Friday, 1 February 2002

Solitaire - Do you play Microsoft Solitaire? I do. In fact my highest score is 16207 with the game completed in just 45 seconds. "How do you get such a high score?" I hear you ask. Well let me let you into a couple of secrets. Firstly only play under Windows 2000. This version of Solitaire allows you to use the keyboard shortcut CTRL-A to automatically "put up" any cards that can be moved to the Ace piles at the top right of the game. A right mouse click will also perform this speedy task. This can save many, many valuable seconds in completing your game. Secondly hold down the CTRL-ALT-SHIFT keys when clicking the stack of cards. This will turn over one card only, yet keep the scoring at the turn-three rate. My strategy is this - I go through the stack twice without using the CTRL-ALT-SHIFT modifiers, turning three cards at a time. Then I begin to use the modifiers to turn cards over one at a time. I never double click a card [or shudder, drag it up] to put a card away in the  ace pile. Always use CRTL-A or right-mouse-click. So - what's your highest score? 5th April, 2002 -- PLEASE CLICK ON THE COMMENT LINK AND LEAVE ME A COMMENT WITH YOUR TOP SCORE - Thanks! 7:25:38 PM    Comments ()

Free Therapy - Amongst the many things that I do is therapy. As a master hypnotherapist and NLP practitioner I really enjoy simply, elegantly and quickly solving peoples problems. If you have a problem and don't mind me [anonmously] posting the problem and the solution here - then I'd love to help you. There is no fee and there is no catch although first class transfers from Sydney will enable the therapy to continue. 5:18:17 PM    Comments ()

SSL - The other thing I love is SSL. It, for some strange reason, gives people the confidence to part with credit card information and make spontaneous purchases. It's very, very nice. 5:04:20 PM    Comments ()

Ebay - I love Ebay. Not in a fanatical kind of religious way [like some] but in a wide eyed, boy in the lollie [sweet] store. I did some training with Ebay in Sydney and taught them HTML, and was truly amazed that you could just invent a whole new class of business, overnight. I've since sold a surplus tape drive, some used NLP tapes and numerous copies of my book "Leadership and the Perfect Outpost." I always list my book and other merchandise in US dollars. 4:40:33 PM    Comments ()

Time - "Time is an emotion" so says Anthony Robbins, and like all emotions can be enjoyed or disliked, held fondly or at a distance, can seem to go quickly or slowly. You've experienced it, haven't you. Sometimes the day just seems to fly, and at other times it seems to go soooo slowly. Yet it's always the same. 24 hours. 1440 minutes. 86,400 seconds. 1 day. 4:15:07 PM    Comments ()

Brunch - I am a big fan of brunch. Well really the Saturday morning breakfast that you have at about 10am, that is so big, you can't fit lunch in! I have recently been trying to remember the lines of a Simpsons' episode where Marge's would-be-suitor offers her brunch. And my darling wife Sue found it for me! Marge:   What's Brunch Jacques: You'd love it,  It's not quite breakfast, it's not quite lunch, but it comes with a slice of cantaloupe at the end.  You don't get completely what you would at breakfast, but you get a good meal! 10:52:46 AM    Comments ()

I'm Groogled - Trying to unravel the riddle that encapsulates the enigma that is the mystery of Google has got me stumped. Just when you think you understand how Google works, when it refreshes its listings and how rankings work - everything comes unstuck. Right now my question is this: How long after Google crawls your website does it take before the cache listings are updates? The website for my training company is in the Google database, but not refreshed. I'm groogled [bamboozled, frustrated and yet strangely in awe] with the whole experience! 10:22:28 AM    Comments ()

Huh? - What kind of a community have I joined? Dave, an angry young man with a keyboard tells Dave Winer to "...take your hypocritical, disingenuous, unethical, weak, stupid and whatever attitude, and stop censoring materials you simply don’t like..." Ouch. 8:35:00 AM    Comments ()

On this day - Poet and writer Langston Hughes, famous for his elucidations of black American life in his poems, stories, autobiographies, and histories, was born in Joplin, Missouri, on February 1, 1902. "I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers." 8:29:23 AM    Comments ()

Psycho Eyes - I took my daughter Hannah to the Ophthalmologist recently to get a prescription for some new glasses. Hannah is 5. The doctor needed to put some drops in her eyes to open up the pupils so she could see all she needed to see, you see. Well, this doctor was not too good with children and made all the classic mistakes you could imagine. Hannah's regular doctor was on holidays and we need to get the new script as Hannah is starting school next week. The most obvious error was this gem: "I'm sorry - but I need to put some drops in your eyes. They will sting." Well that was it. Hannah was crawling up my lap, over my shoulder and wanting to get out of there. We eventually got the drops in, and whilst waiting for them to take effect and for the doctor to see us again, I asked Hannah how her eyes were. "They've gone a bit funny, like psycho eyes" she said. 8:19:34 AM    Comments ()

