This last weekend was another NLP class and the content really kicked ass. Christina Hall, my instructor’s instructor, flew in to do the session. The focus was on language and how the brain perceives things. By understanding the tie between language and the mind you can better understand the many ways you can and do use language to influence yourself and other people.

An essential point to this is that we are constantly influencing and being influenced. We generally do not think much about this but pay close attention today and you’ll notice it all around you. Think about asking somebody out on a date or interviewing for a job. Do you think you can accomplish either without having some influence. Actually, not getting the date or job is also the result of influence, but it isn’t the influence you were after.

What I found really cool about this is that the way in which you ask questions can have a significant impact on the person being questioned. For instance the stereo typical psychologist who asks her patient “What is your problem?” Do you think that has a little influence? The way in which a question is stated has an enormous impact.

“Your problem”. What is it? This problem of yours. You own it, here and now. Thank you for bringing your problem with you to my office. Lets have some fun and make sure you keep coming back and paying me to cure you of YOUR PROBLEM.

In the original draft of this I explore the above and then explained that a better way to state the above question is to ask the question “What was it that you had perceived as a problem?”. This construction does several things. First it does not make the person being questions the owner of the problem. It goes a step further by making ‘it’ not necessarily be a problem but instead a “perceived problem”. Finally it puts it in the past.

The goal of that construction is to help the person use their mind to open up to other possibilities and choices. Goals brings me to wonder what mine is in writing this.

My goal is for you to begin to appreciate how powerful language is and how it influences the mind. Your mind and the minds of the people around you. If you want to change things change your language.

Most of the time the changes in your language are small things. My ‘problem” question and its rephrase appear some what complex, but usually just changing a single word can have a profound impact. Consider these two questions:

1) What would having one million dollars do to you?

2) What would having one million dollars do for you?

One word completely changes the direction of the question. The questions don’t feel the same but it is a subtle difference. Changes like this can be made in your language now.

Time is also an important aspect of language. Christina brought up a study of a tribe that lives in the Amazon. Their language does not contain past or future verbs. It only has present tense constructs. This has a huge impact on how they communicate. If we didn’t have the past tense we couldn’t tell people about what happened in last week’s episode of “The 4400”. Actually, without a past tense there wouldn’t be a last week. Or an episode of “The 4400”. Or the ability to tell stories. Or teach.

I realize that sounds really radical. Lacking a past tense in your language means you cant teach because you can’t tell stories and teaching depends upon stories. This does not mean that learning doesn’t occur. Learning can occur without teaching, but usually it is mirror behaviors. So dad takes the kid out and goes hunting, the kid does what dad does and learns to hunt by doing the same things. Better hope dad is a good hunter.

The reason I bring up time is because of the way our minds process time (it doesn’t really). What is important to keep in mind is that we often keep images of things in our mind. These images are stuck in time. Sometimes they are stuck in the past and sometimes they are the future. The trick though is that they are disconnected. Take for instance weight loss. We have images in our mind. We have an image of how we see ourselves now and we have an image of how we would like to see ourselves. Two separate disconnected images. One has nothing to do with the other.

To help make weight loss work we need to join the pictures together so we can see ourselves becoming that other person. If you make a movie of a fat person becoming a skinny person and are able to recall it at will then you’ll have a much easier time losing weight. You still have to change behavior, but the change is more likely to stick.

The next piece of time and language comes in to play with that movie and the images. Go in to the future, having accomplished your goal, look back and see what you did. Now returning to the present and looking in to the future, see what you are going to do. These two constructs tie the past/present image to the future.

For me the application of this is in starting a business.

Actually, the above statement is now amusing. “starting a business” isn’t really a problem for me. I’m great at starting. I start all the time. The key is accomplishing the goals of the business.

The way I’m applying last weekend’s material has me excited. The first thing I’ve done is sit down and write a description of the business I want to start. I covered most of the stuff I felt important. I described what I want my office to be like (no business casual dress code). I also described how I would be spending my time running this business. The time frame I used to describe the business is five years from now.

I’m now in the process of returning to the present and writing how I plan to go from here to there. This is something I’ve never done before. I don’t know if it is the missing piece, but sense I’ve not done it before it is at least movement toward my goal.

So again, the reason I’m writing this is to create more awareness about language and its affects on the mind. Subtle changes to the way we phrase things can have large impact. Time is a very important component to language. Be sure to create paths between your present and the goals you want to accomplish in the future.

So what does the future hold for motorcycles? One of the guys on a forum I frequent brought up the topic of government intervention in the motorcycle world. Basically, at some point in the future will our lovely nanny state step forward to either ban motorcycles altogether or place huge restrictions on them.

