Brief thought 💭
Transplanted lilies are starting to bloom.
My house is filled with music floating through many of the rooms for hours each day. Making dinner, entertaining or relaxing without the TV are all accompanied by a soundtrack. The music starts by yelling into the air, “Hey Siri, play 80s …
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Brief thought 💭
Brief thought 💭 from Saturday, Dec 17, 2022
The painting setup has been packed up in preparation of a holiday party, but the upgrade to an easel has been a game changer!
more painting coming soon.
Brief thought 💭 from Saturday, Dec 10, 2022
This morning i saw the photo that @hollyhoneychurch posted and here is my attempt to paint it.
This was my first attempt with a sketch, and then on to the larger canvas. This technique certainly helped.
Edit: Tap/click on each image to see a full-sized version
my current painting philosophy capture in a poem:
a song on repeat,
brush held anti-bristle-ward,
arm extended.
let the paint talk,
“be bold”
trust your hand and eye.
water for a man lost to the desert.
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I’m realizing that, in those friendships, there’s no shared ritual. Our points of connection depend on one of us having the time and energy to make the effort. It’s okay that our conversations, or our times together, are sporadic. Sometimes that’s …
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Deep thoughts 💭 on Updates:
As Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter seems to be a grand way to waste millions of dollars, I have decided to resurrect my blog.
So, I’m back online. I have not deleted my accounts on Twitter, but I haven’t logged in in years. I am …
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Brief thought 💭 from Wednesday, Nov 30, 2022
First noted by @mrbeefy, the new Worlde editor ruins the puzzle - The New Wordle Editor Is Ruining Wordle
Brief thought 💭 from Sunday, Nov 27, 2022
Men watching football, oil on canvas paper, 2022.
A very quick life study after driving all day.
Brief thought 💭 from Friday, Nov 25, 2022
The other day @maique posted a picture, and I immediately knew that I needed to paint it. My composition needs work, and my fine detail could be better, but this is the result.
Brief thought 💭 from Wednesday, Nov 23, 2022
I am not religious (anymore, long story), but here is the offering I am giving tomorrow as we host Thanksgiving.
In light of the past few years, and as we see continued tension at home and hostility abroad, what today symbolizes is more important that ever – To acknowledge what we are thankful for, to be around those we care about. But we would be remiss to not acknowledge all that makes this day possible.
Brief thought 💭 from Tuesday, Nov 22, 2022
I am trying to follow Kevin MacPherson’s advice and complete an oil painting a day for 3 months. I will post today’s painting tomorrow, it is bed time now.
Brief thought 💭 from Monday, Nov 21, 2022
Based on a photo I snapped in Venice in 2019. We were walking to find a restaurant at dusk, and the play of the lights on the water caught my eye.
Brief thought 💭 from Saturday, Aug 13, 2022
Relearning and remembering how to play cribbage. An activity that my grandparents taught me is now being taught by my parents to my kids.
Brief thought 💭 from Friday, Jul 15, 2022
First time at, and in the pool in years. Let’s see how my skin reacts.
Brief thought 💭 from Wednesday, Jul 13, 2022
Well, this is an odd turn - make it into poetry, I guess…
Members of the house
exposed.
Someone - not us - is positive
A phone call while they are doing 70. Trip cancelled
Near the Kentucky/West Virginia border
A U-Turn
too little ham salad to be blamed
Brief thought 💭 from Tuesday, Jul 12, 2022
Today’s crisis - my mom didn’t buy enough ham salad on her way to my house. A perfect excuse for @estherbenoit to experiment in creating our own!
Brief thought 💭 from Sunday, Jul 10, 2022
A nice painting 🎨 project started over the holiday weekend and finished yesterday. Time to varnish and prep the next one.
Brief thought 💭 from Sunday, Jul 10, 2022
A wet hike 🥾 with a buddy, and now coffee ☕️ and Formula 1 🏎. Not a bad way to start the day!
Brief thought 💭 from Friday, Jul 8, 2022
A gorgeous find at the botanical garden. Enough to justify a membership.
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Jul 7, 2022
Bratwurst and egg breakfast sandwich. Would recommend. Would eat again!
Brief thought 💭 from Wednesday, Jul 6, 2022
Lifting weights 🏋🏻♂️ and making peanut butter and banana sandwiches 🥪 , as you do.
Brief thought 💭 from Tuesday, Jul 5, 2022
Unexpected found my afternoon meetings cancelled. Now what to do?
Brief thought 💭 from Tuesday, Jul 5, 2022
Unexpected found my afternoon meetings cancelled. Now what to do?
Brief thought 💭 from Sunday, May 22, 2022
This morning @estherb says that she is almost done with Instagram. Too many ads, too many algorithms. So I point her here. Give her a follow for some quality baking photos!
Brief thought 💭 from Friday, Mar 11, 2022
Somehow, with everyone in the house sick with COVID, I have not shown positive on any test. I think a PCR test is in order.
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Mar 10, 2022
I changed my name in the Starbucks app to “Pro-Union.” No barista has shouted out my name to pick up my order, but today a barista said, “Thank you for the support.” #ProUnion
Brief thought 💭 from Wednesday, Jan 5, 2022
Today, I’m grateful for a return to routine and a body that can move.
Brief thought 💭 from Monday, Jan 3, 2022
This was meant to be attached to my previous post. I guess that today I am also grateful to remember that even simple things can be hard.
Brief thought 💭 from Monday, Jan 3, 2022
Today, I am grateful for the little bit of snow we got
Brief thought 💭 from Sunday, Dec 19, 2021
A jaunt to Washington, Virginia and a meal at Patty O’s, a new spot from the Patrick O’Connell. It was a delicious meal and tasty cocktails!
Brief thought 💭 from Saturday, Dec 18, 2021
I think screen time requests from my kids are getting hidden by my always on Focus mode.
Brief thought 💭 from Friday, Dec 17, 2021
Plateslam 2021 turned into a 1 Rep Max day for back squat, overhead press, and deadlift.
324 lbs / 160 lbs / 324 lbs respectively. I am very happy with that, and learned I need to buy more plates!
(324 lbs is every plate that I have, including the little .5 lb weights!)
Brief thought 💭 from Sunday, Nov 28, 2021
My first child just out “dad joked” my mother. Not sure what that means…
Brief thought 💭 from Sunday, Aug 2, 2020
I have been listening to the Songs of Disneyland Trader Sam’s area loop on repeat. It has me wanting to be on vacation.
Brief thought 💭 from Tuesday, Jul 28, 2020
Starting up with Nike Run Club again. Today’s run was very hot.
🏃🏃♀️🏃♂️
Brief thought 💭 from Monday, Jul 27, 2020
Pandemic day 136 breakfast.
Egg whites, home smoked pork, home pickled jalapeños and pickles.
Brief thought 💭 from Tuesday, Jul 21, 2020
I have been on steroids for the last 5 days, and they have been helping with a very itchy skin issue. But they sure have kicked up my anxiety and agitation. On the plus side, I am getting a very good understanding of how my body reacts to stress.
Brief thought 💭 from Sunday, Jul 19, 2020
Today was a good day in the kitchen: removed the skin from a pork shoulder to smoke it, dehydrated the skin to fry it into pork rinds, rendered the extra fat from the skin into lard, broke the bone from shoulder to fit it the pressure cooker to make stock. 🔪🍳🐖
Brief thought 💭 from Monday, Jul 13, 2020
I am observing my first Scouts BSA Eagle Scout Board of Review. It is an interesting process. I wonder how my younger self would have fared with these questions.
Brief thought 💭 from Friday, Dec 27, 2019
Morning mountain air. Fresh coffee. Family. This is a good holiday!
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Dec 26, 2019
Lunch stop at Mateo in Durham! Excited for the food, and the music is on point.
Brief thought 💭 from Wednesday, Dec 25, 2019
Things I learned today:
Staying within a budget can still lead to a nice Christmas That Bittermilk bitter are delicious How to darn socks
Brief thought 💭 from Friday, Dec 6, 2019
It has been such a busy morning already. Walk the dog, go to the gym, get the boy to school, take care of the girl who is sick, configure single sign-on, troubleshoot deployments, request restores. I’m ready for a break.
Brief thought 💭 from Monday, Nov 18, 2019
20191118-WOD
15 min AMRAP:
Row 10 calories 10 push press @ 55# 10 ablation sit-ups Results: 7 rounds + 1 calorie
Brief thought 💭 from Tuesday, Nov 12, 2019
I finally got to play my alternate timeline D&D character, O’ruc Flair, a half orc gladiator who is patterned after most of the late 80’s wrestlers. It was a nice break, brother!
Deep thoughts 💭 on :
AirPods Pro One Week Review
My lovely wife got me a pair of AirPods Pro as a birthday gift. I had been trying to figure out a way to justify asking for them, so she beat me to the ask. I have been playing with them for a week and here is what I think …
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Brief thought 💭 from Saturday, Nov 9, 2019
First night of D&D In Real Life weekend was great! Fought a giant tree monster and leveled up!
Brief thought 💭 from Friday, Nov 8, 2019
An hour of painting and my D&D character comes to life! 🎲
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Nov 7, 2019
Landed in Louisville, and I’ve already had my first bourbon. The woman at the airport bar recommended Weller. Tasty and smooth, easy to drink.
Brief thought 💭 from Wednesday, Nov 6, 2019
My amazing wife got me a pair of Air Pods Pro for my birthday. They arrived yesterday and I have been using them today. My micro review: Transparency mode is very cool. Sound quality is good, maybe better than original. Removing from case is fiddly. Overall: 👍
Brief thought 💭 from Monday, Nov 4, 2019
I am taking a social and emotional intelligence class through work. I am learning that I need to learn how to better identify the emotions I am feeling. I’m not really sure how I’m going to do that, but the effort seems worth while.
Brief thought 💭 from Sunday, Nov 3, 2019
Breaking down camp is always bitter sweet. The end of a camp out, a return to ones own bed.
Brief thought 💭 from Friday, Oct 11, 2019
Seattle coffee (so far):
Joe Chocolate - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - amazing mocha. Victrola ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - a super tasty almond croissant. Storyville ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - the long line was worth it.
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Oct 3, 2019
No matter how busy the day, it is always made better when you hear both your kids singing along to David Bowie.
Deep thoughts 💭 on 💙💜💖:
I don’t know why I feel that I need to write this. It is probably because I “blend” so well. No one would know, so why do I need to say it.
Today is Bisexual Visibility day.
I guess this is where I am. “Hi” 👋
I am …
Read more →
Brief thought 💭 from Monday, Sep 9, 2019
Clearly, this years conference swag is a book. I got one, the next conference got a book. Is this a corporate book club initiative?
Brief thought 💭 from Monday, Sep 9, 2019
At the hotel restaurant, during a work conference in Orlando, the menu had Pappy. They didn’t have the 23, so it is still my white whale!
The 20 year was amazing. Sweet, smooth, delicious. Five stars, would drink again! 🥃
Brief thought 💭 from Friday, Apr 19, 2019
Some days you don’t send an emergency text message to 15,000 people.
Some days you do.
Brief thought 💭 from Friday, Mar 15, 2019
I am loving Queer Eye season 3. I have laughed, I have cried tears of joy. It is an absolute delight!
Deep thoughts 💭 on Changes:
I have been working on some changes online and offline that I teased earlier. Well, here they are:
I have moved my blog to Micro.blog. Micro and macro, all in one. I trust that me paying @Manton will help keep the platform moving. If I start using …
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Brief thought 💭 from Tuesday, Feb 12, 2019
How terrible is this blog post title: How to Trick Your Partner into Using Todoist - Ambition & Balance? How about you be a mature adult and show your partner the benefits and ask them to make an honest effort at using it with you?
Brief thought 💭 from Sunday, Feb 10, 2019
It is certainly convenient that my diet “rest day” fell on the same day as brunch at my brother-in-law’s house. Needless to say, I have definitely cycles those calories!
Brief thought 💭 from Tuesday, Feb 5, 2019
Making some changes. Both online and off. Will write them up soon.
Brief thought 💭 from Wednesday, Jan 30, 2019
Mind blown: the Sovereign Military Order of Malta is afforded the privileges of sovereignty, but has no real territory. 🤯🤯🤯
Brief thought 💭 from Tuesday, Jan 29, 2019
Waiting to see the state senate from the gallery. I may expire here. Please remember me. ☠️
Brief thought 💭 from Tuesday, Jan 29, 2019
I’m flying solo at Equality Virginia Day of Action. I’m planning on lunch at the Secret Sandwich Society, and dinner at Rappahannock. I don’t know how many people on here are in Richmond, but if you want to meet up, or say “hi”, I’m game!
Brief thought 💭 from Tuesday, Jan 29, 2019
Making my annual pilgrimage to Richmond to lobby my delegates and senators for the right to not be discriminated against. This is for me, the people I love, and every other Virginian.
In a recent episode of a new podcast that I have been enjoying, Fun Fact, the two hosts, Arik and Allen were discussing using iPhone XS’s new eSIM capability to have two lines on one phone. They talked about how well the design decisions around …
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Deep thoughts 💭 on :
My son had a great observation today, while at my office: if the building only has two floors why does the elevator have floor buttons? Shouldn’t the door close and know which floor it is on and which floor it is going to?
