www.andrewmackay.net:

Aristotle supposedly said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

I don’t know if that’s entirely true, but it feels like it is. I do know that I desire a life characterized by excellence. It’s easy to look at life — even in one week chunks — and to think, Well, it’s just another week. Ho Hum. I guess I’ll put in what’s required of me, make it to Friday, and then… Weekend!

That’s lame. Entirely not what I want for my life this week, that’s for sure. No matter the task, whether it’s cleaning a toilet bowl (likelyhood: 15%), changing a diaper (likelyhood: 100%) or resolving a customer’s problem (likelyhood: 100%… I almost did 110%, but I realize that 110% is not a real number. It’s like saying I’m one and one-tenths of a human being. Just unrealistic), I want to be excellent at it. I want to condition myself to the point that my responses aren’t just excellent, my entire behavior is excellent.

A more profound quote (not) “Be excellent to each other”… said by these guys:

Me, that is… I had a great time listening to Jeff Bezos talk about customer service… I saw it posted over at The Mystery and the Magic. Jeff Bezos is the founder of Amazon.com, and he essentially gives away some business advice over the course of an 8 minute video.

He talks about the most important things he knows, like obsessing over customers, inventing on the behalf of customers and how it informs their culture at Amazon, and also… he uses a flip chart. Is there a slight irony in the founder of a huge technology company using a flip chart? Perhaps. But, flip charts are innovative too… it takes very little time to alter your presentation… just discard the existing page and create a new one.

Anyway, highly recommended. It’s a good little learning experience.

There’s an article posted here about what 30 top websites looked like 10 years ago. It’s interesting (and funny) because we’ve come a long way — for example, you can tell that clutter is no longer acceptable, clean design is king. Look at the BBC particularly. Wow. Talk about overkill.

Anyway, fun little look back… enjoy.

I hate to rub it in, but… I’m on Vacation! The skyline I’m looking at is, admittedly, nothing at all like the one in the picture. That’s okay though… I’m in my home and native land, Canada. It’s good to be in the Great White North. I’m working on things like diction and accent to make sure I don’t stray too far away from my roots.

Vacation is a time to sit down and reflect on things that take place when the world is moving at it’s usual frantic pace. Work, family life, time wasters, time consumers that aren’t wastes… during this week of “chillin’ out”  (I felt so cool typing that), I’ll have time to think constructively about all those things. Plus, I get to enjoy my family, play with my little boy whenever I can, and drink too much coffee and eat too much ice cream.

Yeah, you gotta love vacation!

There’s a great post at Communicate Jesus that helps people to think about creative people who are Christians and whether or not they should provide their work to the church for free.

Paul bankrolled a bunch of very important creative enterprises. One was Christian television. I know that he backed Clifford Warne and his puppets and Bible stories and sent him to America so Clifford knew how to write and produce children’s television … One of the reasons he was so effective was that he paid the Christian creatives around him.

This is something I’ve put a little bit of thought into — I think it’s really a matter of scale. If a believer is contributing their talents to a side project without greatly detracting from their ability to make a living, that’s okay as “free work” goes. On the other hand, when the scale of the work is big enough to require the person forgo opportunities to make a living, I think it behooves the church to pay for the work.

It’s kinda like this: if we have a plumber in our congregation and he installs a new faucet for us and doesn’t want to bill us, I probably won’t quibble. On the other hand, if the plumber has to take a week to entirely re-plumb our facility, forgoing other jobs, I think we pay him for his work in 99.9% of the cases. Same goes for a designer or… pretty much anyone else.

What do you think?

Off-topic note: the website I’ve used for royalty free images since I started this blog is currently down. This will make it look like a) there should be a photo, but it never loads, and b) like this site is taking forever to load. They do expect a fix to be in place before too many more days pass. Until then, my apologies.

I’m watching a thunderstorm that feels like it’s right on top of my head.

It’s fairly spectacular. I wish I could put into words just how small I feel when this kind of a storm is going on. It’s huge, loud, and powerful.

Six foot two, a few too many pounds… I got nothing on this. It makes me think of my good friend (and my son’s namesake) Luke. This is the ultimate opportunity to yell respect me in a futile manner.

You see, no matter what I do, I can’t change this thunderstorm. It’s got me beat. I can run out there this minute and scream at the sky, tell it to stop, whatever I happen to think of — it will simply soak me. It is unmovable. I get cold and I hate being wet, so I’m pretty far from immovable. I’m a wimp.

