Keith O Hudson

Archive for the ‘Life Lessons’ Category

From 1999 to 2010, I worked at America West Airlines (now US Airways), mostly as a contracts manager for IT contracts. For two years after the merger I did process reengineering to bring some of the pre-merger processes together. During my time at AWA/USA, I have been passionate about trying to streamline and automate business processes to the greatest extent possible, mostly using Microsoft Access. I operated on the principle that computers are powerful tools, and if a business task is capable of being performed by a computer, we shouldn’t have a human doing it. Read the rest of this entry »

From January 1999 to June 2010, I worked at America West Airlines (now US Airways), mostly as a contracts manager for the IT contracts. For two years right after the merger (2006, 2007) I did process re-engineering to bring some of the pre-merger processes together. During my entire time at AWA/USA, I have been passionate about trying to streamline and automate business processes to the greatest extent possible given the tools available, which included primarily mail merge, macros and Microsoft Access. I love computers, and I reasoned that if a business task is capable of being performed by a computer, we shouldn’t have a human doing it. Read the rest of this entry »

At this time of thanksgiving, we are often reminded to count our blessings – to remember the good things with which we have been blessed. For many of us, we list among those blessings a comfortable home, food, clothing, a job that allows us to provide for our temporal needs, and family, friends and loved ones. Read the rest of this entry »

As a society, we pride ourselves on the great accomplishments of humankind –unparalleled economic growth and prosperity; technological inventions; the rapid expansion of scientific knowledge; and wonderful medical advances, among others.

The natural disasters that have affected several areas of the world just within the past few weeks – typhoons in the Philippines, the tsunami that struck Samoa, New Zealand and Australia – are a stark reminder of how helpless we are to control mother nature despite the marvelous advances the world has made in the past few decades.

At the same time, many individuals struggle with personal disasters – loss of a job and income, loss of a loved one, loss of a home, or health issues that can change someone’s life overnight.

Have we ever had a greater need to come together as a human family and to help each other out?

How inspiring then, to hear the he story of Jack McConnell. Read the rest of this entry »

I ran across a blog article this morning here that answers this question with a resounding NO! I highly recommend you read it if you are asking yourself this question, and heed its advice. The advice in that column does not apply to everyone, but it applies to a lot more people than might realize it.

I worked for a bankruptcy trustee in Canada during the 1980s, when the Canadian economy was going through an upheaval.  Mortgage interest rates were at 18% and higher, and I personally spoke with many people whose mortgage payments doubled overnight.  (The longest mortgage term in Canada at that time was 5 years, so every few years, your mortgage “renewed” at current interest rates.) I distinctly remember one man who was used to working a lot of overtime, essentially doubling his base salary.  His mortgage payment doubled at the same time as his employer  eliminated all overtime due to financial constraints.

No one I know can predict their own future with certainty. Err on the side of caution – plan for the worst, and hope and work for the best.

As brutal as is the advice in the blog article I referred you to above, in these difficult economic times, financial decisions must be made based on reality, not fantasy.  Some pain now is much better than a lot of pain later.

Here are two more ways to unfollow people on Twitter who are not following you.

1. The website friendorfollow.com lets you enter your twitter name, and checks your account for those following you and those you are following.  There are three tabs showing on the page:

Following: which shows you a list of all those not following you that you are following. Actually, you see their avatars. Hover over one of the avatars and you can see when that person’s account was created and some other stats about them. If you are signed in to twitter on the account you have searched using FriendOrFollow, you can click on any avatar to go to that person’s twitter profile and unfollow them. HINT: if you are using a tabbed browser, open the avatar’s profile in a new tab. That way, after unfollowing them, you can simply close the tab and you’re back to the list of avatars at FriendOrFollow.  If you leave the FriendOrFollow page rather than just leaving it open in one browser tab while you go to another tab , you lose the list and it must regenerate again when you regenerate the page.

Fans: shows you people who are following you, but you are not following them. Again, you see a list of avatars.

Friends: people you are following and who are following you.

In each case, you have the option to export the list as a “csv” — a “comma separated values” file, which you can then use for additional things.

I’ll show you tomorrow how I use the “Following” csv.

2. Twitter karma lets you enter your twitter account name and password (it passes these to twitter without recording them) and brings back a list of all your followers and those you are following, then lets you do things like bulk unfollow those not following you.  Very cool, but like FriendOrFollow it depends on the twitter api, so can take a long time to populate, especially if twitter is overloaded, and sometimes doesn’t work at all.

Tomorrow, a semi-automated way to unfollow.

There are times you need to come up with ideas.  Perhaps you’re picking a name for a new business, or you’re trying to find ways to make extra money, or solve a puzzling problem.

Whenever you need to spark your creativity and thinking processes, you can use the concept of brainstorming.  It works great when you have several people to brainstorm together, but it will also work for getting your creative juices going when its just you working on something. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re just starting out in life — maybe you’ve just started high school and got your first part-time job, or maybe you’re in college, or you recently got married — or maybe you’ve been around a few years, but you never got yourself organized, you will save time and money and a whole lot of heartache, frustration and grief if you set up a filing system that will let you find important papers in seconds, rather than having to hunt for hours and perhaps never find the piece of paper you’re looking for.

Recently my 21 year old son asked me how to deal with a phone call from a collection agency.  Read the rest of this entry »

I received the following letter via email from a friend a day or two ago,  shared here with his permission. For sake of privacy I have omitted names and some details.

To Family and Friends.

The Jewish Holiday of Yom Kippur, The Day of Atonement, is rapidly approaching.

Atonement for Jewish people means asking forgiveness for sins both from God and Man.  Recently, while in [a small town] for the summer, I attended a lecture which, in part, stated the belief that Man must atone for his sins against Man before he asks for atonement from God.  The speaker also stated that if one comes to the Synagogue to ask God for forgiveness, without receiving atonement for his sins against Man, he’s in the wrong place.  His visit is wasted! Read the rest of this entry »

Many of us have been in a situation where we end up unable to pay all our bills on time.  The natural reaction is to avoid those creditors and bill collectors — ignore the phone when it rings unless we know who it is, and push the collection notices aside when they come, or throw them in the trash without responding.  We hope that something will change soon and we’ll be able to pay them, and until we’re in a position to pay them, we don’t want to talk to them.

Having had several years experience working for bankruptcy trustees and dealing with hundreds of creditors, I can tell you that is exactly the wrong approach. Read the rest of this entry »