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Brief thought 💭 from Monday, Jan 28, 2019
🤣🤣🤣 I didn’t realize it was a whole sub genre! youtu.be/_GJJmLeTl…
Brief thought 💭 from Sunday, Jan 27, 2019
Last night @estherbenoit and I dined at The Inn at Little Washington, a quirky, delicious three Michelin Star restaurant. It was amazing!
Brief thought 💭 from Friday, Jan 25, 2019
After 25 years out of the dojo, I brought a new guy with me, my son!
Brief thought 💭 from Friday, Jan 25, 2019
Friday: Last day of interviews. Also, day before heading to a three Michelin Star restaurant. Very excited. ✻ ✻ ✻
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Jan 24, 2019
Nothing like trying to freeze your credit online and getting an error. Because fucking of course… Fucking equifax.
Brief thought 💭 from Tuesday, Jan 22, 2019
The girl went and tried a meeting with a different scout troop and loved it. I’m so glad we went. She’s already planning on getting her Eagle Scout.
Brief thought 💭 from Tuesday, Jan 22, 2019
It is amazing that after 25 years outside of the dojo, I was surprisingly proficient last night.
Brief thought 💭 from Saturday, Jan 19, 2019
I started this as an Instagram story, but since I’m leaving it behind, I want to make sure it is preserved.
Brief thought 💭 from Friday, Jan 18, 2019
Sigh… not sure why my Apple TV keeps complaining out network drop outs from my eero… no other device complains like this.
Brief thought 💭 from Friday, Jan 18, 2019
[D]escriptions of Donald Trump, stated between 2015 and 2018, by Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina.
A timeline showing how Donald Trump has completely co-opted the Republican Party.
21 Grahams - Harper’s Magazine
Brief thought 💭 from Wednesday, Jan 16, 2019
“You should write down your brand statement, and then EVERYTHING you communicate online (or around your customers) should be in line with that statement. In short, if it doesn’t advance your brand, don’t share or say it.”
And my heart rose up in revolt and shouted: F@CK THAT SH*T!
Cheri Baker wrote this and I think she is so right! There is something that is so weird about someone who only posts things online that are focused on their “brand.
Brief thought 💭 from Wednesday, Jan 16, 2019
I told my wife that I needed to trim my beard to deal with some skin irritation, that got me thinking about the last time I had a clean shaven face. Turns out photos show that being for about a week in 2013. 🧔🏻
Brief thought 💭 from Tuesday, Jan 15, 2019
This is a big ruling! Clearly it will be violated because biometric unlocking is so easy and we are so “safety and security” oriented. But it is still significant!
Brief thought 💭 from Monday, Jan 14, 2019
We had a great D&D session tonight. There was romance, bribing customs officials, and not a single innocent killed!
Brief thought 💭 from Saturday, Nov 24, 2018
My daughters Blood Angels successor chapter kill team with colors inspired by Iron Man. Not sure what her chapter is called, but they are definitely good enough for some games.
#bloodangels #bloodangels40k #bloodangelssuccesor #warhammer40k #killteam
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Aug 9, 2018
First long distance #boostedboard ride. The weather and traffic were perfect!
Brief thought 💭 from Sunday, Jul 22, 2018
Me. Slightly intoxicated… I lost my shirt. Ready to depart!
Brief thought 💭 from Sunday, Jul 22, 2018
This is me. Not drunk. Srsly. Before the cruise. Don’t let @esther.benoit fool you, drunk me is not goofy. 😉
Brief thought 💭 from Monday, Jun 4, 2018
Esther sampling a triple decker home-made oatmeal cream pie.
Brief thought 💭 from Monday, Jun 4, 2018
Esther sampling a triple decker home-made oatmeal cream pie.
Brief thought 💭 from Friday, Jun 1, 2018
I use “Jerry” as my coffee name, because I have had my name butchered in every possible way. Now the crew at the local Starbucks only call me by that. I may have to consider and name change.
Brief thought 💭 from Tuesday, May 15, 2018
Pretty sure I just walked past the Winkelvoss twins in a hotel bar.
Brief thought 💭 from Saturday, May 12, 2018
A lovely dinner with the best company. The fact that there was George T. Stagg bourbon for $24 didn’t hurt either.
Brief thought 💭 from Friday, May 11, 2018
A long drive up the east coast from Virginia to New Hampshire.
Highlight of the day, seeing NYC, before having to drive through part of it.
Brief thought 💭 from Sunday, May 6, 2018
So, um. I just made reservations for my family at a three Michelin star restaurant.
Time to expose them to some food culture, I guess.
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, May 3, 2018
Another episode of the vlog has been posted: youtu.be/9Kp1r0F8j…
Brief thought 💭 from Wednesday, May 2, 2018
I may have turned a 600 hour project into checking a single check box…
Brief thought 💭 from Tuesday, May 1, 2018
I have tried to setup OwnYourGram.com with m.b, but I can’t get it to work… what am I doing wrong?
Brief thought 💭 from Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Doing my civic duty today, acting as an officer of the election, working the polls for the city elections.
Not glamorous work, but necessary. Voting is important.
Brief thought 💭 from Monday, Apr 30, 2018
I guess this is the director’s commentary behind my first YouTube video.
youtu.be/PfNyLOxqf…
I am a late comer to the vlog sensation that is Casey Neistat, and my kids have come to revere him as some type of new media mogul. They love the videos he makes, and I can understand why. He is a very good filmmaker. In addition, I have recently …
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Brief thought 💭 from Monday, Apr 30, 2018
So, I made something today. All on my iPhone.
I hope you enjoy it!
youtu.be/PfNyLOxqf…
Brief thought 💭 from Monday, Apr 30, 2018
I made something today! Hope you like.
jered.link/nitro
#coffee #coldbrewcoffee #coldbrew #nitrocoldbrew #nitro #diy
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Apr 26, 2018
Lifting weights is getting simultaneously easier and harder. The diet is just getting harder.
Brief thought 💭 from Monday, Apr 23, 2018
It is weird when going to the gym and exercising every day is becoming enjoyable.
I guess this is what a runner’s high is…
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Apr 19, 2018
Everyone I spoke to for this story pointed out that some level of noisiness in restaurants is intentional — and you can thank (recently disgraced) celebrity chef Mario Batali for that.
In a great New York magazine article about loud restaurants, Adam Platt points out that the “Great Noise Boom” in eateries started to flourish in the late ’90s, around the time Batali began pumping the music he and his kitchen staff enjoyed working to into the dining room at Babbo in New York.
Brief thought 💭 from Sunday, Apr 8, 2018
She says she is helping me drink my beer… she keeps whispering as I sip…
Brief thought 💭 from Saturday, Mar 31, 2018
Work from Penland School of the Arts. Got my creative fires lit again.
Brief thought 💭 from Wednesday, Mar 7, 2018
Two games of Warhammer 40,000. One 1,000 points, the other 500 points. Death Guard was defeated in both, but a different strategy proved to be much more effective than previous battles.
Brief thought 💭 from Tuesday, Mar 6, 2018
Thank you all for the tea suggestions. I will now begin my exploration beyond tea bags!
Brief thought 💭 from Monday, Mar 5, 2018
Okay. I have given up coffee and am switching to tea. What should I drink? What equipment should I have besides a cup, a teabag, and boiling water?
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Mar 1, 2018
We battled through a computer issue to bring you the latest episode of Not Ben and Jerry’s notbenandjerry.com
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Mar 1, 2018
The first episode recorded on scene at our favorite restaurant! Conversation.show episode 9
Brief thought 💭 from Saturday, Feb 17, 2018
Busy Benoit Saturday! Pinewood derby this morning, swim meet this afternoon. 🏎 ➕ 🏊🏻♀️
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Feb 15, 2018
Our first guests on the Conversation Show! Listen to the hilarious mix of Olympic opening ceremonies, Donald Trump impressions, creepy Willy Wonka, and working at a ballpark. conversation.show/7
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Feb 15, 2018
It is also a lot of fun to have @estherbenoit as a partner! I love hearing her edits and how she shapes a conversation that I was part of! Check out her work on the Conversation Show
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Feb 15, 2018
I am really loving having a little podcast network. It definitely provides a rythym to the week, and things to be excited for!
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Feb 15, 2018
Not Ben (Shane) and Not Jerry (me!) talk about the Winter Olympics, Valentine’s Day, and smart speakers. Get the latest episode notbenandjerry.com/7
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Feb 15, 2018
Our first guests on Conversation.show! @estherbenoit’s brother and his wife join us in an Olympic opening ceremonies extravaganza! conversation.show/7
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Feb 15, 2018
Okay big day for your ears! Multiple b3noit.com podcast episodes dropping!
Brief thought 💭 from Friday, Feb 9, 2018
Also, not normally a creeper, but I needed to have photographic proof!
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Feb 8, 2018
Also, @estherbenoit is the best editor! Seriously. Check out her work!
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Feb 8, 2018
Oh my gosh! The best episode of the Conversation Show came out today. You have to check this one out!
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Feb 8, 2018
The latest episode of @NotBenAndJerry has dropped. The conditions for recording were not ideal, but the atmosphere added to the conversation! http://notbenandjerry.com/6
Brief thought 💭 from Wednesday, Feb 7, 2018
The editor (@estherbenoit) says that this week’s episode of the Conversation(Dot)Show is a great one. You probably should get caught up while we are still in single digits of episode! conversation.show
Brief thought 💭 from Monday, Feb 5, 2018
I’m sitting in a educational session about genderqueer terminology and issues. It is very enlightening and is going to help redouble my efforts to expunge “sir/ma’am” from my vocabulary. Particularly after hearing a child talk about “passing”.
Brief thought 💭 from Monday, Feb 5, 2018
Met with his legislative aide and pressed her on a few bills. I’m sure nothing will come of it, but trying to do my part!
Brief thought 💭 from Monday, Feb 5, 2018
Of course the legislator who supports discriminatory policies isn’t in… and that sucker won by a cointoss. A true reminder that every vote counts.
Brief thought 💭 from Monday, Feb 5, 2018
For Micro Monday, I recommend you follow @belle. She has reminded me several time to use my privilege to help those who aren’t able to assert theirs.
Brief thought 💭 from Sunday, Feb 4, 2018
✅ A morning rpg session with the family for the next episode of DiceRolling.Family.
Brief thought 💭 from Saturday, Feb 3, 2018
“I will live in Montana. And I will marry a round American woman and raise rabbits, and she will cook them for me. And I will have a pickup truck… maybe even a ‘recreational vehicle.’ And drive from state to state. Do they let you do that?”
Brief thought 💭 from Saturday, Feb 3, 2018
You guys! Hunt for the Red October is down to $4.99 on iTunes!
Don’t say I didn’t ever give you nothing!
Brief thought 💭 from Saturday, Feb 3, 2018
It is Saturday, so it is Conversation Show episode day!
Enjoy!
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Feb 1, 2018
Oh Lord! Episode 6 of @Conversationshow is going to be a wild one! Look for it on Feb 10!
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Feb 1, 2018
Music that plucked the nostalgic chord at dinner has lead to an evening of music from my past. It is lovely!
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Feb 1, 2018
The new Bitmoji deluxe avatars are so good, I’m considering changing my custom avatar… Is this a sign of the end times?
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Feb 1, 2018
A new, fresh episode of the dormant @NotBenAndJerry podcast. It is back!
Give it a listen here: www.notbenandjerry.com/5
Brief thought 💭 from Wednesday, Jan 31, 2018
I have been working very hard to create my own little podcast network, and it is almost ready. b3noit.com.
Brief thought 💭 from Tuesday, Jan 30, 2018
Not feeling well yesterday or today. Fingers crossed for a recovery by tomorrow.
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Jan 25, 2018
Well, looks like the podcast thing is going to stick around. Just bought mics and a mixer.
Brief thought 💭 from Monday, Jan 22, 2018
In the last couple of weeks, one podcast has turned into three. I’ve created a little podcast network of my own.
Check them out: coversation.show, DiceRollingFamily, Not Ben and Jerry
Brief thought 💭 from Sunday, Jan 21, 2018
It seems like we are going to have a family podcast network in the near future.
Brief thought 💭 from Saturday, Jan 20, 2018
Even though the day started with a swim meet, it has been a very relaxing day. I can get used to being done with this master’s degree.
Brief thought 💭 from Saturday, Jan 20, 2018
Another day, another swim meet. Thankfully @estherbenoit took the early shift. Tomorrow I will do the same for her.
Brief thought 💭 from Saturday, Jan 13, 2018
Oh my gosh! The Transformers: The movie is available on iTunes. Such a nostalgia rush! I am so excited to watch it with my son! 📽
Brief thought 💭 from Saturday, Jan 13, 2018
It is Saturday, so another episode of the Conversation(Dot)Show is up!
conversation.show/2
Brief thought 💭 from Monday, Jan 8, 2018
On Micro Monday, I recommend @patrickrhone. He shares generously, is always thoughtful in his words, and makes this place a place worth being.
