About Me

Filed under: Uncategorized Vidal — over 5 years ago

I was born and grew up in Miami, Florida where I attended Coral Gables Senior High. In 1988, I graduated from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Then I continued at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles where I earned a Masters degree in Computer Engineering. I hold an M.B.A. from Santa Clara University .

I founded and lead iambic, Inc. a software company in Sunnyvale, CA that developed the best selling applications for Palm OS and Symbian devices. I have 12 years engineering and management experience in the mobile area. Prior to founding iambic, Inc. in 1994 , I worked as a software engineer at a variety of high-tech firms including Bell Communications Research, Frame Technology (later acquired by Adobe), and Novell.

See my professional resume.

View Vidal Graupera's profile on LinkedIn

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Links

Filed under: Uncategorized Vidal — over 5 years ago

Dining

  • Los Cubanos. Excellent new Cuban Restaurant in downtown San Jose, CA.
  • Havana Mania. Excellent Cuban Restaurant in Redondo Beach, CA.
  • House of Siam. Downtown San Jose, CA.
  • Straits Cafe and Pizza Antica at Santana Row
  • Tied House. Mountain View, CA and downtown San Jose, CA.
  • Britannia Arms various locations in the Bay Area including one in walking distance of my house

Bloggers

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Other

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DVDs about Business

Filed under: Uncategorized Vidal — over 4 years ago
Here are some interesting movies and TV series about business. Some of them are funny and others inspirational.
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Books

Filed under: Uncategorized Vidal — over 4 years ago
Here are some interesting business, history, biography and psychology books I have read recently in no particular order.
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About This Site

Filed under: Uncategorized Vidal — over 4 years ago

Welcome. This site has been created for two purposes: (1) as a place to share some of my experiences, interests, photos, and fun stuff with my friends, family and the new people I continually meet; and (2) as a testing ground for my experiements in new media and interesting Internet stuff.

My life is a work in progress. I love learning, and I constantly challenge myself to expand my mind. All of life's challenges I view as opportunities for positive change and growth. I'll share with you here some of the resources that I have found interesting to address those challenges. Please feel free to share your thoughts and recommendations with me.

Thank you for stopping by. Please feel free to register and leave a comment.

Oh, and don't take anything you see here, or don't see here too seriously.

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Inspirational Quotes

Filed under: Uncategorized Vidal — over 4 years ago
  • Change the World or Go Home
  • Free Hugs Campaign. Inspiring Story! (music by sick puppies)
  • "The simplest explanation is usually the best." ~ William of Ockham
  • Mother Teresa's Anyway Poem

    People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered;
    Forgive them anyway.

    If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
    Be kind anyway.

    If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
    Succeed anyway.

    If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
    Be honest and frank anyway.

    What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
    Build anyway.

    If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
    Be happy anyway.

    The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
    Do good anyway.

    Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
    Give the world the best you've got anyway.

