http://www.victusinambitus.com The personal blog <b>pulpit</b> of Dennis A Smith Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:20:51 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The world is suffering, groaning with crime, pain, sickness and all manner of evil pressing in on us all more and more every day. Fights lead to murder. Sickness leads to Dying. Conflict leads to War. Financial woes to Depression. Earthquakes and Hurricanes. How bloomin' depressing trying to find domething ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/10/03/perfection-myths-22/ Just as continued insistence on demanding perfection is a sign of immaturity, increasing our capacity to accommodate things less than perfect is a sign of maturity. We were all born to seek perfection, but some people take it too far and won't be happy until they've got it or found ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/10/03/perfection-myths-12/ I tell a story every now and then about pressure and soap - yes the white stuff that comes in a cake and sits on the bathroom hand-basin. The stuff that you gotta teach boys to use behind their ears (if you ever can!). People don't like being forced into something ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/10/03/forcing-it/ I love creating things - new relationships, working with limited resources to be faster, better, more effective or efficient at doing all sorts of exciting things, especially in business. While others see beauty in a tree and want to save it from the timber merchants, I see fireword, carving, construction timber ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/09/03/creating-things/ I love it when I know the where I'm going - in business, on holiday or in a relationship. It's like things feel under control when we have a plan and I know what it is. Those around me draw confidence from my vision, passion and sense of purpose - ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/08/08/the-death-thing-2-2/ I love the one about the guy who gets a phone call from his doctor. "I've got good news and bad news" the doctor says. "Which one do you want first". "Give me the bad news first" the guy replies. The Doc says, "Well you've only got 24 hours to ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/08/03/the-death-thing-1-2/ I love a little Pacific Island phrase I learned in a kid's song* at Teacher Training College, "fai fai lemu" or in Palagi it translates as "take it easy". For a guy who loves to hit things hard, like as in 100%, 100% of the time, its interesting and sobering ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/07/25/take-it-easy/ I hate preachers that know it all, and have an answer for everything. Along with about a few hundred million uneducated pagans from the back-blocks of Zimbabwe, I'm probably the world's most Un-Theological Genius. I find the arrogant religious zealots especially obnoxious, in that they seem to have definitive answers ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/07/20/the-bottom-line/ I hate getting spun a yarn. You know, when people look you in the eyes and lie to you? I used to tell porkies every now and then but it just got so bloomin' hard trying to keep up with it that I gave up, and I've been straight straightish ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/07/19/lies-lies-lies/ I hate getting pushed around. It doesn't matter who tries to do it - the media, school teacher, the government - if they try to mess with me it gets my back up. It creates some interesting challenges in trying to work out how to cope with the external pressure ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/07/19/getting-pushed-around/ I hate getting things wrong. The sun certainly APPEARS to move from East to West and the earth APPEARS to be flat , so I do understand why the early people interpreted the facts the way they did and got it wrong. Sometimes, not everything seems as it really is . ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/07/11/interpretation/ It's a real bummer when things go wrong and some other dude does the dirty on you. Some people say I'm a sucker because I trust people too much. Most of the time they're right and when things go wrong, it's a big call to let it go. Sometimes we just ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/07/09/let-it-go/ I hated my younger sister for working out that Santa Claus' shopping list was written in our mother's handwriting. She got it and I didn't. Darn! I was embarrassed big-time because I should have sussed it out before her - after all I was older than her, so I should ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/07/05/building-eq/ Theological pride is not limited to the Scribes and the Pharisees from two thousand years ago. It's alive and well thank you, all around me. http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/07/04/theological-pride/ VICTUS IN AMBITUS has run from 1 January 2008 to 30 May 2008, exactly five months. I have published three times a week, and the total content exceeds 50,000 words, in some 75 Posts. The core content will be available in an easy-to-read PDF and book format shortly. In the meantime, ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/05/30/time-out/ Women are like Elephants in that they never forget. OK, I