I’m not particularly good at predicting the future. Hell, I can’t even predict what I’ll have for dinner in six hours and I have complete control over that. So my opinion is pretty useless here, but it does give me the opportunity to indulge in playing grey beard prognosticator. Here we go.

Most likely the government won’t get much more involved than it is now. Technological advancement and market dynamics are likely to play greater roles than government regulation. Specifically the engines today are freaking awesome. A 600cc I4 engine today produces anywhere from 100HP all the way to 115HP! That is from the factory before it has been tuned with aftermarket stuff like new ECU fuel and timing maps and aftermarket exhaust. Tuners can lighten the bikes and make them produce more power.

Tires are also something to consider. The tires I put on my bike are like having spider man’s hands for wheels. I can lean the bike way over and go around turns like I’m glued to the ground. No slippage. They even deal with wet weather really well.

Finally and as a segue in to the market place – both of my bikes get great fuel mileage. My old ZX6 is getting around 45Mpg. My EX500 gets about 55mpg. My ZX6 is my toy for playing around on the track or on club rides. My EX500 is the commuter. With a bank bag I can carry all my stuff to work and home. Even better – I get to use the HOV lanes and I have a toll tag so I can use toll roads. The thing about the bike is that I can get to work quicker (HOV lanes and toll roads) than people in their cages. I can get there quicker without braking the law. No propensity for velocity, no lane sharing, just normal riding. This brings me to the market thing.

I see more bikes on the road in the morning on my way to work. Early adopters are starting to ditch their SUV w/ its 18mpg for a cruiser, tourer or sport bike so they can enjoy better fuel economy.

On weekends it seems like everybody and their dog has a bike. Its like Sturgis in every neighborhood across the country. Frankly I think it is pretty cool. Yeah I wish they would wear gear or at least a real helmet. But at least they are on a bike so maybe they’ll be more aware when they are in their car.

But the thing is more people are getting on motorcycles. Regardless of the reason the statistics are there. More riders. This does cause problems because more riders means more motorcycle accidents. If it gets out of hand then yeah the nanny state decides it has to step in and ‘fix’ the problem.

What fixes would a government likely use in that situation? Possibilities are: restrictions on the displacement of engines, additional ‘safety features’ on the bike, restrictors on how fast bikes go, tiered licensing programs. The only fix likely to make any difference would be the tiered license though.

Restricting the size of a bike’s engine won’t really make a big difference. Remember the whole technological advancement thing? Tell Kawasaki, Suzuki, Honda, et al that they can only go up to 800ccs and guess what happens? You start getting 800cc superbikes that make 150hp just like the liter bikes do now. For reference the MotoGP bikes are now 800cc and produce over 200hp. Restrictions in that form will be addressed by the application of additional technology. If you counter with something like “max 100hp” then the manufacturer will detune the engine via the ECU. Then tuners will just remap the engine afterward restoring it to how it should be. Simply put this won’t be a winning strategy. Worse, like home land security, it just puts a fresh coat of paint over the problem. The riders aren’t having problems because the bike produces too much power. Riders on 50Hp machines can get in to trouble.

Safety features like ABS and traction control also won’t make a big impact on the problem. First, in cases where it isn’t desired the owner will remove or deactivate it. Second in the case of traction control you have the opportunity to tune it. What is your goal – greater performance or more safety? You can tune for either – guess what a squid like me would tune for? Greater performance might provide a little additional safety but not really. Transaction control in that case would be all about getting more of the power to the ground while limiting wheel spin which means some wheel spin would still occur. Safety tuning would aim to eliminate all wheel spin by reducing power.

Limiting top speed is also useless. Most accidents occur at ‘normal’ traffic speeds. If most accidents were occurring at 100+ MPH then sure do like the French and restrict top speed to 99MPH. However, most accidents are not due to excessive speed. Further the users would address this in a heart beat if they were so inclined. Top speed is usually governed by the ECU and it is a setting. You go in and change it just like changing the screen saver on your laptop. But again even with bikes that max out at 100+ mph you aren’t really accomplishing much. I know from personal experience you can get pretty screwed up doing 3mph.

The only thing likely to make any significant impact on motorcycle safety is improving the motorcycle rider. Most people do not bother to take a class. Those that do typically stop with the MSF class. Look at drivers. Beyond maybe doing drivers education in high school most people never bother to improve their driving skills. Some people will take a defensive driving class to avoid having a ticket on their record, but beyond simply reviewing the laws and some general safety tips these things do nothing to actually improve the driver.

