I was listening to the audio book "How to win friends and influence people" the other day when I came across this piece called "Father Forgets" by W. Livingston Larned.

It speaks of a father who has been impatient with his young son during the day and how he realises his mistakes that same night.

It spoke to me as I have a four and a half year old son and have been guilty of the same.

Listen, son: I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guiltily I came to your bedside.

There are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor.

At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. You spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you started off to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved a hand and called, "Goodbye, Daddy!" and I frowned, and said in reply, "Hold your shoulders back!"

Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I came up the road I spied you, down on your knees, playing marbles. There were holes in your stockings. I humiliated you before your boyfriends by marching you ahead of me to the house. Stockings were expensive -and if you had to buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that, son, from a father!

Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how you came in timidly, with a sort of hurt look in your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you hesitated at the door. "What is it you want?" I snapped.
You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, and your small arms tightened with an affection that God had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither. And then you were gone, pattering up the stairs.

Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding - this was my reward to you for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years.

And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your character. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills. This was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night. Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your bed-side in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed!

It is a feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: "He is nothing but a boy - a little boy!"

I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother’s arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much.

I have decided  to not measure my son by the yardstick of my on years. After a long day, this is so easy to do. I will not expect him to have the maturity of a man when he is still a boy.

My son plays soccer, and every week I see parents who expect their children to play the game at a level that is beyond their years. Maybe they are living their unfulfilled dreams through their children. Maybe they are embarrassed by the poor performance of their children. Maybe they just want to give their children the best start in life. It really doesn’t matter why they do it. As parents we should let our children play, live and fail like children.

It reminds me of a verse from the bible,

"When I was a child, I spoke like a child, thought like a child, and reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up my childish ways."

1 Corinthians 13:11

There is plenty of time for my children to mature into adulthood, so while they are children I have determined to laugh when they laugh, comfort them when they cry, encourage them when they fail.

I have realised that as a father my children just want to be love and accepted by me. The best thing I can do for them is to give them what they desire.

While doing research on a potential client before an initial sales meeting I found this quote on their website.

"Every time a man puts a new idea across he finds ten men who thought of it before he did – but they only thought of it."
—Anonymous

The client was creating an application to work with Microsoft Power Point and they needed a hand to meet a deadline.

The product they are building is a very unique and good idea. The owner of the business has had the self belief and discipline to turn her initial idea into a product. The path to success will be difficult but she has already a few encouraging wins.

SSW the company where I work is filled with very smart people. Being a software development company we come across many great ideas from our clients and our developers. I have enjoyed many lunch times throwing ideas around with my colleagues. Dreaming up new products or services that can make us all great riches. It has become a game and we find much joy in doing so.

The above quote inspired me because it made me realise that coming up with great ideas is not that hard or even special. Taking one of those ideas and turning it into reality is what is special and rare. I am also challenged by something I read in a book recently. It went something like this:

"Many people take a very long time to make decisions and then change their mind quickly. Successful people make decisions very quickly and very rarely change their mind."

Have you ever thought, "All I need is one good business idea and then I will be able to…" Then when you get an idea you get excited, think about it for a while, mull it over with a few friends, think some more, do a bit of research and a few days or weeks later you find all the reasons why it won’t work, or you become too busy and you somehow forget that great idea.

I am starting to believe that there are no good or bad ideas. Only ideas that get implemented or ideas that get shelved. I have worked as a business consultant and in the software development industry. In doing so I have worked with many businesses in many different industries. Some of the businesses I worked with sold services or products that I never knew existed let alone make money selling.

It is amazing to see how many different types of products and services there are in the marketplace. It is even more amazing when you see how incredibly successful some of these obscure businesses are. You name it, someone is being successful somewhere in the world selling it.

So the conclusion I draw is that it does not really matter what your idea is or how many you have. What really matters is can you take just one of those ideas and stay committed enough to it and follow it through to completion. This I am sure is one of the keys to success.

The upcoming Beijing Olympic games is a good example of this. Whenever I watch the Olympics I am amazed at some of the events that seem obscure to an Australian like me. One of those sports is handball. I never knew that handball was serious sport, but someone chose it as their sport and practiced and practiced until they made it to the Olympics. They didn’t start handball, then moved to football, then to judo and then back to handball. They most probably chose handball at a young age and then consistently worked at it until they reached their goals.

