BradPace.com

So I have not posted in a long time and need to get back in the habit.  Anyway I just finished listening to the book “The speed of trust” by Stephen M R Covey.  It was a short 75 minutes long.  It was a great book talking about how business runs faster and your own success happens faster if there are high levels of trust in your life.  I have worked at companies that don’t have high levels of trust between executives and workers and it really slows things down.  He talks about how you can measure and improve your trust with others.  I think that so often people let too many things “slide” in the work environment and this hurts your trust levels with others.  Anyway it is a great book and worth the read.

As some of you know I attended Woodbadge training with the Boy Scouts last June.  The main focus of this is to come out of the training with a set of goals (tickets) that you work on over the next 6-12 months.  One of my goals was to read more and I set a goal to read 12 books.  Some business, some religious/inspirational, and some just for fun.  I completed this goal months ago but here is the list of some of the books I read over the last year.

• Legacy of Honor -  a book about famous Eagle scouts and how it helped them.  A great book that all scout leaders and scouts should read.
• Permission Marketing – An old standard from Seth Godin that I had never got around to reading.  Great book.
• Edge of Physics – Pretty good book about what is happening today in physics.  Some crazy stuff.  It got a bit long and I had a hard time finishing it.
• Viral loop – Great book on social networking and what virality is.  I wish it had focused more on social business than on promoting yourself.
• The tipping point -  Again I was a bit late to read this but it is an excellent book and I highly suggest it to anyone.
• The lightning thief (several of my young men and my daughter were reading this)  I loved the book and hated all the changes the made to the movie.  Read the book and skip the movie.
• How to survive the end of the world as we know it – I have been on a survival/preparedness kick the last few months.  This is a great book but gets into the nuts and bolts (or should I say bullets) a bit too much.
• The Mormon way of doing business – This is the best book I have read this year.  Every Mormon in business should read this and I am encouraging any young man who is preparing to go on a mission to read it.  My son loved it.  A must read!
• The road – Fictional end of the world story (now a movie).  My brother-in-law Jeff suggested it to me.  It was not helpful in actually preparing to survive any real problems and was a bit gory.
• Getting things done – Another book I have always wanted to read.  Great book everyone should read.
• The lost symbol – I am just a fan of this series.  It is a fun read.
• Super freakonomics – I love everything about this book.  Everyone should read it.  Also subsribe to their podcast it is great as well.
• 33 million people in the room – Another social networking book.  Again it focuses on promoting yourself and not a business
• Series of 3 star wars books – Fate of the Jedi.  I love my Star Wars!  Not the best I have read but it was pretty good.
• Square foot gardening.  I planted my garden this way this year.  Here is a photo of it about a month ago.  It is looking great.  A great way to garden if you need it to be easy (like me).
• Several canning books – Canned a batch of jam already using home made pectin that I made from apples.  I plan on doing a bunch of canning this year.  Including some meats.
• You on a diet (lost 25 pounds between february and may).  Great book.
• Patriots – An “end of the world” book written by a survivalist.  Of course they had an amazing setup with hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment and supplies and live off them for 5 years.  Kind of a paranoid view of a worst case scenario but worth a read if you like this stuff.
  
• One second after - An excellent “end of the world” survival book about a small town after an EMP kills anything with electronic circuits in the US.  I enjoyed this book very much and it did have useful info to improve your preparedness.

Let me know if you you have any questions about any of these books or want to borrow them.  Some I read and some I listened to with my Audible subscription.  I am currently listening to the book “The Passage”.

So a few months ago I deleted Windows 7 and installed Ubuntu Linux. I felt at the time that the transition went well. But after running it for 2 months I decided to go back to Windows. I purchased Windows 7 and just blasted Linux and installed Windows. Now I admit that I am not a Linux expert and I am sure someone out there will find fault with all my reasons below. But I am better than most at this stuff. Here’s why I dumped Linux:

1) Flash SUCKS on Linux. We have several flash apps that I need to run every day at work and they simply didn’t work right.
2) Virtual Box kind of works. I found myself still running Windows in a VM. Photoshop, MS Office, Itunes and more I had to run in Windows anyway. And it is just not the same in a VM. Plus the sound is always messed up when run in virtual box.
3) ITunes. I admit I am a bit of an apple fan boy. But I love itunes and my iphone. I could sync my phone but it was VERY slow. It worked pretty well in virtualbox until the most recent update of itunes. It completely broke me and I had not had access to itunes for over a week. This is what finally sent me back to Windows.
4) Google Talk. I tried several chat clients on Linux and they are ok. But I really missed the fact that Gtalk stores my chat history with my email. This is huge for me to go back and find stuff that I cant remember if it was in an email or in a chat.
5) Password syncing. I hated that all my passwords are not synced between windows and linux.
6) No Netflix in Linux. I know it is silly but I could not use Netflix streaming at all in Linux. It uses Silverlight for some dumb reason. And because of the sound issues in virtual box I couldnt run it there.