Brief thought 💭 from Sunday, Jan 7, 2018
With the first episode of the conversation.show published, now I need to figure out how to get a little better sound out of the lav mics we are using. Any tips?
Brief thought 💭 from Saturday, Jan 6, 2018
I’m starting a podcast with my wife. She is the most amazing partner to have. Find our first episode at conversation.show. You can also follow @conversationshow here on Micro.blog!
Brief thought 💭 from Saturday, Jan 6, 2018
Okay. I was hosting all of my own posts on my Squarespace blog, total ownership. But posting was a pain! I think subscribing is the way to go and then replicate to GitHub.
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Jan 4, 2018
After The first snow of the year, we make donuts. This year’s batch were exceptionally good!
Brief thought 💭 from Wednesday, Jan 3, 2018
Shopping list for Snowmaggedon 2018:
hot chocolate sleds firewood Everything else is secondary.
Brief thought 💭 from Tuesday, Jan 2, 2018
I have adjusted things on my website to incorporate my microblog content on the main page. Just need to remember to put the right tag on things.
Brief thought 💭 from Monday, Jan 1, 2018
Setup 2FA on Twitter and moved that password to the wife’s 1password vault. Looks like it is Micro.blog for 2018.
Brief thought 💭 from Monday, Jan 1, 2018
2018: I am seriously considering enabling 2FA on Twitter, but adding the 2FA OTP to my wife’s 1Password, so i cant access it.
I don’t want to delete my account, but I don’t want to access it.
Brief thought 💭 from Saturday, Dec 23, 2017
I have always enjoyed Bad Lip Reading’s political videos, but this Star Wars one is just a delight!
I have been a voracious podcast listener since This Week In Tech first premiered in 2005(!). Podcasting has exploded into a beautiful ecosystem of daily and weekly podcasts and long form serialized stories told in a weekly increments. I love all of …
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Brief thought 💭 from Wednesday, Dec 20, 2017
Another documentary in my documentary kick that was captivating is Icarus. I started watching this thinking I was watching one movie, but then, like a very good documentary, it took a turn into a story that was far more interesting than the first one. The timing of me watching this was also very interesting. Let’s say, a movie that I thought was about doping on the Tour de France joined up with the news that Russia will not be allowed to compete in the upcoming Winter Olympics.
I have been on a documentary kick recently. Maybe it is a push back against some reality TV that has been on in the house. Maybe it is because there seem to be more filtering into my Netflix recommendations and other media streams. I have always …
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Brief thought 💭 from Tuesday, Dec 12, 2017
John Voorhees has a great post about automating holiday decorations. I have just completed all of my home automation projects for the season and his article helped expose HomeKit’s grouping feature. It is less than intuitive. A very nice write up: Automating your holiday lights inside and out
Deep thoughts 💭 on :
Tonight’s movie is A New Hope.
Han shoots first.
Always.
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Brief thought 💭 from Monday, Dec 11, 2017
And it isn’t like the children are just eating frozen pizza while mom is away!
Brief thought 💭 from Sunday, Dec 10, 2017
I’m rewatching Rogue One, I am really struck by how mediocre the movie is, and how bad the Rebel tactics were. Angry Staff Officer has a great assessment of how bad it was
Brief thought 💭 from Sunday, Dec 10, 2017
Today was an Apple Pay only day. All of my transactions were quick and seamless. Too bad @HarrisTeeter isn’t joining in on The Future™️
Brief thought 💭 from Sunday, Dec 10, 2017
Tonight starts the Machete Order preparation for Friday. Might blend in the Episode 1-3 edit “Turn to the Dark Side,” just to see how it fits.
Brief thought 💭 from Saturday, Dec 9, 2017
A great post and link from @jamesshelley quoting Daniel Nesbit. One of the reasons I deleted the “traditional” social media from my phone. 🔗 Living in the crossfire of an ‘attention war’
Brief thought 💭 from Saturday, Dec 9, 2017
Nothing like a good dinner with friends and family, a little bourbon, and Christmas Vacation to get me in the mood for the Christmas season. A great counter balance to being out shopping earlier.
Brief thought 💭 from Saturday, Dec 9, 2017
It isn’t so much that I am a Grinch this time of year, but more that I hate how busy every store and roadway is.
Brief thought 💭 from Saturday, Dec 9, 2017
Helping the wife pack and continuing to prep for a week without her. So much easier now, but never really easy without her.
Brief thought 💭 from Saturday, Dec 9, 2017
I can see that most of you are publishing via Wordpress, but as a Squarespace user, I am figuring out that the Squarespace Note app is pretty good for posting here!
Brief thought 💭 from Friday, Dec 8, 2017
Today is a day to lay ground work for future improvements. Much work to be done.
Brief thought 💭 from Tuesday, Dec 5, 2017
A little over a year ago, I switched my site to Medium. I read Marius Maslar and Drew Coffman and understood that Medium was a platform that focused on writing and exposing that writing to others. And while I think that is still true, I find Medium's changes to be at odds with that ethos.
If Medium is focused on having people read what is written, why do they adorn their web versions with John Gruber coined "
Earlier this year, I was at the Cascade Users Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, not just as an attendee, but a presenter. This was my first professional presentation in front of an audience of technically oriented people. I was very concerned about how …
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Brief thought 💭 from Tuesday, Nov 28, 2017
Sour Grapes was such a great documentary. So good, I watched it twice. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Brief thought 💭 from Friday, Nov 24, 2017
Didn’t have to do the dutiful son taking care of my parents technology, but I did it by FaceTime and remote access anyway. Always be upgrading.
Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Nov 23, 2017
I write about the “firstest” of First World Problems and the “multi-watch lifestyle” https://www.jeredb.com/jeredbcom/2017/11/23/the-firstest-of-world-problems
I have been an original Apple Watch user since my lovely wife bought me one for Christmas 2015. While the Apple Watch Series 0 was too slow and too reliant on the phone, it was very close to the Dick Tracy watch or a James Bond gadget. When the Apple …
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Brief thought 💭 from Thursday, Nov 9, 2017
Figuring out this micro.blog thing. Twitter is becoming a little uninhabitable…
Deep thoughts 💭 on The Shelf:
In his article iOS 11: iPad Wishes and Concept Video Federico Viticci wrote about an hopeful addition to iOS 11 which he called the “Shelf”.
There are times when you want to save something without necessarily dropping it into an app or sharing it …
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Esther randomly asked me yesterday if I wanted to cry. Not the usual thing she asks me when we run errands. She told me to pull up the video for the song Symphony by Clean Bandit. Before watching the video, I had thought it was a happy song. Boy, was …
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In Ben Brooks' latest iPad Productivity Report, he hit on a couple of things that I have both wondered about and (mostly) solved. I have transitioned to iPads Pro usage for both personal and work related tasks. I now have plenty of practice …
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Brief thought 💭 from Saturday, Aug 5, 2017
One of the greatest obstacles to planetary science has always been the human life span: Typically, for instance, a direct flight to Neptune would take about 30 years. But in the spring of 1965, Gary Flandro, a doctoral student at Caltech, noticed that all four outer planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — would align on the same side of the sun in the 1980s. If a spacecraft were launched in the mid- to late 1970s, it could use the gravity of the first body to slingshot to the second, and so on.
Brief thought 💭 from Saturday, Jul 15, 2017
Cuban, watermelon and feta. Fair Winds double IPA. Best dinner companion.
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Hazel and I cast my ballot this morning. She cast my vote for Hillary #imwithher
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Pretzel as big as his head!
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Dipping feet in a mountain stream on part of the AT. #latergram #nofilter
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BLTAE - BLT + avocado and egg
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Time for a cocktail. #cuc16
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Staked out a prime seat! #cuc16
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Double espresso #coffeeshoptourism
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Lunch beer - Commonwealth’s Humblebrag
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Yes, that is a Krispy Kreme…
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Somewhere we mention “the people’s elbow”. Yeah…
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Hippocampus - pepper blonde - so amazing!
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Backyard bonfire, on the house after Guy helped fix the door.
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Blue Apron dinner, made by Jered
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Today’s writing environment.
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First time at Cars & Coffee. Quite a display.
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Mexican fiesta night at the pool
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I am involved in my church’s search for a new rector and have been for almost two years. It has been a time to think about the future of my church and the “church”. Conversations have provided many opportunities to discuss the “church” of the future. What it looks like, both locally and globally.
A member of the search committee sent an article “10 predictions about the future Church and shifting attendance patterns”, which contained two items salient to my current church, but are also elements important to the future of the “church”.
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I wrote about buying a product, not being one, with the idea that I didn’t want to use services that I couldn’t control (and pay for), but in the last year, my thinking has changed.
Part of this change has come as part of the increasing speed and nature of hacks and compromises across the internet. James Cox writing for Motherboard:
When it comes to website security, users are largely at the whim of site administrators, especially when it comes to the constant updating of software.
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A Trello assistant, or a foray into using botsWe are at the dawn of the “bot” revolution. Many pundits claim bots will replace apps and become a primary way of interacting with services. I am less confident in our new digital assistants, but with a new bot, I am becoming a fan of their usefulness. I first experienced the idea of a digital assistant in Siri, baked into my iPhone and she has worked in a less than spectacular fashion.
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I have been long aware of Paul Graham’s writing on the Maker’s Schedule versus the Manager’s Schedule. Particularly:
When you’re operating on the maker’s schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. Plus you have to remember to go to the meeting. That’s no problem for someone on the manager’s schedule. There’s always something coming on the next hour; the only question is what.
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Originally, I had created a series of steps using Workflow, Launch Center Pro, and Sidefari to beat my iPhone addiction. Recent changes in Workflow have made the process even simpler.
Before disabling Safari with iOS restrictions, the workflow shortcut can be added to the home screen. This will launch Workflow directly, no need to jump to Safari first.
Second, the new workflow will take the URL from the clipboard and presenting three options:
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Omnifocus, Workflow, and templates With all of the discussion around the Omnigroup’s release of automation for Omnifocus for iOS, I have found several types of automation can be run through Workflow.
Project Project with Defer or Due Dates Project with variable replacement Optional multi-section project Omnifocus task manipulation Basic Project The most basic, just a list of tasks in a project. Almost no automation. Using the Taskpaper syntax in a Text Action, and passing the input to a Omnifocus URL.
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In line for the Seven Dwarves Mine Train. Thanks, lucky FastPass getter @esther.benoit
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Two dudes, checking out a mermaid.
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Red team strategy = Disney ride strategy
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Meeting my favorite characters.
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Vaporators? Sir, my first job was programming binary loadlifters—very similar to your vaporators in most respects.
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Star Tours, the ride strikes back.
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One photo Star Tours review.
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She is proud of her rare purple monorail pin. I have created a pin-trading monster.
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Hollywood studios here we come!
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She loves the People Mover as much as I do!
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Monorail ride into the Magic Kingdom!
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My name is Jered Benoit and I attended Kairos number 10 at Sussex II state prison and I sit at the table of St. John.
When I started this journey, I would tell people that I was going to prison but I would always have to caveat my statement with “voluntarily”. They would chuckle, I would smile, but deep on the inside, a little voice would ask “why”?
During my college years, MSNBC would run weekend marathons of “Locked up”, a reality TV show portraying “real prison life”.
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The anniversary of the Columbia disaster has come and gone, and several links around the internet have pointed to The Long Winters song The Command Thinks Aloud. I listened to the Song Exploder episode about the making of the song, and it is fantastic to hear the thought and love that was poured into a song about the Challenger disaster.
Today, I was listening to the song in Whole Foods and could help tearing up and crying.
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Update: the Workflow actions that make the iPhone dumb have been updated to take advantage of new features available in Workflow. Learn more.
I, like many, have a tendency to bury myself in my smartphone. Endless streams of entertainment and work, Twitter, email, RSS, random browsing. While this is great when there is nothing to do and no one visiting from out of town, but not exactly the behavior I want when I have a chance to visit with family who I only see for a few days every other year.
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Kairos Agape Cookies, boxes and boxes of them
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Early lifter catches the …
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I got my ear pierced to show Hazel it wasn’t so bad. Her ears are pierced now, so it must have worked.
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Cereal and cookies. The breakfast of champions!
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In the past few weeks, I have seen numerous people citing that the average American watches something like 5 hours of TV a day. 5 hours seems really high and the 2013 Time Use Survey conducted by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics shows that the average America really watches about 2.8 hours of TV. That is still a crazy number. Particularly now that summer has started and the kids are out of school, I am planning my TV time like I would plan a trip to the movies.
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Listen here ➡️
It is not often that I tear up when watching a movie, let alone a podcast, but spend an hour and listen to this episode, and let me know if you have a dry eye during the third act.
I know I didn’t.
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There are 11 locked doors between my car and the gymnasium where I sat and listened. 11 doors in, 11 doors out. Each one locked and controlled by a nameless, faceless guard. Some of them opened without delay, others required that my group be herded all together, to have a door behind us close, before the one in front of us would open. 11 doors. The sound of the doors closing and locking, a thud and click mixed together.
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“Turns out…” that the OmniGroup linked to my Delegate AppleScript on their Inside OmniFocus page, which has lead to a lot of traffic to the site, but also a lot of questions/bugs being found in the script. I took some time to get those bugs squashed and add some other features.
