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Words to live by, literally: Charles McConathy on Staying Healthy

Just back from a brief staycation (it’s so lovely in Seattle this time of year) and I found an old post with a few words from the great but late Charles McConathy. Charles was one of the first people to befriend me in the CA tech industry. He founded the very successful and admired MicroNet and was one of the most helpful and konwledgeable people I’d met. 
 
Charles died after a battle with colon cancer in 2004. A month or so before he died, he posted the following message on what he’d learned about staying healthy, which included this summary:
 
“… it is easier to avoid disease than it is to treat it. Do everything you can to protect your health.”
More from the tech point of view when I get back to the office. So little to talk about and so much time.
 
Scratch that, reverse… 😉
 

From: mcconathy@promax.com
Subject: [FCP-L] OT: Oprah – September 1, 2004 Segment
Date: September 7, 2004 11:27:10 AM EDT
To: FinalCutPro-L@yahoogroups.com
Reply-To: FinalCutPro-L@yahoogroups.com

Do any of know how to get in touch with Oprah group to see if its possible get a tape of the September 1, 2004 segment which I think was based on Healing from the Heart with Mehmet Oz M.D. or if any of you taped it could I get a copy. I have some people I need to share it. Unlike Dr. Phil, Oprah does not offer tapes. Oprah does offer transcripts but that is not the same as a real live video. This doctor showed various organs of the body and how they get diseased and most revealing was his showing what body fat looks like and that some people might have 20 or 30 pounds in their system. I saw the above segment while in the hospital. I was was very impressed.

During my illness with colon and liver cancer I have had time to read and learn more about ways to protect one’s health. Remember it is better to pay the grocer and the gym than to pay the doctor. And it is easier to avoid disease than it is to treat it. Cancer and diabetes are rampant. Do everything you can to protect your health. It is not easy to eat right but its well worth the effort – especially when you consider that a cancer patient will run up bills between $400,000 and $700,000. I thank God I have Medicare that covers much of my costs. But now there is some new bills going through to limit the amount for cancer patients. This could leave some without medial treatment.

As you study and read about health you will find a lot of confusing information in books and on the internet. But if you continue to study you will find a thread of truth that is right for you. One group says don’t use soy products and the other might say they are great. After reading and thinking I tend go with soy products since asians have used them for years and have much less cancer than we do in the USA.

Below is a list of items that I feel can improve most people’s health…

• If you have an illness Trust in God and never give up hope – take time each day for devotion
• Stress – find ways to reduce stress – very important
• Rest – try to get two hours of your nightly sleep before midnight
• Avoid sugar, coffee, soft drinks, and snack foods – read the labels
• Exercise – at a very minimum walk a mile a day
• Lose weight if needed – be careful of low carb diets like Atkins – they might work now but could have other long term issues
• If you smoke – STOP – Cancer of the lungs is serious – as seen on the Oprah segment first hand
• Take a sack lunch to work versus going for fast food
• Get 20 to 30 minutes of sunshine each day – good for Vitamin D that helps absorption of vitamins
• Keep a window open day and night for fresh air – disease does not thrive in oxygen
• Drink pure water – try to drink 64 ounces a day of pure water – without chlorine or fluoride – I drink spring water
• Be aware of the effects of mercury in your system – avoid certain fish
• Eat more raw foods – cooked food tends to kill enzymes – try to get organically grown produce when possible
• Learn about enzymes and how important they are to your health
• Use flax seed oil on salads with lemon juice – avoid iceberg lettuce – use darker leaf vegatables
• Eat more berries and fruits such bananas, apples, apricots, peaches, cherries, strawberries, blueberries, and mellon
• Include almonds, sun flower seeds, and cashews in your diet
• Use extra virgin olive oil for cooking
• Use sea salt vs table salt
• Eat less packaged and fried foods
• Drink freshly made vegetable juices – such as blends of carrot, apple, beet, celery, spinach, onion, and garlic
• Avoid or reduce animal fat in your diet – eat more fish or chicken vs beef or pork
• Use almond, soy, or rice milk vs cow milk – cow milk often has hormones and other issues
• Be very careful of the chemicals you use in your home or work
• Study your personal need of supplemental vitamins and minerals
• Have your blood tested – I go to a Natural Doctor that shows me my blood cells on a monitor – very revealing
• Learn to test your silva and urine using PH paper – easy to do – better to be 6 to 7 PH vs acidic – cancer likes acidic
• Depending on your age – get a colonoscopy every five years and regular check ups
• Learn about parasites and yeast and how they affect you
• Remember that a lot of diseases start in the colon and liver – learn how to cleanse your colon and liver
• Learn how to boost your immune system through foods, vitamins, minerals, and herbs

Try researching subjects on Google…its amazing what you can find.

