Marital Interaction
By: Ken Canfield

One of the best things a father can do for his kids is love their mother and build a strong marriage. The effort you put into your marriage is worth it to your children.

Read more at All Pro Dad

Say goodbye to business analysts
By Michael H. Hugos • Published: Tuesday, 13 May 2008

As the pace of change accelerates, business people want more than analysis; they want workable solutions to their problems.

Is there a place for business analysts in IT today? Not if their primary function is just to analyze business needs. As the pace of change accelerates, business people want more than analysis; they want workable solutions to their problems.

Analysis is only part of the job that needs to be done. It can clarify situations and trends, identify problems and make recommendations. But most analysis serves only to educate the business analyst. Business people who live with the situations being analyzed already know 98% of what the analysis will tell them.

Read more at MIS Asia

Strongest Dad In The World
Article was originally written by Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay For their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.

But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.

Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in Marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a Wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and Pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the same day.

Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back Mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. On a bike. Makes Taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much--except save his life.
This love story began in Winchester , Mass. , 43 years ago, when Rick Was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him Brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.

"He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life;'' Dick says doctors told him And his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. ``Put him in an Institution.''

But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes Followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the Engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was Anything to help the boy communicate. ``No way,'' Dick says he was told. ``There's nothing going on in his brain.''

"Tell him a joke,'' Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a Lot was going on in his brain. Rigged up with a computer that allowed Him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his Head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? ``Go Bruins!'' And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the School organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, ``Dad, I want To do that.''

Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described ``porker'' who never ran More than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he Tried. ``Then it was me who was handicapped,'' Dick says. ``I was sore For two weeks.''

That day changed Rick's life. ``Dad,'' he typed, ``when we were running, It felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!''

And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly Shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.

``No way,'' Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a Single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few Years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then They found a way to get into the race Officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the Qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, ``Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?''

How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he Was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick Tried.

Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii . It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud Getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you Think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? ``No way,'' he says. Dick does it purely for ``the awesome feeling'' he gets seeing Rick with A cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best Time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world Record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to Be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the Time.

``No question about it,'' Rick types. ``My dad is the Father of the Century.''

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a Mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries Was 95% clogged. ``If you hadn't been in such great shape,'' One doctor told him, ``you probably would've died 15 years ago.'' So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass. , always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father's Day.

That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.

``The thing I'd most like,'' Rick types, ``is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.''

More links to the video and Sport Illustrated page and the Team Hoyt website

Life After the IT Department
By Deb Perelman

If you didn't work in IT, where would you go? What could you do?

Though IT employment is at an all-time high in the U.S.--some 3.8 million employed residents in the U.S. consider themselves IT professionals according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, a record high--and is expected to climb even higher--computer and mathematical sciences jobs expected to grow faster than any other professional occupation through 2016, nearly a 25 percent increase--there are those that work in the field that no longer think it's all it's cracked up to be.

Read more at eWeek Careers

Budget Cutting

What do you do if the government's Expected Family Contribution is just too high or you can't manage the unmet need in your financial aid package? This page provides a few tips on finding the necessary resources.

Read more at Fin Aid

Dump the insurance on your car

Don't squander money on full coverage for an older car. Instead, consider dropping everything but liability insurance and using the savings for your next auto purchase.

If you're paying for collision and comprehensive insurance coverage on an older car, you're probably wasting your money.

Yet many people I talk to are reluctant to drop this coverage, which pays for:

• The damage you do to your own vehicle when you cause an accident.
• The loss you suffer when your car is stolen or damaged by something other than a crash (such as a falling tree squashing it flat).

Collision and comprehensive coverage are two of the three major components of car insurance. The third is liability coverage, which pays for the damage you do to other vehicles and people.

Read more at MSN Money

Auto Insurance - When Should You Drop Collision and Comprehensive Coverage?

Lenders require car owners to carry collision and comprehensive insurance coverage on their vehicles as long as there is a lien against them (meaning, while they are being paid off). Then, once the vehicle is paid for, it is usually up to the insured to choose whether or not to carry the extra insurance. I’m blogging about this because our Buick will be paid off in June, which means there will no longer be a lien against it and we will be free to drop our comprehensive coverage and collision insurance.

Read more at All Finance Matters

50 ways to trim your budget

You don't have to give up the things you love to save money. You just have to be willing to look hard. Start with your fixed expenses, then review your discretionary costs.

Lou knows his family is in a vicious cycle with credit cards. He's just not sure how to get out.

Bills and credit card payments eat up most of the Mansfield, Ohio, family's income, leaving them little left over to pay for groceries and other basics. So they wind up charging more.

"My family has about $12,000 in debt to credit card companies," Lou wrote in an e-mail. "We want to stop using these cards and get this fixed. But we are 'bridging the gap' with credit."

Like many families, Lou's clan already has trimmed some of the obvious expenses, such as eating in restaurants. But really getting your budget in line may require rethinking just about everything on which you spend money.

Read more at MSN Money

Easy Savings Tips

The following savings strategies provide advice on how to make it easier to save. You may also find the investment strategies helpful in this regard.

