Daily Thoughts 8/9/2009

Mme Recamier in ihrer Wohnung 1824 Lithographie von Aubry-Lecomte nach de Juinne. A reworking of the famous David painting (from Wikimedia). The image was interesting.

Daily Thoughts 8/9/2009

Last night, I stayed up late reading Dean Koontz's Frankenstein City of Night. I found the book to be quite compelling. There is also a graphic novel of the series. I rather liked the website http://frankenstein.deankoontz.com/

I read some of Keeping Customers this afternoon. One of the key ideas that came across to me was that it is necessary to keep customers coming back and create a feedback loop where they tell you what they want, you provide it for them, and then they come back and ask for more.

Today, I did my exercises and watched Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Doctor Watson. This dvd was from 35mm films restored by the UCLA film and television archive. There is a booklet which comes with the films I watched this weekend which describes the films. The Voice of Terror was released in 1942, Sherlock Holmes is hired by an inner government group to find a saboteur broadcasting over the radio. He must stop the continued destruction of ships, factories, oil wells, trains, and munitions. It was a bit different watching this film. The director of the film added some war propaganda and a few very pretty blonde women to the story to make it more appealing.

I decided I wanted to get a better grip on the underlying concept of management. There are a few books which I think speak the language. I put a few books on hold, The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie, Peter F. Drucker The Concept of the Corporation and The Practice of Management. The Practice of Management is supposed to be one of the first books to look at management as a separate disciple. I also am going to try and read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. I could never really get into Rand's books that much. I have already read The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker and Good To Great by Jim Collins.