Category: Personal

More Reading : Less Calories
More Books : Less Blogs
More Webcasts : Less Television
More Exercise : Less Computer Games
More Money : Less Weight
More Meditation : Less News

I know that resolutions need specific targets, but I am not sharing those.

Happy New Year to one and all.  I hope 2008 is a great year for all.

Yesterday, I took a 24 hour break.  No computer, no PDA, no phone, no Television, and no Radio.  I took the day to read, meditate, and reflect back on 2007 and forward to 2008.  The most interesting thing was now long the day was.  Time passed slowly.  Today, I am back on the grid, and the day has zoomed past.

Going through the normal process of reviewing the prior year and getting ready for the new year.  All I will say is that next year should be better.

Habit #7 in Steve Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is called “Sharpen the Saw.”

I use down time at the end of the year to sharpen the saw.

• I work on my tools – my computer, palm pilot, phone – reviewing the hardware and software and then I upgrade as necessary.
• I go through my clothes and weed out the old and make sure the new is clean and repaired.
• I go through the files and make sure everything is organized so that it can be found quickly.
• I review the cable, phone, and cell contracts and make adjustments as required.

Getting ready for the new year.

The Holiday day season is upon us.  I am a real scrooge this year.  I have little interest in celebrating anything but the winter solstice, with the anticipation of more sunlight.

I am surprised about two things this time of year.

1. How little business gets done
2. How much time the it takes to celebrate the holidays

I cut my RSS feeds way down.  Now, I find myself reading more posts and thinking about what I am reading, as opposed to seeing how fast I can scan hundreds of posts.

For now, I am finding it is better to read several posts than to scan many posts.

I cleaned up my RSS Feed subscriptions tonight. I do not like the River of News approach. I like my feeds in groups by general topic. I made sure each feed was assigned to the appropriate group. It looks good so far. I took the time to delete many of the subscriptions that are no longer interesting.

I love the new feature on Google Local Search.  When you get directions from one place to another it shows as the blue line on the map.

The new feature allows you to drag and drop that blue line to change the directions to take a back road, avoid traffic, or to go by the coffee shop.  It is very cool.

Does this happen to everyone else?

I will be reading a blog post that discusses a video. The blog post will have lots of links, but it will not be clear which link is for the video.

Text links are usually clearly marked with color and/or underline. I think audio / video links should have a clear designation.

HONC stands for hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon

Life depends mainly on molecules formed from four types of atoms: hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and carbon.

Honc if you live.

Others thought it was brilliant:

“In our popular culture, we’ve come to expect things to get tied up neatly,” said Jerry Herron, a professor at Wayne State University in Michigan, who found the ending brilliant. “The claim that Chase is making as an artist here is, real life doesn’t have neat endings.

“You want Tony blown away? You want him in jail? Chase is saying, ‘Fine, you write that script,’” Herron said. “He’s saying that life goes on, and art goes on, and he’s just going to end it right here.”

Brilliant wasn’t a good enough word for screenwriting professor Richard Walter, of the UCLA Film School, to describe Sunday night’s finale. “That’s too tame,” he said. “This was genius!”

Article is here.

Note to David Chase of the Sopranos. Fade to Black is a dramatic technique used in both theater and film. It can signify various things: live goes on, that is all there is, things are never resolved, the end, etc.

However, our cable providers often go black for short periods of time for no discernible reason, so using it on a TV program is problematic. Perhaps another technique – fade to white might work better. Maybe fade to black now means is it real? is it fiction? or is it cable?

I am glad that Tony Soprano did not find climatic redemption or punishment. It would have been a cliche.

In the end it was a tale of two bosses.

New York Phil Leotardo went over the top. He got too emotional and he made some bad business decisions. He went too far, his underlings turned against him, and he got whacked and squished.

New Jersey Tony Soprano tended to business. He cut a deal with the New York underlings, whacked the New York boss, and went out to dinner with his family. Fade to black

Brilliant.

The HBO Television show The Sopranos ends tonight.  Over the last two days, I have watched or re-watched all the shows from this season.  I am ready for the final show.

I have read some of the speculation about what the final show might contain.  For Tony Soprano, the speculation varies between getting punished or redeemed, between getting killed or making peace, between hell and heaven.

I do not know what will happen, but I will speculate that it will be somewhere between the two.  It will be cathartic but ambivalent.  Tomorrow we will all declare we saw what was coming.

I have more than 20 blogs, and I know that is not unusual. I collect blogs in all the normal ways:

• I sign up for a Social Media site and automatically get a blog (2 or 3 including Vox).
• I sign up for a professional service and automatically get a blog (2).
• I check out a blogging service and create a blog with a Hello World post that then gets abandoned (Several).
• I maintain a good number of link blogs. They are blogs where I link to articles and other blog posts on specific topics. Each blog is a topic. In serves a similar function as del.icio.us in that I save links on specific topics, but it provides additional flexibility. I save articles on website planning, website design, website construction, website promotion, and website planning for example. My link blogs are all on Blogger, which provides a button to save to the blog as you are browsing. Again, one can save a blog post with the same effort as saving a link on del.icio.us. Some would question whether these are true blogs. (14)
• Then I have some blogs that are more traditional blogs that I write myself. (2 or 3).

