In “Twidiots”, we collect the choicest thoughts on a particular topic from Twitter’s millions of users.
What’s the second most used language in the United States? If you said Spanish, you’re right; if you said Mexican, you are so, so wrong.
Just hear the Supreme Court ruled you have to speak Mexican to vote now. Seems extreme.
— Monkeyboy (@MetricButtload) June 17, 2013
…
Data management is inherently tricky, but when it involves robots in space-communicating via a low-bandwidth intermittent link#8212;it’s trickier. NASA is leveraging Data Distribution Service for Real-Time Systems to help it solve that problem as part of its Human Exploration Telerobotics project. …read more
As a result of the employer delay and other last-minute changes, the CBO said Tuesday that cost of expanding coverage for the uninsured will rise to $1.375 billion from 2014-2023, an increase of less than 1 percent from its previous estimate in May.
Last year, my fellow HBR blogger Daniel Markovitz suggested that stretch goals can be demotivating, and should be replaced by confidence-building “quick wins.” Frankly, this is like saying that the taste of food is more important than its nutrient value. It’s a false dichotomy. Healthy organizations need both stretch and success to stay alive and vibrant, just like a well-balanced diet includes food that is both tasty and healthy.
The key to integrating the two is to carve quick wins out of long-term goals — so that each small success is a building block towards achieving a broader challenge. It’s important however that these small successes themselves be microcosms of the larger goal, and not simply serve as check-marks for harvesting low hanging fruit. Rather, these small stretches (we call them Rapid Results) need to force people out of their comfort zones to try new approaches, ideas, and ways of working in 100 days or less.
Over the past several decades, my colleagues and I have seen the power of short-term stretch goals in almost every imaginable situation. For example:
In order to achieve seemingly impossible growth targets, an adhesives materials company challenged dozens of divisional teams to each implement one “growth idea” that would generate new revenue in 100 days. One team, for instance, revised a commercial taping product for home use and partnered with Home Depot to sell it. Over the next two years, hundreds of such teams around the world helped the company increase revenues while creating further opportunities for growth. These “small stretches” also energized participants and helped them develop capabilities as growth leaders. As one manager said, “I learned more in 100 days than I had in the previous several years.”
To achieve stretch sales goals, the commercial head of a health care company challenged her global team to boost revenues from older brands without losing focus on their primary products. To make this happen, a cross-functional team from each market selected ten promising brands and focused on getting initial, measurable results on one of them in 100days.Over the next year, these teams built on the initial results so that the collective gain was over half a billion dollars.
Short-term stretch goals also work with community development and not-for-profit initiatives. As part of an effort to increase education in Southern Sudan, a team of villagers with help from an NGO took on the challenge of increasing school attendance by 30% in 100 days.The villagers were so motivated to achieve this goal, that they eventually made their own bricks to construct a new building. A few years later a child from that village was the first from his region to attend a university. Recently, an effort in the U.S. to provide housing for 100,000 homeless veterans is utilizing the same approach by carving out short-term stretch goals in a number of cities around the country.
Regardless of context, there are two keys to the effective use of short-term stretch goals.
The first is to make sure that the immediate goals are part of a larger, more ambitious effort so that whatever is achieved and learned is a building block, not an end-in-itself. In other words, extremely ambitious stretch goals need to be deconstructed into lots of short-term stretch goals, sometimes with multiple cycles.
Second, intentionally design the short-term stretch goals in ways that force innovation, collaboration, and learning — so it’s not just a matter of working harder for a short period of time. In this way, each short-term success builds capability and knowledge for the next and the next.
Let’s not dismiss stretch goals as demotivating or dangerous. If you tackle them by carving out short-term challenges, and learn as you go, they can be a powerful way to accelerate progress.
What’s your experience with short-term stretch goals?
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Do you and your husband ever have the same fight, over and over again, without ever fixing anything?
Are you just tired, because there’s this one issue in your marriage where you just can’t make headway? What do you do when he just doesn’t get that there’s a problem, and he has no desire to change, even if it’s really, really bothering you?
Some of the issues you’re stressing over may be very serious, but I don’t want to address the ones that are actually truly endangering the sanctity of the marriage (such as alcoholism, or pornography addiction). That’s really a subject for another post. I’m really talking about those everyday things which can wear us down almost as much: he refuses to care for his diabetes, even though he’s profoundly overweight. He never spends time with the kids. He spends too much time on the computer. He doesn’t talk to you. And he has no interest in changing. What do you do?
Here are my thoughts, in order. And a warning: they’re a little harsh, because there is no magic answer. But I think they’re truthful, and that’s better.
1. Realize that you cannot change anyone else.
In my book To Love, Honor and Vacuum I dealt with this quite a bit. Often when we’re upset in our marriages we think the problem is all him. If he would just smarten up, we’d be fine. But what’s the point in thinking that? You cannot change him. You need to stop trying. Saying, “I will be happy as soon as he…” means that you’re also saying, “I WON’T be happy if he doesn’t….” You’re putting your peace in someone else’s hands, and it’s not healthy.
