{"id":10870,"date":"2015-11-28T11:59:09","date_gmt":"2015-11-28T19:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=10870"},"modified":"2015-11-28T13:32:46","modified_gmt":"2015-11-28T21:32:46","slug":"my-aphroisms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=10870","title":{"rendered":"My Aphroisms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-4964\" style=\"float: right; margin: 5px; border: 1px solid;\" src=\"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/userpicdon-martin.jpg\" alt=\"userpic=don-martin\" width=\"80\" height=\"98\" \/>I thought I would do a post that would collect the aphorisms I live by. What is an aphorism? An <a href=\"http:\/\/literarydevices.net\/tag\/aphorism\/\">Aphorism<\/a> is a statement of truth or opinion expressed in a concise and witty manner.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Never ascribe to malice what you can to stupidity<\/strong>. Loads of things happen in life that can upset us. Sometimes they are intentional faults, sometimes just stupid or unintentional slights. I tend not to let things upset me unless there is a pervasive malice behind the acts.<\/li>\n<li><strong>90% of everything is presentation.<\/strong> I&#8217;m of the firm belief that many of the problems we run into are created not by what we are saying, but how we are saying it. We often don&#8217;t take the time to craft our words correctly, to think about the implications or the way they may hurt or be misinterpreted. Present something right the first time, and you&#8217;ll do better. A corollary is that we must sometimes look past the presentation for the underlying meaning.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The best apology is fixing the problem so it doesn&#8217;t happen again.<\/strong> We&#8217;ve all been the recipients of stupids. We&#8217;ve gotten apologies, many of them meaningless. At least for me, the best apology is one that is accompanied by a correction, so that the apology doesn&#8217;t need to ever be given again. So (as an example), Office of Personnel Management &#8212; I get that you&#8217;re sorry that my information got to Chinese hackers, and thank you for the monitoring service. But what are you doing so it doesn&#8217;t happen again?<\/li>\n<li><strong>Everyone is an expert at remembering something.<\/strong> I&#8217;m horrible with names and faces. Unless I meet you and see you somewhat regularly, I&#8217;ll probably take a while to recall your name. But spatial layouts? I&#8217;ve got maps in my head going back 50 years. I can remember how rooms were laid out when I was a kid, and what was where. Everyone has their skill.<\/li>\n<li><strong>If you get a web service for free, you&#8217;re not the customer, you&#8217;re the product<\/strong>. Have you ever wondered how &#8220;free&#8221; websites make their money? The answer typically is: by selling you. For sites like Facebook and Google, what they sell is two-fold: they sell your eyeballs for advertising, and they sell your demographics to make that advertising smarter. Other sites, like Expedia and Kayak, sell your custom &#8212; they are paid commissions by the airlines and the hotels and the rental car companies for steering your business to them. When using a free website, you must decide if the &#8220;cost&#8221; is worth it to you.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Note: I may come back and edit this post as I realize additional aphorisms. Please feel free to comment with your own aphorisms to live by.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I thought I would do a post that would collect the aphorisms I live by. What is an aphorism? An Aphorism is a statement of truth or opinion expressed in a concise and witty manner. Never ascribe to malice what you can to stupidity. Loads of things happen in life that can upset us. Sometimes <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=10870\">Read More &#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[364],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10870"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10903,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10870\/revisions\/10903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}