Bryan C. Fleming

I had the pleasure the other day to speak with a top recruiter in the Detroit Area. I asked him what the 3 top skills are to determine if someone gets hired by a company. What he said shocked me:


Here they are in order of importance:


#1 Good Communication Skills

#2 Good Networking Skills (not computer networks, we’re talking people here)

#3 Technical Skills

Here’s the kicker. He places people in the computer industry.

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A friend of mine was asking about the stock market and why it’s been so lousy lately. A large part of it has to do with the Federal Reserve raising Interest Rates. So why does this make the stock market go down? Why should you care?

Basically the Federal Reserve is trying to keep people working, while keeping inflation low. It’s a sort of balancing act. They do this by raising and lowering Interest Rates.

When interest rates are low (think 2001-2004), money is easy to get. We (as a nation) typically go out and buy big homes, big screen TVs, and new cars. We spend the money. But, if this goes on too much, companies figure out they can start charging a lot more for that home or car. This happened in the housing market recently as interest rates were historically low. Home prices were rising at historical rates. This is called inflation. When it kicks in, soon you find your dollar doesn’t go very far. After all, who wants their paycheck to only buy ½ of what it did a year ago?

The Stock Market hates higher interest rates because let’s face it. If I can get a 6% rate of return in a savings account why would I risk investing in a company? The company has to pay me a much higher return on my money because there is risk, and money is more expensive for them to borrow. The Federal Reserve has one heck of a tool for putting the squeeze on Wall Street.

In the past year and half the Federal Reserve has been relentless on raising interest rates. They believe the economy is very strong and want to slow it down to stop inflation. That’s why when you turn on the TV, the stock market has been going down… down… down. As more ‘good news’ of the strong economy comes up in government reports, investors know it builds the case for another increase in Interest Rates. This creates stock market panic. We’re seeing a lot that today.

Beware: The Federal Reserve is far from perfect. Sometimes they over raise interest rates and things backfire sending the economy into a recession. Try this simple inflation test. Look at items at your local home depot or grocery store. Are their prices noticeably higher than they were a year ago? If so, you’re seeing inflation first hand.

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Last week we talked about the four ways people approach a new skill or project. We saw how most fail, and really only one type of person ultimately succeeds. We also looked at how the success curve is far from a straight line. Many times you’ll work long hours with no apparent progress. Only after long periods will you see a quick burst of progress, followed by another long plateau.

I didn’t make this stuff up. In fact, I read it in a book. Mastery by George Leonard (Aff) talks about this very subject. I read lots of books, but this is the best I’ve read in a long time. If you want a good read, pick up it up at your local bookstore. It will give you a stronger understanding of why success in anything takes such a long time. You’ll gain a stronger understanding of success as a journey. Not a climatic scene like TV is constantly portraying.

George gets deep into these ideas. On this blog I’ve only touched on them. From reading the book, you get the impression he is a very disciplined guy. I personally recommend this book.

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Thursday we looked at the path to success and the four different ways people approach it. You can read this article here. Over the past few days, we’ve look at the Dabbler, the Obsessive, and the Hacker. Today we’ll look at the Master.

The Master approaches a new skill differently from the rest. They know up front that anything worth learning will take time. They see learning their new skill as a life long process. A journey. They expect there will be quick results at times, but most of the work is done in the valley. The mountain top experience is rare. There will be long periods of no growth followed by short growth spurts. They understand the growth curve looks like this:




As we have learned Mastering anything takes time. Lots of it. Tomorrow we’ll look at why more people don’t have a long-term attitude towards success. I’ll reveal where I’m getting this information too, since truthfully, I’m just not smart enough to have figured all this stuff out.

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Thursday we looked at the path to success and the four different ways people approach it. You can read this article here. Over the past few days, we’ve looked at the Dabbler and the Obsessive. Today we’ll look at the Hacker.

The Hacker – The Hacker is unlike the Dabbler and Obsessive because they will stick with something over the long haul. Because they don’t quit, they do get some success. The Hacker’s biggest problem is complicacy.

They are happy at whatever level they’re at. They don’t want to excel any further. Hackers don’t do anything to improve their skills. If it’s a marriage, they’re happy sitting home watching TV every night. After all, they ARE married right? In their jobs they do enough to get by, but you won’t catch them in any improvement classes. Nor will you see them networking in professional development clubs.

The Hacker is certainly better than the Dabbler and the Obsessive. But, they won’t reach the echelon of success. To do that you must be a Master, which we will cover tomorrow.