2. Try to see him in a different light.
He is God’s gift to you. Maybe 20% of what he does really bugs you, but focus on the other 80%. Learn gratitude for what he does do and accept him for who he is. The more you accept him, the more he feels competent and strong, and the more likely it is that he will want to grow as a person. Men have a deep-seated need to be competent. If they feel disapproval, they often retreat (into television, work, etc.). Treat them well, and they’re more likely to grow. But don’t do so in order for them to grow. Do so because you want the best for them and you honestly are finding things to be grateful for.
3. Pray God’s will for your husband.
Instead of praying that he will improve in the areas that you find difficult, pray for him that God will help him in his various roles. Pray that he will become the man God wants him to be, not the man you want him to be.
4. Pray that you will be the best wife you can be for him.
I know he’s hurting you. I know he’s doing things that you wish he wouldn’t and that really bother you. But ask God what you can do to show your husband love. What can you do to be the best wife you can be? Instead of focusing on what he is not doing, focus on what you can do. God will honor that, and you will feel better. Dare yourself to be as good a wife as you can (which doesn’t mean excusing sin; it just means learning to love). As you build gratitude for who he is (#2), pray for him (#3), and focus on your own roles (#4), you’ll likely find your attitude towards him changing.
5. Change what you have control over.
If he is treating you disrespectfully, for instance, you don’t need to nag him about it. You don’t need to fight about it, or withhold from him. Tell him how you feel, but then put yourself in a position where he can’t treat you that way. I list a whole bunch of different scenarios like this in To Love, Honor and Vacuum, but let me give you an example. If he wants to eat in front of the television, that is completely his prerogative. But that doesn’t mean you have to serve him there. Set the table, have the kids sit down, and if he wants to bring his plate elsewhere, he can. He’s an adult; he can do what he wants. But you don’t need to facilitate it. This one’s kind of controversial, and some of you may disagree with me here. Feel free! But I think it is important to make it a norm that the family does things together. If he chooses something different, that’s fine. But family togetherness is the norm.
6. Find your own peace in God.
If you are feeling put upon and taken for granted, then go to God for your peace. Don’t rely on your husband to meet all your needs; he never will. Get involved in a good Bible study. Fill your time focusing on God, and not on your husband’s shortcomings. Put praise CDs on and let music fill the house. Seek out a godly mentor that can help you grow in the Lord (not help you vent all your frustration about your husband). Look to Jesus, not your husband, and probably the problems you have will minimize in importance.
Post first published at To Love, Honor and Vacuum. Used with permission.
Sheila Wray Gregoire is a marriage blogger, speaker, writer, and mom. The author of seven books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, she loves encouraging women to strive for the kind of real intimacy in marriage that God designed. When she’s not blogging at To Love, Honor and Vacuum, you can find her on Facebook,Twitter, and Pinterest!
MIAMI, May 19 (UPI) — The Miami Police Department said is ending its long-running relationship with the A&E cable channel true-crime series “The First 48.”
Last Saturday, I took apart an old and broken laptop of mine: a Sony Vaio VGN-TZ31XN. That was once a top of the line executive laptop. I bought it in 2009 when the model had just been discontinued and superseded by a new one, so it wasn’t too expensive.
The laptop had an 11″ 1366×768 screen, a 1.2 ghz Core2duo, 2GB of ram and 120 GB hard drive. The reason I paid 1000 Euro for such lowly specs is that it had a weight of 1.25 kg, doing about 6 hours on a battery charge.
I’ve been wanting a new laptop since I started to bump into performance issues during 2011. 2 GB of ram is not sufficient in a time of HTML5 – there are web pages which eat several hundreds mbs of ram. And unfortunately the Linux desktop isn’t getting lighter either (it’s part of why I decided to help Will and Klaas with Klyde for hackweek). And I’ve been doing some light video editing lately as well as more image editing. So when the screen of my laptop finally gave beginning of last year, I simply ordered my new Samsung Series 9. That Series 9 was actually more expensive than the Sony (prices have gone down since then). It is a step forward, but it is sad that it took the IT world over 5 years to finally eclipse what Sony did in 2007. And not even on every level – my Sony included a DVD burner, 3-antenna wifi, TWO card readers, mini-PCI-express, 120 GB spinning rust, FULL ethernet and VGA ports, Firewire and a removable battery in barely 100 gram more!
When you open up the Sony, it becomes apparent how they managed to cram so much functionality (essentially everything a ‘normal’ laptop offers) in such a thin enclosure: they must have worked with the assumption of an unlimited budget. Seriously, it is clear why this laptop was over 2K: the target user group seemed to be entirely unwilling to compromise on features. This thing is far more complicated inside than modern ultrabooks. My Samsung S9 is mostly battery inside: it has a single, laptop-wide motherboard with 2 boards (wifi and mSATA) attached to it.
