The Nexus Between Technology & Life

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YouTube - Storm by Tim Minchin (with text)
  

Link: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3088/3129704554_7e92cd1e5e_b.jpg

As we move into 2009 I’m looking to add to the collection of podcasts I listen to.

All of the podcasts below are free and I listen to each of them on a weekly basis.

I know it seems like there are a lot of podcasts listed here, but by using the Zune software (here) it makes managing my podcasts so simple.

I love to gain knowledge and I’m constantly learning from these podcasts.

When I’m at work I almost always have my ear buds in…listening while I work. This list doesn’t include the audio books I listen to as well…but go check out audible (here) and you’ll find that before you know it you’ll be like me listening to 1 book every 2 weeks.

Here’s my list, if you know of other good podcasts please send them my way!

Weekly Podcasts I listen to:

1. .Net Rocks – (audio) An internet Audio Talk show for .Net Developers – website

2. Stack Overflow – (audio) – A Programming Community exploit – website

3. Business Week – (audio) – The Welch Way – Business and Managing careers – website

4. Channel10 – (video) – Enthusiast’s Technical Videos – website

5. Channel8 – (video) – Academic Technical Videos – website

6. Channel9 – (video) – Developer Videos – website

7. Hansel Minutes – (audio) – Practical Technologist – website

8. Harvard IdeaCast – (audio) – Leading Thinkers in Business and management – website

9. Financial Times Management – (audio) – Management Interviews – website

10. On Digital Media Shift – (audio) – website

11. Science Channel Shorts – (video) – Science News, Breakthroughs, and Discoveries – website

12. TED Talks– (video) – World’s Convention Breaking Mavericks, Icons, and Geniuses – website

13. The Economist – (audio) – Interviews with Journalists – website

14. Gilmore Gang – (audio) – Experts and thought leaders mix it up! – website

15. Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition– (audio) – Entertainment, Food, Books, and more – website

16. This American Life– (audio) – Short Fiction pieces that are touching funny and surprising- website

17. TWIT– (audio) – This Week on Tech: Best Technology Podcast – website

18. Time Business Podcast – (audio) – Business stories with worldwide reporting – website

19. Vanguard : Plain Talk on Investing – (audio) – website

20. Windows Weekly – (audio) – Windows News with Paul Thurrott – website

21. Xbox Live’s Major Nelson – (audio) – The only unofficial podcast direct from Xbox – website

I've been thinking lately about life in general and about human relationships.

The more people I work with, play with, and spend time with...the more I realize that we are all imperfect people...but we all have super high expectations of other people...and somehow we don't realize that other people aren't perfect like ourselves(at the end of the day we all like to believe that we are perfect...here's a clue...we aren't)

In own life I'm finding that I've turned this axiom on it's head...I have super high expectations of myself and I continually compromising my expectations for all of the people that I interact with.

People generally don't do things because they are incompetent or because they have malicious intent...rather they just are trying to do their best...sometimes however their best isn't good enough.

So it's up to each of us to help get them to realize the gap between their actions and the standard that are expected...hopefully people will want to meet the standard and will make sure to...if they don't want to, or are incapable of meeting the standard, then it's unfortunately necessary to have a talk about going our separate ways(tell them they have to leave the team, or look for a new career).

I find in work that it's much easier to have the expectation conversation with colleagues then it is to have it with my personal relationships. Plus in my personal life I don't like having to go my separate ways from my personal contacts.

I also think it's important  to categorize relationships.

-Thoughts for the moment...I'm using a new relationship management tool that pulls from Outlook, Facebook, MySpace, my Phone, and Windows live...it's helping me gauge the depth of my relationships. It's interesting and I'm learning about the nature of my relationships stuff like frequency, topical discussion, etc... Plus I'm weeding out tons of contacts that I only have a  weak connection with.

America’s Declaration of Independence started by saying that everyone has an unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness, yet many Americans have anything but a happy life in spite of how much we have. It doesn’t have to be like that though. Here are some tips on how to live a happier life.

• Realize that more things only bring temporary satisfaction, and a short period of happiness. Happiness is something that does not come with more, or less possessions. Happiness is something that comes from within. The first step to being a happy person is to stop trying to get material things to make you happy.
• Make someone else happy. It’s amazing how much you can brighten your own day by brightening someone else. Little gestures can go a long way in bringing satisfaction. If you need a little something to boost your spirit, do a little something for someone else. The holiday season is the perfect time to get in a habit of doing little things for people. When you make others feel important, you will find that you have made yourself more important. It is better to give than to receive.
• Stay busy doing good things. Studies show that the most depressed people are people who do nothing all day. If you have spare time, fill it up with something good. Volunteer for something. Be active all the time. If you make yourself useful, you will feel more valuable.
• Listen to positive music. Music always been known as a tool that can effect people’s attitude. If you want to make a crowd excited, you play exciting music. If you want to calm a crowd down, you play soft music. Music has a direct effect on your spirit. It’s not healthy to always be listening to music that is negative.
• Use uplifting words. Just like music, words can effect your mood in a direct way. Try to stay away from people who gossip, and tear down each other, and don’t be the person who tries to belittle others. When you belittle someone else, you always belittle yourself. This disrupts your spirit. Instead, find something positive to talk about. Keep conversation upbeat as much as possible.
• Guard your mind. Don’t think about things that aren’t true, pure, lovely, or of a good report. Think about things that are praiseworthy, and virtuous. By guarding your mind, you are guarding you spirit, and by guarding your spirit, you are keeping yourself from becoming an unhappy person. You can always find something good about a situation. Even the most horrible things have had good come out of it.

Being a happy person is not about what you have, or what your position is in society. Being a happy person is all about perspective. Some see the glass as half empty, and others see the glass as half full. Which do you see it as?

credit to Nathaniel Kramer’s submission for the HP Magic Giveaway.

China's Wild West // Current
Unlike their Hollywood friendly brethren, the Tibetans, the Uighurs of northwestern China, claim to be an oppressed minority group that no one has ever heard of. That is, unless the Chinese government publicizes an attack by Uighur insurgents, such as the one that killed 16 Chinese police officers on the eve of the Beijing Olympics. In this Vanguard report, Laura Ling travels to the wild-west frontier in China's Gobi Desert, an area the Chinese named Xinjiang, or New Land, but a place many Uighurs believe should be an independent Uighur nation.

http://current.com/items/89221794_china_s_wild_west

VersionOne just announced that they released their connector to TFS this week. Check out the details here. I am super excited to see Agile partners building integration into TFS.

SQL Server 2008 is finally available in its RTM release. That is a great news. The bad news is that to have support for it in Visual Studio 2008 there are still a few days to go. It looks like Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 service pack 1 will be required for this. Service pack 1 should be available after August 11th.

eek! If you are like me and want to have a ready made, local development environment for your WSS or MOSS work, then you've got to check these virtual images out...

1. A WSS 3.0 VPC environment that is a tidy 6 GB uncompressed - so easy on the hard drive.
2. A fully featured MOSS 2007 environment that is 20 GB and has almost a year left before it expires (April 2009).

The first image is part of the new SharePoint for .NET Developers resources site:

The second image is part of the OBA Composition Reference Toolkit and you have to get it via Microsoft Connect [1].

[1] Microsoft Connect - where the smiles are boundless :)

Amazing videos that I got to see internally and are now public.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/24726/cnet-news-ballmers-tearful-good-bye

http://blogs.technet.com/eileen_brown/archive/2008/06/30/the-very-last-town-hall-meeting-from-bill-gates-and-steve-ballmer.aspx

Bill sure left a great legacy.