Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison before becoming the first President of South Africa to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. During his time in jail, he kept a scrap of paper in his cell that contained the words of a poem by William Ernest Henley, entitled “Invictus.” It ends with the famous lines, “I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.”

To make it through times of extreme adversity, you need to embody these words. Take responsibility for the results you create in your life, and keep agreements with yourself.

They are at least as important as agreements with others.

Quote of the Day…
“Overall, the philosophy is to attack the availability problem from two complementary directions: to reduce the number of software errors through rigorous testing of running systems, and to reduce the effect of the remaining errors by providing for recovery from them. An interesting footnote to this design is that now a system failure can usually be considered to be the result of two program errors: the first, in the program that started the problem; the second, in the recovery routine that could not protect the system.” — A. L. Scherr, Functional Structure of IBM Virtual Storage Operating Systems

Term Of The Day…
From Generation X by Douglas Coupland:
Overboarding: The overcompensating for fears about the future by plunging headlong into a job or life-style seemingly unrelated to one’s previous life interests; i.e., Amway sales, aerobics, the Republican party, a career in law, cults, McJobs, etc.

Those Questions…
- If Americans throw rice at weddings, do Chinese throw hot dogs?
- Was Robin Hood’s mother known as Mother Hood?
- How do you know when you run out of invisible ink?
- What do they call a coffee break at the Lipton Tea Co.?
- How do you explain counter-clockwise to someone with a digital watch?

One Way To Do Things…
When Albert Einstein and his wife visited the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, Mrs. Einstein pointed to a particularly complex piece of equipment and asked its purpose. Their guide said that it was used to determine the shape of the universe. “Oh,” she said, not at all impressed, “my husband uses the back of an old envelope to work that out.”

A man stands on a factory floor looking around aimlessly. The CEO comes up and asks him his salary.
The man replies, “5000 a month sir.”

The CEO takes out his wallet and gives the man 15000 and tells him: “I pay people here to work and not to waste time… here’s 3 months salary. Now get out of here and never come back!”

The guy leaves. Then CEO asked another worker,

“Who was that guy anyways?”

The worker replies, “Courier boy, sir…”

Bob was born without ears, and though he proved to be successful in business, his problem annoyed him greatly. One day he needed to hire a new manager for his company, so he set up three interviews.

The first guy was great. He knew everything he needed to know and was very interesting. But at the end of the interview, Bob asked him, “Do you notice anything different about me?”

“Why, yes, I couldn’t help but notice that you have no ears,” came the reply. Bob did not appreciate his candor and threw him out of the office.

The second interview was with a woman, and she was even better than the first guy. But he asked her the same question

“Do you notice anything different about me?”

“Well,” she said stammering, “you have no ears.” Bob again got upset and chucked her out in a rage.

The third and final interviewee was the best of the bunch, he was a young man who had recently earned his MBA. He was smart. He was handsome, and he seemed to be a better businessman than the first two put together. Bob was anxious, but went ahead and asked the young man the same question “Do you notice anything different about me?” Much to his surprise, the young man answered, “Yes, you wear contact lenses, don’t you?”

Bob was shocked and realized this was an incredibly observant person.
“How in the world did you know that?”, he asked.

The young man replied, “Well, it’s pretty hard to wear glasses with no damn ears!”