Nothing compared to the Sony: taking it apart reveals a square motherboard, a battery-power related board inside a casing, wifi board (the usual), blue-tooth board (tiny), audio board (2 chips & capacitors, audio in/out, 2 speakers, microphone all attached), 2xUSB+card reader board, touchpad board (the touchpad itself also has logic, of course), quick function keys board, 2 more small board I can’t identify. Then the DVD burner has its own internal boards (2) and one on the outside, apparently to interface between the mobo and the dvd burner. Oh, and of course, memory is separate and can be replaced. The webcam also has its own 4 cm long/half wide/double sided board.
Crazy, huh? All that is connected via a
From: http://blog.jospoortvliet.com/2013/04/taking-stuff-apart.html
HowtoForge: This tutorial shows how you can set up an OpenSUSE 12.3 desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge.
The software I propose as default is the one I found easiest to use and best in their functionality – this won’t necessarily be true for your needs, thus you are welcome to try out the applications listed as alternatives.
I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!
To fully replace a Windows desktop, I want the OpenSUSE 12.3 desktop to have the following software installed:
The software provided in the above list covers most of the basic tasks one might need to do on their desktop computers, sometimes there are multiple choices for same functionality. If you know which one you like best, you obviously don’t need to install and test the other applications, however if you like choice, then of course you can install more than one.
I’m using the OpenSUSE 12.3 Live-DVD in this tutorial to set up the system. You can download it from here: http://software.opensuse.org/123/en
I will use the username howtoforge in this tutorial, and I will download all necessary files to howtoforge’s desktop which is equivalent to the directory /home/howtoforge/Desktop. If you use another username, please replace howtoforge with your own username. So when I use a command such as
cd /home/howtoforge/Desktop
you must replace howtoforge.
Download the OpenSUSE 12.3 Live-DVD iso image, burn it onto a DVD, and boot your computer from it. Select Installation.
Continue reading this article at it’s original source:
http://www.howtoforge.com/the-perfect-desktop-opensuse-12.3-gnome-desktop
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Linux Today
By wisecracker
1) 10 centred greyscale fades without warning beeps.
2) 5 centred yellow “WARNING!” flashes with beeps every ON state.
3) 5 FULL widowed red “DANGER!!!” flashes with beeps in the ON and OFF states.
It assumes that the warning bell is enabled inside the terminal.
It is primarily for OSX 10.7.5 and above but it could just as easily work in Linux or other UNIX like systems. It is issued as Public Domain and you my do with it as you please…
READ THE CODE FOR MORE INFO…
(Watch for wordwrapping, etc…)
Bazza, G0LCU…
#!/bin/bash
#
# Flash and fade for a Macbook Pro OSX 2.7.5 Terminal...
# A DEMO to show how to give an AT A GLANCE, and, audible warning of impending doom in a shell script.
# It is for something like an analogue Data Logger input say from an Arduino analogue source.
#
# It may well work on other Linux and Unix like machines but is untested and uses the "tput" command
# to hide and unhide the terminal cursor. The command "setterm" is commented out and could be used
# in place of the above depending on the *NIX flavour...
#
# Written in such a way that anyone can understand how it works.
#
# It starts with 10 cycles of grey/gray scale fading on a black background without any beeps then next
# 5 yellow warning flashes with a beep every full flash and finally 5 FULL screen red flashes with beeps
# on every ON and OFF state.
#
# Clear a screen to white on black...
printf "33[0;37;40m"
clear
printf "n Flash and fade for a default Macbook Pro OSX 2.7.5 Terminal.n"
# Turn the cursor off...
#setterm -cursor off
tput civis
# Fade on and off 10 times, grey/gray scales on black.
for fade in $(seq 1 10)
do
printf "33[12;23f33[1;30;40mFading using four _shades_ of grey...33[0m"
sleep 0.1
printf "33[12;23f33[1;90;40mFading using four _shades_ of grey...33[0m"
sleep 0.1
printf "33[12;23f33[1;37;40mFading using four _shades_ of grey...33[0m"
sleep 0.1
printf "33[12;23f33[1;97;40mFading using four _shades_ of grey...33[0m"
sleep 0.1
printf "33[12;23f33[1;37;40mFading using four _shades_ of grey...33[0m"
sleep 0.1
printf "33[12;23f33[1;90;40mFading using four _shades_ of grey...33[0m"
sleep 0.1
done
# Over-write the above with the ...read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at The UNIX and Linux ForumsBy DividendChannel.com Looking at the universe of stocks we cover at Dividend Channel, on 1/29/13, Full Circle Capital Corp (NASD: FULL) will trade ex-dividend, for its monthly dividend of $0.077, payable on 2/15/13. As a percentage of FULL‘s recent stock price of $7.60, this dividend works out to approximately 1.01%, so look for shares of Full Circle Capital Corp to trade 1.01% lower ? all else being equal ? when FULL shares open for trading on 1/29/13.
Click here to learn which 25 S.A.F.E. dividend stocks should be on your radar screen » or click here to find out which 9 other stocks going ex-dividend you should know about, at DividendChannel.com »
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Markets