Bill's Conversational Musings

It seems we are becoming more and more attached to our digital devices. Phones, tablets, watches all clamor for our attention. We (including me) freely give it to them. We can spend hours on social media, news and interest sites. But to what degree do we find it impacts our …

The sun is hot and the drinks are cold. Here is a list of songs that, to me, remind me of relaxing by beach or pool with a cigar. Not all of these songs are Jimmy Buffett songs. Of course, the Boats, Beaches, Bars and Ballads box set could fit …

Here is a short screencast that I did about using TiddlyWiki as a bookmark manager. Tiddlywiki is a non-linear notebook that is free for download that works especially well using a Firefox and an add-on called Tiddlyfox. Tiddly fox allows you to save the file through the browser. It's a …

Light in and of itself is nothing new. I'm not going to tell you something about light that you probably already didn't know. People have been using light for years. It's the fundamental principle in photography which is, by its entomology, painting with light. People have been using light to …

Here is a list of songs about Texas. The artists sing about the beauty of Texas, the people of Texas and all the great things you can do. As a sample, I have a small playlist here on YouTube. Additional Texas Music (Yes, there's an HEB ad in the playlist. …

My drinking game got mentioned by Rob on the American Auction Network TV. Apologies for poor quality capture. Angela gets a mention on AANTV

Here's a real quick update/post about a Google Hangout I did with my colleague, Allison Henslee, about the launch team and getting started in the Rackspace Cloud. We share best pratices and how we come in on the ground floor to make sure customers are setup for success. Have a …

The saying often goes, "There is no such thing as a free lunch." You can, however, find some free and relatively affordable storage on the Internet and around your own area if you know where to look. When you have worked in technology as long as I have it becomes …

I am fortunate enough to work for a company that focuses on the building of strengths. Rather than looking for gaps or "area of opportunities" we look for what are people good at. In the book Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham & Donald O. Clifton, Ph.D. they approach …

I frequently find myself in clothing retail stores. I'm usually shopping with my wife or grandmother. You can't help but notice the men who are there who don't want to be there. The stand in the isle staring off into space or browsing on their phones. You can sometimes find …

I recently did some volunteer work at place in San Antonio called Blue Hole . During the tour, our guide explained that the area we were working in was a sanctuary for environmental, spiritual and educational values. Some would come to reflect and meditate, others would walk the paths around …

Although cloud means shared hosting it gives you the power to decouple technology like never before. To decouple technology means separating elements that have been traditionally connected into independent infrastructure pieces. Once this done, these elements can be scaled, modified or replaced altogether giving your systems better performance and reliability. …

As easy as it may seem, creating a good website can be a daunting task. It's easy to just create a website, but how effective is it? Who is your audience? What kind of content will you serve up? What will it look like? Answering these questions requires more than …

Why am I still mowing my lawn? For the past 30 or so years I have had to push a lawn mower around a yard in some way, shape, or form. Granted, there were a few years in college where, when I was living in a dorm, I didn't have …