The Windows 7 install was the easiest I have ever had with any version of Windows. It took me less than 45 minutes and it automatically detected all the hardware on my laptop. Everything worked fine right from the beginning.  Now I liked Linux for the simple stuff.  I may dual boot it at some point in the future.  But it is good to have Windows back!

I hate spam (the email kind and the meat).  Almost as much I hate email that gets forwarded to everyone in a chain letter format.  I especially hate it when the email asks you to forward it to everyone you know.  I usually just hit delete.  But I liked this one.  So instead of sending it on am posting it to my blog. (if you must have the original email to send to your friends let me know )

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The prize doesn’t always go to the most deserving

Irena Sendler

There recently was a death of a 98 year-old lady named Irena. During WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the Warsaw Ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist. She had an ‘ulterior motive’ … She KNEW what the Nazi’s plans were for the Jews, (being German.) Irena smuggled infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried and she carried in the back of her truck a burlap sack, (for larger kids..) She also had a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto. The soldiers of course wanted nothing to do with the dog and the barking covered the kids/infants noises.. During her time of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants. She was caught, and the Nazi’s broke both her legs, arms and beat her severely. Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out and kept them in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her back yard. After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived it and reunited the family. Most had been gassed. Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes or adopted.

Last year Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize … She was not selected.

Al Gore won, for a slide show on Global Warming.

In MEMORIAM – 63 YEARS LATER

Please read the little cartoon carefully, it’s powerful. Then read the comments
at the end.

In Memoriam

It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the six million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians and 1,900 Catholic priests who were murdered, massacred, raped, burned, starved and humiliated with the German and Russian Peoples looking the other way!

Now, more than ever, with Iraq , Iran , and others, claiming the Holocaust to be ‘a my th,’ it’s imperative to make sure the world never forgets, because there are others who would like to do it again.

This e-mail is intended to reach 40 million people worldwide!

Join us and be a link in the memorial chain and help us distribute it around the world.

Now that I have had a bit over a week with my new iPhone I figured it was time to write a bit about it. First of all I upgraded from a 2G so it was a big change. Here is what I love about it.

• GPS/Digital Compass – My 2G didn’t have GPS. I love the GPS features on the 3GS. And the digital compass on the map is very slick. I purchased the Geocaching app from Groundspeak and it ROCKS! It almost makes geocaching too easy. We found a couple of caches within a half mile of our fathers and sons campout last weekend. No more typing in the coordinates. Plus I will be using the compass app. Anyone want my scout compass?
• Voice Commands – I have some mixed results with voice commands. Sometimes it works and at other times it doesn’t. But I am learning how to get better results (and I swear the iPhone is getting better as well). But the feature is SOOOO cool. And I have used it in the car. If I had a dashboard mount for the phone it would be even better.
• Landscape keyboard – I love that you can use this in email and texting now. My big fingers need all the help they can get and I probably can type 2x as fast in landscape mode.
• Speed is BIG! – I love the increased speed and notice the difference. Both at boot up and on all the apps. If I cant have multi-tasking apps at least it makes it quick to switch back and forth.
• Push notifications – I bit the bullet and paid for BeejiveIM (when it was on sale) and I love it. It has push capability and it works great. I like this app much better than Palringo (which is what I used before. I also tried fring and didn’t really like that app). That is the only app I have that used Push notifications (other than email).
• Improved camera and video – The photos are much better with the new improved camera. I take a lot of photos with my iPhone. I played with video but have not really had much to video yet. But I am sure this will replace my Flip.

Overall it has been well worth the upgrade. And with 32 GB I have lots of memory to play with. It’s nice to have more music and podcasts.

