Coaching Businesses and Life

In a world of less face-to-face and more online activity, its no wonder we look for contact.

Blogs have taken over the world by storm ever since a few years ago.  FaceBook and MySpace have shown how much people need to be in contact with each other, while behind a computer.  Twitter, the new revolution taking the word by storm is also introducing a way to keep i touch in as little as a few hundred letters.

The great paradox is that we want to be independent while having an online "community."  In a strange twist, being online means being alone.  So can 140 words really explain who am I?  Can it really convey my being?  Maybe not in so little time and space but it does one thing.  It helps me condense my thoughts to a gist.  Most of my posts have a "gist" part so that people car read the essential, even if they miss the rest, they get it.

I come from a generation that was taught to embellish our writing, to make it appealing, sometimes taking long winded sentence structure as the epitome of artful communication.  With Twitter and my blogs, I have to condense so that even my short attention span can read what I have to say, in a gist.

And yes, you can follow the electric car blog I contribute with on Twitter by following: 33Nick

Yes, I did it!  I bought myself a new iMac and I love it… plus I deserve it.

Why an iMac?  Frankly speaking, I have been around computers since… since almost as long as I can remember.  My father worked for IBM, so we had a few at home.  I somehow became an IT consultant for years but the fun was zapped by continuous Microsoft frustrations running their quirky Windows operating system.  What had started as being fun, working on designing and implementing networks became a clean-up-after-Microsoft's-mess job.  I couldn't take it and got rid of my company.

Then I had a stroke of genius! I swore to never give a penny to Microsoft until it really put out a worthy product and insisted on quality, instead of convenience.  Still hasn't happened.  So I bought a Apple PowerBook G4.  That was over 4 years ago and it still works.

I don't have money to throw out the window, even less at Windows (LOL) so I had to be careful which one to choose.  After doing a quick research on refurbished Apples, I found a top of the line iMac for less than the regular price.

How happy am I?  Very!  The new one works like a dream, is blazing fast and the 24" screen is like having my own private viewing of the world on my desk.  Why would I deal with an annoying operating system that has viruses, is targeting by the entire world and is about as secured as a Swiss cheese when I can have an Apple?

Maybe I will post more here this way…

I have to laugh when I hear poor Steve Ballmer at Microsoft that selling a premium computer in this current economic crisis is a far stretch.  According to Ballmer, people won't pay an extra $200 for a premium computer.  Mr. Ballmer is renown to be pretty clueless, and can do a mean monkey dance on stage.  To each's own.

Apple Of My Eye.  I'm not loaded with cash at this moment, like most people BUT I do know what I look for in a new product.  Quality of the machine and good technical support.  If I can get a computer from Apple for an extra $200 and get the extra quality and tech support, Mr. Ballmer, I will.  And guess what?  I am.

Why?  My PowerBook G4 is 4 years old and hasn't stopped running since I bought it new.  The only reason why I want another one is that after 4 years, it is becoming a little slow for my growing needs.  I will retire it to become my external workhorse from the everyday workhorse. I will only use it when I need to go to a cafe or traveling.  All I need at home is an iMac with a 24" screen so that I can watch a movie when I want and work with enough ooomph!

So no, Mr. Ballmer from Microsoft that has always favored shoddy quality, many people like me have shied away from your countless expensive upgrades and continuous virus to a platforms that costs the same years down the line, minus the frustration you made us endure.  It's a question of paying upfront or later.

I just heard this and thought finally a company is doing something concrete about spam.

OK, OK, you are probably bored with this subject of spam but it really is an annoying thing. I read 75% of Internet traffic is spam! Something as wonderful as email has turned into a gateway for shoddy people to sucker others. I still remember the first time I heard of this new thing called electronic mail. It was in 1994. I wanted one. I got one and it was way cool. Now everyone has an email and all email accounts are spoiled with spam. Frankly said I like the way my body is. I don’t need designer shoes nor watches, nor Lords knows what other International Lottery and transfer of funds from unknown people.

Well, I just heard of a company that is having a Friday without email. Employees are asked not to use email and those who do are frowned upon! I thought how wonderful this is. It’s a great way to get people to let go of emails. It’s a neat way to go cold turkey with technology. Do you remember the last time you had no cell phones and no laptops? I do, it was in the early 90s. It’s also a great way to curb down on spam. It could be that solution that addresses a lot of problems. Something to watch out for in the future.

I have been using NYCT.net’s voice over IP for some years right now and the quality has always been great.

A lot of people used to fear the echoes and stayed away from VoIP for business. I can say the quality is as good as a regular land line. In fact I use it for my coaching practice as well as my training online. When I think of the money I have saved, it is a well worth system. Check out there long distance and international calling rates here.

NYCT, as I have said before is a terrific ISP company. These guys have hosted my biggest and smallest clients giving the same amount of professional attention and care to each. One thing I value above all is that they still answer their phones personally. There is nothing better than to have a real human being on the other side of the phone when you are stuck. I can’t stand those faceless bland big telecom corporations and what the rest of the world has adopted in their customer care. It isn’t care getting annoyed at a voice system that sometimes gets it, sometimes doesn’t. It isn’t good customer care to wait and speak to someone who doesn’t understand a thing, or with such an accent you don’t understand, or worse, someone who listens to you for 20 minutes only to put you through tech support. Do you hear me Dell?

That’s why I favor the smaller guys who do better quality work of the bigger” guys. After all, this is what made our country great.

For those of you who still haven’t made the switch to Leopard, you already have heard what a great OS it is. This ChangeWave Research study shows that it even bests Vista at work. Then again, almost anything at this stage bests Windows… And for those of you who still haven’t made the easy switch to Windows, I’m sorry for your pain.

“…ChangeWave Research has posted a study on satisfaction levels for corporate users of Leopard and Windows Vista. Not surprisingly, Leopard users are altogether much more satisfied than Vista users—in fact, Leopard users are 5 times more likely to say they’re ‘very satisfied’ than Vista users…

“In a February survey of 2,200 U.S. corporate computer users, 53% of those using Leopard reported they were very satisfied with their operating system, compared to only 40% of Windows XP and *gasp* 8% of Vista users…”

I think we are witnessing the last days of Microsoft gouging on forced upgrades. Thank goodness those days are behind us. It doesn’t look like people flock to their OS upgrades anymore. The last I witnessed was Windows 2000 which was a good improvement over NT4 and Windows 98. XP was lame and Vista is geared to confused the heck out of everyone even more with its so many flavor on which computers can run its hogging resource monster features.

I’ve helped a few friends with their Windows XP computers lately and I really don’t understand how such a system, lauded for its improvements and “robustness” and yadi yada still bogs down so much. All of them had the same problem, Windows came to a crawl. What do you do? Do you painstakingly go through all the culprits or do what even the great Gates said to do, reinstall from scratch once a year? If this is Microsoft’s idea of a greatly improved OS then they should take Leopard for a spin. Even though I still have 10.3 and Leopard is 10.5, my version still works very, very well and Leopard has features that makes Windows look like a bloated SUV. Windows can be OK only if, and only IF you really now your way around a computer. Apple’s OSx is 99.9% moron free mistakes and quirks.

As far as I have witnessed over and over the last decades, if you are not a Windows centric environment where servers host everything you just don’t need Windows.