Hearing Truth

/ Bruce Cameron

TRUESamuel Johnson is quoted as saying “[i]n order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.” My chance to learn to hear truth came  as I tried to wrap my “think like a lawyer” brain around the concepts of interest-based mediation during a 5 day, 10 hours per day course on family mediation. There is a leap of faith one has to make when transitioning between being “lawyer” and being “neutral” and, after years of legal training it is not an easy leap to make.

The mediation crowd calls it “letting the process work”. It took me 3 days to stop calling it “a quick way to get into trouble.” The hardest part in leaving the advocate behind is abandoning the lawyer’s laser focus on issues, facts, and law for simply hearing truth – not the law’s truth, but the parties’ truth – and realizing that in that moment of silent hearing meaningful solutions are generated without your involvement. Continue reading →

That Was The Year That Was

/ Bruce Cameron / 1 Comment

Its official, last year is finally put to bed, taxes are done, accounts reconciled, bills collected, and the books are closed, so now there’s time to reflect on the good, the bad and the ugly.

The good – Mac’s, CrashPlan, Grasshopper, personallized pens, and getting an accountant

The bad – Iomega REV, Retrospect, phonebook ads, “door” law, and conservative business cards.

The ugly – the high cost of tuition when taking graduate courses at Reality U. Continue reading →

It went bump in the night

/ Bruce Cameron / 1 Comment

Well, I knew that one day I would lose a disk, but I really didn’t need it to happen today, I really didn’t need to lose the disk with my database on it, and I certainly did not expect a 2 month old disk to pack up and go south. The cool thing is that I was down for less than 90 minutes and half of that was spent running to the local big box computer store to get a new drive.

It took all of 3 mouse clicks and less than 45 minutes for CrashPlan to do a complete restore from my on-site backup. Had I not wanted instant gratification, I could have restored from my off-site personal cloud in little over 2 hours. Had I ever wondered about justifying the cost of having a highly redundant back up system, today put all my doubts to rest. Rather than spending countless hours rebuilding my contact list, document database, forms, etc. I went to lunch while my hardware and software did their thing.

Salve Veritate

/ Bruce Cameron / 1 Comment

Perhaps the reader may ask, of what consequence is it whether the author’s exact language is preserved or not, provided we have his thought? The answer is, that inaccurate quotation is a sin against truth. It may appear in any particular instance to be a trifle, but perfection consists in small things, and perfection is no trifle. — Robert W. Shaunon

Talking about backup systems is a bit like talking about wills – its the last thing you want to think about ’cause my data is safe, secure, and sitting on my laptop’s disk. Well the truth of the matter is that one of these days your computer is going to get hit by the electronic equivalent of the 3:30 cross-town bus and you’ll be sending lilies to your data’s next of kin. Continue reading →

A Decalogue

/ Bruce Cameron / 4 Comments

Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them. – H. L. Mencken

In 10 bullet points

  • Be civil
  • Be empowering
  • Be available
  • Be healthy
  • Be innovative
  • Be mindful
  • Be prepared
  • Be timely
  • Be thoughtful
  • Be paid up front

The first and great commandment is: Don’t let them scare you. – Elmer Davis