Brightrock

on the road again . . . Teotihuacan

Brian Schwarz — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 05:20:12 +0000

Business travel can wear a person down, but it does have its perks.

I have to say that I’m pretty pleased that I was able to take these two pictures in the same calendar year:

Guess the food

Brian Schwarz — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:02:12 +0000

So, this is probably the most adventurous thing that I ate while I was in Asia. Any guesses? Bonus points for getting both the species and body part correct.

The Breakfast Menu: Dim Sum in Hong Kong

Brian Schwarz — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 11:32:25 +0000

Now, this is what a menu should look like when you’re traveling. I know I’m in the right place when there is no English menu and the waiters speak little or no English!

Considering I had no idea what I was ordering, I was pretty happy with the results:

Hong Kong

Brian Schwarz — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 11:29:10 +0000

After dinner last night, I went up to Victoria Peak with a business colleague of mine and her husband. Sadly, I forgot to take my camera with me but here is a picture that I took with my camera phone. For a better picture, check out this picture of the skyline.

Petronas Towers

Brian Schwarz — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:50:30 +0000

A view from a rooftop near my hotel in Kuala Lumpur.

The Batu Caves (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)

Brian Schwarz — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 01:35:26 +0000

On the first full day of my swing through SE Asia, I got an early start and beat the heat to visit the Batu Caves. The caves themselves were impressive, although I found it hard to capture the scale of the caves in a photograph.

I’m not sure what I’m going to be doing today - it’s raining pretty hard at the moment, but I’m hoping the skies will clear and I’ll have a chance to visit the Lake Gardens, including the Kuala Lumpur bird park.

Houston Art Car Parade

Brian Schwarz — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 01:18:22 +0000

Mother’s Day was my primary purpose for diverting to Houston for the weekend a few weeks ago, but I also had a chance to participate in the Houston Art Car Parade. While I really enjoyed riding on the Vroom Vroom Room (our favorite mobile piano bar), this Radio Flyer car was probably the most impressive from-scratch art car that I saw that day.

Reasons to Live in San Diego

Brian Schwarz — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 20:09:21 +0000

Decision Making (Malcolm Gladwell at RSA)

Brian Schwarz — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 22:40:18 +0000

Even if you don’t work in IT, this discussion of decision-making by Malcolm Gladwell at the RSA conference is worth checking out. He makes some interesting points about how gathering information is not the critical mechanism for making good decisions. In fact, gathering too much information can actually damage your ability to make good decisions. While that seems counter-intuitive, the more I think about it the more I think that it’s consistent with my own experience.

Click the 4th link on the left to hear Gladwell’s talk - otherwise you’ll listen to a bunch of IT stuff that may or may not be of interest if you’re not in the IT security business. Clearly, the RSA folks want to discourage “deep linking“

http://media.omediaweb.com/rsa2008/webcast.htm?id=3_1

I’ve had to make a number of big decisions in recent years, some of which I agonized over and some of which I decided quickly, and I have begun to realize more and more that the amount of analysis that goes into a decision doesn’t necessarily have that big an impact on the quality of the eventual decision. Sometimes all that extra information gathering is wasted time, simply gathering more support for a decision that has already been made (or could have been made, based on the immediately available information). Sometimes the extra information just confuses the situation, adding noise that obscures the critical facts of the situation.

Name that tool!

Brian Schwarz — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 18:31:34 +0000