenties, thirties and forties. Talk about plenty of opportunities to grow bitter. "Why is this happening to me God!" -- but he didn't become bitter. How did he do it!! This man deserves to be listened to. He's got some moral authority.
A miracle happens and he gets out of prison. Then gets elected president of South Africa. He's able to forgive his oppressors and form a coalition government with those who hated him and what he represented. Talk about forgiving your enemies, he kept many of his "enemies" to work with him in the new government when he was elected president. In fact, he was awarded the Noble-Peace-Prize WITH one of the men in the opposing government he was up-against, Frederik de Klerk
De Klerk also seems to be an awesome man who rose to the challenge at the right time. Is this a coincidence that he became President when Mandela was needed? Is there an opportunity for us to stand up for what is right? Can we sacrifice like that?
Core Truth: Forgiveness is really powerful. When someone will step up and take the first steps of forgiveness, its like throwing a rock at a wall of snow that is about to avalanche. Small acts of forgiveness really can make a difference.
These men were able to rise to a higher calling, and were able to lead-by-example in forgiveness. The really helped their nation to begin to reconcile the terrible hurts from apartheid. Reminds me of the biblical Joseph story -- a man who sat in prison for years, only to end up saving Egypt from a great famine, along with many neighboring nations.
Other notes:
Mandela was born in a tribe where he herded animals young in life. His tribal name was "Rolihlahla" which meant "Troublemaker". This name strikes me as strangely prophetic and sarcastic at the same time. The "troublemaker" becomes one of the greatest "peacemakers" of our era, from such humble beginnings.
Both of his parents died when he was young. He proved a very smart man and went to live with the Chief's family. He could have led a comfortable life with his status in the tribe, but instead went to college to be a lawyer where he started getting in trouble leading peaceful demonstrations against apartheid policy in South Africa. These activities eventually led to a "life term" in prison.
A couple of Mandela Quotes:
"If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner. " -- Sounds loosely like something a Jewish carpenter said a while ago..
"There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires. "
It's awesome to see leaders who we can look up to. I'm proud of this man.
BTW, Clint Eastwood is putting out some pretty cool movies on reconciliation and forgiveness. This is at least his second one, Grand Torino was pretty awesome too.
Here is the meaning of Invictus, (Latin for "unconquerable"):
And the link to the poem: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/invictus/
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Confessions of a PC Guy
OK, I'm going to come out of the closet here. To set the stage, first let me say that I make my living writing software for the web and for databases using mostly Microsoft technology. Not including the PCs we have for employees, we still have a PC for every person in the family (6) and then some extra laptop PCs laying around for company use. We have PCs in the closet and PCs running under desks -- It's like a LAN Party game dream house. Our 5 & 6 year old boys have a waiting list of boys who want to play at their house.. :)
So with all this PC testosterone flowing in the house, its really embarrassing to say, what I'm about to say. I really like the new Mac that a company bought for me to test some websites on. You see, we're doing some video conferencing type software development and it needs to run on a PC and a Mac. Normally we can just test websites on PC versions of the Firefox and Safari browsers, and that means it'll pretty much work the same on the Mac. But with video conferencing, we needed to be a little more rigorous in the testing.
So.. I felt a like I was soliciting a prostitute or buying drugs, but I bough a Mac. A little MacBook Pro. I felt sinful, and traitorous. I was betraying Bill. I felt like I should make a little brown book cover to hide it from my friends. I even had to spend a few hours on google to understand what I was looking for and where to buy it. Dell doesn't sell Macs, you see. Should I look for a pimp or a drug seller on the corner of some seedy alleyway to make my "offer"? Would one of my friends catch me? What if my family found out?
A little more on my PC background. I take a Texas approach on computers. Bigger is better. Whether that is more RAM, more harddrive space, a better video card. I'm a sucker for the upgrade. (Deanna won't let me go to the grocery store with her -- We always come out with way too much food.) I've got some of the physically biggest laptops that you can buy. Giant machines that would crush your legs after an hour if you even made it that far before they caught fire from the heat generated from them. We're talking Dual-SLI-Video cards that you can play 3D games on as if you were on a desktop. Machines that have a GOOD battery life of maybe 45 minutes. Their power bricks are literally brick size and weight.
So that's my laptop background. Never messed with "Sissy" laptops -- until now.
So here comes some embarrassing disclosures.
It came in a cool white box with a handle. Nice packaging. I've got an iPod, I knew that packaging is nice from Apple. I had buffered myself against this foreseen temptation. No problems.