Version 2.1 Release Notes 2.1–20150413
Improved: Inclusion of task name in email subject Fixed: Issue 2 One issue I’m having with the script is the subject line it assigns to the email.
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Invisibilia, a new podcast from NRP, covering the hidden world that influences us. Episode 2 hit quite close to home and worth a listen. Pinboard.in, private bookmarking. I have started to use it more heavily as Evernote has started to slow down and feel bloated in recent iterations. I am also enjoying [Pinner](Pinner for Pinboard) on my iPhone an iPad, particularly with the “Quick Pin” feature. It makes saving things to Pinboard a breeze.
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John Gruber:
…how much will I be willing to pay then to be able to go back in time, for one day, to now, when he’s eight years old, he wants to go to movies and play games and build Lego kits with me, and he believes in magic?
A short post that hits “being a parent” nail on the head.
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Jorge Lopez:
Seriously CatGenie, you added fairly sophisticated DRM to a litter box? I’m a tad hurt you spent my money on building in a restriction instead of figuring out how to avoid constantly cooking poop.
This made me realize that I don’t actually own a CatGenie, I’m renting it. Though I paid for it, I have to pay per use yet I’m still responsible for all repairs until it craps out and I have to get another one.
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Thomas Honeyman:
When I first started using Evernote, I used it the way I’ve always used physical notebooks: a note goes in a notebook.
Of course!
So I created a bunch of notebooks. One notebook for a school class. One notebook for my parking tickets. One notebook for reminiscing about coffee. Unfortunately, this is a fine way to miss out on perhaps the most powerful way to use Evernote: the tagging system.
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Richard Anderson wrote about his task management in the post Another Task Management Journey.
Part of his conclusion:
There’s a lesson I’m opting to take away from this experience. It’s never a bad idea to audit yourself. Thinking about the tools I use, and how I use them, gave me insight into where I was falling down, and helped me put together something better suited for what I do and how I think.
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When Patrick started his newsletter, I subscribed. Now, he has produced a book from some of the great content he has produced.
He was kind enough to send an ebook copy to people who were subscribers, but I’ll be buying a physical copy as well.
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Ben Brooks:
What finally pushed me over the edge was a long look at how I actually use photos. My primary goal is not to make art, but to capture moments and in that, when I do capture a great moment, I want to share that image quickly and widely. I don’t want to share the unedited image, I want to make the image look great still, but sharing is really what photography is all about.
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Game Theory: The Potluck Dilemma
The Potluck Dilemma offers various insights on producer behaviors when attending one of Cheryl’s snooty gatherings. The individual determinants of compliance are so complex for each agent from game to game that a Nash Equilibrium is all but impossible. Few constants exist. Except that Drew will drink too much and fire off that unhinged laugh at all his own jokes. That’s a given.
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I have two GORUCK Tough patches in my collection, one for Class 157, the other for Class 1073. Both were tough in their own ways, but I felt significantly better prepared physically for 1073. I had a good idea of what to expect mentally, so I could focus on being physically prepared.
In Jason McCarthy’s advice for preparing for Selection, he wrote:
Ruck More.
I figured if that is what the mastermind behind the GORUCK Challenge and the even more demanding GORUCK Selection recommended for the more difficult of the two events, that training plan should work.
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Mental Floss explains the pronunciation difference between Kansas and Arkansas, which was a favorite pronunciation flip flop in my grandfather’s patois.
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A colleague brought me an interesting issue yesterday: an embedded Google Map was not showing with the location marker centered. It was showing the map zoomed out and in the wrong position. At first, I thought Oh great, Google has gone and changed something. But after googling around, it appears to be a known issue. I’m just not sure how it didn’t manifest itself earlier. After trying to play with jQuery to get the map to reload/re-center upon tab load.
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I have been using Delegated.scpt, an Applescript developed by Guillaume Cerquant, in my OmniFocus setup for years. I have even developed Applescripts that utilize it. Sadly, it appears as though Guillame’s website has gone offline. I have put it out on Github (with a minor modification of my own), and I am posting it here:
(*
Delegated - V1.2 - 9th, may 2008
This script duplicates the selected task to a WFor context, and mark the selected as completed Use case: When completing a task by delegating it to someone, and waiting for its completion
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Oxt weekend,” in other words, means “not this coming weekend but the one after.” “This weekend” still means this weekend. The ambiguous term “next weekend” can be disregarded entirely.
Via Vox
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Talking with my boss the other day, I found a way to describe both a work situation and the somewhat life changing experience of the GORUCK Challenge. The lessons learned from the GORUCK Challenge:
It could always be worse In a group of 30 people, there can only be one leader If the group doesn’t have a leader, it is your duty to step up and be the leader
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A few months a go, a buddy from the gym, Guy, said that he was going to do a GORUCK Challenge on his birthday. The stars aligned and the date coinsided, so he signed up. He asked a couple of his friends to do it with him, and while they said they would, none of them signed up. About a month out, I asked him about his training was going, how is friends were getting ready.
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My daughter was told that she couldn’t be part of an activity because she was a girl. It was a race. You had better be damned sure I made sure she finished first.
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There are somethings that are just easier to do from the command line. I have created aliases for the most common things that I do, particularly when they aren’t done frequently or the syntax is something that I frequently forget. All of these live in my ~/.aliases file which is part of my ~/.bash_profile.
nosound
alias nosound=’sudo pkill coreaudiod’
I’m not sure why, but occasionally the audio stack gets jacked up.
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There are many devices that are labelled “smart”. “Smart” phones, clearly more computer than phone, “smart” thermostats, “smart” fridges. I don’t need my fridge to tweet for me. You know what will make my fridge smart? I can set the amount of ice I want in the ice drawer and when ever it gets low, it creates more ice and then turns itself off. That is smart
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This was originally posted at Mur Lafferty’s previous site and was lost when the site broke. I don’t want to lose it, so I am reposting it here. She deserves all credit for the post, I am merely hoping to preserve it.
Dear daughter… | The Murverse “You know spies, they’re a bunch of bitchy little girls.” — “Burn Notice”
Dear daughter-
You should know that you are hated.
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August 26, 2009
The switch did not transfer
Thus, we lost power
I’m going from memory
Two systems had problems
Switch Authentication
Wireless, I take it
But then had an additional issue
Quinton went to Radius school
Leaving us for his own company
They are close to five years old
You are not running an appliance
I’m OK with doing that
Let’s see
The thing that really hit me
Shut down with an SMNP call
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My wife is away on business this week. I am parenting solo, which is something that I am used to at this point.
Since starting Crossfit and learning about how to improve the quality of my sleep, I have been aware of the impact of blue wavelength light and sleep. I have even purchased some amber lens glasses, although wearing them over my glasses makes it awkward. And it didn’t really make too much of a difference, but I have learned why.
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The other day, while washing my hands, I looked at myself in the mirror and noticed, what I think were a couple of grey hairs in my beard. I wanted to think that they are blonde. I checked my sideburns and they are light, either blonde or grey. I could have sworn they were blonde, but under this light, they look silver.
I’m sure that when I trim my beard, it will look like a blonde hair mixed with the reds, browns and blacks.
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As a rule on iOS, I do not have my mail alert or notify me in anyway. I think I would have torn my hair out when I was working in IT. My wife on the other hand juggles two phones, work and personal, and has alerts and notifications on the work phone, but not the personal. She is very mindful if her email and her attention and rabidly works her inbox down to inbox zero daily.
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Last year I wrote about a local business, the Warwick Cheese Shoppe and their practice of closing on Mondays. The owner was a traditional cheese monger, a man of his trade. He could describe to you in immense detail the cheese of the week, what to eat with it, drink with it, the origin and life of the cheese. He explained to my wife and I how screw-top wine was the future of wine bottling, how it was not a sign of cheap wine.
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Earlier this week Patrick Welker of RocketINK fame linked to my site and my GitHub repo of my fork of rbugajewski Fuck-Huff-Duff private podcast webapp. I am extremely flattered.
There was one odd thing that I noticed, weird podcasts being added to my Ping! feed that I don’t remember adding. Not completely unusual, I do have some fugue moments in my week, but it was odd. It didn’t dawn on me until tonight to double check the source code in the repo.
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This week I went to my son’s Chistmas chapel, which included him singing “Twinkle Twinkle” and “Go Tell It On The Mountain” . He was great and I thoroughly enjoyed his performance. He has really blossomed in the past few months of school.
The thing that was interesting to me was the rabid nature of the parents trying to capture photos and video of their kids. Multiple cameras, video equipment, cellphones, all being schlepped and used, with everyone jockeying for a good vantage point.
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Sage advice from Aaron Hillegass regarding starting a company:
When you have Enough, the extra money means very little. I’ve been broke, and being broke sucks balls. Having Enough is awesome. How would I define “Enough”? Enough means that you can take a friend out to a nice lunch and not have to worry about how much it costs. I have hung out with a couple of billionaires — my experiences indicate that being a billionaire is just incrementally better than Enough.
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Jason McCarthy:
The foreground is different than the background of our lives. The things that matter aren’t things at all and we love them more because they don’t last forever and neither do we.
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Sid O’Neil:
Every time a new gadget comes out my twitter stream screams the same thing for a couple of days: WANT WANT WANT WANT. It’s an insidious pull that I’m not immune to, and it’s almost constant: there’s always something new to desire.
This is the time when I start to examine what I really want. Having had an iPad 2 for a couple of years, I have learned that an iPad is a great kids computer, but for me, it not something I want or need.
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I don’t care what some people say, I love the Olympics. I love the padgentry, I love the curious nature of more obscure the sports. I love it all 1. I think it stems from my being just the right age for the 1992 Abertville, 1994 Lillehammer and 1998 Nagano Winter Games, and the 1992 Barcelona Summer Games2. As I have grown, one thing I do not care for is the design.
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From The New York Times:
A group of experts in medicine, law and ethics has issued a blistering report that accuses the United States government of directing doctors, nurses and psychologists, among others, to ignore their professional codes of ethics and participate in the abuse of detainees in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
…
In 2008, in documents alleging abuse, lawyers for a detainee at Guantánamo Bay singled out a psychologist as a critical player.
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Every year, I want to watch football. I try. I understand the mechanics of the game and the rules1. I try to follow a team, but I have a confession.
I am not a football fan. I do not have a team. I don’t know when the games are2. I don’t know the players. All of this is evident in the fact that my kids don’t have no understanding of the game.
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Tim Cook in the Wall Street Journal:
At Apple, we try to make sure people understand that they don’t have to check their identity at the door. We’re committed to creating a safe and welcoming workplace for all employees, regardless of their race, gender, nationality or sexual orientation.
…
Protections that promote equality and diversity should not be conditional on someone’s sexual orientation. For too long, too many people have had to hide that part of their identity in the workplace.
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Alexandra Petri in the Washington Post:
And if you say “I’m running five minutes late” this, to me, translates to “Hey, you now have time to watch a 90 minute film before you get dressed!”
Then you are clearly incapable of living in modern society. I didn’t say watch a movie, I said I was delayed by 5 minutes. I am an “early person”, you should know that it pains me to tell you I will be late.
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Steven Miller:
Although your cortisol levels peak between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., there are a few other times where–on average–blood levels peak again, like between noon and 1 p.m., and between 5:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. In the morning then, your coffee will probably be the most effective if you enjoy it between 9:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., when your cortisol levels are dropping before the next spike.
Right about when I need a cup of joe.
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I wrote in my Read Later post about my use of Poche, an open source alternative to Instapaper. I have been happy with it, but there are a few rough spots.
First, it is actively being developed. This might not be a rough spot, but the features are still in flux, the look and feel is changing greatly in point releases. While I like watching development happen, I also like a little more stability.
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When I wrote about owning the services I use, I neglected to indicate what I used to read articles later. At the time of that writing, I had been an Instapaper user for years. I had bought the Pro version of the app, when there was a both a free and pro version, because I saw the value in what Marco was making. I even supported him when he released a subscription model, even though it was through Paypal.
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When I wrote earlier this year about not using free products, one of my major points of friction was Dropbox. I don’t use more than the free 2GB tier so space wasn’t an issue, and to make the jump to the “pro” level was steep, $100 for 100GB. Not to mention that I don’t need to sync that much stuff.
That layered with a new personal interest in privacy and personal data security (thank you NSA), I have been more determined than ever to quit my Dropbox usage.
Brief thought 💭
During yesterday’s post, I had to confirm whether the Warwick Cheese Shoppe and a similarly named restaurant in Williamsburg were in fact a local chain or two similarly named businesses in the same region, with an eerily similar menus.
In searching the Facebook pages of both of these restaurants ranked high in the search results. The thing that was interesting is how much more frequently updated the Facebook pages are as compared to their web sites.
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Today, I was going out to lunch with a friend and we decided that we wanted to get a sandwich from a locally owned deli, extemely close to my office. The Warwick Cheese Shoppe has been around for 30 years, and going inside you can tell that they have been working at their craft everyday since opening.
Everyday, except Mondays.
When I lived in Germany, stores were closed on Sunday. Restaurants were open but to make up for being open on Sunday, they were closed on Monday.