Other apps that I use and love:

• Scriptures – This app was pricy but worth it. It is the best version of the LDS scriptures. Plus it includes a bunch of other content like the Hymns, Manuals, Resources, General Conference and more. Search works great and so does bookmarking. I love following along in Sunday School with the Teachers manual. I do use it in church and because all the content is in the app it is very fast.
• Evernote – I still use this great app and it is only getting better. I cut and paste tons of stuff into it to save for later. Their tagging system works well. You can store just about anything in Evernote.
• Content Apps – I love apps that provide easy access to data. Like the LifeHack app, USA Today, Digg, WebMag, LDS radio, NY Times and others. My new favorite content app is the iStake app from Avikey. It integrates with LDS.org and provides my ward directory and the ward directories of all the wards in my stake. I don’t know how many times I tried to look up people in my area and did not have their contact info. It’s worth the $10 and works great. Also I love tying knots and love the knot guide app (a must for any scoutmaster).
• Photo Apps – I love the apps that do fun things with my photos. My kids and I have spent hours messing with photos on the iPhone. The most entertaining is the Face Melter app. We have ended in tears laughing so hard. My kids love it! I recently added the OldBooth app that allows you to put your face on different old photos. I just started using Animoto to take my photos and build mini-video slide shows. It is so easy and the videos are very cool. Plus with the new version you can download the movies. (It’s kind of lame you can only do 30 second movies without paying). And yes I use my company’s app FamCam to easily send any photos to my family members. I also use Photogene to improve the photos I take. Adjust the curves and to do all kinds of other tweeks to the photos.
• Web Apps – I still use some web apps on the iPhone. Like the Yahoo movie web app. And if you have not visited on NBC.com on your iPhone you are missing out. They have tons of content that streams. It works perfectly. Someone at work just showed me this just today.
• And let’s not forget GAMES! I love puzzle games like VaultBreaker, BrainTeaser, Sodoku, touchPhysics, and Chess. But my favorite puzzle games are Enigmo, cubicMan, and Peggle. Other fun games are Knights, Ignite, Air Hockey, CannonGame, iFish, Crazy Tanks, Oregon Trail, and the Tap Tap games.
• Other apps I use regularly are Kindle, Facebook, Twitterrific, i.TV, Yammer, Guitar Toolkit, and The Weather Channel.

So yesterday we launched our first iPhone app from FamilyLink.com.  It is called FamCam.  It is a very simple app that simply allows you to create family groups from your contacts and then you can send photo to them with just a few clicks.  It is simple but very useful.  Check it out in the iTunes store under Social Networking apps.  We are trying to get as many installs as possible right after launch.  So if you have an iPhone please install the app. Here is a screenshot:

Anyone that knows me knows that I LOVE my iPhone. I use it for everything and have 7 screens of applications installed. Many are free and quite a few are applications I paid for. But this last weekend I wanted to try the Kindle on the iPhone from Amazon. After all the app is FREE so I had to try it.

First off I do NOT have a Kindle and have never had the chance to try one. I have read several short ebooks on my computer and found it to not work very well for me. Part of it is that I sit in front of my laptop all day (and often late into the night) for work. The idea of reading a book there as well during my free time just does not appeal to me. Also I find the screen to bright and it strains my eyes. I can stare at the screen for 10-12 hours but even I have my limits .

The Kindle app for the iphone intrigued me for several reasons. One is the portability. The idea of always having something in my pocket to read is great. I already have plenty to read on my iphone. I do about half of my time on Facebook from my iphone. Also I read many blogs (like the lifehacker blog from their app) and news (like the USA today and Digg). Plus all my email accounts! But sometimes I want to curl up with a good book. Usually about technology, marketing, church stuff, or sci-fi / fantasy.

The second thing that I thought I would like is the actual presentation on the screen. The lines are short because of the size of the iphone screen. I have not officially taken any speed reading courses (not since 6^th grade at Delta Middle School) but I do know that you should try to read 4-6 words at once and the iphone screen size seemed perfect for this. (My next quest is for a good speed reading course).

So on Friday night in bed I downloaded the kindle application. It took about 15 seconds. I thought it would come with some type of free content or book but it did not. But it had a link to Amazon.com to get a book. I did not want to buy an actual kindle book to test this out but I did find several free books. I navigated the Amazon easily on my Safari browser and “purchased” the free book on the iphone. By the time I could fire up the Kindle app my new book was already there. A fantasy book called the “Assassin’s Apprentice” by Robin Hobbs. I barely read the description of the book before downloading it just because I was conducting a test.

