Staying Happy

Photo by Donna Cymek (Creative Commons License)

Part of my job is about problem solving which can be very rewarding but also depressing at times as people generally only come to me if they have a problem they cannot solve. And problems when not dealt with accumulate and grow (as much as I wish they would simply go away).

Aside from trying to find solutions, it's also a battle to stay emotionally on top of things - problems, people, people problems, problem people, money issues, family issues, "the cat decided to sharpen its claws on my financial report" problems, "where to hide a dead cat" problems, "the family is now upset the cat has gone missing" problems, computer problems, car problems ... the list goes on. Some days it would be easier to go back to sleep but that is simply avoiding the issues. Much better to face them and come out healthy and happy at the other end.

So here's a  list of things we can do to stay happy.

(The first 10 I've taken from a great post which explains them in more detail - read the full article)

1. Exercise more – 7 minutes might be enough
2. Sleep more – you'll be less sensitive to negative emotions
3. Move closer to work – a short commute is worth more than a big house
4. Spend time with friends and family – don't regret it on your deathbed
5. Go outside – happiness is maximized at 13.9°C
6. Help others – 100 hours a year is the magical number
7. Practice smiling – it can alleviate pain
8. Plan a trip – but don't take one
9. Meditate – rewire your brain for happiness
10. Practice gratitude – increase both happiness and life satisfaction

Some others:

11. Decide to be happy - influence your environment, not the other way around
12. Take regular breaks - in the day, week, year
13. Surround yourself with happy people

I'm sure there are others ...

Leadership Failure

There are certain key phrases that I listen out for coming from my own mouth. One of these is

"... because I'm the boss and I asked you to do it"

or any one of it's derived relatives.

If I ever hear a statement like that pass my lips then I take it as a sign that I've failed somehow as a leader (note, I'm not saying that I don't have the right to say it).

Why?

Because one of my functions as a leader is to provide people a goal/vision to work toward. If they have this then it should be self evident why they do the tasks they do. If someone questions the task then I should take that as a sign that I am not communicating the goal/vision well enough.

The problem is that it takes a lot of effort to communicate a goal/vision, far more than it does to order someone to do something. But that, to me, is the difference between a boss and a leader. A boss's primary function is to get the job done. A leader's primary function is other people and taking them on a journey. The reality of my life is that I am both (and also a worker with a boss), but I'd like to think that I lean toward the leader side of things more.

Even worse than the aforementioned statement is the emotional bullet after the fact eg

" ... by not doing what I asked you are not showing me respect ..."

The statement may be true (although I would always be hesitant to state other peoples intentions - much better to say "I don't feel respected"). However, we should switch it around and if someone hasn't done the task asked of them then take it as a sign that we haven't communicated the "why" clearly enough.

And saying a statement like that is essentially an emotional power-play. No-one can defend themselves under that kind of accusation. And it certainly doesn't help get the task done, nor inspire anyone to do differently next time.

We can always learn something about ourselves from other people even through their inaction.

Making Mistakes

Our company has had great growth over the past few years and while it would be nice to say it has all gone smoothly there have been a lot of mistakes ranging from the forgettable to monumental blunders. We've re-organised as best we could with the little knowledge we have, made adjustments to plans on the fly and despite trying to stay ahead of the game it has often been the case that we have "flown by the seat of our pants."

My wife recently reminded me of a Woody Allen quote:
"If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative."
Surely that means I'm being extremely innovative!

Mistakes have consequences but they are not all bad. On the good side we have learnt some valuable lessons where we have been willing to learn them.

Recently I've been working on our company values and principles and one of the ideas I want to encapsulate is failure:

1. People are expected to fail every now and again;
I want people in our organisation who are willing to step out and try new things. Therefore I also need to expect they will fail sometimes. Standing still in the place you know is safe but it doesn't get you anywhere.

2. People have the freedom to fail;
Within an organisation (company, family, sports team ...) the mistakes we make will affect others. We need to accept that we will suffer the consequences (good and bad) of the actions of others, help them to learn, learn from them, and move on together. Like it or not, our lives are connected to other people.

3. People should learn from their failures;
If people are continually experiencing the same failures then it's a very good sign they are not learning and adjusting. You can't expect to continue to do the same thing and get different results.

Finally our outlook on failures is very important. Thomas Edison's famous quote about his journey to make a working light bulb sums it up:
"I have not failed. I've just found 10000 ways that won't work."

Installing ffmpeg on CENTOS 6

I recently had to do this and thought I'd post the steps mainly to remind myself if I had to do it again in the future:

1. Enable EPEL
   rpm -Uvh http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
2. Install RPM Fusion
   yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/el/updates/6/i386/rpmfusion-free-release-6-1.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/el/updates/6/i386/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-6-1.noarch.rpm
3. Install ffmpeg
   yum install ffmpeg

Quite straight forward really!