It creates issues of course. No one wants to read multiple blogs from one person.

• I could write one entry and cut and paste to other blogs. I will do that with this entry to try it out.
• If one knew RSS, one could subscribe to all the feeds and send them to one group or folder.
• There are RSS tools available to merge RSS feeds, so one could create one RSS feed from many. See RSS Feed Mixers.

Some people create one blog and put everything into one blog.

• Jeremy Zawadny from Yahoo writes a blog with excellent technical perspective, but I also get his blog posts on his other passion which is learning to fly.
• Matt Cutts from Google writes a blog on SEO that is required reading for anyone promoting websites, but I also get his vacation pictures.
• Dave Winer pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software. He always has interesting perspectives on current technology. But I also get his posts on his lawsuits or travel plans.

Options include:

• Do one blog and accept that it is good to get information on the person behind the blog.
• Create different blogs on different topics.
• Treat blogs like Newspapers and only read the articles / posts of interests. A sports fan reads the sports section without a care about bridge columns, comics, or horoscopes.

I think one of the most interesting options is to add intelligence to RSS Readers to filter by tag. That way I could filter out Jeremy’s flying posts, Matt’s vacation posts, and Dave’s naked Jen posts (I am not going to explain).

And for the one that asked – I will also post this on Vox so that I am posting there as well as on Les Bain’s Blog.

The article “Who’s Got the Monkey?” was published in the Harvard Business Review in 1974 by authors William Oncken, Jr. and Donald L. Wass.

I used to keep a copy of the article in my briefcase at all times, and I would give it away whenever I thought it would be helpful.

I also kept it because it was a lesson I needed to re-learn. It is the best article I have ever read on effective delegation.

I wish I could participate in a discussion on Global Warming with various experts that slowly and carefully explored the issues as follows.

1. Is it getting warmer now? If it is, by how much? How do we know that it is?
   Discussions about ice ages, meteor storms, Greenland, and what killed the dinosaurs are excluded at this point.
   “Is it warming up NOW” is the question. The question is not “did it warm up in the past”.
   If (it is getting warmer by any agreeable measure)
   {on to number 2}
   else
   {break for coffee and go home}
2. What does it mean that it is getting warmer? What has happened so far?
   Keep the conversation to what has happened that can be observed or measured.
• If something is happening that might or might not be attributed to global warming, merely note it is happening and that there is disagreement about what caused it.
• There should not be major disagreement here. It is either happening or not. The glaciers are either melting or they are not.
3. What does it mean that it is getting warmer? What might happen in the future?
   What do we think might happen.
   • No one knows exactly what will happen. Well meaning experts should be able to reach some consensus of what might happen or what will probably happen.
   • Discussions about ice ages, meteor storms, Greenland, and what killed the dinosaurs can be included at this point.
   • Disagreement is expected at this point.

Do most experts agree? That is not what I am reading. It seems we should be able to reach some consensus on the above. Which leads to the next discussion on

• What is causing Global Warming
• What if anything do we want to do about it.

My son went sky diving today to celebrate the end of the college semester.

I am pleased that he is enjoying himself. Later on this evening I will hear how it went and see some pictures.

It is inevitable that soon I will start watching the clock.

I was updating the client list on my website, and looking at various websites I have worked on over the last couple of years and months. I have learned a lot.

I guess it is human nature to think about all the things you do not know (for example Ruby on Rails) than to remember all the things you do know.

Today is the day for phone calls.  Each phone call is “dial and wait” or “dial and navigate voice mail”.  I know it is phone call day, so I am prepared in advance to put on the head set, open snail mail, clean the desk, and do filing as I wait on hold.

If I could just turn off the music on the phone and listen to what I choose it would be a happier day.

The common analogy for a push down stack is the stack of dishes at a buffet. Take one off the top and the next one pops up.

That is like what it has been for me lately. Do one critical task, the next one pops up. Work like crazy to try and get the stack down, but it just keeps getting reloaded. Maybe that is just life.

This has been a good week. I popped up a lot of dishes.

It is Easter weekend. Easter is a Christian holy day that celebrates what happened on a Jewish holy day and uses the Pagan fertility symbols of bunnies and eggs. I live near the city of Walnut Creek, and it got some notoriety recently because the local festivities used the term “Spring Bunny” instead of “Easter Bunny”. It was, of course, originally a spring bunny.

Because this is a holy day for many, work is lighter. It is also a time to take a quick breath, post to my blog, and catch up on email.

I do a daily podcast with my partner at biziii.com.  We just passed our one year anniversary.  We have done a show Monday – Friday for a year.

Independent Entrepreneurs are sometimes called solopreneurs. Being a solopreneur requires energy from the solopreneur, which means exercise, good diet, and adequate sleep. But solopreneurs are too busy to exercise, eat right, and get adequate sleep. They can succeed in the short term, but not the long term.

