As I read a lot about happiness in the last year, I could not ignore this title

I found this Tony Hsieh, which I didn’t know, CEO of Zappos.com, which I didn’t know, offering a free copy of his new book for bloggers.

Few days later an UPC shipment is at my door: you know when you’re surprised because you’re not expecting anything, right?

Well I open the box and I found 2 advance reading copies of the “Delivering Happiness” book.
My natural reaction was a big WOW: 2 copies of a book not yet published delivered by express international shipment. WOW.

Well, after reading the book, I understood this was exactly the purpose of it. Tony’s culture, that reflects in Zappos way of operate, is all built around the “WOW effect”: the reaction of positive surprise, when something unexpected exceed our expectation and we struggle to believe it’s true.

Turned out that Tony Hsieh is a young and rich entrepreneur running the biggest online shoes shop: www.zappos.com
But that’s not the interesting part. Tony is different than others young and reach entrepreneur because he’s moved by an higher purpose.
He strives to deliver happiness, to generate joy for himself and for everyone else.

The book is in 3 parts.

In the first part (Profits) Tony writes about his life, how since his childhood he has always had a business oriented mindset (trying to build a worms factory, for example!) and later on how as a teenager went through different interests and experiences.
I loved how he could get lessons out of every experience. That’s what experiences are made for.
It’s not important which experiences you go through… for Tony was playing poker and going to rave parties, for someone else can be playing soccer and camping.
It doesn’t matter. What matters is the lesson you get out of it.
In some parts Tony can be seen as the classic lucky guy that got millions from the Internet boom, but is Tony’s way of openly and honestly shares what every passion gave him that shows that Tony has something more than money and ideas, Tony is looking for an higher purpose.

It’s when he decided to risk all his money into Zappos that this becomes clear.
There’s a sentence here that opened my eyes… “I had discovered my new passion. I was passionate about proving everyone wrong.”.

Tony’s passion is not in shoes. Passion is not in our job. Passion is in ourself. This made me realize that the passion I had for IT (that leaded me to a humbly great career) was not about IT, but was about proving that I could be part of this system and built a position.

The second part (Profits and passion) is all about Zappos, since Tony’s decision to fully dedicate his time to it.
From the hard and uncertain times of the beginning to the affirmation of the company built around culture and core values.
This part isn’t my favourite, but this is me. I’m more interested in Tony’s personal journey than in business management… but still, this is a pleasant read full of amazing anecdotes and contributions from Zappos employees.

The section 3 of the book (Profit, passion and purpose) is not just the closing chapter with some ideas about further business development.
It’s the disclosure of what is behind the creation of the “delivering happiness” concept.
This is the part I love the most. It talks about life purpose, science of happiness and happiness framework… and close with a set of questions for YOU to think.
In this part the analysis of happiness top my previous favourite one from “the 4 hours work week” by Tim Ferris… there happiness is excitement, while here passion is a kin of happiness before reaching an higher purpose.

If you’re looking for inspiration about how to live before you die… this is one of the book I would recommend you to have

http://www.deliveringhappinessbook.com

This book is available via Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/deliveringhappiness

1. oltre che allo storico indirizzo http://daniele.itvc.net (il dominio ha 5 anni!) il blog e’ ora raggiungibile a http://www.danielebesana.com

2. visto che mi sento in qualche modo internazionalizzato, ho iniziato a scrivere i posto sia in Italiano che in Inglese. Per passare da una lingua all’altra, cerca le bandiere nella colonna a destra (son sicuro che le puoi trovare)

My end results:

SECTION I:    TROUBLESHOOTING AND SYSTEM MAINTENANCE
Compulsory Section I score:                        50.0
Non-compulsory Section I score:                    50.0
Overall Section I score:                           100

SECTION II:  INSTALLATION AND CONFIGURATION
RHCT components score:                             100.0
RHCE components score:                             89.3

RHCE Certification:                                PASS

Congratulations -- you are now certified as a Red Hat Certified Engineer!  Your RHCE Certificate number is 805008660832359.

As the failure rate on the first attempt is around 50%, I’m very proud to say that I passed at the first try! B-)

This are few recommendation for people that are willing to get this important certification:

• when you plan your study, complete the online pre-assessment questionnaires. They’re very well done and will give suggestion on what training/level is good for you
• join the right RedHat training for your level: they’re simply great. But go to the training already prepared: study BEFORE join the class, so that you can use the training to go deeper and build conficence rather than learn things from 0. At least the RH300 (the one I followed) is VERY intense!
• always check the RHCE Prep Guide, and focus only on the topic listed there. If something is not written there WON’T be in the exam
• be sure to be confident with ALL the topics, don’t sit for the exam hoping that something won’t be tested
• time is very important so be ready to work fast
• experience is even more important, so use and play with RedHat as much as you can

Good luck if you plan to go for the RHCE, I’m going to celebrate now

Just yesterday I succesfully passed the JNCIS-FWV certification exam, what a relief!

Now I’m a JuNiper Certified Internet Specialist for Firewall and Vpn products.

To who’s willing to pass this exam, I can suggest to stroongly study the 4 training course books:

• INSG
• NMTP
• NAVI
• INHN

And complete all the LABs… it’s very important.

I found usefull also this study guide:

http://www.qorbit.net/nn/Apr-2005/2901.html

but pay attention, there’re a lot of errors in the explanations and in the Q/A reviews.

Btw, the exam is not easy.

There’re many questions about Virtual Systems, definetly is the hardest topic covered: practice helps a lot, expecially with Admin permissions.
Some questions are related to debugging and troubleshooting, so be sure that you can read a DEBUG or a SNOOP output and understand what happens…

And be fast, I run out of time during the review of the marked questions, probably ’cause I’m not English mother tongue and I had to fully understand the tricky questions.

Good luck!