The best way to improve things would be a tiered licensing program (frankly it should apply to cars as well). Instead of allowing a person who has never been on a motorcycle to jump on a 100+ HP motorcycle require that they spend some time learning on something with maybe 50+ HP. Require a certain number of hours of both classroom and on road instruction before graduating to the next level. Also require continuing education in order to keep your license at whatever level you have attained.

Improving both riders and drivers is the best possible way to make the roads safer. Making cars or motorcycles safer is simply painting over the problem without actually solving the problem (amazing yes – a technologist saying the technology doesn’t solve everything). Take the safest car in the world with its ABS, air bags, collision warning system and OnStar – put a jackass behind the wheel and see how many people can be killed. Happens everyday. Until the car can drive itself (even that won’t entirely fix the problem) you have to fix the jackass.

I strongly believe tiered licensing would make things much better on the road. It would save lives. But in many cases are these lives society really needs to save? Some jackass who hops on his HOG, rides to the bar, ties one on then proceeds to ride his hog off a cliff. Or the 18 year old whose parents hand him the keys to a supersport (100+ HP sport bike) even though he has never ridden a motorcycle before. He hops on rides around and slams in to an SUV killing himself (not sure about the poor people in the SUV). Do we really need people saved who lack the intelligence to make good choices without the assistance of the nanny state? Life is precious. A gift from god. But would we really be better off having avoided the sorrow? Maybe Darwin awards really do serve a purpose and need to be handed out.

Luckily human ingenuity would still win out even with a tiered program some people will still manage to win themselves a Darwin award. The difference would be that the skill level displayed would be much higher. Maybe some smart people who just go in over the heads would be saved. The upside though would be to the market place.

Safer streets for riders would hopefully lead to more riders. The tiered program could be used to create new segments in the market and a steady churn of people trading up. Manufacturers would have more opportunity to sell new designs.

The question of whether or not and how the government would get involved doesn’t really have any real answers. We can only speculate and perhaps hope. Most solutions, the easy ones, really don’t address the real problem (the riders and drivers). The greatest hope would be changes to the way riders and drivers are licensed and the education requirements that should be added. Is a tiered program likely? I honestly doubt it.

I'm down to 46 minutes for 4 miles.  Personally I think it is great.  Only problem is that my freaking ham string has started to hurt.  A lot of that has to do with me not stretching properly before and after my little trips.   It also has to do with being 6'2" 220lbs running on concrete.  Oh yeah and always running the same course every time. 

I've fixed the course I take.  Basically I still do the same course only now I reverse it for my second lap.  That should help undo the issue with always running on the same side.  Stretching is also being addressed but I think I need to stretch on the days off too. 

The one thing that bugs me is weight loss.  You would think doing 8 - 16 miles a week would cause some type of weight loss.  I've not really increased my diet.  I drink tons of water and other fluids (too much diet coke I'm sure).  One thing that frequently comes up with weight loss is that exercise alone will not really cause you to lose weight. 

In most ways this is not an issue of weight.  I want to be in good enough shape to do things that are physically demanding (racing motorcycles for instance).  Getting down to some ideal body weight is not a priority.  However, it is still curious that I'm not dropping weight.

The next phase will be to start lifting weights more.  I'd like to make it in to the gym twice a week.  Ultimately I want to be able to bench press 150% of my body weight, squat 200% bw, do 20 pull ups and 80 situps in 2 minutes.  Oh - run 3 miles in less than 24 minutes.

Easy.

I had to register my new bike and renew the tags on my wife's car today.  I went to the DMV at about 9:30.  There were maybe five people in line.  Took about five minutes to get up to the counter and maybe another five minutes to get my new license plate and tag renewal done.

So if you have to go - do it in the morning.  The times I've gone in the afternoon or around lunch time I have had to wait about an hour to get the job done.

So I've started marketing a service.  At this point it is a bit of an experiment.  I've not bothered to do any work on my web-site or anything.  In this case the service can be sold without that stuff, later I'll need some online functionality for my customers, but for now everything can be done on the phone, email and via paypal.

But I also have some software I want to start selling.  That is going to need a web-page with a little work invested.  Thing is I'm using CS to host GuerillaProgrammer.  I've moved my crap around enough and I have no desire to do it again.  So now I'm researching how to add my own custom pages to CS.  I don't need much integration with CS, but I would like to be able to add my pages to the navigation bar.

In my previous encounters with CS I was left really disappointed.  I felt it was a hair ball that somebody had coughed up and not been polite enough to bury so nobody else would have to encounter it. 

My opinion now?  We'll see.  At least their forum seems to be documenting stuff a bit better so I have hope.  In my current case: add a new page to cs 3.0 seems to answer my question.  I'll give it a shot on my VM at home to see how it works.

The rest - integration with paypal isn't difficult.