How to Make It Easier to Save

1. Save early and often. Start saving the day the baby is born, if not earlier, and save as often as you can. The sooner you start, the more you can take advantage of compounding to watch your savings grow. It will also help you get into the habit of saving.

2. Save as much as you can. If you don't think you can afford to save, start small. You will find that you will adjust your spending habits, and can gradually increase the amount you save. Don't worry too much about starting small, since the compounding of interest over time will help your savings grow. The first step is to get into the habit of saving.

3. Save regularly. Rather than save money at random intervals, try to save a little every month. The more frequently you can save the better, but at the very least save once a year. If you can save with the same frequency as you receive your paycheck, you will find it easier to get into the habit of saving.

Read more at All Pro Dad

Adobe Photoshop Tip: The Lord of the Rings Tutorial

In the land of MacMerc, in the fires of Mount Dude, the Dark Lord RickMacMerc forged in secret a master Ring tutorial, to control all others. And into this Ring tutorial he poured his custom shape, his layer effects and his methods to bring the Ring to life. "One Ring Tutorial to rule them all." The Tutorial stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little, and you will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while the user is true.

Read more at MacMerc

Using social networking safely: tips from security pros
By Katherine Walsh • Published: Tuesday, 6 May 2008

Despite the well-publicized security and privacy risks of social networking, it's possible to reap the benefits of social networking and stay safe at the same time.

Howard Schmidt was reluctant to hop on the social networking bandwagon--a byproduct, he says, of the paranoia he internalizes a security professional. Eventually, though, Schmidt--the one-time cybersecurity adviser to President Bush and itinerant CISO turned consultant--decided the positives outweighed the negatives. He joined not just one social network but three: Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace.

"My response to those in the security business lamenting the existence of Facebook and MySpace is to ask them if they've ever been on it," says Schmidt.

Read more at MIS Asia

The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities

There are a lot of great freeware products out there. Many are as good as or better than their commercial alternatives. This list features our pick of the "best of the best."

Almost all the utilities in this list have featured in past issues of the free monthly newsletter "Support Alert" More freebies are published in each new issue. If you are interested in great utilities and freeware you really should consider subscribing. It's free.

This list is currently being upgraded to a community-based list with different sections of the list maintained and updated by volunteer editors.

Listed below are 46 different freeware categories with our selections of the best products in each category. The list is ordered by program function rather than merit so you'll get the most out of it by browsing down this page at leisure. The pathologically impatient can consult the index below.

Read more at Tech Support Alert

The extend list can be found here

Selective Boycott of Shell and Caltex

I got an email encourage me to boycott Shell and Caltex and buy Petron. This will supposedly force the price of gasoline to go down to P20 or P30 according to the latest email I got. (Wow, this paragraph is original content :-) I don't want to reproduce that chain email here, but I do want to post a few responses that I got from the Internet validating my suspicion that the email is a hoax. Here they are:

Selective boycott of oil firms will work only if...
By Federico D. Pascual Jr.

BOYCOTT FAILS: What ever happened to the idea broached by disgruntled motorists to boycott Shell and Caltex and buy fuel only from Petron or the small players to force the foreign oil giants losing sales to lower their prices and thereby foment a price war? I have asked around and I want to report that, for whatever reasons, the idea apparently has not caught on. Why would it work when most people are not even aware of the action plan? The boycott proponents were mostly campaigning by email in the Internet. And how many motorists have email and Internet?

Read more at ManilaMail.com

The folly of forcing a price war on oil
by Bong Austero

The e-mail that’s currently clogging up networks is yet another hoax entitled Gas Out. It’s a pseudo campaign with a noble objective—to lower prices of oil by forcing a price war with the two major oil companies in the country. It is an e-mail that seems to be generating steam. Friends in the industry have asked me to comment on it since they have noted that many people seem to think that it would work.

It’s one of those pseudo campaigns with a huge potential to hook people in simply because it perpetuates the truism that many people continue to hold sacrosanct: When people come together in unity, nothing is impossible, even slaying a corporate giant. In this particular case, oil companies. Very few are able to resist the temptation to join something so seemingly righteous.

Read more at Manila Standard Today

On boycotts and lower gas prices
posted by Sacha Chua

I received a forwarded e-mail exhorting Filipinos to boycott Shell and Caltex in order to force the two companies to lower their gas prices, and thus affect gas prices everywhere.

Something about that approach strikes me as wrong.

First, it ignores the law of supply and demand. If all the faithful boycotters get their gas from independent gasoline stations (of which there aren't that many, especially along the highways), what's to prevent those gas stations from raising _their_ prices?

Second, it feels like a solution from the wrong side of consumerism. Let me quote a segment from the e-mail:

Read more at Sacha Chua's Wordpress blog

Quick Ways to Trim Your Budget

Looking for some quick and easy ideas on how to trim those extra expenses from your budget? Here are some tips from financial advisor Larry Burkett:

Save on utilities:

Keep the faucet turned off as much as possible while brushing your teeth or washing dishes. Run the dishwasher only when full. Keep the refrigerator turned down to the lower settings. Turn your water heater down. Instead of keeping your thermostat at extreme temperatures, keep your heater or air conditioning at practical levels, then dress accordingly. (Most utility companies recommend keeping your heater below or at 70 degrees and your air at or above 75 degrees in order to save money.) Turn the lights and TV off in rooms when not in use.

