Len's News, Notes, and Stuff

Mobile Internet is an Investment in Crap-Avoidance … and that Saves You Money!

If you have shop­ping urges — and be hon­est, you do — mobile inter­net can save you money.  Just this morn­ing, as I wan­dered aim­lessly around Wal-Mart while my car was in the shop to get win­ter tires put on, my hav­ing a Net con­nec­tion on my phone saved me money.  Seri­ously.  And this wasn’t the first time, either.

Now, if you’re addicted to buy­ing clothes, shoes and acces­sories — i.e. you’re a woman — this won’t apply to you 100%.  But if your pur­chases revolve around dig­i­tal gad­gets, things with elec­tric motors, enter­tain­ment media on shiny cir­cu­lar discs, and things that come with spec sheets — i.e. you’re a man — trust me, spend­ing $30 a month on a mobile net con­nec­tion is worth it.

Let’s talk num­bers, shall we?  Let’s use today as an exam­ple.  I was going to buy The Ulti­mate Bruce Lee Col­lec­tion, a nice lit­tle DVD bun­dle for $15.  I thought about a bargain-bin PS2 game, Women’s Vol­ley­ball Cham­pi­onship, for $10.  That’s $25 right there.

How­ever, I didn’t get either of those two items. Why? Because I took my phone out of my pocket, went online, and Googled some reviews.  The reviews for the Bruce Lee DVD set were ok, but didn’t wow me enough to (a) buy it, and (b) sit down and watch all 5 movies.  The reviews for the game were piti­ful — in fact, they actively warned read­ers to avoid the game like the plague.

After that, of course I put every­thing back on the shelf.  As I write this, I’m still at Wal­mart wait­ing for my car — but this isn’t a post about mobile pro­duc­tiv­ity, it’s about how a lit­tle invest­ment in con­nec­tiv­ity saves you money.  I saved $25 today because online reviews saved my ass.  $5 more, and it’d already a breakeven propo­si­tion for the month.

I am a book addict.  I buy them faster than I can read, and I really do read faster than a preschooler.  I get tempted when­ever I drop into a well-stocked used-bookstore, or walk into Winners/Homesense with their dis­count cook­books.  Thank­fully, I have a mobile net con­nec­tion — I can look up book reviews on Ama­zon wher­ever I am.  And once again, those reviews save me from buy­ing crap, just as they did last week­end.  Or was it the week­end before?  Or was it both?

Whether it’s sport­ing goods, elec­tronic gad­gets, video games, movies, music (yes, some of us still buy DVDs + CDs rather than steal the con­tent online), per­fume and fra­grances, cook­ware, gro­ceries (hey, do *you* know how to choose a good olive oil or what the hell a choco­late per­sim­mon is?), motor oil, lotions, potions, sham­poos, house­hold appli­ances, or damnit, even a frickin’ restau­rant, vaca­tion, car, or house, an Inter­net con­nec­tion in the palm of your hand wher­ever you hap­pen to be can save you from spend­ing your hard-earned money on crap.  Heck, even if you’re a pimp and “hard-earned” is just a fig­ure of speech, a mobile Net con­nec­tion will save you money.

So if you’re tired of buy­ing crap because you (a) just love stuff — and admit it, you do — and (b) don’t have the right infor­ma­tion at the right time, get with it and invest a few bucks in a good data plan.

Now if you’ll excuse me, that cast iron skil­let in Aisle 14 is call­ing my name.  There ain’t no reviews deflect­ing the temp­ta­tion on that one.

Hey, a mobile net con­nec­tion isn’t per­fect, y’know.

Good Cookbooks Have Named Authors

I spend money on cook­books even though there are free recipes online, and free recipes in papers and mag­a­zines.  I spend money on cook­books with named authors even though the com­pi­la­tions by Best Cook­ing Ever Mag­a­zine are cheaper, and com­pi­la­tions titled Best Asian Food Ever are easy to find.  Why do I do this?  Because cook­books by named authors are better.

Bet­ter how?  Fair ques­tion.  I find that the recipes are bet­ter, that’s the most impor­tant thing.  I find that I learn more from them, that’s some­thing worth keep­ing in mind.  And finally, I enjoy read­ing them.

When you put your name on some­thing, you are stak­ing your rep­u­ta­tion on the qual­ity of that item.  In the case of cook­book authors, they’re not only stak­ing their rep­u­ta­tions but also their future income.  If you buy one of their cook­books and the recipes suck, you’re not going to buy any of their other ones.

So why are the recipes in cook­books with named authors usu­ally bet­ter?  Because a good author will have tested and tweaked the recipes until they work well and give the results they want to pro­duce — and which you want to pro­duce by fol­low­ing the recipe!  Yes, they are skill­ful and knowl­edge­able, but they have also put in the time and con­sid­er­able effort to fine-tune the recipes.  Com­pi­la­tion recipes will not have ben­e­fited from this kind of effort.  Free recipes you find online or in a mag­a­zine or news­pa­per also likely will not.