I am now on chapter 20 of the book and on page 5339. Obviously the pages are much smaller . The experience of reading this book on the iphone has exceeded my expectations. I find it very easy to read. There is no vertical scrolling of any page. Just flip the page to the left or right like a real book. Be it a book that is 3”x4” and has 9000 pages! I have spent about 5 hours over the weekend on the book and found that it has not strained my eyes at all. I read in the car, waiting for a movie to start in the theater, waiting for my food at sizzler, and in my back yard. Plus I think the for factor of the pages has helped me to increase my reading speed.

An added bonus has been that I have really enjoyed the book! It is great and has really sucked me in. I like her story and the world she has created for this series of books. Yes it is a great marketing ploy by Amazon to give away the first book in several series to hook you into reading the rest. It will probably work for me. I love the long series of escapism literature.

Overall I give the kindle for iphone app and overall experience of 5 out of 5. It makes me wonder if I would like a Kindle. I probably would but will never fork out the cash to buy one. Why should I when I have my iphone!

My coworker Jim sent these quotes to me today and I was very touched by them. So I decided to post them to my blog.

1. When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.

2. The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.

3. It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.

4. I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

5. My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

6. No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.

7. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

8. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

9. To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

Most Interesting Quote:

10. I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.

Dear friends and family:

We just wanted to drop you a note and wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy holiday.  We had a great year and look forward to the New Year.

Love
Brad and Becki Pace

One of the souvenirs I wanted to bring home was a kurta.  That is a traditional male outfit that is a long sleeved shirt that goes down to you knees.  We looked at many places and they just don’t make them in my size (big supprize).  Do on Tuesday Dhananjay from the office took me to the main part of Pune to their clothing district.  This is the oldest part of the city and the roads are narrow and very crowded.  Plus with Diwali just around the corner there were extra street vendors selling just about everything. Here is a photo of the fun.

On Thursday they were planning on having “Traditional Day” at the office here.  This is when everyone wears their traditional dress to the office for one day.  So I wanted my kurta by then so I could wear it on Traditional Day.  Luckily we were able to find a tailor who could make it in a single day.  We picked out some cloth (pure silk actually) and he took my measurements.  The tailors tape just made it around my chest and he acted like he had never seen a 20″ neck before!  Anyway it cost me just $27 and I got my kurta on Thursday morning just in time for the activities at the office.  The cloth shop was dimmly light and I thought I had chosen a brownish color but when it came it looked more like pure gold.  Here I am with Dhananjay from my team (on the right).

The team here has a montly party to celebrate the birthdays and to give out awards and such.  It was my birthday in October and so I was included.  The tradition here is that frosting from the birthday cake gets smeared on the face of those with birthdays.  So you can see I got a healthy dose of frosting smeared on me!  It was a fun time.

Also becase Diwali is next week, they also had an activity for that.  The women of the office created some beautiful displays that were then judged and a winner was awarded.  This is a tradition that has much symbolysm and they decorate their displays with flowers, food, spices, powdered paint, and small lamps of burning oil.  Here are a few photos of the displays just to give you a sample.

Here is another photo of the party. I loved to see all the traditional clothes everyone was wearing and it was a great party!

I made a trip into town today.  We ate at Pizza Hut in the mall.  Pepperoni pizza (pork of course) has never tasted so good!  Here are a few photos from the trip.

Indians love their motorcycles (and scooters).  It is the most economical way to get around.  Most are 125cc engines and the bikes are pretty small (compared to US street bikes) so they can easily maneuver them in the busy streets and so they get good gas mileage.

I love seeing the cattle roaming the streets.  It is so cool!

They are setting up lights everyware for Diwali – The Festival of Lights.

Everyone is out and about on a Sunday night.  It is exciting for me to be with so many people!

They had a parade that included some type of shrine complete with a guru on a float.  First a water truck came by sprinkling water on the road with people sweeping before and after the water to clean the street.  Then they sprinkled the road with flower petals and said prayers to get ready for the shrine float.  These guys came just before the shrine and are some type of famous warriors from the past.

This is the truck covered with flowers.  All are fresh and put on strings.

This is the guru on the float with many loyal followers.  There were ladys passing out blessed food.  It was like puffed rice with a bit of sugar.  Very tasty.  It was fun to see the whole production.