My superpower

Yesterday, my superpower manifested itself again. It’s not a talent like a photographic memory, or an idiot-savant talent like being able to glance at a number and instantly know its square root (I’ve been called an “idiot” many times, but rarely a savant). Instead, it’s a usually dormant power, a kind of dedicated healing mode [...]

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Winning friends and influencing people aren’t everything

Martin Michlmayr, the former Debian project leader and recent Cambridge graduate, wrote to say that my dismissal of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People as “simplistic hypocrisy” in a recent blog entry was an interesting contrast to the “glowing review” he had read on another site.
I answered privately, but Carnegie’s book has [...]

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Back to the exercise

After fourteen months of enforced inactivty, on March 7 I finally returned to a schedule of heavy exercise. Since I’ve been fanatical about exercise since I was in Grade Three, the return is a relief. It also has me appreciating anew all the benefits I’d almost forgot about.
Not wanting to place too much strain on [...]

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Business experts and the cult of leadership

Business experts always have an air of fantasy about them. Many give watered-down accounts of outdated psychology like the Myers-Brigg personality test. Almost all give the impression that the writer’s experience of the modern office is either scant or years in the past. I mean, what other field would still consider a piece of simplistic [...]

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Sing oak and ash and thorn

“Oh, do not tell the priest our plight, or he would call it a sin,
But we’ve been out in the woods all night, a-conjuring summer in.”
- Rudyard Kipling
Well, not really. I’m a little old for the ELizabethean sport of greengowning, let alone getting up and out before sunrise. But I admit to a romantic fondness [...]

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Free Geek Vancouver

In part of my never ending efforts to get out of the house for more than my daily exercise, last night I went to a meeting of the local Linux Users Group at the new Free Geek warehouse just off Main Street in Vancouver. I went away more convinced than ever that Free Geek is [...]

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Training a bad boss

Articles about dealing with a bad boss always seem to center on enduring the situation. They tell you to avoid being judgmental, to understand a boss’ situation, to find ways to relieve your stress – and to leave quitting or complaining as last resorts. The assumptions are always that you are powerless, and that you [...]

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Using an objective in your resume

Of all the possible contents of a resume, the objective statement is by far the most controversial. Many consider it a waste of time, a piece of puffery that is as empty as a mission statement. Personally, I am in favor of using one, but only if it is written and regarded in the right [...]

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9 common misunderstandings about resumes

For years, resumes were my life. As a marketing consultant, I not only submitted hundreds of resumes to clients but also maintained a stable of different resumes for all occasions. As a manager, I’ve waded through hundreds of the things. As a mentor, I’ve helped people write their resumes, and as a freelancer, I’ve written [...]

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The first preen from a parrot

Unlike cats and dogs, parrots are still wild animals. Although the CITES treaties have all but eliminated the export of wild birds, even now, few parrots are more than three or four generations removed from the wild. That fact alone means that getting a bird to accept you is very different from training most domestic [...]

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