I have been busy with clients, so I am not reading blogs as regularly.  It makes me wonder what I am missing.

I had an aunt that used to watch soap operas for the same reason.  She just did not want to miss anything.

Heard about fatblogging.  If not see http://www.technorati.com/search/fatblogging

I am joining in the fun.  I am going to lose weight also.

Today is my Birthday.  It is the sort of information that I used to keep very quiet.  This blog is encouraging me to share that sort of thing with the world.  I am not sure why.  Maybe it is just a topic to blog about.  Maybe it is realizing that sharing is connecting.  Nah .. that is way too pompous.

The Police Reunited at the Grammies.

I like public transportation. I have always liked buses and trains. I use public transportation when I can. It is a particularly good time to think, plan, and consider.

I have two members of the Millennial generation in my household. They do not understand the big deal about Web 2.0 and Social Media.

They were both on the Internet at a very early age, and they always experienced the web as a read/write media. They were never passive on the Internet. They were in chat rooms, forums, groups, and bulletin boards from the start. They both have long term friends they met online.

And of course there were aggressive household safety rules. They helped define those rules by their participation in various Internet safety forums and groups.

When we discuss Web 2.0 and Social Media, they just do not get it. For them, it is their parent’s generation finally figuring out what the Internet was all along.

I have an old Palm.  I like it just fine.  I have taken it to geek meetings and it gets almost as much attention as the new products.  I am carrying around a dinosaur.

I wanted to start syncing it with my laptop, so I had to get a serial / USB cable and drivers from Radio Shack.  I am synced again and ready to go.

I am trying out Carbonite Backup. It is a backup system that backs up my hard drive to a Carbonite server. It is easy to set up, it backs up without worry, and stores my information off site.

I have an Amazon S3 account also, but I cannot seem to find the right software. Carbonite software backing up to Amazon S3 would be nice.

My biggest problem with Carbonite is that is does not back up external drives.

Today I am working in a library that has excellent free wifi. Sweet.

Discrete tasks have a beginning and an end: continuous tasks do not.

I am a discrete task person. I use a popular task list program. I add tasks, prioritize the tasks, do the tasks, and then mark the tasks complete. When confronted with a challenge, I automatically start to break it into discrete tasks. If I feel overwhelmed, I focus on the task at hand. Getting a project done is like working with one lego block at a time.

I work with people that seem to find everything a continuous task. Every task is intricately related to every other task. When a task is done, there is no recognition of a task done, just an expression of the next task that needs to be done. It feels like working with a ball of twine, with each piece pulling the next piece in and no celebration of a finished piece.

Everyone works in their own style, but it wears me out to do it the second way. There is no sense of completion. No little break after a finished task, no little celebration.

In California, an elderly couple was taking a walk. The man was attacked by a Mountain Lion. The woman beat on the Mountain Lion with a log to no avail. She took a pen and tried to jam it into the eye of the Mountain lion to no avail. She clobbered the nose of the Mountain Lion and that finally worked. The man is in serious condition, and I certainly hope he recovers.

The local talk shows were full of after-the-fact advice. One caller suggested that the appropriate response was not to try and poke the pen into the eye of the Mountain Lion, but to lift its tail and poke the pen there. What followed was alternately very yucky and very funny radio, as everyone tried to top each other on comments about that approach.

This weekend is the Super Bowl. SuperBowlMonday.com is pushing to make the Monday after the Super Bowl a National Holiday. I keep seeing the numbers that 85 million Americans voted in the last election, and 140 million will watch the Super Bowl. I do not know how many of the 140 are eligible to vote.

Some random thoughts:

• I think only those that voted in the last election get to take the holiday.
• Let’s consider moving Martin Luther King day to the Monday following the Super Bowl and call it National Unification Day.
• Both head coaches in the Super Bowl are African-Americans.
• It seems that for some sports fans, the winner of the Super Bowl is more important than the winner of the Presidential race.
• I remember how much of the day after was spent discussing the Super Bowl and the Super Bowl parties. Maybe that conversation just gets moved to Tuesday.
• I voted yes for the Holiday. I also voted in the last election.

I voted for my favorites blogs for bloggies today. The bloggies are the oscars for blogs. I did not vote in every category. I do not read blogs in every category. I do not read any sports blogs or teen blogs for example. But I am very fond of lifehacker, and voted for it twice.

We order groceries online and have them delivered.  There are 3 in the household, and the responsibility of placing the order falls to the one that wants new grocery items in the house.  Sometimes it becomes a contest as to who can hold out the longest.

I rarely place the order.  I find it a challenge to live on the cans and boxes of food on the shelves in our apartment.  I search online on food ingredients and try the recipes to various levels of success.

But when someone starts the order, they get lots of Instant Messaging help from the other two about what to order.   Does everyone else IM to members of the family they live with?

I have been working long hours.  I am at the computer for 15 hours a day.  I have not done that for a while.  I got backed up on some client work, and I am refocusing my business.  It is taking some time.

It is exhilarating in a way, maybe because it reminds me of my younger days when I worked long hours regularly.