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Thursday we looked at the path to success and the four different ways people approach it. You can read this article here. Today we’ll look at the second of these people – The Obsessive.

The Obsessive – This person starts out with much more enthusiasm than the Dabbler. If it’s a diet, they’re counting the calories. They’re putting in 5 hours a day at the gym. They get better results from the dabbler because of all their effort. Like the story of the rabbit and the turtle; they burn out. To find these people, look for the newbies that are overly enthusiastic. They won’t be around long.

What the Dabbler and the Obsessive have in common is they love the rush of starting projects. They lack the patience and self discipline too see thing through. The inevitable back slide that will occur in any venture gets the best of them and they’re off to something new again.

Tomorrow we’ll look at the third type of person – The Hacker. You’ll see they actually can persevere through the tuff times and don’t get derailed so easily.

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Your company is doing OK, but the stock prices doesn't go up.

Your Development team is stuggling to get Windows Vista to market, and the world is criticizing you.

Everyone is screaming that your product is not secure. So you do something about it.

Now you get this.

Truthfully I HATE Symantec and I'm glad God has a sense of humor. It's too bad Microsoft has to put up with such cry babies....

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Thursday we looked at the path to success and the four different ways people approach it. You can read this article here. Today we’ll look at the first of these people – The Dabbler.

The Dabbler – They approach every new sport, relationship, or career with enormous excitement in the beginning. They really like the idea of the refresh start. They love learning, growing, and the quick results that come from starting anything new. They usually bail out early on when they start hitting their first obstacles.

They’ll usually say, “It wasn’t for me”. You can tell who these people are, because they’re always talking about their new venture. These people are eternal kids. They never make it through the pitfalls it takes to become a success at anything. They jump from each new thing like a frog on a lily pad.

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Ahh… the path to ‘success’ is a long one indeed. Too many times we all get impatient. We want things on our time. Perhaps television is the cause. Perhaps it’s just human nature in general.

When we start new projects/endeavors we end up being one of four people….

The Dabbler, The Obsessive, The Hacker, and the Master.

Of course it’s only the master that ends up becoming the over-night success we hear about. Yes, that over-night success many times was years and years in the making.

Over the next four days I’ll be talking about our friends The Dabbler, The Obsessive, The Hacker, and the Master in more detail.

Which one are you?

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Have you ever wondered what these terms mean? Often you hear a reporter say, “We’re in a bear market”. What’s that all about anyways?

A bear market means the market is going down. A bull market means the market is going up. Great. So how did anybody come up with this?

It turns out that this has to do with how these animals attack!

A bear swipes down with its claws. A bull pushed up with its horns.

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I’ve wrestled with this one for a while. It’s hard to get a grip around, but the numbers are certainly growing…

Just as the RealEstate boom is slowing in the U.S. another one is forming. The only problem is, it’s not here on earth…. This boom will be in online games or virtual worlds.

Consider this:

Jon Jacobs purchased a ‘Space Station’ for $100,000 (real U.S. dollars) in a game called Project Entropia back in October 2005. Everyone laughed at him. Now he earns $15,000/month in rent. Again in real U.S. Dollars.

Second Life, a game that’s dedicated to a virtual world was designed with a built-in virtual economy. It’s churning $5,000,000/month in real U.S. dollar transactions.

Anshe Chung, Second Life's most notable land baron, makes $175k per year flipping virtual real estate.

Here are some more stats to think about…

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MerryOne has a great post talking about Public Schools vs. Private Scools. She's making the argument for Catholic Schools. Couldn't the same be true for private schools in General?

Now, it's been said that a state pays $10,000/year per child. Consider an average classroom has 30 children. Where's all the money going? Last time I checked a teacher didn't earn $300,000 per year.

What would happen if the state 'attached' $10,000 to the child? Then the parents could choose what school to send thier kids too. Free market competition would take over indeed.

Right now, there is simply no accountability. One more miserable example of why goverments fail.

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Mitch brings up a good point here. You know, as a software developer having software on a ton of desktops, you see trends where Microsoft breaks software. I think the big problem here is the Windows Development team is under the gun to keep windows just as updated as a website. So there isn't enough testing.

Mitch is right we're all Beta Testers...

In case you all missed it. Microsoft pushed down their Windows Authentication tool to look for pirated copies of windows. hhmmm... didn't see that one in the news.

http://www.writingup.com/mitchell_allen/public_service_announcement_automatic_windows_updates

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Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

This is pretty cool stuff. It will let me reference other blogz...

