I am not a very Holiday oriented person.  I mark them passing, but they are, for me, essentially extensions of the weekend.  Days with less work, and a little more peacful, with a reduction in the amount of phone calls and emails.  Of course, I go through the motions for the family, as it is important to have these touchstones.

This year, though, I find myself truly happy to see the passing of the year, and the dawn of a new one.

2007 was, personally and professionally, a simply horrible year.  Maybe not the worst of my life, but certainly not the best.

It began, in earnest, when on Jan 2, I found out that a friend and mentor had passed away.  As January progressed, we discovered at work that making the transition to a new software platform for the business would be slightly more painfaul than the two weeks of chaos we had been promised… It was more like three or four months.

Things went that way through the summer, until late this fall, we found that my brother had a serious medical problem, that might have been cancerous as well.

As the year ended, my Brother is fine, and mending, but my friend and mentor is still gone, and his legacy is fading fast.  It looks like issues at work have bottomed out, and may start to improve, though I am finding that there are other opportunities out there.

2008 will have it’s own issues and problems.  It started last night, with the Fireworks “computer error” at the space needle (Y2K08), and near the end we will have another Presidential election to live through.

But, it’s another chance to try to get things right.  Good luck to everyone for a better year!

Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table.

-George Schultz

Sanctions and negotiations can be very ineffective, and indeed foolish, unless the people you are talking with and negotiating with and trying to reach agreements with are people who can be trusted to keep their word.

-Caspar Weinberger

We don’t point a pistol at our own forehead. That is not the way to conduct negotiations.

-Benjamin Netanyahu

The above courtesy of Brainyquote.

The quote I was looking for went something like this:

The Weak do not negotiate - they are dictated to by the Strong. 

Negotiations are only possible in two situations:

Between Equals, or qualitatively/quantitatively matched forces.  On occasion, it is in the interests of a stronger party to grant “equal status” to a negotiating partner. 

Between a smaller/weaker party and a larger/stronger enemy, if the latter has losts its will.

     In the second instance, there are two permutations: 

          1.  The smaller/weaker party is simply using the negotiations to “freeze the field”, and consolidate gains, with the potential of returning to the field in the future.

          2.  The smaller/weaker party is simply using the negotiations as a distraction, while continuing to conflict in other venues, or behind the scenes.

Unfortunately for America, we seem to be stuck in the Second situation, since WWII.  The only real exception has been Iraq and Afghanistan, but the Democrat Party would desperately love to that route on those conflicts as well.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.

-Winston Churchill

People being people, most things that have happended in history are cyclical, and, within bounds, can be applied to the present and future.

History is full of lessons, that we fail to heed at the price of learning them directly.

Courtesy of DANEgerus:

“In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free.”

– Edward Gibbon

“Either you create your future, or you become the victim of the future someone creates for you.”

-Vice Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski, USN