Regular features from July 2003 91st Issue

The Digital Doctor - Backup Blues

Every computer users worst nightmare is hard disk failure, all those years of hard work now stuck on an inaccessible lump of metal. Of all computer components the hard disk is the most likely to fail, they are fragile pieces of hardware and as we know nothing lasts forever. Usually when they do go you end up losing everything on there as a) the shop will just replace it if its under warranty, b) the technician wont have the savvy to backup your work before re-installing a new disk, or c) the platters are damaged beyond repair and you can't access it without spending thousands of baht on a hi-tech recovery processes.
Simple measures can be taken to avoid data loss if your hard disk decides to go south on you. Backing up your data should be an essential part of your computing habits. There are several ways you can create backups:
1) Second hard disk: Installing another hard disk into your computer provides an excellent way of keeping your data backed up. It also gives you the flexibility of more storage space. You could use a mobile rack which is a tray enabling you to remove the disk and store it safely elsewhere should you have any real important top secret stuff. For commercial applications you could set up a RAID system, which uses two or more hard disks mirrored so they run faster and function as an operational backup.
2) Partitions: This is one of the simplest ways to backup your data, it involves splitting your original hard disk into 2 or more portions. For example a 20GB disk could be split into two tens or a five and a fifteen, you will then have a C: and a D: drive. Your operating system and programs would be setup on C: and your documents, photos and music stored on the D: drive. This is also a good idea for when windows has problems and needs to be re-installed, you don't have to worry about losing your data as its stored on D: and C: can be safely formatted. You are still not safe if the entire disk fails though as both partitions are still part of the same disk.
3) Removable media: A zip disk could be used to store documents, this unit which is the same size as a floppy drive (the actual disk is a bit thicker) can be installed easily. The disks can hold 100 or 250MB of data, fine for documents and pictures but probably not enough if, like me, you have a lot of data to backup. Floppy disks are okay for a few word or excel spreadsheets but I wouldn't rely on them for anything important, they tend not to perform too well in a tropical climate! Memory cards and USB sticks are also good backup devices however their capacity is somewhat limited unless you're willing to spend more money.
4) CD: You could backup your data to a CD which can hold 700MB. Burners are pretty cheap nowdays costing between 2 and 2,500 baht, they are easily installed and write at high speeds (as opposed to the old units which took nearly hour per disc and you couldn't touch the machine while it was burning). You could use a re-writeable CD to backup every month or so onto the same disc. Normal CD-R's cost around 8 baht each and CD-RW's around 60 baht.
In the event of data losses due to power failures you should have a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply). This external unit will stabilize power dips, spikes and surges and act like a battery when the power goes out. It should not be used to run the machine, just give you enough time to save what you are working on and shut down safely. It will also protect your internal computer power supply and prevent spikes reaching the sensitive components on your mainboard. A UPS should cost between 2,500 and 3,000 baht. The power system in some remoter parts of Hua Hin is often up and down more than two pigs on a honeymoon so protecting your computer is essential. Also make sure your computer is properly earthed/grounded, this can be done by attaching one end of a copper wire to the case (usually one of the fixing screws) and the other to a metal rod outside which is then knocked 2 - 3 feet into the ground. Most Thai houses only have two pin power supplies as electricians in Asia are oblivious to the fact that appliances need to be earthed to prevent stray voltages running through them and damaging sensitive components as well as you every time you accidentally come into contact with the case!
Preventative maintenance for your computer and hard disk can reduce the risk of it failing. A few simple steps to follow; make sure your case is well cooled, if your hard disk is running hot it will reduce its life expectancy. Check your case fans and make sure they are dust free and running freely. Regular Defrags (as mentioned in an earlier article) will cut down on the work you disk has to do by saving it time searching for and running fragmented files. As for as buying particular brands and asking what disks are best I can only go by personal experience. I have found IBM to be very reliable, Seagate hard disks are also good, then I would rate Quantum, Maxtor and finally Fujitsu and Western Digital (the latter two I have had many problems with) you may have different experiences.
Backup software is all pretty much the same, bundled with Windows is Microsoft Backup which you can configure to backup what you want and schedule it to do it when you want to where you want. One Step Backup is a similar program from Iomega that comes with your Zip drive. Or you could use Windows Explorer to copy and paste your documents to you backup media, most CD Burning software works on the same principle.
If you have any questions about this months or any computer issues contact the Doc on 01-1911742 or email:
webmaster@observergroup.net

What do you see yourself doing in retirement?

Would you like a few nice holidays a year? Would you expect a good standard of living?
Would you like to help your children or grandchildren in times of need? No doubt there are plenty of things to do with your money now and you may think that waiting a few years to start providing for your pension will not make much difference. THINK AGAIN
The longer you delay starting a pension the more you will have to pay to build up a reasonable fund. The longer you wait the greater the increase in contributions.
Compound interest makes a huge difference. The longer your money can grow the better.
Look at these two examples.
Tom pays into a pension fund for ten years starting at age 21 paying just US$1,500 P.A.
After 10 years he will have paid US$15,000 contributions which, growing at an average rate of 7% would equate to a retirement account of US$332,065 at age 70.
This presumes he stops paying after 10 years and makes no more contributions.
Paul puts off saving for his retirement until the age of 30 and had to save US$1,500 P.A,
For 40 years to reach a retirement account of a similar value to Tom's.
Total contributions would be USD$60,000 compounded at 7% providing a retirement account of USD320, 414.
Because he delayed Paul has to pay for an extra 30 years in this example and his account still falls short of the ten year payment of Tom's account
Can you afford the delay?
Its worth looking at a further two examples.
Marcus O'Sullivan is 25 years old and enjoys working overseas with an international accountancy firm based in Bangkok. He plans to retire at 55 and is aiming to have a good enough pension to enjoy his retirement with few financial worries. He has plans for three big holidays a year and a lively social life when he retires. Marcus has started contributing US$200. per month which he indexed at 5% p.a. to increase in line with inflation. His policy will run for 30 years and at the end of this period his fund value assuming a net rate of return of 10% is US$540,928
Chris Bryans is 40 and hasn't yet organized his pension. He always put it off, preferring to spend the money he had for his current/present plans and only saving for short term needs. He now starts thinking about his retirement and the money he will need to accumulate to have a worry free retirement. He invests US$500 per month also indexing at 5% to increase in line with inflation. He plans to retire at 60. His policy will run for 20 years and at the end of this period his fund value assuming a net rate of return of 10% p.a. US$438,608.
It's a simple message really. Leaving your retirement planning until later can leave a substantial shortfall to your pension account and mark a significant increase in contributions required to achieve a livable pension. .
One good reason for delay in your own mind can be eliminated. Most reputable providers recognize that internationally mobile employees can run into problems when companies make employees redundant.
Arrangement can easily be made to take a break from contributions when you finances need it most and when you regain employment you can start up again.
Most of these plans are designed to be flexible. As your circumstances change these retirement plans can change with you.
Retirement is potentially the longest holiday of our lives. With today's average life expectancy increasing we can estimate a retirement of 10 or 15 years if not longer.
We also know that in retirement, money is not everything. But as Bob Hope says "It will do until everything comes along".
For further information on any area of personal finance contact Jerry McMenamin
At info@swissinvestcenter.net

Dog Rescue Update ...

The Hua Hin Dog Rescue people are very sorry to report that their good friend Michel left them for a better world. A terrible disease took him away in just a few days. Michel built up the whole Center, all the pens, the roofs, the water draining, etc… From up there, he must be proud of his work done at the Centre: Despite heavy rains, it remains dry and practicable.

There was a mention for the centre on TV and Verity impressed with her Thai language skills. Good for their image among the local population!
Good old Mulligan is fine now and completely healed. He was adopted by Marc and now lives happily at his home. A tough job for Marc as Mulligan requires, and begs for, his yoghourt every day!
The centre is hosting Fortuna, 2 months old, no more hair and covered with wounds. She gets better each day and stays with Moth, they both enjoy each others company.

Cary Leander brought in a small dog in very poor condition. Once the dog has recovered, she will take it back home, in Cha Am, where she lives now.

A look at current events through the eyes of Transformational Thinking.
By Bill Gould

Models & Mentors
In the last article, we looked at world leaders and more or less challenged them to apply Transformational Thinking to their decisions, positing what a difference that could make in our collectively shared reality. Thank you for the many readers who shared their views via e-mail. Thank you to those who also recognized in that article that we must first challenge ourselves to improve our own reality and who took steps in that direction. Some of the results have been truly astounding, going to show that it works when you work it. This month, I want to continue in that vein and explore the essence of leadership. I have been asked to do a one-day workshop for a Financial Institute in Bangkok on Leadership and that has really got me thinking and we all know how dangerous that can be!
Leadership and management are not synonymous. Systems, projects and other such things are designed to be managed. People are designed to be led or to lead. While experience has shown me the need for both on a balanced level (the Middle Path) I have also seen too little leadership and too much management in the corporate arena and elsewhere. Perhaps that is because, in part, of the undue emphasis on management in the MBA textbooks. They have to do that. Otherwise, they would have to introduce human beings into the picture and that is much too complex and explosive an issue to introduce at that level of education, or so they would seem to think. The educational world is not known for its risk taking nature. The classroom must be controlled at all cost. Let's not introduce anything that may challenge the student to think for themselves or they might realize what we are offering them in no way prepares them for the real world. Think of the lost revenues as enrolments plummet!
I have always been a leader. From earliest age on, I made my own way and people either followed or I traveled alone. I think one of the largest common denominators of leadership is the desire to be responsible for one's own fate, to assume the responsibility for one's actions and have the freedom to act in accordance with one's belief system. When I seek personal models and recall former and current mentors, I often turn to the darkest times of my personal history, the war in Viet Nam and the first day I walked through the door of an AA meeting some twenty years ago.
My best thinking is what got me to Viet Nam. I certainly wasn't dumb enough to think I would survive on my current state of knowledge and immediately looked about for people to emulate, survivors. I identified two basic types of leaders in the military. The first was the one who said, "Go take that hill, boys!", sat down, lit a cigarette and waited. The second was the one who charged up the hill never looking back, shouting "Let's take that hill, boys!" You protected the second type with your life. You trusted and respected him. The first type was usually found with an M-16 slug in the back or "fragged" back at base camp while in the cold water shower. They were dangerous. They were the amateurs. You never know what an amateur is going to do next and that is what makes them dangerous. Extreme examples? I think not. Simple models we can learn from.
My first night in AA, my sponsor, good old Willis Brown, told me, "Pick out the winners. Look for the ones who not only have the years of sobriety under their belts but the serenity to match." Willis was certainly such a man. That was an extremely important life lesson! Combine that with the Viet Nam examples and they spring to life as real world models with which we can now work. We have just breathed the human spirit element into them. But let's first address the traditional management approaches and see why they are no longer as effective as they once may have been.
Traditional management approaches no longer work, particularly here in Thailand because . . .
You cannot transplant a Western system to an Eastern culture without taking the host culture into design thinking. I would be the first to agree that the Thai way of doing business could stand improvement but not at the cost of losing its positive aspects, of which there are many. Thai business is very people centered. It is all about personal connections. that can be a very interesting concept to play with in a pro active leadership program.
Most current management systems are process driven, not people driven. This is why programs like ISO and TQM are such a waste of energy and resources. I fond it interesting that GM, Chrysler and Ford demanded all their suppliers and their suppliers adhere to ISO standards yet none of them have implemented an ISO program within their own company.
Even the "best" Western systems are failing. Witness IBM, WorldCom and other such corporate giants, for years models of Western systems at work. Now we are beginning to see their ultimate effects, the long term disasters that many of us predicted some twenty years ago should the corporate charter yacht not alter course.
In consideration of the host culture, certain adjustments have to be made in the area of values before any true system design can take place. Purpose must be redefined by the stakeholders and the purpose must be translated into mission terms people can identify with and contribute towards. I have seen no current Western system capable of such an adjustment. Pliability is not one of traditional management systems' assets.
Tradtional management systems are hierarchical in design and this is an unnatural state of existence, a false environment that will stifle creativity and innovation, the life blood of any organization hoping to survive today's onslaught of change at such a rapid pace.
Most current management systems are based upon control and not true power. Control is great for systems but doesn't transfer so well to human beings.
That will do for starters, I guess. I am sure you get the point. What does this have to do with leadership? Plenty. That is precisely what is needed in today's corporate environment, true leadership, not elevated hierarchical stage puppets. When I view myself as a leader, I also view a person I would follow willingly. That becomes my model. Such models are hard to find in today's corporate arena. Top management in world leading organizations are being indicted or at least called to task for their golden parachute clauses while asking labor to take huge cuts to offset the results of poor management. Of course, many of them claim the world crisis was responsible. Sounds like the whimpering of victims of circumstance to me and not someone I would want to follow in any case.