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I thought I’d switch gears a little today….

There’s a lot in the press these days about kids on MySpace. If you keep an eye on shows like Dateline you’ll see it’s astounding the number of older men trying to pick up young teenage girls through MySpace.com. For parents this can be scary.

If you suspect your child is acting ‘strange’ you might want to get into their MySpace account to see who their ‘friends’ are. Doing this pretty easy.

Now, I have to tell you I’m promoting software that I wrote. It’s for sale on the Internet. However, I’m going to show you a trick to get their password without paying a dime. The reason I’m posting this is because we’re blown away at the number of people that email us with horror stories about MySpace and what they’ve found out.

Here are a few things you must know:

- You must have access to the child’s computer to do this. You can’t get passwords from someone say 100 miles away
- The child must be using Internet Explorer for their browser. If they use Firefox (as of today) all bets are off. This will change very soon.

So here’s what you do:

Download PC Tattletale from http://www.pctattletale.com
Install it on your kid’s computer
Follow the set up instructions
Wait until they go on the computer
Their password will be emailed to you
After you get their password, uninstall the software

Because we offer a free trial period, you won’t need to pay anything. Plus you’ll have their password sitting around to keep on eye on their behavior.

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So, Interest rates look like they’re going up again. There are a lot of people who’ve been making a pile of money in the lending business over the past few years. Now, they’re starting to feel pinch.

Truthfully, we’ll look back on these last five years as a time of crooked home lending. The lenders have been writing loans to people who shouldn’t have gotten them. Now, as their business dries up I read their latest trick……

The 50-year Mortgage!

So let’s see. We can have an interest-only adjustable-rate 50-year mortgage. So now we can still buy that $200,000 home for $800 a month. Wow. Truly Amazing.

What you should look for….

There will be a high default rate on the mortgages in the coming years. Once that hits, the pendulum will swing and home loans will be very hard to get. The government (read taxpayers) will get stuck with the tab.

The Realtors and Lenders need to face the facts… The real-estate boom is over. They should talk to the dot-com’ers too see how to cope with this. These lending tricks are getting old.

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I found this on http://www.msn.com/. My Question to you:

What 2 costs are spiraling out of control in this country?



Answer:

- Gasonline
- Healthcare

Ok, now look at the list………

Surgeon -- $181,850*
Anesthesiologist -- $174,610
OB/GYN -- $174,610
Oral and maxillofacial surgeon -- $169,600
Internist -- $156,790
Prosthodontist -- $156,710
Orthodontist -- $153,240
Psychiatrist -- $151,380
Pediatrician -- $140,000
Chief Executive Officer -- $140,880
Engineering Manager -- $140,210
Family or general practitioner -- $137,980
Physician/surgeon, all other -- $137,100
Dentist -- $132,660 -- $111,130
Airline Pilot -- $134,090
Lawyer -- $110,590
Air Traffic Controller -- $100,430
Dentist, any other specialist -- $106,040
Computer and Information Systems Manager -- $100,110
Marketing Manager -- $100,020
Natural Sciences Manager -- $97,560
Sales Manager -- $96,950Astronomer -- $96,780

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This would shake things up a bit in the tech world. It’s interesting to ponder and it would rock the search engine wars. A while back Microsoft tried to work a deal with AOL and got the door slammed in their face when AOL went with Google. So now a mega Yahoo/Microsoft merger is in the news.

A closer look…

Microsoft has $40 billion in cash. Yahoo wants over $80 billion. So Microsoft just gets a loan right? Of course I’m kidding.

Seriously, Microsoft takes a lot of pride in their technology. They are planning on spending billions to build a massive service infrastructure for both corporate and consumer customers. The cost of such a network with hundreds of thousands of servers scattered around the world is staggering. In fact only a few companies in the world could even begin to make this investment. Do you see where I’m going with this?

Microsoft is excited about the infrastructure costs because it limits the number of competitors. A couple of kids in a college dorm won’t be able to enter the new game. So do they want to buy Yahoo? I don’t think so.

Too see where Microsoft is pouring their energy check http://www.windowslive.com. Yep, that little URL is Bill Gates’ new baby.

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There is an awesome article in CNN today about a California Start up company. Apparently they’ve built an electric car that’s faster than a Ferrari 360 and Porsche GT. Being from Detroit it seems that Silicon Valley could be our next big competitor. My question is why these guys can crank these cars out for around $100,000 and it took GM over $1,000,000 to build one? Sounds like one hell of an improvement from a Golf Cart!