Was handball a good choice of sport? Well only the athlete could tell you that. But they were successful at it. They took an obscure sport in my world view and became outstanding at it. They made it to the Olympics. No they may not be superstars and millionaires like the soccer or golf players but they turned their passion or idea into a success.

Remember "Fortune favours the brave."

Be brave enough to take one idea and follow it through to completion.

If you want to create PDF files and don’t want to fork out the cash for the full version of Adobe Acrobat, you can use CutePDF Writer instead. CutePDF Writer is a free download. The CutePDF Writer is added as a printer to your print dialog box as shown in the image below.

The other day I had to send a large file to a friend. I didn’t want to send it through email because it was very large.

I decided to use SkyDrive. SkyDrive is a personal hard drive in the Internet.

To use it you need to sign up for a Windows Live ID. When you sign up you get:

1. 5 Gigs of storage in the cloud (Internet)
2. Personal folders - for private access only
3. Shared Folders - To share files with friends who have a Windows Live ID account
4. Public folders - To share with anyone on the Internet

When you upload a file for public access you get a URL that you can email to a friend or associate. When they click on it they can download the file. If they have a windows Live ID they will have access to all your public folders or shared folders.

At SSW we often require our clients to send us very large files by FTP. This process can be time consuming and requires existing infrastructure. SkyDrive is a free, quick method of sending large files across the Internet.

SkyDrive is also a great place to place files you would like to access when you are travelling or not working at your main computer. All you need to is an Internet connection and you can download the files to a MAC or PC.

I found a great website the other day called www.PersonalMBA.com The author of this site has put together a reading list of books that he believes contains similar information to an MBA course.

The idea is that instead of spending $100K on an MBA course you could read this list of books and receive almost the same information.

Now of course there are advantages to completing a traditional MBA. These include:

1. The networking between the other students who are traditionally well connected in the business world
2. The credentials you receive on completion of the course
3. The lecturer and peer interaction you have in a class setting

Putting that aside, if you do not have the time, money or desire for the certification, this is a great way to learn more about business on your terms.

I think this list of books is very useful because:

1. It distills the best books on specific topics. When you walk into a bookstore it can be overwhelming when you approach the business book shelves. Which ones are worth the read? This list is a good starting point.
2. It gives you a goal to work towards, instead of just reading random books. I like the “The PMBA Guide to Personal Master Planning” It gives you a realistic way to plan your attack.
3. It gives you a sense that if you complete a set of books in a category then you may have a reasonably well rounded insight into the subject - as opposed to one authors opinion.

Two of my friends at work Cameron and Ulysses have taken a keen interest in this book list and we will start working though these books together.

The last few months I have been listening to audio books on my iPod while driving to work in the car.

This has had a drastic impact on the quality of my trip. It used to be chore driving to work listening to the radio or a random .NET podcast. The drive to work is now the highlight of my day.

In the last few months I have listened to:

1. “The four hour workweek” by Timothy Ferriss
2. “The 48 Laws of Power” by Robert Greene
3. “The art of war” by Sun Tzu
4. “The magic of thinking big” by David J Schwartz
5. “Getting things done” by David Allen
6. “The twelfth card” By Jeffrey Deaver

All the books are business related except “The twelfth Card” By Jeffrey Deaver - that was just for fun.

With a young family, I would never have had the time to read all these books. It took me no extra time out of my day and I have already implemented a few strategies from “Getting things done”, that have drastically improved my efficiency at work.

There is a great site called www.Audible.com which sell these audio books. My local library is also a great source to find many titles.

Some of my colleagues at work have also started and we have a had some great conversations discussing and debating many ideas from these books.

I highly recommend “The 48 laws to Power” to spice up lunchtime conversation. It is very thought provoking and controversial.

I am not happy listening to my iPod for extended periods of times in my car due to the potential for hearing loss.  am looking at purchasing a new car stereo which I can plug my iPod into so I can listen to the audio books using the car speaker.

I attended the 1st Red Bull FlugTag today with my 4 year old boy.

I was amazed at the the size of the crowd and would estimate that there were over 50,000 people around the foreshore in front of the Royal botanical Gardens in Sydney. The Red Bull Marketing department would be giving each other a few high fives tonight because in my opinion it was a massive success.

The Royal Botanic Gardens was a beautiful venue in the best harbour in the world, the crowd was massive and the flying machines were hilarious.

My 4 year old had a great time even though we only lasted two hours of the total 5 hour event. The organisers did well to keep his attention for as long as they did.

Well done Red Bull for putting on a great family day of mammoth proportions.