CPanel on AWS: Domains redirecting to cgi-sys/defaultwebpage.cgi

We recently set up a test server environment on AWS. One of the issues we faced was putting multiple domains on a shared ip address. Visiting these domains redirected to the default web page for the hostname.

Our Setup:

An Elastic IP (EIP) pointing to a VPC which contained an EC2 instance (web server) and an RDS instance (mysql server). WHM/cpanel had DNS Clustering enabled for automatic DNS entries on our remote nameservers and the shared IP address was set to the EIP.

Process:

After much googling about the problem and a lot of test edits to httpd.conf it seemed apparent that it was related to a resolution of the domain name on the web server. The DNS entry itself was correct as we could reach the server but it didn't seem like it was resolving to the correct ip address that was within the VirtualHost directive in httpd.conf.

I created a simple PHP script in the default htdocs location to print out the environment.  This was simply something like:

<?php print_r($_ENV);

This gave me the information I needed (although I missed it for many hours). $_ENV['SERVER_ADDR'] was set to an internal ip address not the EIP.

The reason is the EIP points to the VPC which in turn passes the request to the internal server IP address - in our case a 10.0.x.x address. The server was then responding with the default configuration not the settings within the respective VirtualHost directive (as it was set to use the EIP).

Solution:

In our case we still have the EIP set as the shared IP address in WHM/cpanel. We do this so that the clustering will set up the DNS entries correctly. However we need to manually change the VirtualHost entries to respond to the internal IP address. (The plan is to write a post-account-setup script to automatically change on account creation).

Dealing with an ego monster

All of us must deal with other people. It is a part of life and the success of those relationships will determine to a certain degree the success (however that is defined) and happiness in our lives. Some relationships we choose: friends, sports teams, hairdresser, barista, etc. and some relationships are, to varying degress, forced on us: family, work colleagues, the passenger next to you on the plane (albeit for only a short period of time), etc. It is within this second group of people that we often find ourselves getting stressed for a variety of reasons.

Recently I've had the opportunity to deal with one such person, where the relationship is, for the most part, forced upon me ie we need to work together. However this person also comes with a rather large ego which is evidenced by:

• the belief that certain activities could not succeed without them;
• they take credit for work which is not theirs (with the stated belief that they are better known hence the "marketing" value is better tied with them);
• if an opportunity arises for some public exposure, they will take it without any thought about others who may be more appropriate for the opening.

This is the ego monster!

So how to deal with such a person?

1. Separate the person from the problem
(My wife recently reminded me of this eternal piece of wisdom.)

In this case the person is actually quite nice. Take them out of situations where the ego monster can raise it's head, and they are very likeable. Simply put, the person is for the most part a quality individual but the problem is how they respond in certain situations.


2. Don't Take it Personally

Ego monsters don't have bad intentions. They genuinely believe that what they do is acceptable behaviour and they are in fact being kind to you by virtue of their actions. Now it's always hard to keep a good attitude when someone hurts you, but knowing that their intentions are generally good can help in dealing with the actions.

3. Set Clear Boundaries


This is really a general piece of advice for life. We set boundaries on our relationships with other people, we set boundaries on ourselves so we don't hit those dangerous places of extremes. In the case of dealing with an ego monster, set clear boundaries on what is acceptable and what is not. This means telling them this is line and I'm uncomfortable if you cross it. And if they do cross it then you need to choose, either raise the matter with them or change the relationship (as far as it is possible).

Now What?

While those points look good when written, I realise it's always harder to put them into practise. So for me it's a journey in progress. If you see me on the news charged with the murder of an ego monster you will know I failed. Otherwise it's a daily battle with my own attitudes, response and reactions.

Doing things the (LMS of choice) way

Having just finished 2 days of facilitating moodle course creator training, I have yet again been left with new insights into how people are using moodle and what they expect of a modern Learning Management System. Meeting people on-the-ground is always good for someone like me who is otherwise engaged in business or development but not actual use of the tools that make up my livelihood, at least not on a daily basis.

There is one thing that does continually annoy me however ... a user who was using LMS X and is now moving to moodle (for whatever reason) and demands that moodle should do things the same way as previous LMS X. It seems to me that it's not the method that is so important, but the learning outcome. In other words, what were you trying to achieve by doing previous activity in LMS X and how could we achieve that same outcome in moodle? NOT how can we do the same activity in moodle?

The analogy to me is like driving in a car for a number of years, then switching to a motorbike and insisting that we have a steering wheel to turn corners. Surely the end result of turning a corner is the ultimate goal and method is somewhat irrelevant.

While I respect that the method does have some impact I have seen enough quality teachers who can make miracles happen without any additional props, resources, LMSes to know that whatever the desired outcome, you can make it happen if you think creatively about it.

Thoughts on Leadership

Someone recently said to me that the goal of being a leader was to train people to be at least as good as yourself. Well with all due respect (and I do have a high level of respect for that person), I disagree. If that is "the" goal then it implies leadership is based on a persons capabilities/skills in a particular field. However I suspect the General of an army is not the best sniper, tank driver, unarmed combatant, etc. Nor is the CEO of a bank the best financial expert. Nor (ideally) is the prime minister/president of a country the best policy maker, politician, orator.