To do a legitimate job on the testing, I'd actually have to USE the Mac a bit, to get oriented. I figured the main way to do that would be set up my email accounts on it and use it as a "short-trip-email/internet" laptop. That way I could learn my way around it and be able to help folks with Mac problems. Its hard to do that if you've never used one. Amazingly, that was easy to do and it actually felt pretty responsive in getting my 3 different IMAP email accounts set up and functional. I was embarrassed to find out that it actually felt a little BETTER than checking email on my PC. (It took about 5 hours to synchronize all my email folders, but that would have happened on any computer -- I've just got like 1 gb of email files.)
The first time I noticed I was lowering my well-calculated Mac-the-Prostitute defenses, was when I noticed that this little machine can sit on my lap without making me infertile. The heat it puts off is pretty minimal. I felt a little angry and embarrassed -- my PC laptops never did a lapdance for me and here was this little Mac-whore sitting there for hours...
There aren't even any fans -- I can sit using it with no noise. Wow. I'm used to multiple fans cranking at full speed, warming the room by 10 degrees and leaving scorch marks on the desk.
Second thing -- The track pad on the mac is freaking awesome. What the heck PC laptop manufactures?!? Have you used one of these? You've got to be embarrassed at how sucky the pc touchpads are? You really should be! And I didn't even know what I was missing. Dang. The mac-touchpad is huge, smooth and the two finger scroll / two finger right click are amazing. It took me about a day to get used to it, but now its ruined me for using a PC laptop touchpad. I feel like I did when I ate my first real Steak at Great American Land and Cattle Co on Alabama (El Paso, TX). All the rest of the leathery meat slabs I had eaten in my life were now left naked for what shallow imitations they were for real "Steak". Yeah, that's pretty much how I feel using my pc laptop touchpads now. It hurts.
Lid-closes-sleep-mode. First thing I usually do on a PC laptop is to turn off the "Sleep-mode-when-you-close-the-lid" mode. It just doesn't ever seem to work right -- It always freezes up some poor application that wasn't designed right. I have tons of PC applications, and its easier to just shut them down, then turn off the laptop manually. Then you don't have to battle some poor app that won't come back "awake" when I lift the lid again, or try to get a network connection back, or try to get my email program to respond, etc... -- I couldn't believe it, but the Mac version of this close-the-lid-sleep function actually works. And it works really fast. And all the software seems to be fine with "Being woken back up". The network just jumps back on. So I don't think I even know HOW to turn off the mac, but that's fine. It just works.
Now will I be throwing out the 10+ pcs in my house? No. I still need them because they run the majority of the software that I need to run my programming business. And they also run the 100+ games that my family loves to play. And they seem to cost 25~50% of what the Mac machines of similar caliber cost. And I know how to build them, replace their parts, diagnose them from the ground up if necessary. (And I assume all machines on earth break down eventually, even cool little silver ones with no fans and big/smooth track pads.)
Did I mention battery life? Granted nothing I have is a fair comparison, but still, I got like 6 hours of email work straight out of the Mac. This is unheard of on my PC laptops. Though I could probably get similar battery life on a PC laptop if I didn't always buy such power hungry monsters with big 17" screens. I just can't help it. (See the "Sucker-for-upgrades" comment above.)
With all that said, I feel a little like I've stepped out of the confessional. I've come out of the closet. I'm ready for the ridicule. I've been tempted, if not turned, to the "darkside". I can say it now I think... "macs are pretty cool."
Which laptop will I bring with me on little day trips? It'll probably be the cool little silver one with the bitten-apple on its cover. It's appropriate for my sinfulness feeling, but sometimes its good to be a little bad...
So with all this PC testosterone flowing in the house, its really embarrassing to say, what I'm about to say. I really like the new Mac that a company bought for me to test some websites on. You see, we're doing some video conferencing type software development and it needs to run on a PC and a Mac. Normally we can just test websites on PC versions of the Firefox and Safari browsers, and that means it'll pretty much work the same on the Mac. But with video conferencing, we needed to be a little more rigorous in the testing.
So.. I felt a like I was soliciting a prostitute or buying drugs, but I bough a Mac. A little MacBook Pro. I felt sinful, and traitorous. I was betraying Bill. I felt like I should make a little brown book cover to hide it from my friends. I even had to spend a few hours on google to understand what I was looking for and where to buy it. Dell doesn't sell Macs, you see. Should I look for a pimp or a drug seller on the corner of some seedy alleyway to make my "offer"? Would one of my friends catch me? What if my family found out?