Defining Moments - Have you ever done anything that at the time you were just overwhelmed with the enormity of it that it just blew your mind? But then later rationalised and thoerised and explained away what happened? But still enjoy telling the tale? Well I have. I am a graduate of the Anthony Robbins Mastery University. I don't tell too many people this. But I do tell some of the stories. Like the firewalk story. 7:35:33 AM    Comments ()

Through a child's eyes - My son Ben is the sweetest kid you could imagine, with a beautiful heart and soul. But he is a classic. Often he will come and ask "Dad, is there anything I can do for you?" My heart melted the first time he asked. And the second. And possibly the third. By the ninth and tenth time, when I'd suggested a few things he could do (like mow the lawn, or clean up the family room) and received a "Nah" delivered with a rapid shake of the head I realised that there must be [gasp] an ulterior motive! Sometimes, just sometimes, "Dad, is there anything I can do for you?" could be interpreted as "Dad, can I play on the Nintendo?" A cynic might say "Like father, like..." 6:49:40 AM    Comments ()

How come there's no spell check in Radio? 6:23:48 AM    Comments ()

Digging deeper - In what is seemingly a more desperate act by a government sinking in quicksand, the Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock says that up to 4,000 Afghanis could be paid to leave Australia! Two great quotes: "'To assume that all of them would want to take advantage of an opportunity of that sort would I think be perhaps naive, but it would be of that order,' Mr Ruddock said" and "Asked whether the offer constituted a bribe for asylum seekers to withdraw refugee applications, Mr Howard said people would say that about anything involving money." Just love it. This is a tricky issue. I don't really have a fixed opinion as to the rights and wrongs or the ethics involved - but I am loving the unfolding of the problem. Perhaps it's just my weird way of viewing the world - but I just love seeing how people get into and out of sticky jams. 6:23:20 AM    Comments ()

Speaking of details - I had a friend do some work on a piece of land that we are preparing for sale and popped around to give him a cheque for the work he was finishing. He asked me for cash, and I offered to "open" the cheque for him. This is a process of simply writing "Please pay cash" at the top and applying a second signature. I received a rather panicky call from Adam later that afternoon advising that the bank wouldn't cash his cheque because I had left an important detail off the cheque (no not my signature - the numeric value (see number 5). Weird huh. As it turned out I was meeting with someone only a hundred metres from the bank and was able to supply the missing detail for him, making Adam and the bank teller very happy indeed. Ahhhh. 6:11:44 AM    Comments ()

Wise sayings often fall on barren ground, but a kind word is never thrown away.      - Arthur Helps 5:58:21 AM    Comments ()

I see you - Ever wondered what the world looks like at night from space? Check out this beautiful picture. Load the page in another window and go about your business for a bit - it'll take a moment to load. You'd think NASA would have fast servers huh. It seems that the five remaining DMSP satellites combined their energies and took hundreds of pictures to put together this remarkable sight. Nice one boys. 5:55:10 AM    Comments ()

I feel a strange compulsion to tell my life story. Is this normal on the first day of my new life as a blogger? 5:49:39 AM    Comments ()

Details - I have a poster on the wall in my office. It is a picture of Albert Einstein complete with a quotation of his. It reads "I want to know God's thoughts...the rest are details." My observation of many people going about their lives, living (or rather staying alive) is that there is far too much attention on the detail of life and not enough attention given to the life they are living. Have you ever caught yourself doing that? You know the pattern: so concerned with the silly little [insert mundane detail of life here] that you miss something really important going on around. If you have kids - often it is their expression of life that you miss, or shush, or dampen. Until one day you notice that they are just like you are - consumed with the miserable, details of living. And not living. I determined that this would not happen to me. <snip> 5:46:42 AM    Comments ()

Well Jonathon would be proud - finally I am convinced to put fingertip to keyboard and begin a weblog. I woke up this morning from what must have been a bad dream, with the completed resolution in my mind - that I had something to write about and the only forum in which to do so was a blog. Kind of funny really. Like many of my ideas, only the title was formulated. Whatever burning idea was there has evaporated like the refreshing dew on the grass in the back yard. It's there all right - when you pop out int he morning to check if the chooks have laid an egg - you can tell 'cause your feet are wet. But a little later, everything is dry again. 5:31:44 AM    Comments ()