More at AllProDad.com

Gutsy Guilt

Don’t let shame over sexual sin destroy you.

John Piper | posted 10/19/2007 08:27AM

The closest I have ever come in 26 years to being fired from my position as a pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church was in the mid-1980s, when I wrote an article for our church newsletter titled "Missions and Masturbation." I wrote the article after returning from a missions conference in Washington, D.C., with George Verwer, the head of Operation Mobilization.

Verwer's burden at that conference was the tragic number of young people who at one point in their lives dreamed of radical obedience to Jesus, but then faded away into useless American prosperity. A gnawing sense of guilt and unworthiness over sexual failure gradually gave way to spiritual powerlessness and the dead-end dream of middle-class security and comfort.

In other words, what seemed so tragic to George Verwer—as it does to me—is that so many young people are being lost to the cause of Christ's mission because they are not taught how to deal with the guilt of sexual failure. The problem is not just how not to fail. The problem is how to deal with failure so that it doesn't sweep away your whole life into wasted mediocrity with no impact for Christ.

More at christianitytoday.com…

Why Kids Tattle and What To Do About It
By: Elaine M. Gibson

When we bring an adult perspective to this process of tattling, or telling on someone, we fail to understand what is going on for the tattler. As adults, we aren’t sure what to do about tattling and we convey our ambiguity to our children.

On one hand, we USE the information the child gives us to correct another child’s behavior or prevent damage to people and property.

But on the other hand, we tell the tattler that tattling is wrong. ‘Don’t be a tattletale.’

Children can’t cope with such double messages.

More at All Pro Dad …

All That’s Good in Sports

The NBA is as good a place as any for working out one’s salvation.

A Christianity Today editorial | posted 9/04/2007 08:51AM

July was, without question, the worst month in recent memory for professional sports. Each one of America’s big three got its own black eye.

• Barry Bonds pursued baseball’s most hallowed record, the career home run mark, amid suspicions of steroid abuse—and a pesky perjury investigation.
• Michael Vick, the NFL’s second-highest-paid player, was arraigned in federal court on charges of illegal dog fighting.
• And, most damaging, Tim Donaghy, an NBA referee, was accused by the FBI of betting on games in which he’d participated—the cardinal sin in all sports.

Overshadowed by these negative headlines was a noble decision made by Utah Jazz guard Derek Fisher: He asked to leave his team.

More at chistianitytoday.com…

Toyota Headlamp Wiring

I found this site when searching for help for my Toyota Tamaraw FX headlamp wiring kit. I got a standard wiring kit so that I could put in higher wattage bulbs. But Toyota apparently wires their headlamps in a weird way. When I switch to high beams using the auxillary wiring, BOTH low and high beams come on, and the high beam indicator on the dashboard does not.

Here’s the site -> http://www.4crawler.com/4×4/CheapTricks/Headlights.shtml

Many thanks to the author for sharing. Haven’t tried it though, but will do as soon as I find the time. :-)

Here’s another site with car wiring diagrams:

http://pdftown.com/Toyota-Supra-1995-Wiring-Diagram.html

10 Ways to Communicate More Effectively with Customers and Co-Workers

We all know what happened to the Titanic. Clearer communications could have prevented the tragedy and the loss of more than 1,500 lives. Communications plays just as important a role in your careers. When asked to name the top three skills they believed their subordinates need, 70 percent of the readers of CIO magazine listed communications as one of them.

Here are some tips on how you can communicate more effectively with people at work, be they customers, co-workers, subordinates, or superiors.

More at techrepublic.com…

The Forbidden City of Terry Gou

His complex in China turns out iPhones and PCs, powering the biggest exporter you've never heard of

By JASON DEAN
August 11, 2007

Shenzhen, China

Past a guarded gate on the outskirts of this city sits one of the world's largest factories. In dozens of squat buildings, it churns out gadgets bearing technology's household names -- Apple Inc.'s iPods and iPhones, Hewlett-Packard Co.'s personal computers, Motorola Inc. mobile phones and Nintendo Co. Wii videogame consoles. Few people outside of the industry know of the plant's owner: Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. With a work force of some 270,000 -- about as big as the population of Newark, N.J. -- the factory is a bustling testament to the ambition of Hon Hai's founder, Terry Gou. In an era when manufacturing has been defined by outsourcing, no one has done more to shift global electronics production to China. Little noticed by the wider world, Mr. Gou has turned his company into China's biggest exporter and the world's biggest contract manufacturer of electronics. Hon Hai's revenue has grown more than 50% a year in the past decade to $40.6 billion last year. It is expected to add $14 billion in revenue this year. That is roughly the equivalent of Motorola's adding, within a year, the sales of CBS Corp.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal