'Word of Mouth' - Fool proof marketing tool.

This survey says 'word of mouth' is the #1 marketing tool:
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=104538

Eventhough the research is done for electronic purchases. I believe this is true for any kind of business or service. Think of how many of your puchases (ranging anywhere from getting a mortgage to buying a USB storage device) has been influenced by opinions of your friends and family. Remember how many times you wanted to get opinions from others for things that you were in the verge of buying and cancelled because someone told you that may not be a good idea.

More on this at:
http://customerevangelists.typepad.com/blog/

Better Families

Wondering how your level of intelligence affects you in forming and keeping a family. It appears to me that people who have very high IQ levels kinda gets shaky when it comes to family with very very few exceptions.

I'm consciously observing that whenever i've won an argument rationally with my wife, I got to sleep alone! So next day I go to her, tell her that I did not pay much attention to her side of the argument and I feel bad about it (you don't even have to say that you were wrong)... that's it! We get more closer.. may be by a bit, but it is really going to help the family to be more jelled in the longer term.All the juice in the left side of my brain would not have helped me acheive this.

So my conclusion, as of now(rationality kicks in!), is that your IQ level is inversely propotional to the happiness and jelling you have in your family.

Your code is not you.

Imagine the following scenarios:

Team Member1: "Hey Team Member2, your code is not working.. I could not integrate my code now"
Team Member2: "No, buddy. It was working alright. Why don't you double check yours?"
Team Member1: "I did. Looks like you are assuming that the object I passed will not be null. That's not the case."
Team Member2: "I ran my tests. It's working fine."
Team Member1: "But it's not working now. I did not change your code! Come on."
....
....
....

Team Member2: "No Man! I can't change anything. It works fine for me."

Now it's no more a technical issue. It's status quo. Solving this is going to take time and energy of more than just Members 1 & 2. What could have been different if:

1) Team Member2 knew that his code is not him and also when to lose the ego. It's an application he/she wrote which nothing but a set of instructions for the computer to perform.

2) TeamMember1 just knew when to replace 'your code is not working' with something like 'Looks like WE have got an issue to solve'.