know that that's a generalisation. As a guy, I like and appreciate women in lots of different ways, but there's something abou tthe fairer sex gender that drives me nuts. Why on earth do they have to live in ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/05/30/future-destination/ There's more to business than money and there's more to life than work. I'm a sucker for work though, bordering on being classified a work-a-holic by those who like to label others. It's not because I have an addiction to work, it's because I love what I do. My work is ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/05/28/doing-and-being-1-2/ When cooking something up - maybe a story, a business deal, a winter soup or whatever, most of the time it's got to be 100% good or the whole thing breaks down and evil results. A teenager who was arguing along the lines that "just a little bit" of naughty ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/05/26/the-one-percent-2-2/ The Greeks used to leave one particular stone out of every building that they built, just so that they didn't insult the "gods" by building something perfect themselves. From memory it was located at the base and behind the pediment (That's the triangular roof façade at the front of their ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/05/23/the-one-percent-1-2/ It's a trap, this ANTI thing. Anti-whaling, Anti-abortion, Anti-gays, Anti-homophobes, and the list goes on an on. Competing political parties can score political points and label you without policy of your own, if you are just "anti" too often. The trouble with being anti something is two-fold. First you become ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/05/21/the-anti-trap/ Fear and Pain can be like two pillars that hold up a plethora of negative behaviour. All destructive behaviour such as addictions, anger, anti-social behaviour and more can always be traced back to one or both of these two causes. Remove or minimise the fear, or pain, and the house of ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/05/19/fear-pain-2-2/ I've observed that all negative behaviour, such as habits and addictions; all things unhealthy, hurtful or damaging to self; anti-social and destructive activities are always grounded in one or both of two nasty little beasts, FEAR and PAIN. These two little "puppies" really are like pillars in a Roman Temple - ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/05/16/fear-pain-1-2/ It always hurts when someone criticises you. I don't believe that anyone is immune to hurt from criticism. The little ditty "Sticks and stones will hurt my bones, but names will never harm me!" is a lie. Unkind or harsh words can kill the spirit, stunt our growth and trigger ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/05/14/flattery-2-2/ A few hundred years ago an English religious dude by the name of Charles Colton penned the words "Imitation is the sincerest of flattery." Sometimes yes, but jealousy can also show its ugly face too once you've been around a while. Being an entrepreneur is sometimes pretty lonely, as you have ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/05/12/flattery-1-2/ The discipline of Usability, particularly in website development, puts massive efforts into research to develop user-friendly websites - websites that work well. The essence of Good Design is that one design can achieve a given purpose better than another "Lesser "Design. It is assumed of course that there is a designer. ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/05/09/good-design-3-3/ In the last decade or two, the Intelligent Design (ID) movement has really made great strides in developing the idea that there really has to be a Designer behind what we see in nature. A leader in this area has been Michael Behe, particularly with his arguments around what he ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/05/07/good-design-2-3/ Except for straightforward phone calling, you would be hard done by to find a dumber piece of design than a cell phone. For a guy who's into efficiency, trying to TXT is more than a painful process - it's a dead cert frustration creator. Predictive texting doesn't work for me ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/05/05/good-design-1-3/ Sometimes anger really gets you going. I don’t mean to bashing someone with a hammer, I mean the deep determination to wrestle with an issue or a problem until we can get to the bottom of it. A key thought in this angry state is often to ask questions. Why is ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/05/02/dealing-with-anger-2-2/ Let's face it. We all get angry at times. Some $@*%^$! cuts us off while driving. A staff member or partner rips you off. You get burnt because of someone else's fire. Some things make you see red - don't they? Stuff that makes my blood boil is like when the ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/04/30/dealing-with-anger-1-2/ There's a story about a donkey that's been going around the Internet for quite a while. No doubt some dude knows where it comes from and it was probably in a parchment written by Norman Vincent Peale in 1642 in a monastery in Northern Poland, or something like that. I first ... http://www.victusinambitus.com/2008/04/28/donkey-thinking/