Here’s the CNN Article:

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Have you ever wanted cable TV in another room of your house that didn’t have a cable jack? This recently happened to me and I took a risk with wireless Cable TV. It paid off big time.

In theory it’s possible to have one of your cable boxes wirelessly broadcast cable through your home. To do this you’ll need a wireless TV broadcaster. They cost around $50. But the big question is do they really work?

I bought such a device from http://www.x10.com/. You should have no problems with this device. I set mine up to broadcast about 30 feel through a wall. The video comes through crystal clear.

Now, it does not do HDTV. So you have to keep that in mind. Also, if you’re in the room with wireless TV you might have a hard time changing the channels. They do offer a remote control feedback feature, but I didn’t need to hook this up. I don’t believe this will work with Digital cable (Comcast).

One last drawback is the wireless TV will have to watch the same channel as the sender TV. For most applications this really isn’t a big deal.

I’m writing about this device because it worked well and I’m happy with it. Keep this device in mind if you want TV in a room that’s not wired for it.

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Today I’ll give some inside information about Royal Caribbean excursions. This is for the 7 day Caribbean cruises on the Voyager of the Seas. The 4 stops are Labadee, Haiti; Ocho Rios, Jamaica; George Town, Grand Cayman; Cozumel, Mexico.

Labadee (Monday) – Royal Caribbean will relentlessly push the Jet Ski tours on you. I believe its $80 (it can hold 2 people). Some of our group did this, but the adventure was short lived. Furthermore, locals wanting to sell them shirts and crafts approached them on the water while they were trying to Jet Ski. I was told the experience was a little scary. You should put the $80 or $160 towards a deluxe suite on the ship. Instead, sit on the beach and maybe rent a $10 floating mat. Royal Caribbean offers a free lunch while you’re there.

Ocho Rios, Jamaica (Tuesday) – Ocho Rios is a ruff town, but the people are very nice and really want to help get you anything you need. There is a small walled off section where you can hang out. It includes a Jimmy Buffet Margaritaville bar and sandy beach. It’s nice to walk through, but since you can eat for free on the ship why run up a $100 bar tab eating there? Nice to visit, but you’ll probably stay on the ship that day.

Grand Cayman (Wednesday) – People from my group did the stingray excursion and loved it for $40 a person. If you want to save some money, spend $8 and catch a cab to 7-mile beach. It’s beautiful. You won’t be disappointed. Shopping is expensive.

Cozumel Mexico (Thursday) – Booze cruise for $40 a person was a lot of fun and entertaining. Be prepared to drink a lot (it’s free). However, no lunch is provided. A friend rented a motor scooter. It broke down 10 miles out of town and he had to run back to the ship in the blazing heat. I’d stay away from those for that reason. You’ll notice the area has not recovered from the hurricanes. The large shipping docks are wiped out and they are trying desperately to tender tourists in from the ships that still visit. If do any shopping do it here. The local communicate really could use the money. While there, you’ll notice all of the hotels are concrete shells. Everything has been blown out. The hotels are not opened yet.

Hopefully this helps you when you travel with Royal Caribbean on the Voyager of the Seas.

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After returning from a 7-day cruise on Voyager of the Seas, I thought I’d give you the skinny about how Royal Caribbean operates.

You will board the ship on a Saturday. During that day only you can buy a free drink pass for $40. Buy it. You’ll certainly drink that much in soda pop and you’ll be far ahead. Secondly, they offer (on the 11th deck) a prepaid wine package. Again, take them up on this. You’ll spend about $175-$200 and you’ll be far ahead again. The wine is served with dinner and for 2 people one bottle a night is more than plenty. I bought the 7-bottle package and gave away 2 bottles the last night. The 5-bottle package would have been perfect.

Voyager of the Seas is a breathtaking ship both in size and scale. As room accommodations go, I would pay the extra money for a suite on Deck 10. These rooms are much larger than a normal stateroom and have a very large private balcony. This is a big deal because you should know that the normal staterooms are very cramped and may not have any view of daylight whatsoever. Think of living in a closet for a week straight.

The suites offer free drinks between 5:00 – 7:00 pm. You will recover much of the extra cost of the room by using the free bar for guests on this deck only.
I will talk about the excursions on the ship and which ones are worth going on.

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