A little more on my PC background. I take a Texas approach on computers. Bigger is better. Whether that is more RAM, more harddrive space, a better video card. I'm a sucker for the upgrade. (Deanna won't let me go to the grocery store with her -- We always come out with way too much food.) I've got some of the physically biggest laptops that you can buy. Giant machines that would crush your legs after an hour if you even made it that far before they caught fire from the heat generated from them. We're talking Dual-SLI-Video cards that you can play 3D games on as if you were on a desktop. Machines that have a GOOD battery life of maybe 45 minutes. Their power bricks are literally brick size and weight.
So that's my laptop background. Never messed with "Sissy" laptops -- until now.
So here comes some embarrassing disclosures.
It came in a cool white box with a handle. Nice packaging. I've got an iPod, I knew that packaging is nice from Apple. I had buffered myself against this foreseen temptation. No problems.
To do a legitimate job on the testing, I'd actually have to USE the Mac a bit, to get oriented. I figured the main way to do that would be set up my email accounts on it and use it as a "short-trip-email/internet" laptop. That way I could learn my way around it and be able to help folks with Mac problems. Its hard to do that if you've never used one. Amazingly, that was easy to do and it actually felt pretty responsive in getting my 3 different IMAP email accounts set up and functional. I was embarrassed to find out that it actually felt a little BETTER than checking email on my PC. (It took about 5 hours to synchronize all my email folders, but that would have happened on any computer -- I've just got like 1 gb of email files.)
The first time I noticed I was lowering my well-calculated Mac-the-Prostitute defenses, was when I noticed that this little machine can sit on my lap without making me infertile. The heat it puts off is pretty minimal. I felt a little angry and embarrassed -- my PC laptops never did a lapdance for me and here was this little Mac-whore sitting there for hours...
There aren't even any fans -- I can sit using it with no noise. Wow. I'm used to multiple fans cranking at full speed, warming the room by 10 degrees and leaving scorch marks on the desk.
Second thing -- The track pad on the mac is freaking awesome. What the heck PC laptop manufactures?!? Have you used one of these? You've got to be embarrassed at how sucky the pc touchpads are? You really should be! And I didn't even know what I was missing. Dang. The mac-touchpad is huge, smooth and the two finger scroll / two finger right click are amazing. It took me about a day to get used to it, but now its ruined me for using a PC laptop touchpad. I feel like I did when I ate my first real Steak at Great American Land and Cattle Co on Alabama (El Paso, TX). All the rest of the leathery meat slabs I had eaten in my life were now left naked for what shallow imitations they were for real "Steak". Yeah, that's pretty much how I feel using my pc laptop touchpads now. It hurts.
Lid-closes-sleep-mode. First thing I usually do on a PC laptop is to turn off the "Sleep-mode-when-you-close-the-lid" mode. It just doesn't ever seem to work right -- It always freezes up some poor application that wasn't designed right. I have tons of PC applications, and its easier to just shut them down, then turn off the laptop manually. Then you don't have to battle some poor app that won't come back "awake" when I lift the lid again, or try to get a network connection back, or try to get my email program to respond, etc... -- I couldn't believe it, but the Mac version of this close-the-lid-sleep function actually works. And it works really fast. And all the software seems to be fine with "Being woken back up". The network just jumps back on. So I don't think I even know HOW to turn off the mac, but that's fine. It just works.
Now will I be throwing out the 10+ pcs in my house? No. I still need them because they run the majority of the software that I need to run my programming business. And they also run the 100+ games that my family loves to play. And they seem to cost 25~50% of what the Mac machines of similar caliber cost. And I know how to build them, replace their parts, diagnose them from the ground up if necessary. (And I assume all machines on earth break down eventually, even cool little silver ones with no fans and big/smooth track pads.)
Did I mention battery life? Granted nothing I have is a fair comparison, but still, I got like 6 hours of email work straight out of the Mac. This is unheard of on my PC laptops. Though I could probably get similar battery life on a PC laptop if I didn't always buy such power hungry monsters with big 17" screens. I just can't help it. (See the "Sucker-for-upgrades" comment above.)
With all that said, I feel a little like I've stepped out of the confessional. I've come out of the closet. I'm ready for the ridicule. I've been tempted, if not turned, to the "darkside". I can say it now I think... "macs are pretty cool."
Which laptop will I bring with me on little day trips? It'll probably be the cool little silver one with the bitten-apple on its cover. It's appropriate for my sinfulness feeling, but sometimes its good to be a little bad...
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