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The kids have been watching the Star Wars Clone Wars series and at the beginning of each episode there is a very “Jedi” phrase. Not exactly and inspirational quote, but something along those lines. Today’s episode had the moral:
Attachment is not compassion.
Normally I have to read these out loud for the kids, and today when I did, Esther retorted:
Worrying is not love.
I married a really smart lady.
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I subscribe to Tonx Coffee. Every two weeks they send me some delicious, fresh roasted coffee. Each shipment they send a little card describing the coffee and a letter from the team.
This shipment’s letter was to good not to share:
One of the big myths we try and bust again and again is the absurd notion that you need a professional barista with expensive gear to make a decent cup of coffee.
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One of the things you’re supposed to work out some time in your adolescence is that though you’re the star of your own life, you’re not the star of anyone else’s. Some companies never work this out.
A few years ago I worked on a project to make a video-on-demand service for a big UK supermarket chain. All of the supermarket execs kept saying things like ‘our customer’ or ‘the Sainsco customer’.
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Seth Godin writes:
More people are doing marketing badly… than any other profession I can imagine. What an opportunity…
If we were building bridges this badly, the safety of our nation would be in doubt. The local sub shop makes a fine sub, but has a dumb name, a typo in their sign, no attention paid to customer service and on and on. Same for the big hospital down the street and the politician you wish would get a clue.
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Sometimes, I wish I was back in high school. Not because I want to do things over, but because of my lack of options. I grew up a military brat and lived near the base. My choices for almost everything was limited. Limited by the exchange rate, by what was carried in the base exchange, by what was being done on base during the weekends, or by my lack of understanding the native language.
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This past weekend I stumbled on an App.net converastion about podcasts, what people listen to, how many subscriptions they have, etc.
(adn: 6551982)
I have gone back and forth, listening to more podcasts that I can handle and then parring way back. Having to comb through multiple hour-plus long podcasts doesn’t leave me much time to find great content. As an example, I love the 5by5 network, but the volume of their output is greater than the amount I can have input.
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Today, a coworker asked how I managed to have a Red Teams patch. I could have sworn that he had asked about how I had a someting patch, but not a Red Teams patch, who else knows about my friend’s site.
Turns out he was asking about my very unique Red Teams patch. My coworker is a reader if the site. So I explained that I designed the logo and my payment was a patch.
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My daughter, age four–almost five, called me at work today and just wanted to talk. She spent the night at her grandmother’s house, and we talked out what we had for breakfast, if we slept good, the weather. Just her and me. Something worth dropping everything for.
I just hope she remembers our little conversations when she is a decade older.
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Last Saturday, I went swimming with my kids. We walked to the pool and they were excited to get in, so in my haste to get them in the water, I managed to take my phone swimming too. I realized about 5 minutes after getting in the water that there was something heavy in my left pocket. “Shit.” I said in my head. I calmly got out of the pool, set the phone in our stuff and tried to not let my frustration with myself show.
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Almost as soon as we unloaded the last box, my wife decided that that not only should we have a housewarming party, but the date that it would be. She unwittingly set us up for success in getting moved in and unpacked.
Since finding and implementing GTD, I have shed my procrastinator ways, but moving into a house can be a huge and never ending “project”. Having a hard deadline was difficult, due to the volume of work, but worth it.
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Firstly, seeing as this is the first post I have made regarding my work, a disclaimer: the views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and in no way reflect the views or opinions of my employer or anyone who works there, outside of me.
I am part of the team responsible for the website of Christopher Newport University and in the yearly cycle of the university, commencement is a high point.
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Sean Korzdorfer tweeted a link to a new OmniFocus Applescript that he wrote that deletes tasks that were not created in the last 14 days. I like the idea, but my brain can fail me at times, so I modified it to provide me a little more security.
-- prune_old_omnifocus
-- Created by: Sean Korzdorfer
-- Created on: 05/10/13 13:14:39
-- Modified by: Jered Benoit
-- Modified on: 20130510 1636
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Hello! If you are looking for the most up to date version of this code, point your web browser to https://github.com/jeredb/Delegated I have been using the Delegated Applescript for Omnifocus from Guillame Cerquant since it was originally released back in 2008. It was one of the original scripts that showed the power of Applescripting in Omnifocus. I even created my own variation of the delegated script to email the delegated task to the person, etc.
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The a couple of weeks ago, I wrote on app.net:
When I find out people I know and respect pirate media, my respect for them is tarnished. Forever.
I’m not sure what brought it on. I guess it was the fact that I was on my way to the movies, the first time in a while, and my mind drifted to the preview of someone’s Statusboard widget that showed their Transmission progress.
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I mentioned in my post Buying a product, not being one that I was running the CardDav / CalDav server Baïkal on Dreamhost (referral link), and I got an email from Chris asking:
I noticed on your blog you are running Baikal on Dreamhost. I was wondering if you could share any notes on how you got it running and sync’ing with iOS devices. I am trying to use the flat package I have have got in running and creating accounts but I am unable to login.
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How to disable Android “Safe Mode”:
Turn the phone off. Turn it back on and hold the ’up” volume button. What is “Safe Mode”:
Safe Mode temporarily disables all apps that have been installed via Google Play. Performing this troubleshooting step is necessary to determine whether a 3rd party app is the cause of an Operating System / App issue. Safe Mode should always be performed prior to a hard (factory) reset.
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More than a few months ago, my wife found a kickstarter project for a girl focused engineering set, Goldie Blox. As with all kickstarter projects, a compelling video and a descent product and it usually gets funded. I hadn’t backed any kickstarter projects and didn’t think much of it, but when the project made it’s funding goals and the kits could be pre ordered, Esther and I ordered one.
We had to wait a long while until the kit was shipped, but it was worth the wait.
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What feels like a long time ago, my wife introduced me to Bloglines, the RSS web service. It was before Google Reader existed. Yes, she was even more forward leaning than me. When Google Reader was released we both made the switch and she has been happy reading.
I left Google Reader a while ago for Fever, but when Google announced they were shutting the doors on Reader, I knew that she would be impacted.
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A while back I wrote about the podcasts I listen to. My time has been a little tight and I found myself getting more frustrated about the episodes that I could listen to. That combined with a number of podcasts winding down or ending (Hypercritical and Build & Analyze), my podcast listening is decidedly different.
This American Life The Talk Show With John Gruber The New Disruptors
I really like this podcast.
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This past week, in addition to a new job, Esther was away on business. Luckily, it was close enough to home that we could come up and visit. The hotel is using a contact RFID key card, and it is interesting technology. I am curious to know if they use it for tracking and analyzing traffic patterns with in the hotel, i.e. if there are a lot of room keys on a floor in the elevator lobby, why not alter the elevator algorithm to reduce the congestion.
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On Monday, I started a new job. I am no longer in IT, I no longer have the proverbial keys to the kingdom (or the responsibility that follows). It is weird and I imagine that I will feel a little strange about it for a while, like checking my email and not having a significant number of messages, and not being on call.
Needless to say, this does not mean I am in happy at my new job.
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Earlier this year I wrote about buying products instead of being one which included using Fever as my RSS reader. It appears that I read the tea leaves correctly, because today Google announced they were shutting Google Reader. Many of my friends have been using Google Reader for a very long time, and while there are stand alone RSS feed readers, not many of then have any sync or at least sync that is not reliant in Google’s syncing.
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Delicious and surprisingly Paleo. They taste like banana bread.
Ingredients 3 bananas 5 dates, pitted 3 eggs ¼ cup coconut flour ? cup honey 2 tbsp coconut oil, melted 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 teaspoon cinnamon ¼ teaspoon baking soda ¼ teaspoon baking powder pinch of salt ½ cup dark chocolate chips, melted 1 teaspoons ground coffee coarse sea salt (to top donuts-optional) Instructions Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
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A missionary visited a little village in a remote area in the rain forests of Africa. He asked the chief if he could speak to the people about the benefits of modern technology and medicine. The chief granted him his request and the following day, the entire village gathered in the popular assembly spot.
As the missionary extolled the virtues of modern western technology, the audience kept on waving their arms and shouting “Hazunga!
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Ingredients: 2 Cups Almond Flour 1/2 Cup Dried Cranberries 1/4 Cup Unsweetened Shredded Coconut 2 Tbsp Raw Organic Honey 1 Tsp Baking Soda Pinch of Sea Salt 1 Egg Zest of 1 Orange or to your taste liking Process: Preheat oven to 375 Degrees F
In a large mixing bowl, combine your almond flour, sea salt, baking soda, cranberries, and shredded coconut In a smaller mixing bowl, mix the egg and the honey until well blended Add your wet ingredients to the dry and mix well Knead the dough with your hands if necessary to ensure an even distrobution of ingredients Add in the orange zest and continue to knead to mix well
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Today was my first day back to they gym in a while. I have fought off a nasty flu/cold that sent me to the doctors, which is a rarity for me and should be seen as an indicator of how bad off I was. The illness immediately followed by the travel that my wife had to leave for left me out of the gym for three solid weeks.
This in combination with my lackadaisical workout schedule since the holidays has left me feeling more out of shape than in.
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My wife is back from her business trip and these are some of my collected thoughts on flying solo as a parent.
Everything takes longer than expected, I figured this would be the case, but it always sucks to be reminded. Rising early makes a huge difference, more can be accomplished efficiently while the little ones are sleeping. Having checklists can be a life saver. I knew exactly what needed to be packed in everyone’s bag the night before they were needed, making sure that I either had them packed the night before or before everyone was awake.
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I listened to the latest episode of the Enough podcast and the guest Pat Dryburgh in relating his spate of deleting his social media accounts, starting ing fits and spurts said off handedly that there was a time bomb attached to every thing he creates.
When I was a print graphic designer I used to design one off logos and projects that I would intensely work on and the after printing a single copy or hearing it, I would delete it (or technically not save it).
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When the Girl was born, I wrote about 360° awareness, which is something that still gets to me when people lack it. Case in point, this weekend at Trader Joes, it was a mad house. People and carts everywhere. The people killing about, oblivious to those around them, not keeping the lanes of traffic free. It reminded me of Merlin Mann’s video. The rules of the grocery store are:
keep moving if you are not moving, get out of the way These two things should be universal axioms, things we all understand.
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Esther, my lovely wife, is off on business, which means that I am the sole parent home with the kids, except I’m not at home, I have a full week of work, coaching and some other thing simmering in the background. Not that taking care of two kids is something that I am not capable of, but it is always nice to have someone around to help lighten the load, sharing the work and wrangling the kids.
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Esther and watched the documentary “The Queen of Versailles”, following the construction and lack of completion around David and Jackie Siegel’s mansion. It is a great movie, highly worth a watch and now available on Netflix.
While watching the movie, Esther made an observation that paraphrased went like this:
They (David and Jackie Siegel) are clearly greedy, every can get greedy. When the line between want and need is blurred we can all be greedy.
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Last week, while coaching the Teens Crossfit class, two of the girls were discussing a television show that I was not familiar with. I inquired about the show and they were were confused about my lack of knowledge of current reality TV. They quizzed me about show after show, some of which I had heard of but a vast majority I had not or only a passing of the name.
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In a previous post I discussing using services and products interested in taking my money, instead of data about me. I deleted my Facebook account, stopped using Twitter and switched primarily to App.net. This was an interesting change, the conversations were richer, partly because of the increased character limit, partly due to the more selected population. The problem that I found was that there wasn’t a whole lot of social in the social network.
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Version 3 didn’t last very long. While I liked Octopress, there was inherrant friction with posting, and lots of fiddling, things that kill my desire to write. When my Hazel actions started to break down, I stopped writing, which is not what I wanted. The site is now powered by Wordpress again. I have re-released the archives of the site, but they have been significantly edited. Most of the link posts have been deleted, all of my tumblelog experiments have been cleaned out, all of the “Today, I had a sandwich” posts have been removed.
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Shawn Blanc wrote about his use of Scratch as a follow on to Simplenote. Many others have written about using Drafts in their capture work flow, but I am confused and I feel like I am missing something.
I like the apps, they are each customizable and I get buried in the multitude of options for configuring the different “actions” available. There are so many different options, that it can be dizzying.
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With Instagram’s recent hiccups, Google’s push to ‘plus’ everything, Twitter’s restrictions on app developers and Facebook’s continual disregard for my privacy I am beginning to think that Anil Dash was right about the web we lost. All of the money grabbing, not from me but from people who sell my information is a little disconcerting. So, this year I am working to buy products, not being one.
This is not an easy task.
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On April 17 of 2012, I wrote about The TV Experiment we started. It involved:
Here is what I am purposing:
We are going to cut the cord. We will get the content for our TV from streaming devices or HD local over-the-air sources, particularly for time sensitive or sporting events.
How:
We will use the second generation Apple TV and iTunes to get some shows, as well as newly released movies.
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Today my wife was trying to maneuver a ham into our oven, bought remnants of an unprepared New Years Day feast, when I realized that oven doors open the wrong way. Think about what is prepared in the average American oven, turkeys, pies, or in our case hams. All things that can be heavy, or should be delicately maneuvered as to not spill their contents. But the way the oven door opens is counter to how you should be able to get the item in.