The recent world events have us all considering the topic of leadership in at least an indirect way. Whether or not you judge a particular corporate or world "leader's" actions as being those of a sane person, you have to admit that the ripples he/she creates are long-reaching, indeed. I suppose I have a particular problem in both the political and the corporate arenas because I tend to filter everything through principles first. If I can't see principles, it isn't worth looking any further. Just a shortcut I sometimes use when sorting through huge numbers of people. That narrows the field considerably. Now, I want to point out that this is not a judgment call. It is based on experience. Every time I have seen an individual or an organization sacrifice principles for profit, it has been the beginning of their downfall, their Waterloo. Filling these "positions" are people. Real people, just like you and me. They are human beings and that is a great beginning point upon which to build our model. It must be human. (We just put the top twenty consulting firms out of business, running to their ISO manuals, feverishly searching in vain for anything to avert impending doom.)
Someone you can trust and respect. Subjective, but that shouldn't exclude it as a factor for consideration. (We just put the top twenty systems analysts out of work.) And someone who trusts and respects you. Should be a two-way street.
I want a good thinker. Now, again, that is not a prejudiced point of view, merely one filtered through many years of experience in this field. I want a person who is imaginative, creative and innovative, someone I can learn from. I also want that someone to tap into my creativity and allow me the room to grow. See how this is working, flowing both ways? Not just top down. This is an important lesson we should include in all MBA programs.
I want someone with whom I am aligned in purpose and whose purposes are in alignment with my own. I want that person to believe in what they are doing with passion and I want to share that passion. Equally, I want them to recognize my passions and know ho to create the opportunities for me to apply what I know, teach and learn.
Here's what it comes down to, folks. We have to design our own models and mentors because there just ain't that many of them out there in the real world. We have to ask ourselves, "Why?" Who are our heroes today? Sports figures? Okay. I can see that. Based on accomplishment, something easy for us to measure and something to which most of us aspire at some time or another. Stats are easy for most people to digest and certainly fit in with a linear thinking system. I tend to look at things a little differently. I want the ideal leader, not just a reasonable facsimile thereof. Someone I can trust twenty four hours a day and not situationally. Call me demanding.
There is a catch to all this thinking, by the way. There is that natural law we mentioned a few articles back that says that the more aware one becomes, the more responsible one becomes for one's actions in direct proportion. Uh! Oh! You mean . . .? Yeah. Perhaps I should have warned you before you got this far. It may be too late for you to turn back now. Sorry about that. As we sit here opining the perfect leader, creating an image (model) in our mind, we are also creating a bar for us to reach. As soon as the mind can conceive of it, it becomes possible. The only trick is finding the connections between here and there. They are always there. You just have to look for them and that is another attribute I want in my ideal leader's bag of tricks.
I once told Willis when I was thanking him for perhaps the one-millionth time for being such a good sponsor and mentor that the perfect guide was someone who let you stumble but who never let you fall. He grinned his usual sheepish white beard-covered knowing smile with that glint in his eye that said it all. He never was one much for words. That's something else I want in a leader. I believe they refer to it in the textbooks as empowerment but I have seen little evidence of it in the real world. Perhaps that is because they don't teach the difference between power and control. The leader knows the difference. Power is not something that is inherited, comes with a promotion or a title. It is all about experience. Power can only be earned and is given by people freely, never by directive from above or outside. That is control and whereas control may be great for systems, humans don't tend to operate that way, as we pointed out above. Know the difference and never lose sight of it. That's one of the keys to being an effective leader.
To borrow upon another AA experience, there is the Serenity Prayer: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can and the wisdom to know the difference." That is a great attribute for a leader. I want my ideal leader to have that one, too.
Based on another human being, real or contrived, living or passed on, the simple truth is that our models and mentors exist only in our minds. We create our own. As our awarness increases, do our actions reflect this change? Hmm. There's the real question, folks. It always comes home, doesn't it? responsibility. We are back to the individual, aren't we? What can I do with what I have learned through this exercise to improve my own reality? That's where the theory becomes reality and that is the only place it really matters.

We are all leaders in one area of our life or another. None of us are leaders in all. Certain leadership skills are transferable from one area to another, others inherent within the individual and others that can be taught and learned easily. That's is what Tansformational Thinking provides, the vehicle and the skills to attain the models and mentors we create for ourselves. Mostly, I apply what I know to my own life and it works for me. By sharing it with others, I have seen it help them, too. We apply it within our organization and it works for us. There is always room for improvement and none of us blind to our own lack of experience. That's when you start looking for the winners and emulating them, commonly referred to as faking it until making it.

See you next month. Keep on thinking!

Observer columnist Dave “Cocky” Cocksedge not enjoying his birthday at all!

Oam celebrates her birthday just before flying off to UK

Porn clearly delighted with her birthday cake!

Balloons all round for Nick and Alex’s party

Lenny and the gang get on with some serious birthday cake eating

Ian David and Orn enjoying a David’s birthday

Hamilton Accies Supporters Club (HK Branch) Chairman for life gets to share his cake with Jay

Toby, Bill and Steve find something to laugh about at Limelight

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