  • Patton
  • "Distraction is the manifestation of the fear of doing something important." ~ Justin Hersh
  • “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.â€? ~ Marianne Williamson
  • "If it isn’t broken, you’re not trying hard enough." ~Unknown
  • "Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else." ~Leonardo da Vinci
  • "It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things." ~Leonardo da Vinci
  • "I always tell the kids, 'You know what’s great about going the extra mile? There’s very little traffic.'â€? ~ Jim Larranaga, George Mason University basketball coach
  • "If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing." ~ Margaret Thatcher, British stateswoman
  • "If you have no critics you likely have no successes." ~ Malcolm Forbes, publisher
  • "A goal properly set is halfway reached." ~ Zig Ziglar, motivational coach
  • "Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in a fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside than in bed." ~ Charles A. Lindbergh, aviator
  • "Things do not happen. Things are made to happen." ~ JFK
  • “Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past.â€? ~Dr. Jerry Jampolsky
  • “He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever." ~Chinese proverb
  • "Talk doesn't cook rice." ~Chinese proverb
  • "If you have the opportunity to play this game of life you need to appreciate every moment. A lot of people don`t appreciate the moment until it's passed." ~Kanye West
  • "Nothing in life is promised except death." ~Kanye West
  • In America, they want you to accomplish these great feats, to pull off these David Copperfield-type stunts. You want me to be great, but you don't ever want me to say I'm great?" ~Kanye West
  • “We all self-conscious. I'm just the first to admit itâ€? ~Kanye West
  • "Do one thing every day that scares you.â€?—Eleanor Roosevelt
  • “Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.â€?—James Dean
  • “If you don’t listen, you don’t sell anything.â€?—Carolyn Marland/MD/Guardian Group
  • “Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.â€?—Margaret Mead
  • “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.â€?—Oscar Wilde
  • “Make your life itself a creative work of art.â€?—Mike Ray, The Highest Goal
  • “Have you invested as much this year in your career as in your car?â€?—Molly Sargent
  • “The most successful people are those who are good at plan B.â€?—James Yorke, mathematician, on chaos theory in The New Scientist
  • “People want to be part of something larger than themselves. They want to be part of something they’re really proud of, that they’ll fight for, sacrifice for, that they trust.â€?—Howard Schultz, Starbucks
  • “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.â€?—Charles Darwin
  • “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.â€?—General Eric Shinseki, retired Chief of Staff, U. S. Army
  • “If things seem under control, you’re just not going fast enough.â€?—Mario Andretti
  • “You can’t behave in a calm, rational manner. You’ve got to be out there on the lunatic fringe.â€?—Jack Welch, retired CEO, GE
  • “We have a ‘strategic’ plan. It’s called doing things.â€?—Herb Kelleher, founder, Southwest Airlines
  • “I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living, or get busy dying.â€?—The Shawshank Redemption (Tim Robbins)
  • “You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend or not.â€?—Isabel Allende
  • “Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm.â€?—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  • “If you’re enthusiastic about the things you’re working on, people will come ask you to do interesting things.â€?—James Woolsey, former CIA director
  • “A man without a smiling face must not open a shop.â€?—Chinese proverb
  • "The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." ~Michelangelo
  • “A year from now you may wish you had started today.â€? —Karen Lamb
  • “There's a reason that Americans (and Californians especially) accomplish so much - it's that optimisitic spirit. It can be deeply annoying, but it's massively effective.â€? ~Russell Davies
  • “80% of success is showing up.â€? ~Woody Allen
  • "non scholæ sed vitæ discimus" [we do not learn for school, but for life] ~Seneca
  • "Never miss an opportunity to be fabulous." ~Tina Seelig
  • "It is never too late to be what you might have been." ~George Elliot, writer
  • "The road to success is marked with many attracitve parking spots." ~Christina Harbridge Law
  • "My tax return in the United States has to be kept on a special computer because their normal computers can't deal with the numbers." ~Bill Gates
  • "The dream you don't fight for can haunt you for the rest of your life." ~ Rodney's father, Robots the Movie
  • "Be the change you wish to see in the world." ~ Gandhi
  • "The only people for me are the mad ones...the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars." ~ Jack Kerouac
  • "The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." ~ Lao Tzu
  • "He who knows others is wise; He who know himself is enlightened." ~ Lao Tzu
  • "Happiness is a journey, not a destination. For a long time it seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. This perspective has helped me to see there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way. So treasure every moment you have and remember that time waits for no one." ~ Souza
  • "What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?" ~Unknown
  • "If you are going to doubt something, doubt your limits." ~Don Ward