For exam­ple, I tried a free recipe for pump­kin muffins that was pretty hor­ri­ble.  I didn’t real­ize it until I was halfway through the recipe and the process that who­ever worked for the news­pa­per where I got the recipe from clearly had no idea what the hell they were writ­ing.  The ingre­di­ents list and the instruc­tions did not match — an ingre­di­ent appeared in the direc­tions out of nowhere, late in the game and with­out not­ing how much to add.  Thanks for noth­ing!  But wait, that’s exactly what I paid for that recipe, so why am I com­plain­ing about get­ting what I paid for?

Then what about learn­ing?  You learn lit­tle or noth­ing from a com­pi­la­tion cook­book that just lists recipe after recipe, with or with­out pretty pic­tures.  I pre­fer cook­books with­out pretty pic­tures over­all, but what I love about real cook­books is the author telling you what’s going on behind the scenes.  Why is some­thing done a cer­tain way?  What’s the his­tory behind this dish?  What are we aim­ing for with this dish or that dish?  What can be sub­sti­tuted, and what can’t be?  Why?

Com­pi­la­tion cook­books are exer­cises in econ­omy.  They are meant to be cheaply pro­duced so that the pub­lisher can make a quick buck.  They’re really not there to edu­cate you.  But a good cook­book by a good author is an edu­ca­tional expe­ri­ence.  You will learn from the chef.  It’s like a lit­tle tuto­r­ial, and read­ing and try­ing the recipes will actu­ally make you a bet­ter cook or chef your­self.  But fol­low a canned com­pi­la­tion recipe or some­thing you clipped online or off a news­pa­per, and chances are you’ll learn very lit­tle.  You may get good at fol­low­ing that recipe, but chances are you won’t have learned any­thing really transferrable.

Now what about sub­jec­tive enjoy­ment?  I like per­son­al­ity.  I like it when a book has per­son­al­ity because the author has per­son­al­ity.  Every chef in the world — you, me, the celebrity, the guy at the local restau­rant — has a per­son­al­ity that comes forth in their cook­ing and in their words.  I enjoy read­ing the anec­dotes, the words of wis­dom and and words of admo­ni­tion from named authors.  It’s like being there with them.  You get a sense for who they are.  You get a sense for what they value.  You get a sense for how they think.

And do you know what that means?  It means I know which book to pick up for ideas when I’m look­ing for a cer­tain kind of approach, or if I’m feel­ing in a cer­tain kind of mood and have a cer­tain kind of atti­tude in mind for what I want to make.

You don’t get that from com­pi­la­tions and free recipes, because they are by nature devoid of char­ac­ter and per­son­al­ity.  And per­son­ally, I get very lit­tle enjoy­ment from being around peo­ple or items with­out personality.

Hav­ing a named author on the cover is no guar­an­tee of a good cook­book.  Lack of a named author, though, is close to a guar­an­tee that what you have in your hands is soul­less, bland, and will do lit­tle to improve your skill and knowledge.

In my expe­ri­ence, good cook­books have named authors.  That’s why I’ll look a lit­tle harder, spend a few bucks, and get good cook­books from good authors.

Free-Range, Cage-Free Eggs Taste Better than Chicken-as-Machine Eggs

Am I in dan­ger of becom­ing an egg snob?  Maybe.  But it has long been said that bet­ter ingre­di­ents make bet­ter food.  With that in mind, I can now say that free-range, cage-free eggs taste bet­ter than fac­tory, stuck-in-a-cage, never-seen-sunlight, is-that-a-chicken-or-an-egg-machine eggs.

Before I tell you about my egg-tasting expe­ri­ence today — one that was merely for­tu­itous but worth talk­ing about all the same — let me tell you why I choose to buy free-range, cage-free chicken eggs in the first place.  It comes down to taste, qual­ity, com­mon sense, and ethics.

Have you seen videos or pho­tos of how chick­ens are raised in mod­ern egg-producing facil­i­ties?  The chick­ens are cooped up in cages where they barely have space to move around, the metal grat­ing cage floor is bad for their feet and their bod­ies, the things never get a chance to sim­ply do what chick­ens do.  Other than eat and lay eggs.

Maybe that kind of inhu­mane treat­ment doesn’t bother you.  It both­ers me.  At least a lit­tle.  I won’t pay $10 an egg to treat the chick­ens well, but for an extra 5 cents an egg?  Definitely.

