Honor, how we need you.
Valor how we need you.
Loyality how we need you.
Courage how we need you.
Love, how we need you most of all.

Have you ever heard about Chaos Theory? If not, simply it has two ideas. First every system tends to degrade into chaos. Second, although systems appear to be in chaos, they still have a pattern. Put into action, what I think this means for our lives is to accept that no matter how hard we try, chaos will ALWAYS win. That means that we will get frustrated, we will get disappointed, and feel like things are a mess. Haven’t you ever spent hours sweeping and then mopping, and then within five minutes after finishing someone drops something onto the clean floor. Ahhhhh! Perfect point, this is chaos in action.

So we must resolve within ourselves that it is impossible to beat chaos. There is no way to stay ahead. However, even though we lose the battle, we can still win the war. Since there is order within chaos, then what we really need to do is to look for a comfort zone within chaos that we can feel, duh, er … comfortable. I think I really mean at peace. Our minds are pattern matching super-computers. Finding patterns and recognizing them gives us peace. So if we are lucky enough to look beyond the moment and perceive the bigger pattern that those cookie crumbs on your freshly mopped floor are part of, then we will feel more at peace.

To put it simply, we are all a mess, we can’t help it, that is the nature things, but we are all part of a bigger pattern where we fit in. If we acknowledge our part of the pattern, then our minds will have to feel more at peace.

Wow, what a week! What a way to kick off our second quarter in the SNAP project. We had two team meetings, numerous one on one meetings, then an intense day to get my slides ready for the Puerto Rico Open Source Congress, and then we finished with team presentations, a brief intro to SourceForge.net and then to cap it all off, an exclusive peak into the Mono project by my very special friend Paco Martinez.

I met some great people at our PROS Congress activity, and I am stoked to get back in the saddle and ride this bucking bronco of a project. It’s a wild ride, but it is worth the effort. So all I have to say is Giddy Up!

There comes a time

I’m convinced that the SNAP Project is my opportunity to do something great. A very big claim to live up to, but I believe it just the same. However to hit this one out of the park, to take this one the distance will require a discipline, persistence, and determination above what I have been capable of in the past. When I set this goal for myself, I do so willingly. I know that setting my sights above what I have been capable, of extending myself to new heights, I grow into my lofty goals.

One area that will require great effort is focusing on producing instead of consuming. One of my big challenges, professionally and personally is focusing on only one thing. I’ll admit it, I get bored easily. A victim of a short attention span, or a hyper-active society. I need constant input, new data, new challenges, and new problems to solve. I love technology, I love computers, I love reading about them, and playing around with them. To be successful, however, I strongly believe I need to curb that passion. Or better still, I need to focus that passion. I need to concentrate on only what will benefit me and SNAP.

There are some who say, and I’ve seen it within my own professional life, when consuming massive amounts of information can lead to an ability to put things together, solve the trickiest of problems, see patterns where none seem to exist. This is obviously a powerful asset, but it takes time. It can even become a consuming activity, when we believe that we will “miss out” on that one piece of information that will make it “all” fit together.

But there comes a time, when we need to put everything aside. We need to stop researching, minimize our reading (what you thought I would say stop reading?). We need to change our perspective. We need to stop consuming what others write, what others produce, and become a producer. We need to start writing, we need to start coding, we need to make our dreams happen. There comes a time when we must trust that we have the skills, abilities, experiences, information, or whatever necessary to make exciting things happen. We may be able to support our goal along the way, by supplementing our knowledge, but it had better be critical to our success.

Call it the magic bullet theory. Call it the missing link theory. However you want to call it, what we must face. What we must accept, is that there is probably nothing missing, nothing keeping us from our success, except ourselves. What we should be asking ourselves instead is how deep are we going to throw ourselves into our project? What commitment are we willing and able to make? I believe that there comes a time for everyone chasing a dream, to stop chasing, and make the dream come true. For me, I believe that time has come.

They almost always get you in the end. Persistence is an amazing thing. It can carve out the Grand Canyon or it can help you climb Mt. Everest. It can break down a uncooperative prisoner or it can create a world-wide chain of fast food stores. The power of persistence is perhaps your strongest ally or your largest foe.

I must confess, in the past I have succumb to the persistence of the ordinary, the constant clubbing with mediocrity, the ever present status quo. I have spun my wheels until they become smooth from the friction I get when I try to do the extraordinary or when I try to ask the question “no one is supposed to ask”. In the past the “culture of mediocrity” beat me down until I, just like most everyone else, no longer cared anymore about my job, my employer, my performance, my future, my growth. I like most everyone I met would only do the minimum to get by. I would only do just enough to keep ahead of it all. Of course, in the end, I realized that this compromise of my ideals was extremely costly, and I suffered, am suffering the consequences.

Unfortunately, once again I am confronting my nemesis. New surroundings, new people, same old attitudes. Surely everyone who ever finally surrounded, started with grand resolve and great confidence that they would be able to persevere. However, once you have surrounded once, it is usually much easier to do so once again. If I am to withstand the torture I am receiving and will continue to receive I need a new strategy, new allies, and a new defense for I am afraid that blind faith in persistence will not be enough.

Well it certainly has been a roller coaster ride with my emotions, my sleep patterns, and my productivity. Lately I’ve been wondering, do I still have a significant amount to learn or master when it comes to human relations. The more I’ve tried to understand people, the more they still sorta do what they always tend to do, baffle me. I know that I need to be like totally awesome at human relations (HR). That’s what it should be called, instead of Human Resources. In my opinion the department of Human Resources was created by senior executives that were ashamed of the decisions they were taking. So they created a new department to deal with the aftermath. I can’t imagine a group of people in charge of doing more repugnant and unsavory tasks as Human Resources. I think it’s wrong. If a CEO and the board of some company decides to lay off a group of people, they should be forced to fire those affected personally. When you have to meet, face to face, those your decisions affects, I believe that it would force companies to be more socially responsible for their actions. Have you read of these folks who have to train their Indian replacements before getting fired? Talk about demeaning! As one who went through a “down-sizing” , it is demeaning enough., but to force someone to train the person taking your job. Despicable.