people & community spaces

there isn't a single thing i enjoy about airports. parking is normally a hassle, check-in lines are often long & painful, bathrooms are messy, food options blow, & the costs for anything you may buy is outrageously out of control (almost as bad as hotels)!

granted... air travel has become a necessity for many folks & businesses. i for one love the fact that in less than 24-hours i can be in any part of the world.

no matter how much air travel has become a way of life, airports in my opinion are gross places & i don’t enjoy hanging out for hours waiting for flights in them! i don’t blame the cities for the grossness of their airports. in fact i’m sure the dollars spent to spruce up airports & daily costs associated with janitorial costs are outrageous.

so who’s to blame? simple, the folks that visit airports daily & don’t know how to pick up after themselves! as i've suggested before, community spaces are treated like wastelands by the average joe (see office kitchens for example). most people simply aren't accountable for their actions & as a result they don't clean up after themselves when they make a mess.

while passing through terminal 1 in the cincinnati/north kentucky airport this morning i was stopped dead in my tracks at what i saw. next to a row of chairs was someone’s clipped fingernails (let's hope it they were fingernails & toenails) all over the floor. as if it isn't gross enough that someone would sit & clip their fingernails in public! the fact that this person left their fingernails all over the floor just makes me sick.

question: if you were to see a person cutting his/her fingernails in an airport & then begin to walk away leaving the fingernails all over the floor would you say something to this person? i'd like to think that i would. the airport staff can’t control everyone so it’s time we pitch in & defend our community spaces.

shave & suit

in november/december of last year i was sporting a mountain man beard. while i’m not a fan of the beard today it was fun at the time & i enjoyed not having to shave for those 5 – 6 weeks. given that i had to shave daily & get hair-cuts weekly while serving as a US marine i haven’t been a fan of either activity ever sense. after the mountain man experience i began using the shortest guard on the beard trimmer & i’d usually only shave twice a week.

my “no shaving” style for 2008 all ended this tuesday, march 11th, when i shaved with a real razor. i was meeting with nokia folks at their office in white plains, NY & i felt the need to “clean-up.” not only did i shave; i was sporting a suit for this meeting. while fun to dress up everyone now & then i really prefer jeans & a nice shirt.

to my surprise my shave & suit were not necessary. i was expecting a room full of suits & what i got was a bunch of 30-some dudes (minus the accounting guy) wearing jeans, nice shoes, & those pin-striped shirts that are currently so popular. worse off, 2 of the 7 guys had that short shave look that i’d been sporting. oh, & then there was the most senior of all the guys sporting sunglasses on his head.

boy did i feel like a bone-head. i have to remind myself of the industry that i am in & that in tech almost any thing is allowed – even from folks that are with a big organization like nokia.

qualities of a winning personality

i forget where i read this... how can you disagree with any of these though? while not complicated stuff - how many of us actually hold true to each of these qualities?

1. exhibit integrity: one is said to have integrity to the extent that everything he does and believes is based on the same core set of values. while those values may change, it is their consistency with each other and with the person’s actions that determine his integrity.

2. do not speak badly of others: when you confide in a friend and speak badly of others, what’s to say that you won’t speak badly about the friend to someone else? when you establish yourself as someone that does not speak badly, you will find that more people confide in you.

3. stay optimistic: i don’t mean blindly optimistic where you think it’ll rain money tomorrow. i’m talking about putting aside what’s going wrong in order to focus on what’s important and stay on course.

4. help others when you can: they say you don’t know how much money you have until you give it away. i think the same goes for knowledge and all of our abilities in general. i think part of our purpose in developing ourselves, our skills and talents is to be able to share it.

5. high ambitions: this is one of the most contagious qualities. the reason is that your dreams or goals not only bring you hope, but hope to the people around you. you enroll (or recruit) them into this dream, and it inspires and motivates them to dream goals of their own.

6. kind and compassionate: the ability to feel the suffering of others, and to care and possibly do something about it. if you think it sucks to feel someone else’s pain in addition to your own, you can also consider the feeling of unlimited love and joy that others experience as well.