  • "Once you have tasted flight...you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return." ~Leonard da Vinci
  • "Leap and the net will appear." ~Zen saying
  • "Friendship is when people know all about you but like you anyway." ~Anonymous
  • "Never let the odds keep you from doing what you know in your heart you were meant to do." ~H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
  • "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it...not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense." ~Buddha
  • "There is no use trying," said Alice..."one can't believe impossible things." "I dare say you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." ~Lewis Carroll
  • "If you're going through hell, keep going..." ~Churchill
  • "If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves." ~Thomas Edison
  • "Every truly great accomplishment is at first impossible." ~ Fortune Cookie
  • "The road to success is always under construction." ~ Unknown
  • "Nothing will be accomplished if all possible objections must be overcome first." ~David Cummings
  • "As long as your going to be thinking anyway, think big. " ~ Donald Trump
  • "Show me someone without an ego, and I'll show you a loser." ~ Donald Trump
  • "With out passion you don't have energy, with out energy you have nothing." ~ Donald Trump
  • "I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present. That's were the fun is." ~ Donald Trump
  • "Experience taught me a few things. One is to listen to your gut, no matter how good something sounds on paper. The second is that you're generally better off sticking with what you know. And the third is that sometimes your best investments are the ones you don't make." ~ Donald Trump
  • "Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war." ~ Donald Trump
  • "When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. " ~ Steve Jobs.
  • Video of the above speech Click here for the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
  • "Hope is not a strategy."
  • "On the plains of hesitation bleach the bones of countless millions who, on the dawn of victory, stopped to rest and died." ~ Omar Khayyam, mathematician, philosopher
  • "The Arena: It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy course; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat." ~ Theodore Roosevelt, speech in Paris, at the Sorbonne, April 23, 1910
  • "You're never beaten until you admit it." ~ General George S. Patton, Jr
  • "Now if you are going to win any battle you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up. It is always tired morning, noon, and night. But the body is never tired if the mind is not tired. When you were younger the mind could make you dance all night, and the body was never tired...You've always got to make the mind take over and keep going." ~ General George S. Patton, Jr., U.S. Army General and 1912 Olympian
  • "There are no secrets, only information you don't yet have..." ~Adam Curry
  • "The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser - in case you thought optimism was dead." ~Robert Brault
  • "Optimists are nostalgic about the future." ~Chicago Tribune
  • "A pessimist is a man who thinks all women are bad. An optimist is a man who hopes they are." ~Chauncey Mitchell Depew
  • "A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties." ~Harry S. Truman
  • "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true." ~James Branch Cabell
  • "There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist." ~Mark Twain
  • "vita non est vivere sed valere vita est .. life is more than merely staying alive"
  • Miyagi: Now, ready? Daniel Larusso: I guess so. Miyagi: [sighs] Daniel-san, must talk. Man walk on road. Walk left side, safe. Walk right side, safe. Walk down middle, sooner or later, get squished [makes squish gesture] just like grape. Same here. You karate do "yes," or karate do "no." You karate do "guess so," [makes squish gesture] just like grape. Understand? Daniel Larusso: Yeah, I understand. Miyagi: Now, ready? Daniel Larusso: Yeah, I'm ready.
  • Mongol General: Wrong! Conan, what is best in life? Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women! Mongol General: That is good.
  • “A man who drinks only water has a secret to hide from his fellow men.â€? ~ Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), French poet
  • "The first responsiblity of a leader is to define reality." ~ Max DePree
  • "The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes." ~ Tony Blair
  • "Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up and knows that it must run faster than the fastest lion, or it will be caught. Every morning a lion wakes up and knows that it must outrun the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It matters not whether you are a lion or a gazelle, when the sun comes up, you had better be running." .......African parable
  • "Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says, 'Make me feel important.' Not only will you succeed in sales, you will succeed in life." ~ Mary Kay Ask, founder of Mary Kay
  • "I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened." ~ Mark Twain
  • "I dont know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." ~Bill Cosby
  • "All men make mistakes, but married men find out sooner." ~Red Skelton
  • "Advertising is based on the old observation that every man is really two men -- the man he is and the man he wants to be." ~William Feather