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When my parents don’t visit for Christmas, they send a box for the kids. There are a few thing tucked in there for Esther and me, but they the boxes are really for the kids, filled with Christmas cheer. My mom starts calling in late October, checking the kids sizes, ensuring that the things she is thinking about buying are okay or will be something the kids will be interested in.
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I was so frustrated…
My lovely wife had let me sleep in to the luxurious time of 8 o’clock. I had gotten up, prepared coffee for the day, the kids almost ready for the day. My wife gets ready to her day, she is getting treated to a massage. It is going to be me and the kids. I’m not one to shy away from taking care of my kids, I am not so macho that I can’t change a diaper or so inept in the kitchen that I can’t prepare lunch.
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Why this was removed from the System Preferences, is beyond me.
sudo -s launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist Remote Login must be enabled for SFTP.
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Sven Fechner posted a link to Jonathan Poritsky’s gist of converting a recipe to discrete Omnifocus actions for each ingredient. I didn’t have luck with the way that it was posted, I kept getting • DELETE in front of each ingredient, so I modified it a little, first to delete the extra text, but also, to create a project for each recipe instead of a large “Recipe” project.
tell application "
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Yesterday, I made the trip to ODU, specifically to the Human Performance Lab, to get my body composition measured in the BodPod. It was a unique experience, like being sealed in an escape pod. The device uses air pressure to calculate body density to then get body composition via the Siri Equation.
% Body Fat = (495 / Body Density) - 450 The procedure was quick and easy. I had to strip down to the bare minimum compression shorts and a swim cap and get weighed.
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The Problem Over the Thanksgiving break, I was listening to Gabe Weatherhead’s Generational podcast Episode 009 “Research Materials and Tools with Walton Jones”. Walton blogs at Drosophiliac and has some very geeky processes and tools to capture his research data. I was particularly intrigued by his custom skimmer:// URL Scheme. My mind immediately jumped to how I can combine the iOS URL schemes that are available in the apps that I use, and how they can be used on the Mac, allowing me to have a single URL that I can drop into either VoodoPad or Omnifocus.
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In my job, I am continually looking up server IP addresses, but having to type nslookup and then copy the address to put it somewhere else, can be tedious. I don’t remember where I found this, but drop I drop this in my .bash_profile
function nl {
nslookup $1 | tail -2 | awk -F ":" '{print $2}' | pbcopy
}
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I don’t understand people showing off their destop setups. Every couple of days Lifehacker and every other (airquotes: productivity) site has post of someone’s cool desktop, fixed up with GeekTool, a serene background, and a minimalist feel.
Why?
I can barely remember the last time I looked at my desktop. I have tried using GeekTool to have “ambient” information on my desktop, but since I never look there, I never saw it.
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Jason Kottke links to a hilarious video of the driving in Russia, and I can attest to the absolute insanity that is the Russian driving ethos.
I went in 1999 and stayed with a host family who had to drive me from the high school to their home. Most of the way we were on what would have easily been a 3 lane high way (three lanes in each direction) and it appeared to have no discernible order, people drove where ever they damn well pleased.
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The other day Doug asked that I share the Hazel action that automatically published my blog when a new post is added. On the publish folder I have a Hazel action that:
copies the post to my own plaintext archive, moves the file to the octopress/source/_posts directory modifies the filename to replace spaces with dashes The last action in the stack is this:
cd /Users/benoit/octopress; /Users/benoit/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p286@global/bin/rake generate && /Users/benoit/.
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I am concerned that I will forget about the drafts that I have sitting in the drafts folder.
To fix that I created an Applescript, again triggered by Hazel, adds the files to Omnifocus as tasks. I adapted a David Sparks script to suit my needs.
tell application "Finder" to set fileName to (name of theFile) set fileName to ((characters 1 thru -10 of fileName) as string) set URLFile to do shell script "
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At work we run a severly outdated version of Coldfusion. It was out programming language of choice until 3 years ago when we switched to ASP.net. Our Time and Leave accounting system run on Coldfusion, so it is important, particularly when timesheets are due. Which was yesterday, so of course the system decided to give up the ghost.
Not the whole system, to be honest, just the email part, which is not critical to the functioning of the system, but without the notification, some people lose their ever-loving mind.
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The Department of Transportation also said, however, that rear-end crashes have risen by 20 percent and total crashes are up by 0.9 percent at intersections where cameras have operated for at least a year.
What we are doing is making people paranoid — causing them to slam on the brakes at the slightest hint a light might change, or deciding to fail to make even an absolutely safe right turn on red
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I have become a little enamoured with Sean Korzdorfer’s use of Due as a sidecar app to Omnifocus. He has some Applescripts and other pieces of code that make it very easy to work with, but I really enjoyed reading his Open Notebook which lead me to his Sequential Due Tasks. He is using the URL Scheme in Due.app to create tasks that cascade to the next. I love the idea, but have limited use, but it did get me thinking about how I can use Due in my workflow.
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Sven Fechner finally solves duplicate “Open With” issue:
/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user & killall Finder`
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You are a Democrat, an outspoken atheist, and a foodie. You like to say ’Science!” in a weird, self-congratulatory way. You wear jeans during the day, and fancy jeans at night. You listen to music featuring wispy lady vocals and electronic bloop-bloops.
You really like coffee, except for Starbucks, which is the worst. No wait — Coke is the worst! Unless it’s Mexican Coke, in which case it’s the best.
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(tweet: 269315355078443008)
Take a minute to think about it.
Spot on.
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C.J. Chivers finds the sad element in the otherwise fantastic movie Jiro Dreams of Sushi
This devotion to work came at great costs to the families of Jiro and Pressfield. In fact, Jiro’s children didn’t recognize him when he spent some very rare time at home one day.
That’s tragic, not inspiring. As noble as you may believe your pursuit of excellence is, it means nothing if you go home at night to people who do not recognize you or want you around.
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Peter Maass for The New Yorker, introducing a piece on privacy in light of the David Petraus affair:
In 1987, when Judge Robert Bork was enmeshed in a partisan struggle over his Supreme Court nomination, a reporter for an alternative weekly in Washington, D.C., got a tip that the judge was a patron of a local video store. Michael Dolan went to Potomac Video, in the western corner of the capital, and asked the assistant manager for a list of videos the judge had checked out.
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One of the nice things about Wordpress, or even the previous blog engine I used, staticDimension, I was able to use a bookmarklet to capture ideas on the go. It is not so difficult on a dedicated computer, I always have a text editor and can even upload a file to my Dropbox with out having the client installed. I have even made the process easier by creating few TextExpander snippets.
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Rob Trew’s scripts are some of the best Omnifocus scripting out there.
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Boolean operations Like a web search field, Spotlight supports boolean operators like AND, OR, and NOT. You can also use a minus sign (-) to exclude terms. For example:
chocolate recipes -coconut Use quotation marks to enclose phrases and parentheses to enclose search terms:
chocolate AND "peanut butter" NOT (almonds OR coconut) Searching by date The ‘Modified’ and ‘Created’ attributes can accept all kinds of dates. You can use things like:
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To “unlock” documents in Lion, System Preferences > Time Machine > Options.
from @TedLandau
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In terminal, type:
cd /usr/local/apache2/conf/
openssl genrsa -out server.key 2048
openssl rsa -in server.key -out server.pem
openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr
openssl x509 -req -days 3600 -in server.csr -signkey server.key -out server.crt -sha1 Modify conf/extra/httpd-ssl.conf:
SSLCertificateKeyFile /usr/local/apache2/conf/server.pem In httpd.conf, uncomment:
Include conf/extra/httpd-ssl.conf
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In terminal, run:
chflags nohidden ~/Library
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Open Image Capture and go to the Preferences menu (under the Image Capture menu item). Under the General tab, change the option for “When a camera is connected…” to “No Application” instead of “iPhoto”.
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30 18 * * * rm /home/someuser/tmp/*
Fields:
minute (0–59) hour (0–23) day of month (1–31) month (1–12) day of week (0–6, 0=Sunday) command By default cron sends an email to the user account executing the cronjob. If this is not needed, add:
>/dev/null 2>&1
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Add something like this to your .bash_profile:
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/mysql/bin
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If, after installing Java for OS X 2012–006 and Java 7, you want to disable Java 7 and re-enable the Apple-provided Java SE 6 plug-in, follow these steps.
Note: You must be logged in as an adminstrator.
Note: If prompted for your administrator password after a command, enter it and then press the Return or Enter key.
Open Terminal, located in the Utilities folder. Enter this command, then press the Return or Enter key:
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In the terminal to show:
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool true && killall Finder In the terminal to hide:
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool false && killall Finder
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I have been using Shaun Inman’s Unplayed to track the movies and books I consume, but with the Markdown files living on the server it can be a little bit of a pain to keep the lists current. On a hunch, I took the markdown files from my webserver and put them in my Dropbox. I copied the public URL and edited the code in index.php
to have the download version of the public Dropbox link, which involves switching the www in the url to dl, making https://www.
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I was nervous about the reboot of the James Bond Franchise, how could Daniel Craig be a decent Bond? He was blond, didn’t look nearly debonair enough. How would the plots continue to grow in the loss of the Russians as the primary villain? Casino Royale was a great start, gritty and realistic. Daniel Craig made a great Bond.
The series hit a hiccup at Quantum of Solace, in that the movie felt mopey and uninteresting.
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If you’re an unreasonable person, trust me: the time it takes to find the best of something is completely worth it. It’s better to have a few fantastic things designed for you than to have many untrustworthy things poorly designed to please everyone. The result–being able to blindly trust the things you own–is intensely liberating.
This is the trust that I put in my GR1 and GR2, and is the same goal that I have, finding the same quality of product for all the niches in my life.
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I continually refer back to this, so why not put it in my outboard brain.
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I got an email today in regards to my GORUCK experience. It was a little surprising as I have been very close to “murdering my darling” in the past 6 months. Since I helped someone, maybe I’ll give this blogging thing another swing.
I came across your blog when I Googled “how to prepare for the cold during a GoRuck Challenge”. I am an IT director in Lexington, KY and I am doing my first GRC in 1.
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Apple announced the 13-inch Macbook Pro, the latest iteration of the iPad and the much anticipated iPad mini. I find the MacBook Pro and the iPad mini compelling, but don’t have a need for them in my life just yet. I don’t think the much was a surprise, photos of parts had been leaked to gadget blogs, so the event was focused on two things, the name and the price. Everyone is covering the event, the hardware and the comparisons, but I think all of the Apple bloggers are missing the biggest, yet subtlest announcement today.
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Since getting an iPhone 5, I have been listening to more podcasts than ever before. Not just due to the device, but partly to being fed up with not getting through the podcasts that I want to. Here is how I am listening:
I have tried Instacast, but I couldn’t figure out Instacast’s playlist feature, so I tried Downcast and it has stuck. I sync the podcast subscriptions and listened episodes between my iPhone and iPad, just in case I want to listen on either device.
Brief thought 💭
A podcast, Small Time SysAdmin. An interview series with people who wear multiple hats, like Marco Arment of Instapaper, who are responsible for systems administration on top of their primary job. Questions would include:
What do you do / how do you describe what you do? Windows, Mac or Linux shop? What is th most important metric after uptime? What is the most useful tool or script or application?
Brief thought 💭
A co-workers car in the parking lot has the vanity plate “FLYIN AMA”. For years, I thought that it stood for “Flying Against Medical Advice”, but during a retreat, the co-worker explained that “AMA” was not an acronym, but the outrigger on an outrigger canoe.
“A skilled crew can balance the [canoe body] so that the ama leaves the water and skims over its surface; this is called “flying the ama”… .
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I have an amazing wife. I’ll tell you why, because on Mother’s Day weekend, she let me hang out at the Crossfit gym and go through the Level 1 Certification process. The reason why she let me do it, apart from how awesome she is, is because I am going to a Crossfit Kids coach at our gym. This means that my wife not only gave up her Mother’s Day weekend, but she also gave up a weekend in April to let me go to northern Virginia and complete the Crossfit Kids Certification.
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At work, my manager has to come up with a new paragraph to describe what his section of IT, Systems Administration and Database Operations, does for the website. Below is my contribution.
Sung to the tune of Ice Ice Baby
Systems and Database Operations will stop
Collaborate and listen
Work with you on your brand new innovation
If Something grabs a hold of you tightly
we’ll work to make it happen daily and nightly
Brief thought 💭
Keep your phone turned on at all times of the day. Allow the rings, beeps, and buzzes to interrupt your child midsentence; always let the caller take priority. Carry your phone around so much that when you happen to leave it in one room your child will come running with it proudly in hand — treating it more like a much needed breathing apparatus than a communication device. Decide the app you’re playing is more important than throwing the ball in the yard with your kids.
Brief thought 💭
Increasingly I am finding myself powering the phone down when I get home from work. Not ’silent mode.” Not ’airplane mode.” Off. Disconnected.
It reminds me of ’taking the phone off the hook,” like they did in those good ‘ol landline days… except now it’s like taking the whole world off the hook.