7. believe in and respect yourself: if you don’t respect yourself, you can’t honestly expect others to do it. when you make decisions, with love and respect of yourself in mind, you’ll be pleased to see yourself taking action on a higher level.

8. persist until you succeed: being ambitious is not enough. it’s when you fall down, realize that your set back is a lesson learned, and get up to persevere.

9. open mindedness: if you aren’t open minded, than your set in your ways, doomed to never discover a newer and better way.

10. take responsibility: blaming others doesn’t really solve problems. a person with a winning personality will take responsibility for what happened and take measures to prevent the situation from repeating itself.

bikini fans

i'm surprised that i'm talking (blogging) so much about the green bay game too... it really was a disappointment. i mean, this is probably favre's last year & for them to go the super bowl against the patriots would have made for such good marketing & hype. how in the world did they loose at home in that crazy weather?

enough with the game, how about those bikini girl fans? did you miss seeing these girls on the camera yesterday? how nuts will fans get? is it really worth it to be on TV? my answer is yes!

for 2 minutes they probably froze their nipples off - literally ;). in that two minutes their faces, well their bodies, were seen by millions & now with all the web attention they've probably been viewed & talked about by hundreds of millions. granted, it's not the most respectable thing to be known for. of course, it wasn't like they were stripping - millions of women wear bathing suits everyday around pools & beaches. it's the cold weather aspect that makes it a "big deal." their stunt worked & they've created a lot of fun chatter & probably brought smiles to a lot of faces.

i suppose if fans are going to show off their bodies for the camera i prefer it be "bikini girls" versus the usual overweight fat man that's drinking his beer & eating a mouthful of chili dogs with his buddy.

productive arguing

leaders from 22 governments gathered this past week in santiago, chile to increase awareness & concern for social issues and poverty in latin america, spain, and portugal while at the same time much of the region is experiencing economic growth. the meetings should have been productive, but they turned south when king juan carlos I of spain turned to venezuelan president hugo chavez and asked, "why don't you shut up?" king juan carlos' comment has been getting a lot of attention (good & bad) this week. when reading more about the incident, i was reminded of an article that i read (& made it a point to save) from the BBC some time ago on productive arguing that i'm going to share with you.

i couldn't agree more with each of these suggestions provided in this article. disagreements are going to arise from time-to-time; it's what you make of those disagreements that matter.

productive arguing

differences of opinion are normal and healthy in adult relationships and learning to compromise is a skill required in many areas of life. you might want to print out this page and pin it to your notice board to remind you both whenever a disagreement arises.

1. stick to the issue in hand - don't bring up previous misdemeanors or other things you've been meaning to say.

2. don't argue over trivia - for example, arguing whether it was monday or tuesday that you forgot the milk. the issue is you forgot, not which day it was.

3. start sentences with "i" - for example, "i felt annoyed when you..." rather than "you annoyed me when..." and "i would like to go out more often," not "we should go out more often."

4. don't use absolutes - never say "never", "always", "should" or "shouldn't". they're irritating and often inaccurate. for example, "you never wash up" will almost certainly get a response of "what about when...?"

5. let your opinions stand on their own merits - don't be tempted to bring in other people's opinions.

6. try to stay sitting down, relax your muscles and don't forget to breathe - it's much easier to stay calm if you're not pacing around the room.

7. don't start throwing abuse around - calling your partner lazy, fat or paranoid isn't going to convince them to see your point of view.

8. be aware of your feelings and tell your partner these as well - saying "i'm scared you don't love me anymore" is likely to get a better response than "you don't act like you love me."

9. try not to block the conversation - don't interrupt, launch into a monologue or expect them to be a mind-reader.

10. agree to a code word for time out - if one or both of you feels you're getting overheated it's best to take some time away from each other to calm down before going back to the disagreement.

remember, who wins the argument is irrelevant if your relationship loses something. always try to confront the issue - not each other.