The only experience I can compare it to is standing next to a helicopter carrier belonging to Her Majesty’s Royal Canadian Navy. That ship was huge. I was 13 or 14 years old. In a battle of power, I’d take the carrier.

Sometimes a little reminder of powerlessness can be good for you.

Wednesday motivators? Come on Andrew, are you getting short on material? If this was any day but today, I might have to say yes, but today, July 15th, 2009, is an important day, so I’ll give you a little deeper a glimpse into my life.

On this day three years ago, my darling wife married me. She wasn’t my wife before then, if you needed that clarified.

It’s been a wonderful three years. She is my cheerleader, my number one fan, my most honest critic, and–by every measure–the person I most enjoy spending (and wasting) time with.

So, today, Rebecca, let me say thank you. Thank you for marrying me. You’ve made my life so much better and we’ve had a lot of fun since we got married. I look forward to having a lot more fun in the coming years. You are my favorite.

There are 80s rock songs about it… you know, weekends. When I’m coming off a really great weekend, I can’t help but feel a little regret that it’s over. Let me tell you, this past weekend, we made lemonade out of lemons… in spite of illness and a lack of sleep on the little guy’s part (and his mom’s part, of course), I would classify what has just passed as a great weekend. It had all the key elements, rest, relaxation, fun… everything I’d ask for.

There’s motivation in that. In part, out of gratitude for the weekend that was. In part, looking forward to the weekends that will be.

Man, I’ve got to stop being so sappy about my family.

Maybe not.

So, admittedly, I’m floundering about a little bit, trying to find a topic for these Saturday posts. Floundering is a funny word.

So… today, my favorite tech solutions from the past week:

first, multiple monitors. I know, I know… “welcome to 1992″ or something. But seriously, setting up your pc to display across two screens is brilliant. If you’re using a laptop, chances are you’ve got the hardware right there to pull it off. Why so brilliant? Organization: Put the important stuff on one side of the screen, the unimportant stuff on the other. For example, when I’m using Quark for typesetting, the main document is displayed full screen on my laptop, on my right. My toolbars, copy of the book in word, PDF of the original design document, and whatever else I need are displayed on an external monitor, set to the left of the laptop. I have never been so freed up to work. And to check facebook. Wait, honey, I didn’t mean that.

second: virtual private networks/remote desktop access: I’ve been using gbridge (yes, that’s www.gbridge.com) for this. It’s stellar because it uses gmail accounts as logins and works quite effectively. It lets me take over someone else’s computer (by invitation of course) and do whatever needs done. For those of you who get phone calls with computer questions, this will save your life. Far easier to play with configuration yourself than to talk someone else through it. (Something here about giving a man a fish… nah, whatever).

Third and last: Digsby. Instant messenger is so 1999… but by comparison to the complete “come and go” nature of facebook, IM seems kind of almost personal. The great thing about Digsby is that it will integrate your instant messaging clients, your facebook account, even your twitter account. Add e-mail updates to it and it becomes an all-in-one communications client. I love it. It helps that it doesn’t absolutely kill my beat, old laptop with its memory footprint, too.

So, there you go… a little bit of solution Saturday for you. Not anything that you couldn’t have found over at Engadget probably… but hey, they’re on Late Nite with Jimmy Fallon, I’m on… late night? What the heck is a late night? I’m in bed by nine.

Last, but certainly not least, to my American friends (and my darling American wife, who I am so proud to be married to), congratulations on the celebration of your independence. There is a uniquely independent spirit to America. It is a great asset and a great challenge. Cherish the asset. Attack the challenge. I’ll be here rooting you on. Except for in olympic hockey.

Over caffeinated? Need something to pour that energy into? Here’s some random links to give you food for thought today:

Pete Peterson is a contributor to the Rabbit Room. He is also in the process of publishing his first book, The Fiddler’s Gun. He’s doing some fun stuff over at his website for the book, creating a world that you can definitely be drawn into.

Perhaps only of interest to me because of my day job, they finally sentenced Bernard Madoff yesterday for the theft of somewhere in the realm of 50 billion dollars. His lawyers had requested a sentence of 12 years. I think what the judge did was more appropriate. Really brings home the ol’ “if it sounds to good to be true it probably is” rule. It even applies in investment decisions.

Oh the funny things you can do with a little scraper and a sign that had good intentions.

Finally, last but never least, there seems to be some strange goings-on over at the Maple Mountain Story Club. Could just be a little ADD on Sam’s part, but you never know. Keep your eyes peeled.