The microphone is being passed around the room as each of us say what we hope to learn and gain from the course. As the microphone reaches me I say, “I want to be around creative people, and get over the fear of failure.” Roy H. Williams takes the microphone back after the last person states her hopes for the course. Roy looks right at me, with his slightly crazy-wild eyes, and says, “Fear of failure. You must understand that failure is only temporary. Just as success is only temporary.”

My brilliant and beautiful bride sent me to the How To Make Awesome Sauce course at Wizard Academy last summer as a birthday gift. We both had expectations of what I would leave the course with, but neither of us would foresee the impact that lesson would have on our family’s life.

We spend too much time worrying about what might happen if we fail. It becomes the worst-case scenario three fold, leaving reality and real options far behind. I am amazed how much time is spent mentally Tivo-ing the scenes on our internal big screen with what might happen. Extra mental work is required to change the plot so positive outcomes play on the screen instead of embarrassment and ruin. Even crazier is we easily see the spoils of success and yet cannot visualize the success itself.

Believing failure is temporary even before your head knows it to be true changes how you begin each endeavor. It started at the Wizard Academy course by speaking up and asking to take David McInnis’ idea and turn it just a bit. Yes, I would be willing to fail with someone else’s idea.

Then I came home and a friend casually mentioned a website he wished existed. Hmm, I’m willing to risk failure with an idea that is partially mine.

Then my wife finished her PhD. She’s pondering a post doc study or a position that would take us away from current home and family who live here. “Yes!” I say. Let us risk failure as a family with the idea of moving for a year or two and embrace a great adventure. Is adventure not what we are chasing? Are we not risking failure over the reward of successful adventure?

Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway. – Earl Nightingale

Christening a ship with precious liquid before she is truly baptized in water is a tradition that goes back to ancient times. A Third Century Babolonian poet said it as,

Openings to the water I stopped;
I searched for cracks and the wanting parts I fixed;
Three sari of bitumen I poured over the outside;
To the gods I caused oxen to be sacrificed.

Wizard Academy - How To Make Awesome Sauce

The party Thursday afternoon at Wizard Academy was just such a Christening for the four businesses that were launched that week. Complete with precious liquids flowing. Test my Message was one of the fortunate ships to be baptized into the sea of commerce.

The weeks after launching have felt like we were the only ship at sea at times, and a few other times like we were among friends sailing with the same goals. Most often it has been a lonely journey. The work that must be done day-by-day turns into a few weeks quickly without contact from the outside world. The adrenaline and high winds of launching are a quiet dream and you begin to wonder if you should have stayed on shore.

A long four weeks without any real, bottom line results brought windless doubts. I was frustrated, paranoid, and depressed. Where were the people cheering as we launched? Why was the radio silent? Had I taken the ship in the wrong direction? Where they waiting at a port that I did not port in? We were burning up fuel and not finding any wind. Then an island became visible on the horizon. Small sales began to catch wind again. My mood swung up and the day’s sunset was like a gift just for me. Is this what the journey is going to be like? Days starting out with dark clouds and ending with sunsets?

I’m constantly reading about entrepreneurs and the businesses they’ve started. The authors’ common current for success in these stories consist of being determined and having skills to navigate the waters. Sailing is not just a horizontal adventure, but a three-dimensional emotional rise and fall, pitching and rolling with the waves.

Faster boats need smaller rudders than slower boats of the same size. Why is that? Is it some kind of law of emotional physics. While the sea is the same for both boats the one that can make the journey faster needs less of a rudder to make the same turns. I’m discovering just how big my rudder is. I’m sure it takes an experienced captain to pilot the faster ships. Though they most likely started out building their skills on a ship that needed a big rudder.

I love this graphic, as I’m an Android believer it hits close enough to home to laugh at myself.

TmoNews did a good job, see their comments and original graphic here.

Taking around four months to drive from Italy to China is fast for humans, let alone a car by itself. Going over eight thousand miles and not stopping once for gas is even more impressive. See the full story.

Chris Brogan give some excellent voicemail advice. I know I could follow this and do a great service to those I communicate with.

Why do all E-reader cases have the notepad placement on the left hand side?

I don’t know about you, but when I want to make notes about something I’m reading I place my notepad on the right hand side of my text. Having my note taking happening on the left side of my text (as the picture above shows) feels very awkward. To have my eyes crossing over my hands while I’m trying to read and write messes with my brain.

Obviously all the many E-reader case makers/designers out there have never taken many notes. Moleskin comes close here, by using straps on all four corners of the e-reader so you could flip the e-reader around, but the slit for the paper pad is still wrong. (And their design is not to flip the e-reader, but to make it work for multiple kinds of readers.) I guess I could take a knife and make a second slit for right handed use.

This is fascinating to a non-space/flight person like me. It is amazing what can be done with the inexpensive (relatively speaking) technology that is so commonly found today.

Homemade Spacecraft from Luke Geissbuhler on Vimeo.

Is it just me? Or does it seem as though innovations have sped up in number of new ones being released in the last six months?

Smarter Than You Think – Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic – NYTimes.com.