tag: General Thoughts

Back around 2005 I started an on-line masters program with a well-known and highly promoted online university. In one of my classes I had written what I thought was a well-done treatise1 in order to fulfill some course requirement. I did not score well on that paper. When I asked why, I was told that it did not meet the page requirements. I pointed out to the instructor that as a communications major in business school I was taught that you should write succinctly in order to clearly communicate your thoughts without burdening the reader with undue verbiage. I was taught not to fill your writing with fluff – say what you need to say then get out. ...

There have been a lot of discussions recently about how tipping the US has gotten out of control. Everyone, it seems, wants to be tipped for doing their jobs. Go to the local doughnut shop, walk up to the counter, order two donuts and a cup of coffee and there is a) a tip jar on the counter and b) a tip line on the credit card reader. Sorry? You want a tip for literally putting two donuts in a bag and filling a cup with coffee? I think not! The same is true at many fast food joints. ...

A question I have to ask myself sometimes is why I write if I know no one is reading my work. And that’s a valid question, I think. The answer is actually pretty simple: I write for myself. I write to clarify my thinking. I write with the notion that something I write might find its way to a reader who needs the information or perspective I’m providing. I write to document my thinking at this moment in time, knowing that at some future date my thinking will evolve in new directions, just as my current thinking evolved from, and in some cases diverged from, my earlier thinking. I write because I want to and, to some extent, need to. ...

Why Would Anyone Choose to be Attacked? I don’t remember now, what prompted me to think about this topic. It’s one that I actually jotted down some time ago in response, probably, to a news article or some other reading I had done at the time. But the question that I wanted to explore a little bit (this may be more a micro blog post rather than long-form) is in the title. ...

Hello and welcome! If you are retired and are even minimally technically inclined or would like to be, enjoy using a computer, and find yourself using a number of services such as Google docs, RSS readers, photo editors and organizers and so on, may I suggest that you explore self-hosting or homelabbing as a great retirement hobby. Today I want to introduce you to the two hobbies, how they are different and how they are related. This is intended to be a fairly short video as I only want to introduce you to the concepts, give you some ideas of what you can do in this space, briefly discuss why you should self-host (or build a homelab) and give you some ideas about how to get started. ...

Returning to Basics The title of this blog is iamcuri.us. That title was chosen to reflect the many and sundry interests that I have and the drive I have to explore new ideas and to learn new things. While I think some of my posts here have reflected that, others seems to skew in specific directions that seem to narrow the focus on the blog. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the posts that outline my tinkering in websites and self-hosting do reflect my questioning and exploring and learning. Still, I think that it’s time I pushed into some new areas and revisit in more detail some old areas, too. ...

The Evolution of an Academic Had someone told me on the day of my high school graduation in 1977 that I would one day be an academic, in possession of a doctoral degree and teaching at the university level, I’d have warned them that whatever they were smoking was muddling their brain. Yet, here I am, forty years later, in possession of not one, but two master’s degrees, and a doctorate, teaching at a university. How did that happen? ...

The ONE THING I love to read and love to learn, so it is no suprise that one of my favorite pastimes is to wander through bookstores. I love perusing the titles, skimming a few pages of those that interest me and maybe marking a few to add to my reading list. It’s a habit I developed probably thirty years ago. One of the subject areas I generally skim is the business management section. Learning about management styles and techniques is interesting and informative. Last fall, however, as I was skimming titles, I had an epihany. As I skimmed the titles I became aware of just how many titles purported to embue the reader with “the one thing” that they could do to be the best leader, the best manager, to build the most successful company, and … well, you get the idea. As I looked further, I found books of similar types in other subject areas. It seems that everyone one is looking for the ONE THING that gives them an advantagse. The problem was that in skimming the books it quickly became apparent that the “one thing” differed from book to book. ...

What’s Wrong with Asking for a “Highly Satisified” Rating? Virtually all businesses today are concerned about how the public perceives them. They recognize – and rightfully so, in my opinion – that customers who have a positive experience, who receive great service, or receive quality, tasty foods are more likely to be repeat customers. They also know that customers who have a poor experience are just as unlikely to return. Thus, measuring the customer experience by asking the customer to complete a survey of their experience is an important means for getting information on how well the company is doing in meeting the customers’ needs and expectations. I’m not sure all managers understand the value of the survey and the need for accurate feedback. ...

Science Fiction and the Polymath Throughout my junior high years I was a huge science fiction fan. One of my favorite authors of the time was Isaac Asimov. I was quite surprised to learn that Asimov not only wrote science fiction but had also penned books, short stories, and essays that ranged from religion (Guide to the Bible), chemistry (he was educated as a biochemist), engineering, and the list goes on. This realization intially confused me. How could a science fiction writer be so bold as to write on so many different topics? How could he know enough in each of those fields to qualify himself to write books on them? It would be many years before I encountered the term “polymath”, but surely Asimov earned the title. ...