So why are these people the leaders? Well simply put because they are the best "leaders" ie I believe leadership is a skill/gifting in and of itself. Therefore in any organisation the role of a leader is different to the roles of those being led.

So what is the goal of a leader? To draw out the best in the people being led to achieve a particular goal/vision. A general's role is to make his soldiers into better soldiers, in whatever field, to win a battle or a war. A CEO of a corporation aims to produce experts who can provide strong growth (financial or otherwise). A head of government draws the best policies out of their executive to improve their nation. A head master develops the best educators who in turn produce the best students. And so on ... you get the idea.

If we take on this view of leadership then we understand that the role of a leader is to serve those whom they lead. The leader is to develop/draw the best from their followers who in turn will deliver the results to achieve the vision. Once we understand the why of leadership, then we can better work on the how-to of leadership (and there are a multitude of books, experts, opinions on the subject).

One final thought: everyone follows someone and everyone leads someone - at the very least we should be leading our own lives. Most of us will also have families, friends, work colleagues that we also lead in some aspect. We should be aware that our role is to serve these people, to draw the very best out of them that we can.

Reading Resolution 2

An update on my reading resolution - there are 2 more books to add to the list:

Coalescent by Stephen Baxter
Relativity by Albert Einstein

Given that it's month 9 and I've only completed 5 books it may be a little hard to achieve my goal of a book a month for the year, although I do have about 3 books on the go right now so we'll see.

It's also somewhat misleading as I tend to read a lot but it's usually magazines, bibles, web articles, manuals, advertising, children's books (for my kids ... well maybe for me too) etc.

Tardiness

OK, so this is a bit of a rant about something that really annoys me. If you are going to make an appointment with me or arrange to meet me or basically say "be here at this time" then don't be late!

If you are late then you are stealing my time. If you are meeting with a group of people and you are late, then you are stealing time from all of them.

Now I realise that there are valid reasons for being late ... life happens. However when it is something within your control then you are making a value judgement that whatever it is that "prevents" you from being on time is more important than those with whom you are meeting.

A simple of rule of thumb I use: time is money (in reality it's worth a lot more) so assume you are paying everyone with whom you are meeting eg I'm meeting with 12 people, I'm going to be 5 minutes late therefore I should be willing to pay 12x5min = 1 hour of their time. I generally use $150/hour as the benchmark (mainly because of my profession). So the big question is: Is the reason I'm going to be 5 minutes late worth $150? Sometimes it is but it's not often when it has a monetary cost associated with it.

So if you are late, aside from genuine unforeseeable problems, then be willing to pay the price of my (and other people's) time.

Installing git on a CentOS server with WHM/cPanel

Recently I had the need to install git on a CentOS server. It was not a trivial process by any means but after a lot of googling we finally had a win. The steps I took were:

1. Configure EPEL repository for use by yum:


rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm


2. Install git using yum:

yum install git


However I encountered a dependency problem with perl-Git. It seemed that no matter what I did I could not "find" this package using yum. After a lot of searching I came across the following blog post:
http://www.cmdln.org/2010/05/07/install-git-on-centos-cpanel-server/

Essentially cpanel configures yum to exclude perl updates to protect it's own packages. Thankfully there is a one-time work-around to disable the excludes for a particular repo so the following command worked for my git install:


yum --disableexcludes=main install git


Win!

Cousin Definitions

Last night I went out for dinner with my wife, eldest daughter, my parents, my cousin and wife (they were visiting from NZ), his son and girlfriend and their daughter. Needless to say we had a great night. However the discussion at some point inevitably turned to everyone trying to define the relationships between us - and with more than a little confusion. So after a bit of research (thank you wikipedia) I've finally found out that:

1. the degree eg first, second, third etc is the one less than the minimum number of generations from either cousin and the nearest common ancestor;
2. the remove is the number of generations separating the cousins.

So based on those 2 rules, some of the relationships at dinner were:
1. Me and my cousins son are first cousins once removed;
2. My daughter and my cousin are first cousins once removed;
3. My daughter and my cousins son are second cousins;

I doubt that this will be the most life-changing information, but at least at the next dinner I have with my cousins and family I'll be able to define our relationships!

Reading Resolution

I quite enjoy reading and own a large number of books on a wide range of subjects. However many of those books remain unread because I never seem to have time. So this year I made a resolution to read a book a month. It's now May (4 months gone) and I've completed 3 books so I'm currently slightly behind. The books are:

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A Abbott
Incandescence by Greg Egan
The Reason for God by Timothy Keller

Hopefully I can write a review of those books at a later date.

The start of my blog

Well I've decided to jump on the blogging bandwagon and start my own blog. I'm doing this more out of interest about what I will end up writing. So here begins the journey.