James Shelley
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I was in the doctor’s office with zero cell signal, so I was forced to read some dead-tree media. I picked up Entertainment Weekly issue 1203, the Summer Movie preview edition, not my normal reading fair and started thumbing through it. I found some summer blockbuster movies that I wanted to see, but the article that got me steamed was one that was around the topic:
So there are 4 TV shows that were great in the beginning, but are boring now.
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In getting ready for the GORUCK Challenge, a great cause came along. Below is the email I sent:
You may have heard that I am going to try and complete the GORUCK Challenge in Virginia Beach on April 28th at 10PM. If I haven’t told you about the GORUCK, let me give you the elevator pitch and a link to a video:
The GORUCK Challenge is a team event and never a race.
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It was 10 PM and I was cold standing in front of the Neptune Statue in Virginia Beach. I wasn’t as cold as Esther, who forgot to bring a jacket, but I was cold and it was windy. We were standing with the people who would become GORUCK Challenge Class 157. Some people I had communicated with via Facebook, we had coordinated our 25 pound team weight, a team t-shirt and days leading up to the event, where to buy bricks.
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I wanted to move my blog from Wordpress to a static blog engine ever since Brent Simmons blogged about baked weblogs. I played around with a few but when Ben Brooks wrote about staticDimension, I knew I had found my new blogging platform. The beauty of staticDimension is that it runs on a web server and doesn’t require me to bake the blog and then upload it to the web server, or deal with some Dropbox sync voodoo that I can’t do on my current host.
Brief thought 💭
As a society, we’ve done our absolute best to saturate ourselves with TV, news, articles, blog posts (yes, like this one), tweets and photos. Most of it, however, holds little meaning to us beyond the momentary endorphine hit and amusement of sharing it amongst your friends.
This is not something that we need to undo, necessarily. Society has proven vastly more productive, as whole, with these tools and connections. On the other hand, at an individual level, I believe we are unaware of the effect that this constant saturation has upon us.
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I try and take notes in all the meetings I go to. I have been taking them digitally, but it is so easy for me to get digitally distracted. Sometimes the meetings I am in can be stressful. I mean pulse pounding, hearing my heartbeat in my head kind of stressful, not often, but when they are, sometimes I need to have a reminder in my notes that I was stressed when talking about the subject, so I am purposing the “Meeting Note Seismograph”.
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So what can we do, dear daughter? When you get a little older, I will be honest with you and tell you — fuck ’em. You will not change their mind by arguing, by telling them they are wrong. You change their mind by showing them how being a girl is awesome. You show them by not hiding, by not being demure.
You show them by being more than your looks, even if that’s all people comment on.
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Patrick Rhone wrote a great piece about discovering, via his daughter that TV is Broken. I have noticed the same phenomenon with Hazel, she is either confused and annoyed by commercials or she turns into the perfect marketing zombie immediately asking for whatever is being advertised. And that is not even mentioning the annoyance of the auditory volume of commercials, so much so that Congress has taken up legistlation about it.
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I have been listening to podcasts since about September 2004. It used to be clunky to get content and when Leo Laporte started the TWiT Network, I was excited. I listened to the first episode of TWiT and almost every episode in between.
We are now in a golden age of podcasts. There are multiple independent networks and many main stream providers are furnishing their content via the podcast delivery model.
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Our schools are failing. Rarely does real learning happen in modern classrooms, and when it does, it is often merely a byproduct of each student’s pursuit of an independent and potentially conflicting goal: high grades. While I can only speak to grading practices at my school, I suspect that these concerns are endemic throughout high schools nationwide.
First, high school grades themselves are very poor indicators of a student’s competence.
Brief thought 💭
I read a long time ago about Cal Newport’s Fixed-Schedule Productivity.
The system work as follows:
Choose a schedule of work hours that you think provides the ideal balance of effort and relaxation. Do whatever it takes to avoid violating this schedule. This sounds simple. But think about it for a moment. Satisfying rule 2 is not easy. If you took your current projects, obligations, and work habits, you’d probably fall well short of satisfying your ideal work schedule.
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Last night, I ducked out from home after putting John to bed to see Randall Munroe, author of the XKCD webcomic speak at his alma mater, CNU, where I work.
Randall told some great stories, about how the comic started and some pranks he played while on campus. The great thing about these stories is that I remember the events, but on the “administrator” side versus the “student” side. He also explained the XKCD April Fools joke, which was impressive in both planning and technical scope.
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Theoretically, you can annotate your bookmarks, entering free-form reminders to yourself so that you can remember why you bookmarked this page or that one. I don’t know about you, but I never actually got around to doing this — it’s one of those get-to-it-later eat-your-vegetables best-practice housekeeping tasks like defragging your hard drive or squeegeeing your windshield that you know you should do but never get around to.
Until I started blogging.
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I have been using the native web app for viewing Fever° on the iPhone and waiting for Reeder 3 to ship with Fever° support. In the mean time, I have had to build some odd muscle memory tricks to browse quickly, but also manage to save items that I want to read later. The biggest thing is not using the web app as “Saved to Homescreen” “app”. That is one of the worst options, because when I go back to the Fever° “app”, the whole “app” has to reload and I lose whatever blog post I as reading.
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This weeks This American Life is a fantastic story about what the question: What kind of country do people want, specifically in regards to the size of government?
All across the country right now, local and state governments are finding they can’t pay their bills. Schools are losing teachers, street lights are going dark, garbage is piling up in public parks, and cops are suddenly an optional expense.
This week we travel to Colorado Springs, to Trenton and to the office of Grover Norquist to ask: Is the kind of country we want?
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I have always had a love hate relationship with shaving. I love how smooth my skins feels after, I love the ritual that goes into shaving, but I hate razors. More specifically, I hate razor blade manufacturers and I even cycle in and out of growing a beard to not have to shave.
The act of shaving isn’t the problem. The blades, that is where the problem lies. I have a inherit aversion to changing blades, which means that I am always scraping my face with a dull blade.
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Nobody sits around and plays Farmville. Nobody gets embroiled in a flame war concerning the portrayal of Klingons in human vids or just sits and watches vids with their feet up. Nope. The brave men and women of the future read (super old) books, talk to each other face to face, and even in their VR fantasies practice for things they will have to do in real life or, admittedly quite realistically, have space holosex.
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Brett Terpstra posted an Applescript that takes the completed tasks in Taskpaper and posts them to Day One. I have gone back and forth between Taskpaper and OmniFocus, so I immediately set to modifying the script to work with Omnifocus. My script cribs adapts Chris Brogan and Rob Trew Report Generator.
Here are the results:
(*
Jered Benoit
jeredb.com Omnifocus -> Day One Daily Completed Task Log Based upon [Version 1.
Brief thought 💭
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6 whole jalapenos 6 slices of bacon Chicken Sausage Currywurst Sauce Preheat Oven to 375 degrees. Slice jalapeno’s in half lengthwise. Remove seeds, leave the stems if you would like to be fancy. Bake for 10–15 minutes to soften. Cut bacon slices in half. Stuff each jalapeno half with chicken sausage. Wrap bacon around each bite. Use the fattest part of the bacon on top of the wider part of the jalapeno.
Brief thought 💭
(tweet: 131448991098478592)
Jason Kottke, coining a new term relevant to the modern age.
Brief thought 💭
Google announced about a week ago that they were going to change the way that Google Reader looked and the way that social sharing was done. I am all for a consistent user experience, and any update has to be better than some of the poor design that Google has had in the past1, but a weeks notice is not very accommodating for people who have used Google Reader for years to manage their content and sharing.
Brief thought 💭
Used against the IRA:
One of the most interesting operations was the laundry mat [sic]. Having lost many troops and civilians to bombings, the Brits decided they needed to determine who was making the bombs and where they were being manufactured. One bright fellow recommended they operate a laundry and when asked “what the hell he was talking about,” he explained the plan and it was incorporated — to much success.
Brief thought 💭
Shane: I would have been in time, except there was an accident
John: Was the guy on a cellphone?
Shane: I don’t know.
John: The station said that talking on a cellphone was the equivalent of driving drunk.
Shane: Well, what if you have children screaming in the back seat, wanting a bottle?
John: I’m not sure
Shane: Or if they’re smoking or drinking or eating a Big Mac.
John: They shouldn’t be smoking anyway if they’re needing a bottle.
Brief thought 💭
Adapted from:http://thegrowinglife.com/2008/05/the-alternative-productivity-manifesto/
The Roots
The etymological roots of productivity are from the 16th century French word productif, reaching its economic sense in 1899 with the meaning “rate of output per unit.” This definition has essentially not changed in 100 plus years: “producing readily or abundantly […] producing goods having exchange value,” or the measurement of output over time.
The word derives its meaning from the era in which is was generated.
Brief thought 💭
If you are a regular reader, you may notice some changes to the site. The reasons are varied, but if you have commented recently, don’t think that your comment is the reason why I have made these changes.
I have been working to sharpen the saw, in both my personal and professional life. I have found myself overwhelmed by the amount of work my job and my lovely daughter have created.
Brief thought 💭
In fact, six U.S. cities have been found guilty of shortening the yellow light cycles below what is allowed by law on intersections equipped with cameras meant to catch red-light runners.
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Despite what you think, I am not going to write about a certain four-letter word (Look it up on Wikipedia). The “F” word I am referring to is “friend”.
With the advent of social networking the term friend has become completely devalued. We now have “friends” on Facebook and Myspace, but there is now way to define the person as a close friend, acquaintance, or person you feel semi-obligated to connect with.
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This is a reworking of a previous post, originally titled Kelly Johnson’s 14 rules of management. I had originally written this when I was working in graphic design and it was directed at that line of work, but I think the concept is easily molded to any job.
I had originally made this list the Skunk Works of Design (SWD), that has been changed to Skunk Works Analysis (SWA).
The Skunk Works manager must be delegated practically complete control of his program in all aspects.
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Being a new dad has lead me to codify something that I have been practicing and preaching for a long time. 360° Awareness.
I have seen plenty of time when my 14-year old brother-in-law is walking through a store, paying little mind to the goings on around him. Standing in the middle of an aisle, blocking someone who is behind him or reaching for something not realizing that his reach would cross the view or reach of someone else.
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With the addition of Hazel, the experiment phase of my self experiment project (initial post, update 1) has come to fruition.
After months of priming my sleeping patterns with Pzizz, we are now going to be in the thick of up and down with the baby. Updates regarding how neurolinguistic programming has helped or hurt with getting more sleep will be coming soon.
To ensure the thorough nature of this experiment, I need to disclose that Esther and I have had a fairly easy first three days home.
Brief thought 💭
I have a daughter, Hazel. She’s new and it’s weird to be someone’s parent. That is part of what is weird, not being responsible for someone. I have had that arrangement with my wife for a year or so and I am used to being the provider. This is a different.
I look at Hazel when she is sleeping and it is hard to believe that she isn’t a child I will give back to another set of parents in a few hours.
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Social networks are wonderful things. I have been able to keep up with my cousin’s who are spread across the country, reconnect with old high school and college friends, but they also generate a lot of noise. Being a joiner, I know that I am partly to blame for the amount of noise I get, but still the systems generate a ton of messages that I don’t care about.
Noise lives somewhere between spam, bacn and messages I want to get.
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June is coming quickly, never more true as we wait for our baby. It has been rumored that Apple is releasing SDK built apps for public consumption. Oh yeah, and that iPhone 2.0 3G thing. While I am curious about the 3G availability and any price increases on the 3G data plan, the thing I am most excited about is the third-party applications.
Some of the applications I am most looking forward to are:
Brief thought 💭
Steve Rubel twittered an interesting link this morning: Eliminating the need for customer service.
To summarize:
“A company’s customer service staffing is inversely proportional to the quality of its underlying operations.” Focusing on how many times and why customers contact the company can be a very valuable metric.
By empowering your customers to solve their own problems, you reduce the amount of time and staff that must be spent solving 80% (according to the authors) of your customer issues.
Brief thought 💭
About a 3 weeks ago, I followed Tim Ferriss’ advice and setup an auto responder on my email. It said that I had a full workload and was checking my emails twice a day, but in the event of an emergency or something urgent, give me a call. The exact wording is below:
Dear Colleague,
Due to high workload, I check email twice daily at 9:00 AM and 4:00 PM EST.
Brief thought 💭
I accompanied Esther to the doctor today, it was a standard pre-baby check up. Today was our first appointment with a new doctor after changing practices, and as a qualifier, we changed doctors very late in the process.
I’m not writing about the baby, that is covered on another blog. I’m writing about service.
Our experience with the previous doctor was abysmal. Not for the medical care, it was more than adequate, but for the service.
Brief thought 💭
Esther and i were driving tonight and a good number of the cars we were around had the bright screens of DVD players showing out their windows. One of the vehicles turned to go to the same store as we were, which clued us into the fact that the vehicle and it’s occupants were not on a road trip of any kind. Probably just a run to the store, like us.
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The New York Times ran an article today about bloggers who were working themselves to death and how this becoming part of a rising trend. While I do agree that the always-on, instant news source culture that has been created by the new blog community has created some problems, specifically the accuracy of the “reporting.” It think Matt Richtel gets it wrong.