But so what if the chick­ens are hap­pier and health­ier?  Other than giv­ing those of us who think about more than just dol­lars and cents a warm, fuzzy feel­ing in our hearts, it also means a higher-quality egg.  In what sense?  Well, if chick­ens roamed around the city eat­ing garbage like urban pigeons do, would you eat their eggs?  Prob­a­bly not.

But why not?  I’m will­ing to bet it’s because you have com­mon sense and real­ize the garbage-in, garbage-out rule of thumb applies to liv­ing sys­tems.  But it isn’t just about the diet, it’s also about how healthy the entire ani­mal is — not only phys­i­cally, but also psychologically.

What kind of qual­ity work do you pro­duce if you were stuck in a space barely big enough to fit you, kept under con­stant psy­cho­log­i­cal stress, and treated like a machine to just eat and pro­duce?  Oh wait, if you’re like mil­lions of North Amer­i­cans and work in an office cubi­cle, that decribes your existence…

Any­how, health­ier ani­mals cre­ate bet­ter prod­uct, whether that’s a wid­get, a report, or an egg.  I don’t have the lab evi­dence on-hand to prove this to the skep­tics in the audi­ence, but this ought to jive with com­mon sense for most of us.

Now what about taste?  I started this post because I did a taste com­par­i­son with 2 soft­boiled eggs, so what was the result?

In sum:

• ŸThe caged-chicken-as-machine egg yolk was saltier, with a stronger “yolk” taste up front.  The taste was short-lived, drop­ping off and dis­ap­pear­ing quickly.  No dif­fer­ence in the egg white, no dif­fer­ence in yolk color.

• ŸThe free-range, cage-free egg had a milder, “wheaty” yolk.  No ini­tial blast of salti­ness, and the over­all taste was not as pro­nounced, but it lasted, was mel­lower and rounded.

The chicken-as-machine egg hit the taste­buds like a sledge­ham­mer.  The let-me-be-a-chicken egg was more sub­tle, more nuanced, more inter­est­ing, and like that pink bunny with an Ener­gizer bat­tery up his spine, kept going and going.

The qual­ity of chicken affects the qual­ity of egg.  The qual­ity of egg affects the qual­ity of taste.  And taste is what good food is about.

& Vendors">The 3 Kinds Who Want War: Young Bucks, Rulers & Vendors

There are some peo­ple who like war.  It’s not the sol­diers.  It’s not the gen­er­als — at least not the ones who’ve been on the line, in the thick of things.  The peo­ple who want war are those who are full of bravado but don’t know any bet­ter, those who stand to gain power, and those who stand to make money.  But I’m just going to take a few moments to talk about the folks who serve in uniform.

I was talk­ing to a good friend last night and he spoke for a few moments about the TV series Bat­tlestar Galac­tica.  I asked him what the main theme was, and he described it to me about a strug­gle between humans and robots.  He then men­tioned that there were those who wanted peace, but the mil­i­tary was “of course” against that and wanted war.

Is it really an “of course”?  I don’t think it is.

I remem­ber watch­ing a doc­u­men­tary a few years ago, and they were inter­view­ing some British sol­diers.  One of the ques­tions they were asked was what they thought about going to war and fight­ing in a war.  The young bucks who hadn’t seen action were all gung-ho, macho and full of bravado.  The older guys, who were typ­i­cally the sergeants or such non­com­mis­sioned offi­cers were qui­eter about it.  They were con­fi­dent and talked matter-of-factly, but the bravado and machismo wasn’t there anymore.

I read biogra­phies and first-person mil­i­tary his­tory accounts, and what I con­sis­tently find is that there is no bravado and machismo there.  It isn’t like the young bucks going nuts over a new video game like Call of Duty, or those who can rat­tle off cool lines from action movies.  Don’t get me wrong, I like action movies, but they’re just movies.

Here’s some­thing from Lt. Gen. Moore (ret):

An esti­mated 3000 to 5000 North Viet­namese reg­u­lars had been killed or wounded.  A total of 305 Amer­i­cans had died and another 400-plus had been wounded in that time of test­ing.  No one who fought there, on either side, talked seri­ously about who won and who lost.  In such a slaugh­ter­house there are no win­ners, only survivors.

And what did he think of the enemy sol­diers that tried their hard­est to kill him and his men?

When my sol­diers spoke harshly, with anger, of our ene­mies, I told them to remem­ber that these men had moth­ers who would be shat­tered by the news of their deaths; that they, like us, had been caught up in great-power pol­i­tics and were doing their duty as we were.

That’s not what you’ll ever see in an action movie.  That’s not what any young buck full of testos­terone thinks a tough, proven sol­dier would say.

This man, who has seen much car­nage, who had led men into and through hard, tough bat­tles, has this to say as a prayer to for those who serve:

May God bless and keep all sol­diers, young and old, and may that same God open the eyes of all polit­i­cal lead­ers to the truth that most wars are a con­fes­sion of fail­ure — the fail­ure of diplo­macy and nego­ti­a­tion and com­mon sense and, in most cases, of leadership.