I emailed my friend I mentioned previously but she has not gotten back to me about "the process".  No problem, I'll get to see her next week in class anyway.  Hopefully she'll be able to clarify what she was talking about.  In the mean time I've not been idle.

I have a service that I think is useful and I even have a target market that I believe would find the service useful.  So instead of doing my usual, which is to do nothing, I went ahead and contacted a few people to gauge their reaction.

I'm honestly astounded by the response I've gotten.  I've had one positive which is likely to lead to some actual business, two "I'm interested, lets talk", and one "we do that already".

The odd thing is that before I took this leap my biggest fear was that I would get rejected outright.  The difference now (I'm still not thrilled by the idea of rejection) is that what I want to avoid is a no response.  The one case of "we do that already" could be interpreted as a rejection, however I see it as an opportunity to talk to the person some more.

I'm still setting up my service and I'm still not real clear on how to market it.  How do I describe the value I am delivering and why they should not do it themselves but instead pay me to do it.  It is all a matter of presentation.

Luckily every one of the people I contacted responded.  I'm not sure how to handle the case of a no response.  Keep spamming until they tell me to quit?  Not sure I like that.

One aspect of this is that what I did is a lot like cold calling.  The books I've read say not to do that - "Avoid cold calling at all costs".  However if like me you have not done a great job networking then what do you do?  I do not have money laying around to pay for a marketing campaign.  But here is the thing the people I'm contacting have contacted me offering me their services.  So in some ways I'm not exactly cold calling.  I know the people I'm contacting need this service so I actually have somebody to cold call.

Where I would be afraid of cold calling is where I don't actually know who to call.  For instance, if I was selling an EAI package for doing medical claims processing for insurance companies (ahem) I would not have a clue who to contact.  Do I just call the front desk at BCBS and say "give me the guy in charge of claims processing"?  I might give that a shot but I would not expect it to get very far.

Actually, for the above scenario I have a few people I would talk to that could help me.  That might be the key to it too - know when to ask other people for help.

I'm still interested in getting some coaching on how to start my own business (in many ways I already have).  But I'm not going to sit around waiting on other people.  I do not care if I what I try does not work.  Failures here are not fatal.  You just try something else until you finally find something that works.  The trick to getting coaching is that hopefully your coach has already done it before and can help you jump over the n00b mistakes.

In the mean time I'm going to get my first five shots sorted out and see where it takes me.

Just one more before I get down to it.

So for the past three years (has it really been that long?) I've been talking about and sort of half heartedly trying to start my own business or businesses.  I will get a great idea get started on it and then stop and repeat the process with a new idea.  I have three or four ideas that have been started but then dropped.  Not necessarily because the idea is not good, it is because I get the technical stuff started and start thinking about what comes next and I draw a blank.  How do I sell a product (whether it is software or a service)?  How do I market it? The technical stuff is not a big deal to me.  Even the hard stuff I eventually get. Being 'hard' to me just means I need a little more time to figure it out.

So anyway I have a couple of ideas sitting on the shelf.  One is ready to go - I just need a little help to get it in to production. 

The difference today is that I got a new idea - ask for help.  One of the people in my NLP class is a professional coach.  While doing one of the exercises she talked about telling her clients to follow 'the process' with their ideas.  What this 'process' is is something very interesting to me.  Is it really a process like a program - do step 1 then 2 then 3.  Or is it something more vague?  Have you guys been keeping secrets from me?  I'm going to talk to her and see if I can resolve this.  I know I'm missing some little clue.  A little piece of information that if I had I would be able to take my ideas to market.

To be clear about my ideas - I don't think any one of them is necessarily going to set the world ablaze.  I'm not looking to do that.  I'm looking to build a few small businesses that provide income for my family and friends so I can focus on the things that excite me.

My new bike needs work.  The tires are shot - the rear is showing cords.  The front brakes squeal so they need to be changed.  Sense this bike is going to be used on the track I plan to swap the brake lines for steel braided lines so I wont have any brake fade.  No biggie right?  Not really but this is important stuff that needs to be done correctly.  If the brakes don't work the bike does not stop.  I like to stop so I would not like that outcome.

So while I want to do the work myself I really wanted some supervision.  I don't really need it.  It is a comfort thing.  So yesterday I decided to 'man up' and just get it done this weekend.  Then oddly enough I read this on instapundit: JOBS AMERICANS WON'T DO.  It isnt about working on brakes.  It talks about being handy.  Read it yourself so you'll know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, after I finish up some coding I'm doing for myself I'm going to go throw the bike up on its stands and getting the work done.   Of course the fun bit is that I can't really ride the bike a whole lot after I change the lines - the tire needs to be replace too and I don't plan on buying new tires until next week!

