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When I had no roof I made
Audacity my roof. When I had
No supper my eyes dined.

When I had no eyes I listened.
When I had no ears I thought.
When I had no thought I waited.

When I had no father I made
Care my father. When I had
No mother I embraced order.

When I had no friend I made
Quiet my friend. When I had no
Enemy I opposed my body.

When I had no temple I made
My voice my temple. I have
No priest, my tongue is my choir.

When I have no means fortune
Is my means. When I have
Nothing, death will be my fortune.

Need is my tactic, detachment
Is my strategy. When I had
No lover I courted my sleep.

I came across this while reading The Good Men Project.

For the historical record, 1999-2009:

• Graduated from high school
• Moved to Rochester, New York for school
• Worked three summers and countless holiday breaks at a steel tube plant
• Co-op’ed at an aerospace and defense company
• Got hired right after my co-op, spent my senior year working/distance learning.
• Moved to Connecticut
• Graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology
• Spent every weekend in NYC for a year…
• Nearly went broke in NYC
• Left Pratt & Whitney to consult
• Bought a house in Austin, Texas
• Traveled to:
  • Argentina
  • Costa Rica
  • Belize
  • Honduras
  • Grand Cayman
  • The Bahamas (twice)
  • St. Lucia
  • Brazil
  • Mexico City
  • Japan
  • China (three times)
  • Thailand (twice)
  • India
  • Singapore
  • Probably a few other countries…need to check my passport.
  • Countless trips within the states
• Promoted a couple of times
• Spent over three years on a project in Michigan
• Made platinum on Continental airlines three years in a row
• Was the best man in my best friend’s wedding
• Leased a place in downtown Denver
• Ski’d Breckenridge seven times…implying I finally learned how to ski
• Went from 145lbs to 190lbs
• Switched to a Mac at home
• Stopped paying attention to most professional sports
• Worked.  A lot.

“If your company is so big and impersonal that you call the people you have assets, resources, bodies, or any of the many other degrading terms available, you’re doing it wrong.”

You read this and think, I don’t even know what 37Signals does — I just want to work for them.

Source: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2070-the-language-of-staffing

Timely article over on Crunchgear.com about the death of Tivo.  I’ve had Tivo for many, many years but finally just canceled it due to AT&T’s awesome Uverse service which a) records in HD and b) allows you to watch recorded shows on any tv in the house.  I just don’t see how Tivo can compete — for a while I was reluctant to abandon the service because the cable company DVRs sucked so bad, but Uverse has sold me that Tivo is done.

Amazon.com: Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century 9781594201981: P. W. Singer: Books.

Another great recent read of mine.  I highly recommend this book if you are interested in how combat is going to be (since it has already changed) 5-10-20 years from now.  The book gives a great overview of what is in use today, the ethics of continuing down the autonomous war fighter path, the unanswered legal questions present today, and of course the Skynet conversation.

“You don’t know where I’ve been. You don’t know where I’ve been. Just let us have the basement!”

Still one of my top 10 favorite movies.

There’s a Buddhist teaching,” one of our friends on the mailing list writes, “that the impulse to stay busy can be a particularly insidious form of laziness. As Sogyal Rinpoche put it:There are different species of laziness: Eastern and Western. The Eastern style is like the one practised in India. It consists of hanging out all day in the sun, doing nothing, avoiding any kind of work or useful activity, drinking cups of tea, listening to Hindi film music blaring on the radio, and gossiping with friends. Western laziness is quite different. It consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity, so there is no time at all to confront the real issues. This form of laziness lies in our failure to choose worthwhile applications for our energy.”

via Caterina.net: Being Lazy by doing too much.

Kudos to the guys at Bonobos for recognizing just how difficult it is to find decent fitting pants. I’ve bought pants from everywhere — Express, Banana, Club Monaco, you name it — and they never seem to fit just right. Thankfully I had read an article in some entrepreneur magazine about how these Stanford MBA were doing something about it. Enter the best fitting pants I have ever bought. These pants fit even better than the custom suit pants I had made in Shanghai!!!

I am writing this post today because I received an email which lets you create your own referral code (save 15% off your order using referral code “natelewis”) and to say thanks to the folks at Bonobos.

PS: Check out the “Experts Only” section.