Funny, I was just thinking about Stephen Covey this morning while getting ready for a new week at work...trying to remember, "what *are* those seven habits again?"
(I obviously have a ways to go before I'll be highly effective)...and here was this quote from Covey on the log in page when I got to work:

"Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us."
~Stephen Covey

Philosophically, I don't agree completely with this statement (I wouldn't consider this the ultimate freedom), but it's still something to think about.

How to Take Notes in Meetings

I've been in so many meetings lately, I could use this advice from Sloth Ethic.

"True friends are those who, when you make a fool of yourself, don't believe that this condition is permanent."

~Erwin T. Randall

Bond...James Bond

I've always enjoyed James Bond movies, even when they're a littly silly and seem all about double entendre, chase scenes and gadgets. "Casino Royale" is definitely my favorite James Bond movie...ever. Much more gritty and intriguing, not so campy and cartoonish. Daniel Craig is amazing, and so much more like the Bond in Ian Fleming's books. I've talked to people who gave up on Bond movies after the Sean Connery era. For them I say, this is the "real" James Bond.

Time well spent

"Picarello knows classical music. He is a fan of Joshua Bell but didn't recognize him; he hadn't seen a recent photo, and besides, for most of the time Picarello was pretty far away. But he knew this was not a run-of-the-mill guy out there, performing. On the video, you can see Picarello look around him now and then, almost bewildered.

When Picarello was growing up in New York, he studied violin seriously, intending to be a concert musician. But he gave it up at 18, when he decided he'd never be good enough to make it pay. Life does that to you sometimes. Sometimes, you have to do the prudent thing. So he went into another line of work. He's a supervisor at the U.S. Postal Service. Doesn't play the violin much, anymore.

Does he have regrets about how things worked out?

The postal supervisor considers this.

"No. If you love something but choose not to do it professionally, it's not a waste. Because, you know, you still have it. You have it forever."

- Excerpt from an article in The Washington Post on Joshua Bell playing in a DC train station at rush hour.

"I have no fear of what science will tell us about the universe - since God is definitionally the Creator of such a universe; and the meaning of the universe cannot be in conflict with its Creator. I do not, in other words, see reason as somehow in conflict with faith - since both are reconciled by a Truth that may yet be beyond our understanding."

- Andrew Sullivan (author "The Conservative Soul") from a blogging debate I found through my friend, Jack.