Yesterday I went to motoliberty and got my track gear. Originally I only intended to pickup boots and gloves because I was going to rent the leathers from CSS during class. My plan was to buy the leathers after I had attended class.

Truth is, I was going to pickup a good pair of comparatively inexpensive track boots. The ones I had targeted were the Setup Vision Boots. They looked good on the site and appear to be a good boot. However, when sitting next to a pair of SIDI Vertigo Boots how the hell are they supposed to fair? I really liked the SIDIs and truth be told I would probably end up selling the Setups to get the SIDIs after a while. I think the SIDIs are good enough that I might not ever buy another pair of track boots.

Gloves weren’t bad. Motoliberty has their own custom line called N2. I got a pair of Victory Race Gloves. Overall I like them.

Here is where things went a little a stray. I’ve got the money saved up for the track suit and had planned on getting a Fieldsheer Revo Sport 1 piece suit. They didn’t have any in my size. But they did have one Fieldsheer Flex in red left over. Audrey the store own cut me a sweet heart deal on it so I got it.

I also got a Taichi Inner Suit. It is basically a one piece suit made of the same material as a football jersey. You wear it under your leathers so they don’t stick to you allowing you to get in and out of your suit.

Wearing the suit I now understand how the professionals are able to walk away from some of the spills they take. They still get hurt and stuff but there is no way they would hop up and walk away with out this stuff on.

Right now I need to spend time in the suit getting use to wearing all this stuff. First it is heavy. All that leather and armor is hefty. I would hate to fall in a swimming pool with this on. Second, it doesn’t exactly restrict movement; it just changes it a bit. The thick leather and stuff is much heavier than either of my jackets so it will take some getting used to.

Third and I think most important is that this stuff is hot. To quote: “It’s Tarzan hot!” Just getting in it inside the air conditioned house will get you sweating. Walk outside in the mid day heat and you might keel over from heat exhaustion just walking down your driveway.

I admit to a little exaggeration here; but not much. This has really got me motivated to get myself in better physical condition. Don’t care about weight. I want to make sure I can last two full days of intense physical exercise wearing this things. I’m going to super bike school and I intend to get every last scrap of learning out of it that I can. I believe in order to accomplish that I need to be in better shape than I am now.

Anyway, I’m a little off course now. Yeah the suit is heavy and it will bake your brain if you let it. Drink lots of water. But otherwise it is going to let me get out on a race track to see how far I can push myself and my motorcycle.

Overall I’m really impressed with MotoLiberty. Their shop is nice with lots of gear ready to go. It was funny because I would ask if they had something and they guy would pull it out from somewhere. Yup, got that. Even better is that they are pretty close to my house so I don’t have to drive halfway across the metroplex to get gear. I love cyclegear and they’ve done a great job taking care of me, but I like the fact that Motoliberty is a local shop. I mean, the owner was even digging stuff out for me. How cool is that?

So between MotoLiberty and Discount Cycle all I got to do is run south on 35E to get everything I need. Sweet.

I love Trizle.  They are the kick ass.  Usually.  This time though I think they missed.

The gist of what they are saying is that "clothing matters".  To some people.  Some people forum strong anchors to what they are wearing and as such those anchors affect their performance.  Other people oddly have the opposite anchors.

I resent the *** out of having to dress up for work.  Even business casual pisses me off to no end.  To me wearing a pair of dockers and a button down shirt is a symbol of laziness and failure.  Failure to get off my ass and start my own business because I'm too damn lazy to do the work necessary.  As such I have to wear the clothes some *** in HR thinks his (or her) proles should be wearing.

First date clothes?  I wore a pair of jeans.  Generally speaking I live in jeans or shorts.  And Hawaiian shirts were and remain the highest forum of fashion.  Everything else is just a waste of time.  Magnum PI rocked!

But seriously - if what you are doing is working alone in your home office then 'first date' clothes are so much BS.  A comfortable pair of shorts and a t-shirt make a lot more sense. 

If you are meeting up with a gang of VCs to beg money - wear a suit. 

Meeting your customer who is going to hand you a sale - wear a suit.

Generally speaking if you work in a cubicle and only deal with people inside your company then clothing should be the last thing a company worries over.  People actually doing their work well should be the first priority.

The next thing is this there are not a lot of skilled software developers out there.  Generally we're a testy lot and things like dress codes do annoy us.  Given current market conditions and future forecasts - why should a company care?  Most companies don't put programmers in customer facing positions anyway.  So hide them in their cubicles and let them wear their star fleet t-shirts and jeans.  You might hang on to them longer.