There are some peo­ple who want war.  They truly do.  But it is my view and my argu­ment, that it is not the mil­i­tary who wants war.  They of all peo­ple know how hor­ri­ble it is.  Most serve hon­or­ably, with a desire to pro­tect that which they and we hold dear.

In a democ­racy, rulers are account­able to we the vot­ing pub­lic.  We can’t do any­thing about the young bucks — young men will always be full of bravado and machismo, and maybe that can be a good thing.  But we have influ­ence over the rulers, who in turn are the ones that pay out money to the vendors.

Let’s keep our eyes and vig­i­lance on those who want war, and not on those who do their duty wher­ever they are sent by the rulers whom we have put in power.

Why don’t we do AARs at work on a regular basis?

AAR isn’t just a sound that your favorite pirate makes when he runs out of whisky.  It stands for After-Action Report, and it is what the busi­ness world calls “Lessons Learned.”  How­ever, the term lessons learned is some­times a bit too pre­sump­tu­ous — are the lessons really learned?  Bet­ter yet, are the lessons even really captured?

The busi­ness world takes a lot of its lessons, think­ing pat­terns, and con­cepts from the mil­i­tary.   There’s a rea­son for this: there is no less for­giv­ing envi­ron­ment then that of human war­fare.  Busi­ness isn’t much friend­lier some­times, but at least it isn’t lit­er­ally about life and death.

Still, the lessons from the world of sweat, bul­lets and blood aren’t ported over com­pletely or suc­cess­fully.  Let’s look at the AAR or lessons-learned, for example.

I hap­pen to be read­ing a book by Lt. Gen. (ret) Moore and Joseph Gal­loway titled We Are Sol­diers Still.  It is a follow-on to their eye-opening book We Were Sol­diers Once … And Young.  Both books cen­ter around the events and expe­ri­ences in the Ia Drang Val­ley in 1965, just as Amer­ica was begin­ning its direct involve­ment in the conflict.

Phuong told us […] he was about three miles away from the bat­tle­field.  He could see the smoke and hear the artillery and air strikes.  I asked if he then moved toward the fight­ing.  He grinnned and replied: “Oh no!  I went in the oppo­site direc­tion.”  Phoung told us that the North Veit­namese drew valu­able lessons from the Ia Drang, lessons that they applied, with flex­i­bil­ity, through­out the rest of the report.  Phuong’s report, writ­ten in the imme­di­atcy of the moment after he had inter­viewed the sur­viv­ing North Viet­namese com­man­ders, was printed as a small pam­phlet and quickly dis­sem­i­nated to the NVA and Viet Cong troops.  It was titled sim­ply: “How to Fight the Americans.”

Think about this — the North Viet­namese had just fought a bloody 4-day bat­tle with the Amer­i­cans.  Both sides got their noses blood­ied, both sides fought valiantly, both sides were in it for keeps.  But what hap­pened right after the battle?

He told us that the sur­viv­ing North Viet­namese com­man­ders gath­ered after the fight and together they went over each action in the bat­tles and the lessons that should be learned from them.

They got together to fig­ure out the right lessons to learn, doc­u­mented them, and then quickly dis­tilled them down to the basics and com­mu­ni­cated them out to the field com­man­ders.  They reviewed what hap­pened, learned how to do bet­ter, and made sure every­one else on the line learned the lessons.

Why doesn’t this hap­pen more often in the work­place?  Yes, the Project Man­age­ment Insti­tute (PMI) is big on lessons-learned and review­ing pre­vi­ous lessons learned.  Yes, big exer­cises in the emer­gency man­age­ment field have “hot-washes” (who came up with that ridicu­lous term?) and lessons-learned doc­u­ments.  But are they really focused, earnest ses­sions where par­tic­i­pants — espe­cially the lead­ers — try to learn and inter­nal­ize the key lessons?  And are these lessons effec­tively com­mu­ni­cated and inter­nal­ized by oth­ers in the organization?

I don’t have any answers here right now.  I was just read­ing through the book and this nag­ging thought just kept gnaw­ing at me.  Why do most busi­nesses and orga­ni­za­tions suck so badly at learn­ing lessons that they’ve already paid for?

More impor­tantly, how can we do bet­ter?  How can we learn fast and com­mu­ni­cate it fast?  How can we learn fast like the peo­ple who beat the world’s most tech­no­log­i­cally advanced army with peas­ant sol­diers?  How can we learn to accom­plish our objec­tives, using AAR as a tool for improve­ment rather than the sound we make as we stum­ble along like drunken pirates?

Maybe you’ve got some thoughts on this.  I’d like to hear them.