Thanks for your help,

Charles F. McConathy

 

Link to this post: https://aka.ms/Brdlua

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Bill Gross: Twenty Amazing Facts Learned at the 2012 World Economic Forum in Davos

Bill GrossBill Gross is founder of the technology incubator Idealab and more companies than I can count (he says “100 companies in last 30 years” so perhaps I can count that high). Mr. Gross tweeted “while on [his] quest for learning in life and at conferences.” (Follow him on Twitter as well as on his blog at http://www.BillGross.com.) 

So, a tip of the hat to you, sir: for me, the cost to attend WEF virtually and digest everything on the Davos stream in real time in my PJ’s: $0 (priceless 😉

With his coverage and that of the other quarter of attendees on Twitter, I was able to keep up in real time (which explains why I was cranky and tired this week) and almost felt as though I were in Davos. I appreciated the openess and how many people tweeted, published blog posts from the event, and the access the press had to attendees, with sessions live online in real-time (http://wef.ch/live).

But, sadly, without the incredible Swiss hospitality, food and snow. And the Occupy protesters!

So, from his tweets, here are Bill’s “Twenty Amazing Facts Learned at WEF 2012”

  1. There are only 52 companies on Earth worth more than Apple’s $97.6B hoard ofcash.
  2. Kodak invented the digital camera in 1975 & their board buried it b/c it looked too disruptive
  3. iTunes alone generated 50% more revenues than ALL of #Yahoo last year
  4. From Angela Merkel – “there are 23 million companies in the EU & there are 23 million jobless.”
  5. There were ~2,600 attendees & more than 5,000 Army members guarding #Davos – more than 2/attendee!
  6. There are 371,000 babies born each day. There are 377,900 iPhones sold each day.
  7. Annual growth in China 9%, India 8%, Africa 5.5%, Europe 0%.
  8. Over next several years world will need amount of food = to all produced in last 10,000 years!
  9. 89 percent of young people want a job that helps to change the world for the better.
  10. In a hyper connected world average is over as we all knew it – we are now competing with the whole planet.
  11. Spanish unemployment surges to 22.8%. Under 24 years old – 51.4%. Staggering.
  12. 1 in every 2 people in India is under 25 years old (and they want their piece of the pie).
  13. Because of corruption, U.S. investment in India went down from $24B in 2010 to $11B last year.
  14. The U.S. economy grew at its fastest pace in 1 and a half years in the 4th quarter of 2011.
  15. a: The poorest 2 billion people spend 40-60% of income on food & 15-20% on energy.  And 15 b: Each year of secondary school increases a girl’s future wages up to 20 percent.
  16. 47% of time spent using smartphones is spent on= Facebook.
  17. Apple’s cash reserve is enough to pay off the total public debt of 8 countries in the EU.
  18. New era of volatity – the S&P Index moved > 2% more than 60 days in 2011. In 2005 – Zero.
  19. Avg cost of attending Davos: Food ($2k) + Hotel ($3k) + Flights ($6k) + Transfers ($9k) + EntryFee ($20k) = $40,000
  20. On Hacking, the Intellectual Attacks come from China & the Financial Attacks come from Russia.

WRT number 19: $9K in transfers?!?

 

Tags: WEF, Davos, conferences, World Economic Forum, 2012.

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Satya Nadella: the new president in Microsoft’s Server & Tools Business

News today: we have a new president in the Server & Tools Business: Satya Nadella, a respected technical leader here at the company (as noted here: http://bit.ly/i5ovIb). Satya moved from MBS to the Online Services Division to head up the engineering division there, which includes Bing, MSN and AdCenter (our advertising platform).

Satya Nadella hasn’t blogged in quite a while – I’ll suggest that he pick this back up ;)  You can check out his old posts at http://bit.ly/iejhvy. In particular I enjoyed one of his last posts on “making complex things simple” mantra, with observations from the book "The Laws of Simplicity" by John Maeda…

"I recently read The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda. He has a cool web site as well. In the Dynamics group there is a lot of passion around this subject.

"John’s first rule – REDUCE: Simplicity through thoughtful reduction…strikes me as the most critical, when it comes to software design.

"I remember going to for my first meeting with the technical team at Navision before the acquisition. Their entire presentation was around how little code they have in their application. Mind you this was before we had settled on price!!

"This spirit of “minimalism” has helped us a ton as we have looked to evolve our apps and make them modern both in terms of user experience, runtime infrastructure and design time tools."

This reminds me of another discussion: Tony Scott, our CIO, asked Steve Ballmer (as noted on the Microsoft CIO Network site) about the biggest lessons he has learned over the ten years Steve has been CEO.