  • "The difference between intelligence and stupidity is that there are some limits on intelligence."
  • "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."~ Napoleon Bonaparte
  • "The future is here. It's not just evenly distributed yet."~ William Gibson
  • "Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them." ~Albert Einstein
  • "Entrepreneurs are simply those who understand that there is little difference between obstacle and opportunity and are able to turn both to their advantage." ~Niccolo Machiavelli
  • "Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil. " ~Niccolo Machiavelli
  • "Hence it comes about that all armed Prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed Prophets have been destroyed." ~Niccolo Machiavelli
  • "It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both." ~Niccolo Machiavelli
  • "The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him." ~Niccolo Machiavelli
  • "Never confuse motion with action." ~Benjamin Franklin
  • "Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today. " ~Benjamin Franklin
  • "The ninety-nine percent important thing to do in a company is to win, OK. The one percent is to be very, very nice while you're winning. " ~Eric Schmidt, CEO Google
  • "Do or do not... there is no try." ~Yoda
  • "Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." ~Yoda
  • "[Luke:] I can’t believe it. [Yoda:] That is why you fail."
  • "Ohhh. Great warrior. Wars not make one great." ~Yoda
  • "Tomorrow when you come to work, if it doesn't make the customer happy, move the business forward, and save us money, don't." ~Reed Hastings, CEO, Netflix.com
  • "For me life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer." ~Arnold Schwarzenegger
  • "Money doesn't make you happy. I now have $50 million but I was just as happy when I had $48 million." ~Arnold Schwarzenegger
  • "The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it, as long as you really believe 100 percent." ~Arnold Schwarzenegger
  • "The last three or four reps is what makes the muscle grow. This area of pain divides the champion from someone else who is not a champion. That's what most people lack, having the guts to go on and just say they'll go through the pain no matter what happens." ~Arnold Schwarzenegger
  • "When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength." ~Arnold Schwarzenegger
  • "If they don't have the guts, I call them girlie men." ~Arnold Schwarzenegger
  • "To be a photographer, if a day goes by without doing something related to photography, something essential to existencae has been ignored." ~Advertisement for Academy of Art SF [Vidal' comment: substitute photographer and photography with any passion you have]
  • "The cost of computing has dropped exponentially, but the cost of thinking is what it always was." ~Zvi Griliches, Harvard
  • It's better to enter the mouth of a tiger than a court of law. ~Chinese proverb
  • A happy death is better than a lawsuit. ~Spanish proverb
  • A lawyer is an expert on justice in the same way a prostitute is an expert on love. ~Unknown
  • Talk is cheap until you hire a lawyer.~Unknown
  • "The time is always right to do what is right." ~Martin Luther King Jr.
  • "The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers." ~Ralph Nader
  • "One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." ~Elbert Hubbard
  • "There are times when a man should be content with what he has but never with what he is." ~William George Jordan
  • Are you fit company for the person you wish to become? ~Unknown
  • Attitude determines altitude. ~Unknown
  • "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." ~William Shakespeare
  • "Never let yesterday use up too much of today." ~Will Rogers
  • "Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else." ~Will Rogers
  • "Even if your on the right track you'll get run over if you just sit there." ~Will Rogers
  • "Never write when you can talk. Never talk when you can nod. And never put anything in an e-mail." ~Eliot Spitzer
  • More persons, on the whole, are humbugged by believing in nothing, than by believing too much. ~P.T. (Phineas Taylor) Barnum, 1810 - 1891
  • Every crowd has a silver lining. ~P.T. (Phineas Taylor) Barnum, 1810 - 1891
  • Money is in some respects life's fire: it is a very excellent servant, but a terrible master. ~P.T. (Phineas Taylor) Barnum, 1810 - 1891
  • Whatever you do, do it with all your might. Work at it, early and late, in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned, and never deferring for a single hour that which can be done just as well as now. ~P.T. (Phineas Taylor) Barnum, 1810 - 1891
  • This is a trading world and men, women, and children, who cannot live on gravity alone, need something to satisfy their gayer, lighter moods and hours, and he who ministers to this want is in a business established by the Author of our nature. ~P.T. (Phineas Taylor) Barnum, 1810 - 1891
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Feedburner RSS Feed

Filed under: Uncategorized Vidal — over 4 years ago
Feedburner Logo If you are subscribed to this site via RSS, please resubscribe to my new feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/vidalgraupera. In order to enable video and podcasting, and for a variety of other good reasons, I have switched the feed for this site to Feedburner which provides RSS 2.0 feeds with enclosures.
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Music

Filed under: Uncategorized Vidal — over 4 years ago
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