Today, my brand new MacBook Pro arrived. I have maxed it out on all specs in terms of performance–it is the fastest laptop on the planet.

I’ve never ever used a Mac before, except from the usual 30 seconds you get once in a while in an electronics store, so I am looking very much forward to seeing how I’ll like it. I will still keep my beloved Thinkpad, though :-)

So if you have good tips for Mac beginners, must-have apps that I need to get or anything like that, please let me know.

As I have mentioned before, I’m currently writing my Master’s thesis — which I hope I’ll get the time to tell you about. The thing is, when I work on it all day, I really don’t feel like spending my evenings trying to write a post for my blog. At the latest, I’ll write up the ideas of the thesis when it’s done and over with. :-)

Anyway, because I’m writing my thesis I am re-reading a book I bought in the NYU book store in the fall of 2004 when I lived in New York City. The book is called The Elements of Style (by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White) and is about usage and style of well-written English. It is my absolute favourite book on the topic, it is short and it is to the point.

However, the point I want to make in this post is actually far from the subject matter of the book. But in the introduction to the book is an important point:

If you don’t know how to pronounce a word, say it out loud!

This sentence, one that William Strunk repeated over and over in his classes, is a metaphor or something bigger. Please don’t hide what you can’t do, because if you do, you’ll never learn.

There is a lot of talk about Google (GOOG) these days because they broke the 500 dollar/share roof. The valuation seems crazy, but I haven’t looked into whether it is sustainable or not, so let’s not discuss that :-)
However, I had a little look into the money Google spends on innovation (or research and development) versus Yahoo (YHOO) — and Yahoo has outspent Google every year for the past five years (I didn’t look further back). Still, if we look at the stock price since Google went public, Yahoo’s share price is flat compared to Google, whose share has quadrupled.

Here is a slide illustrating that point exactly from a presentation my good friend Thomas Joachim Hansen and I held yesterday.

Those who know me, know that I’m fond of cars, very fond of BMW, and particularly fond of the BMW M5. Well, I can’t but share this video my brother pointed to me on YouTube.

It’s always showtime, but I guess it’s a little more showtime than usual in Copenhagen tonight.

I’m reading a great book right now — Difficult Conversations it’s called (I’ll give you a review when I’m done with it) — which is about how you handle the tough, emotionally charged conversations that you inevitably face in life.

That type of conversations are probably not on the top of your wish list, but when they are there, you need to deal with them properly, and you need to make sure that you address both the feelings of you and the party with whom you’re speaking. We should not forget either, that it is these types of conversations that also shape a great deal of our character.

At this time, I wanted to share a section from the beginning of the book, and then I’ll get back to reviewing it in a later post, once I’ve finished reading it.

There Is No Such Thing as a Diplomatic Hand Grenade

Desperate for a way out of the dilemma, we wonder if it is possible to be so tactful, so overwhelmingly pleasant that everything ends up fine.

Tact is good, but it’s not the answer to difficult conversations. Tact won’t make conversations with your father more intimate or take away your client’s anger over the increased bill. Nor is there a simple diplomatic way to fire your friend, to let your mother-in-law know that she drives you crazy, or to confront your colleagues’ hurtful prejudices.

Delivering a difficult message is like throwing a hand grenade. Coated with sugar, thrown hard or soft, a hand grenade is still going to do damage. Try as you may, there’s no way to throw a hand grenade with tact or to outrun the consequences. And keeping it to yourself is no better. Choosing not deliver a difficult message is like hanging on to a hand grenade once you’ve pulled the pin.