In article , Leo
writes:

Alun,

Interesting points - my responses are below:

On 21 Sep 2003 04:51:33 GMT, Alun Palmer wrote:

Leo wrote in
m:

Very well said, Dee - anything is possible if you want to do it badly
enough..

And if you want to do it badly enough you may end up doing it so badly
that it would have been better if you had not tried!

Alun, a defeatist attitude only condemns one to failure. Have
confidence in yourself - look at the things that you have done in your
life - if you had not tried, where would you be now? Maybe you will
try and fail - but to never try is to fail anyway....

No one says that you have to be an expert at everything - competent is
good enough!

I am certainly no prodigy at morse, electronics, martial
arts, cooking, business management or anything else - but I have
always been able to accomplish the things that I was motivated to do.
Mind you, it took me until I was 45 to become motivated enough to
learn morse code - but I wanted to get on HF, focused on the goal,
bought some training software online and passed the 5 wpm test four
weeks later. Conversely, I have wanted to learn to play the guitar
since I was a teenager - not sufficiently enough, though, as I never
did do it. Which, in retrospect, is probably a good thing....

Talent has very little to do with accomplishment (it does relate to
the level of excellence that one can attain

Indeed it does. There are some things that I will never be excellent at,
and Morse code is one of them.

Me too - good enough to pass the required exam, but that's about it!
But, passing the exam was the goal (as required by law - the "price of
admission" to HF) - and I achieved that 100 percent! (with my 10
percent morse skills, which may never be used again - they served
their purpose! God rest my morse skills.)

, but to become reasonably
proficient in anything talent is not a factor), especially in ventures
based primarily on rote repetition like morse, Karate, or learning a
language. Aptitude and motivation, yes, but not talent. Otherwise,
I'd have accomplished nothing so far

Blaming a lack of talent for failure to accomplish something reflects
on a persons' own inability to accept responsibility for their own
actions

So you can do anything can you? Do you beat up on yourself whenever you
fail at something? That doesn't sound very healthy to me.

No, but I do strive to achieve those goals that I set for myself. If
I fail, then fine, if I know that I put in the best effort that I
could, I'll accept it - but that doesn't happen often. I suspect
that, if you do a quick review of your past goals and achievements,
you'll come up with a similar success rate.....

- successful people, quite simply, go out and get what they
want. Or, in the words of Albert Gray:

"Successful people are successful because they form the habits of
doing those things that failures don't like to do"

73, Leo


Fine qualities for a chairman of a Fortune 500 company maybe, but as a
condition for admission into a hobby???

Fine qualities for anyone, actually (my posting had nothing at all to
do with the admission requirements into this or any other hobby,
simply the innate ability of people to accomplish whatever they set
their minds to. (Based on their abilities, of course - reality check
time). For example, I'm sure that you have developed the self
discipline to do what needs to be done in your life, even if
occasionally difficult or distasteful, haven't you? Therein lies the
meaning of the quote. Failures always have an excuse why they
couldn't get things completed.

A failure usually engineers their own fate. In my career as a
manager, I have never considered anyone who gave something their best
shot to have failed! The mark of a true loser is someone who gives up
before he tries.....and has a dozen reasons why it wouldn't have been
possible anyway......

A "manager?!?"

At Anonymous Electronics, Inc., no doubt.

As a career electronics design engineer I never had a Real manager
who wanted to hold on to the past for dear life...or make either work
or life experience some kind of "test" for "moral qualities." Do the
assigned work successfully and one gets paid...a test every week.
I passed all of those. Took some doing but it was done.

At NO company was there a willingness to hold on to the PAST in
methods, standards, or behavior. If there was a BETTER way to do
something, we tried to do it. That took much more work, but was very
satisfying when we did it.

Amateur radio is NOT professional radio, true, but I fail to see all the
moral indignation over those not caring to learn morse code for a ham
license. Sorry "Leo" but a half century ago I did 3 years of military
radio communications on HF, trans-Pacific, without ever having to use
morse code or be required to know it. It wasn't needed then, it isn't
needed now to communicate on HF radio.

WRC-03 removed the old S25.5 requirement...at the urging of the IARU
and several countries. ARRL still refuses to take a stand on the code
test. Seven or eight nations of the world have dropped code testing for
ham licenses. More will follow as COMMON SENSE dawns on ham
radio regulation.

If you start cackling about "traditional values" and other homilies about
code testing "always a part of amateur radio," then YOU lost it, not the
NCTAs. You cannot be some kind of moral superior for demanding that
"everyone else has to do it like you did."

Leonard H. Anderson
not anonymous, mailing address the same as in HR magazine bylines