The article paints the picture of an epidemic, bloggers keeling over left-and-right, but this is no different than professional journalists.
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Jason Calacanis has stirred up some blogosphere trouble with his post on How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips).
Tip #11:
Fire people who are not workaholics. come on folks, this is startup life, it’s not a game. go work at the post office or stabucks if you want balance in your life. For realz
Jason has edited Tip #11, changing language from “workaholics” to “[people who] don’t love their work” after getting some feedback from the inter-webs.
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In the continued expansion of my duties at work, I have been assigned/volunteered to be the back for the the webmaster when it comes to emergency notification. This really gets me in deep with the what is happening. Essentially, if the webmaster is out of contact, I get the call to push out changes to the webpage/text messages. A lot of responsibility for lowly ole me.
The interesting thing about this is I get to be involved in the discussions surrounding the implementation of these emergency contact systems
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I have a background in graphic design and consider myself a design elitist (thus my love for Apple’s industrial design). Changing from a designer to an analyst is quite a different world.
Example:
In an enhancement revisions to the housing lottery system, authentication for first-year freshman and transfer students is going to be handled differently than in prior years. Freshman and Transfers have to fill out different forms to secure their place on campus, which is also different from Returning students.
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I have been working on a project that would make the management of summer conferences on campus easier and more efficient than the “by hand” method that is used now. Essentially, the system has been a series of Excel spreadsheets, emailed back and forth and stored on a shared network folder. Lots of revisions, not very effective, not to mention that if someone has the document open and another player needs to make a change, there is a lockout.
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I went to my sister-in-law’s going away party tonight. She’s leaving for the Army in the next couple of days and while I’m happy for her, I am concerned about some of the choices she is making. Those choices are neither here nor there, but the party setting is pertinent to this post.
Being a male vegetarian is weird. Not from my end, I enjoy eating vegetables, not eating meat. That’s the point right?
Brief thought 💭 from Tuesday, Jul 10, 2007
…
This post was originally written when I was young, immature and dumb. I didn’t understand the trans community. I regret having written this, and I have removed it.
Brief thought 💭
What is the point of learning how to click, where to click, without understanding why to click.
In my freshman year of college (circa 2000), I took “Introduction to Technological Systems”, which was a renamed “Introduction to Computers”. I enjoyed the class and quite liked the professor, eventually getting an A in the class, along with pretty much everyone else in the class. The introduction to technological systems went through a computer part by part, from CPU to databases to the internet, giving a broad overview of a little bit of everything.
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I recently read a blog posting which linked over to Kelly Johnson’s 14 Rules of Management and I was intrigued by his principles of management and how they can relate to a design shop. I have been interested in Skunk Works ever since I had read a Popular Mechanics article on the organization just after the first Gulf War and learning of Kelly’s rules of management, I immediately been can to co-relate them to running a design shop.
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Last night I was watching Enterprise, yes, I know I’m a geek, and “Trip,” the chief engineer said something while dressed for shore leave. “You have to be seen to be noticed.” He was of course dressed in a loud and obnoxious Hawaiian shirt.
The funny thing is that he is completely right. I used to know a coworker who did very little to take credit when it is due to him and he essentially locked himself in his cubicle.
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I promised earlier this week that I would detail how I have built my personal productivity system. The short course will be here, a longer more detailed version will be available if you click the “more” link below.
The Short Course I have become a disciple of David Allen’s Getting Things Done, it literally revolutionized my life almost two years ago.
David Allen’s system is a simple one with many complex iterations and sub sections.
Brief thought 💭
After beginning the discussion about a personal productivity system, a great concept in getting to a more productive life is the Japanese philosophy of kaizen. Kaizen’s English translation is “continuous improvement”.
The goals of kaizen include the elimination of waste (defined by [Joshua Isaac Walters] as “activities that add cost but do not add value”), just-in-time delivery, production load leveling of amount and types, standardized work, paced moving lines, right-sized equipment, etc.
Brief thought 💭
I have been trying to post regularly about my things happening in my life. Yesterday was a good example of why a personal productivity system is essential to maintain organization in your life.
Yesterday was a very hectic day, a lot of projects needing attention, more projects being created, plenty of hurdles to overcome. Almost a standard day, but without my productivity system, I would have probably gone to the corner, assumed the fetal position and wept.
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A whole song devoted to Tom Cruise and how Tom Cruise Crazy he is! Fabulous
I particularly love the uke
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Whoa. I’m not very good with math, nor am I very good with children and remembering what grade they are in at what age, etc. I just learned this wicked easy way to know a kids age or in the inverse, their grade.
To find age (when grade is known)
Age = Grade + 5
To find grade (when age is known)
Grade = Age — 5
Now I won’t feel like an idiot asking about kids grades and age and such.
Brief thought 💭
Esther says I have an unhealthy obsession with Merlin Mann of 43folders, and for the most part she is probably right. Essentially I want to be Merlin Mann (although I don’t have as cool of a name). He is a productivity guru, even though he says he is the most productive procrastinator in the world.
Back to the point of this post.
About a week ago, I sent Merlin an email, it went a little something like this:
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I love getting 419 scams. Maybe if you help me Mr. alija zongo will give you a cut of the money too!
Dear Friend,
TOP SECRET
I am alija zongo, the director in charge of auditing and accounting
section of Africa Development Bank,Ouagadougou Burkina faso West Africa with
due respect and regard.I have decided to contact you on a business
transaction that will be very beneficial to both of us at the end of the
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Saturday night, Esther and I went to the Mythbusters. They came to campus as part of our family weekend program and I was really excited. It was Kari and Grant and I really had no idea what was going to happen. As we drove the the venue, I was thinking: They can’t possibly bust a myth on stage. How would that work. They have to do hundreds of repetitions to ensure accuracy.
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I have found in recent months that I have been watching a lot of TV. I mean a lot, so I have decided to stop watching TV for a week. The only television I am watching is movies that we have gotten from Netflix. I don’t want to let those go to waste, but other than that, I’m watching no TV.
I started this morning, which was weird. I didn’t pop on the boobtube like I normally do.
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This is going to be extremely hard to write.
John, my father-in-law, died on Tuesday, August 8, 2006 at 4:05.
It was not expected and although he was battling cancer, it is believed to be unrelated.
I was going to post all about the bicycle trip, but currently that doesn’t seem appropriate.
Funeral planning is underway, I will post details that are appropriate.
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I think its update no. 3.
John has been at the VA hospital for like 48 hours straight. He was informed that they didn’t get enough cells to type the cancer, although they know that it is cancer. After he spoke with an oncologist, she let him know that she thought it was most likely not metastisized melanoma, but more likely lymphoma. If it is lymphoma, his current state is actually very good, it would be classifed by most professionals (and all my website reading) as stage 1.
Brief thought 💭
Esther’s dad had his biopsy today. It was a pretty rough procedure. I got to the hospital a little after 10:30, having raced to get there at a descent time, and had to sit and wait. John’s appointment was scheduled for 11, but he didn’t get seen until 11:20 and that was after he bugged every person who entered the waiting room. It was weird the way he went into the appointment though.
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Today is John’s biopsy. I’m going to be there to support Marina (his wife) and it looks like it might be a long wait. Do hospitals have wi-fi? I have packed a bag of snacks for us, because Marina is a little bit of a health nut. I mentioned us eating from the vending machine and she turned her nose up.
His appointment is at 11, but they want him to check in at 10:30 because it is a real surgery kind of procedure.
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My readers, the state of Jeredb’s Union is strong.
You may notice a change in the look of jeredb.com, that is due to the upgrade to Wordpress.com. I have been with Blogger since my sophomore year in college and have made use of every little feature that they have squeezed into their service, but I have finally out grown the service as a whole. I want a more robust blogging experience, and while I’m not hosting my own Wordpress install, I think that this is an improvement.
Brief thought 💭
I just got back from the first appointment with John about his cancer (read more) and we got absolutely nothing done! I’m really pissed at the VA hospital, the surgeon we saw, and at John! Let me tell you why:
The VA doesn’t do a “team-based” approach to treatment, so the initial problem was that the oncologist needed a biopsy to confirm the type of cancer (understandble) but the surgeon didn’t want to operate on the groin lymph nodes because it would leave him with unpleasant side-effects (swelling in the legs, possible blood clots) and might delay his chemo treatment.
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After a very restful weekend, I am “once more unto the breach.”
Let me tell you, I’m sick of print design. Not the love of ink on paper, but print design in a place that doesn’t accept good design, that doesn’t have the budget for good design and that doesn’t let designers push the envelope.
I want to move into digital media, I’m doing podcasting right now and I want to be more involved with blogs, plus I’ve got this calendar thing that I’ve been doing for almost a year so I think that it can all become official and be rolled into a new job with a title something like “Emerging Media and R&D Specialist.
Brief thought 💭
This week was really rough.
Wednesday after a long staff retreat, Esther and I learned that her dad has cancer. He had a scare about a year ago. Melanoma on a butt cheek. It was operated on and we thought everything was great. He even went in for a 6 month scan which showed nothing.
He has had an abnormal bump in his groin, but we all thought it was a hernia or some other common ailment.
Brief thought 💭 from Tuesday, May 16, 2006
freeker_cnu: wigwam, frightened of the dark:
I honestly can say I’ve had the time of my life these past five years and today was the perfect capstone… minus the capburn. I got my B.A. I got to spend the afternoon and evening surrounded by those I love. Yeah, I got money, but I also got advice and words of encouragement. And I hugged the balls off of Paul Trible. OH, he tried to pull away.
Saturday night saw Ben Lee performing at the Kimball Theatre in Williamsburg. I had heard of Ben during my undergrad with a download of a song called “Cigarettes Will Kill You (WMV from Amazon)” and found him to be a great little balladier. So with a …
Read more →
Brief thought 💭 from Friday, Apr 21, 2006
I have been intrigued by the concept of Coca-Cola Blak from its first announcement. How can you combine a sweet syupy cola flavor with the bitterness and strength of coffee? Before I continue with the review a brief interlude. While living in Europe, I came across a great little stop, the Baeren-Treff, a purveyor of fine gummy bears. One of the most unique flavors that they carry is a coffee flavored gummy.
Brief thought 💭 from Friday, Apr 7, 2006
Work as been stressful the past couple of days, lots of projects with tight deadlines. Not so much fun.
Oscar went in on Wednesday to “reduce his manliness” and when we got him back yesterday, the vet said he had a a seizure. I thought: “No big deal, so high powered drugs might make me seize up too.”
Last night he had one at 6:15ish. It was freaky. I’ve dealt with people seizures before but never an animal one.
Brief thought 💭 from Friday, Mar 10, 2006
When the idea of a la carte cable has been floated, I am usually over joyed. I can get ride of a whole lot of channels that I never watch. Here is my list:
Lifetime
“Next on Lifetime…” the same old bleh movies about mothers who love their children, etc. ESPN
I know that I’m the only guy every who isn’t addticted to ESPN. ABC Family
I don’t need family friendly programming.
Introduction Organization. Left-brainers love it. Right-brainers hate it. If you’re a graphic designer an easy guess is that you are a right-brain thinker. What is this left-brain, right-brain stuff? Experimentation has shown that the two …
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Deep thoughts 💭 on Pride:
It’s weird. I didn’t really think that one feels pride in your family. Especially when the family is just me and Esther. I’m always proud of her accomplishments, but not in a boastful way. Well today (yesterday in reality) that changed.
She got into …
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Jinx is a cat that we adopted a year and a few months ago. She was very anti-social. She has since become a very social animal and a lot of fun to have around.
Recently, she has started to watch TV with us. Usually it’s nature shows on PBS or …
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Dateline — My Bedroom
2:30 am.
What was that horrid noise? …
There it is again. …
Is that Esther snoring? …
No. …
Where is it coming from? …
It’s under the bed. …
If I were 5 it would be the boogie man. …
I’m not 5. …
Oh holy ****! …
That’s a cat …
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In a previous entry, I shared with you how Mrs. Gomah, from Abidjan, needed my help to get a large sum of money. I also posted by response. Here is what rolled in over the weekend.
Subject: FROM GOMAH TILL I READ FOR YOU
Dear Benoit,
I’m in receipt …
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I AM MRS. VICTORIA GOMAH,THE CHIEF CORPORATE INVESTMENT BANKER OF A BANK IN ABIDJAN.I MUST SOLICIT YOUR CONFIDENCE IN WHAT AM ABOUT TO TELL YOU.THIS IS BY VIRTUE OF IT’S NATURE AS BEING HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL AND URGENT.
I AM LOOKING FOR A RELIABLE AND …
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I am a very political person.
I am left leaning.
I think that a socialist state takes better care of all people.
I vote Democratic.
I abhor most Republicans.
I am a very political person.
But not one person I work with know that.
A long time ago, I …
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Merlin Mann of 43folders.com has started podcasting little tips. In this podcast he discusses the different formats he plans on putting future podcasts in.
The list includes:
plain text transcript html xml/rss/atom audio/mp3 DRM-protected wav …
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Deep thoughts 💭 on Question…:
If your urine smells faintly of coffee, does that mean you drink too much?
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