Hasta La Gadget!

Monday was a rough day for the members of Blink-182 as well the group’s fans. It all started when a press statement emerged stating that guitarist/vocalist Tom DeLonge had “indefinitely” departed from the band. A little later, DeLonge responded that he “never quit” Blink-182, but that the statement had been sanctioned by bassist/vocalist Mark Hoppus and drummer Travis Barker. Then, in an exclusive interview with Rolling Stone, Hoppus and Barker said that the “disrespectful and ungrateful” DeLonge was indeed out of the band, as indicated by emails from his manager.

Now, DeLonge has posted a rather lengthy note to Facebook to share his side of the story. Explaining the efforts to which he went to help move the band forward, he cited the recording of their 2012 EP, “Dogs Eating Dogs,” as a moment of “self-sabotage” for them. Leading the charge on the recording process, DeLonge says that he spent two months in the studio, while Hoppus and Barker only came in for 11 days.

“At one point, squabbling and politics forced me to pull the EP down at a time when 60,000 fans were trying to purchase it,” DeLonge wrote. “And that blew my mind. I’d been trying so hard but that moment ultimately broke my spirit. I then realized that this band couldn’t lose the years of ill will.”

As Blink-182 searched for a partner to support the recording of a new album, DeLonge was also engaged in crafting a variety of projects for his other band, Angels & Airwaves, as well as launching a media company. According to DeLonge, he was then handed a “60-page Blink contract” prohibiting him from releasing an Angels & Airwaves album for nine months, and stating that the new Blink-182 album had to be finished in six months, creating an even greater rift in the band.

In the end, DeLonge wrote that he still cares for Hoppus and Barker, as “brothers” and “old friends,” but following Monday’s actions, their relationship has been “poisoned.”

“Never planned on quitting, just find it hard as hell to commit,” DeLonge concluded.

Read the full note below.

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Like millions of my fellow Baby Boomers, I deeply care about the future of our planet and the well-being of current and future generations. My concern is based on the values I grew up with on a farm, in a small village in West Germany after World War II. Growing up in that village, I could see the immediate impact of a person’s actions on others and on the community as a whole. Wherever I traveled or worked around the world, I took these lessons with me. This realization hit me during a business trip to Asia in the year before 9/11.

Jet-lagged, I had awakened in the middle of the night and turned on the TV only to find a news story about an ethnic war in Africa, in which paramilitary troops of one ethnic group were raging through the villages of another — cutting off the arms of every little child they could find. They forced the father of each child (with a gun pointed at his head) to hold his own child’s hands during this brutal act. At that moment I thought of my son at home, and I identified in a very painful way with these fathers, imagining myself in their shoes. At that moment, I became painfully aware that, after nearly 30 years working in two successful careers, I had yet to work on the world issues I cared about most.

After two years without making a decision on how this experience should change my career direction, I walked the Camino de Santiago across northern Spain (The Way of St. James,) hoping some sign would show up. Thankfully, that sign came during the 35 day walk, in the form of a conversation I had with a fellow traveler, where I helped him to rediscover his passion for painting. He later let me know that this conversation had inspired him to transform his community into an art town. Through this experience I came to realize not only my talent and passion for coaching, but also how coaching can be an effective way to mobilize a person.

Although I had started to use coaching more and more in my business and management career, it wasn’t until three years later that I made the connection to the emerging field of social and environmental sustainability as an opportunity to help people find meaning and greater purpose in their work. At the Bainbridge Graduate Institute (B.G.I.) at Pinchot University, which was pioneering a new M.B.A. program to lead social and environmental innovation, I learned about the inspiring work of Dr. G. Venkataswamy (Dr. V.). After retiring from government service at the age of 58, he became a social entrepreneur, developing the Aravind Eye Care System which provides low cost eye care services, preventing blindness or restoring eyesight for millions of poor people throughout India.

Dr. V’s case and many other cases that I studied had one thing in common: their success was based on the ability to mobilize people to find and implement solutions. I became convinced, if one could mobilize enough people throughout the world, many of the big issues that threaten the future of our children could be solved. One of the biggest pools of people ready to be mobilized can be found among the 76 million Baby Boomers in the U.S., as demonstrated in the 2014 study by Encore.org and Penn Schoen Berland, which states that 25 million Americans 50 to 70 years old are eager to share their skills, passions and expertise to address social and environmental needs. (http://www.encore.org/files/2014EncoreResearchOverview.pdf)

About 10 years ago, I started deliberately coaching Boomers to help them find and make the transition to new careers aligned with the issues they care about most. As I worked with clients and researched the challenges that people face in transitioning to a career with purpose, I discovered that most people either: A) do not know how, or B) are afraid of the risks involved, in making that change.

This inspired me to develop The Boomerang Approach that allows people to follow a simple and practical step-by-step process to find and transition to a role aligned with their passions, strengths, and issues they care about most.
While this approach has already helped many people to find careers aligned with what they deeply care about, The Boomerang Approach can help many more Boomers who are eager to meet the world’s deep needs.

— Reiner Lomb
www.boomerangcoach.com

Book Title:
The Boomerang Approach – Return to Purpose, Ignite Your Passion: A Straightforward Approach to Align Your Career with What You Care About

Charles Townes, the physicist whose work would help lay the foundations for the development of the laser died today. He was 99. His career also ranged far beyond an interest in lasers, into astronomy and a fascination with spirituality.

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It is safe to say that with its new design, larger screen, higher resolution, and improved camera that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus have to be Apple’s most desired phones to date, but exactly how desired are they? As it turns out, extremely desired. This is according  to Apple’s latest quarterly earnings (via VentureBeat) in which the Cupertino company revealed their sales figures for the first fiscal quarter of 2015.

According to Apple, they have managed to sell a whopping 74.5 million iPhones, thus allowing them to break both the 60 million mark for the first time, and subsequently the 70 million mark as well. Last time we saw such numbers, it was from Samsung who had estimated to have shipped 75 million smartphones in a quarter (although shipped and sold are different stories).

That’s great on the iPhone front, but unfortunately it looks like that success has not extended to Apple’s iPad. Apple’s figures have revealed that they have managed to sell 21.4 million iPads in the same quarter, but while Apple’s iPhone sales represented a 46% year-over-year increase, iPad sales were down 21% from 26 million the last time.

In some ways this is to be expected as tablets tend to have much longer life cycles than phones. Unlike phones, customers might choose to upgrade their tablets every 2-3 years, which might explain why iPad sales aren’t particularly hot. However with the rumor mill claiming that we might see the 12-inch iPad Pro this year, perhaps things could change.

Apple: 74.5 Million iPhones & 21.4 Million iPads Sold In Q1 , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.