"… there’s a quote from a college basketball coach who just died here in the U.S., a guy named John Wooden, who was the coach at UCLA for many years.  But his writing on this sort of stands out to me.  He used to tell his players, "Be quick, but don’t hurry."  In our business more than any, you’ve got to be quick, but don’t hurry.  You can hurry things and you get a bad outcome if you try to rush, rush, either half-baked, not forward-looking enough.  But if you just take your time, you’re slow, you’re not in the market, you’re going to fail too.  And so really being thoughtful about — it doesn’t mean — there’s no implied algorithm of how you be quick but don’t hurry, but I know that a lot of the bad decisions I made, I made when I did hurry or when I took too much time to make a decision.  One or the other.  And so those are sort of my principles that I’ve learned.  I mean, I can also tell you I’ve learned a lot of things from specific projects."

 

Tags: announcements, Microsoft, Windows Server.

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Of interest: Ex-Microsoftie Brad Lovering joins Splunk in Seattle

Congrats to ex Microsoft-ie @, as he just joined @, as noted at  by the Seattle Times’ own Brier Dudley

Brad Lovering, one of Microsoft’s top engineers until he left last year, is heading a new Seattle office for Splunk, according to a report by Mary Jo Foley.

Lovering is now vice president of development platform with the San Francisco-based company, which provides an enterprise IT data management system used by thousands of customers.

During his 24 years at Microsoft, Lovering rose to become one of the company’s elite Technical Fellows.

Splunk investors include Bellevue’s Ignition Partners, a venture firm led by a number of Microsoft veterans.

As noted, Brad was a techical fellow at Microsoft, an “acknowledgement of the key role a technical leader plays in driving intentional innovation”.

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How to make an impact at Thanksgiving, even if you’re not Bill Gates

It’s Thanksgiving, and again I am fortunate enough to spend my holiday with my friends and family. In a past post, I noted my posts on being thankful, in particular this one on being thankful, where I noted the Seattle P-I newspaper’s slide show on “Words of Thanks.”



“What are you most thankful for? P-I photographer Meryl Schenker profiles six local residents who have different reasons for giving thanks on this holiday.”


At home, we’re thankful for many things, primarily for good health, family, and our community. The philanthropist W. Clement Stone said that “If you are really thankful, what do you do? You share.”


Today I received a mail with a link to an article from last year on Bill Gates and how Microsoft’s founder and his wife, Melinda, are aiming to change charity…



“For the past 10 years, the Gateses have opted for the latter: “How can we do the most good for the greatest number with the resources we have?” Bill asked a sea of Harvard University graduates at their commencement ceremony last year.


“The answer? If you’re Bill Gates — with $37.5 billion in your foundation’s coffers and as much as $100 billion to contribute over the course of your lifetime — you do it very, very carefully, say philanthropy leaders.”


OK, you don’t have Bill & Melinda Gates’ resources. What can you do?


Plenty. And you don’t need billions to make a difference.


In an article today from Patrick May of the San Jose Mercury News writes about the local impact of the recession at the holiday to some of those in Silicon Valley, and provides a list of places to give for the holidays in San Jose and surrounding areas.


In Amy Goodman’s article about thanksgiving, she notes “Billion for a Billion” campaign launched by the WFP, “urging the 1 billion people who use the Internet to help the billion who are hungry. But if you think that hunger is far from our shores, here is some food for thought … and action: The U.S. Department of Agriculture released a report Monday stating that in 2008 one in six households in the U.S. was “food insecure,” the highest number since the figures were first gathered in 1995.


And Jerry Large writes today about good people giving back with thanks, about “someone who traveled to a foreign land and made a fresh start despite hardships and with the help of new friends.”


So I’ve included this link on how to help over the holidays from my previous hometown paper, and from our new home town, The Seattle Times Fund For The Needy


This in closing from the article on Gates noted above



“Gates — who dropped out of Harvard to create Microsoft — returned to the university last year to accept an honorary degree and to deliver the 2007 commencement speech to graduates. It was, Gates-watchers agreed, probably one of his finest speeches ever, an eloquent reminder that success doesn’t always mean following the rules. Among other things, Gates told Harvard students that technological achievement is critical in the years ahead, but that “humanity’s greatest advances are not in is discoveries but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity … reducing human inequity is the highest human achievement.”


How will you pay it forward?


Whatever you do, for those in the States and wherever you are, have a happy Thanksgiving.


 


Tags: shopping, Microsoft, articles, blogs, what I read, Thanksgiving.


Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse, Windows Vista, Windows 7, computers, Thanksgiving, how-to


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