January, 2006

funny / lifehacks — No Comments
31
Jan 06

Where Technology goes to Die

Here’s the two graveyards of technology at my parent’s house, one for decrepit technology and dusty old tomes of computer knowledge. You should’ve seen the huge box of old 30 meg hard drives and token ring network cards I pulled out of my bedroom.

I hadn’t used any of it in at least two years so it got tossed!

The picture above includes the 386 my uncle gave me that I upgraded to a blazing 233mhz plus a bunch of printers where its more expensive to buy the cartridges than just buy a new printer.

These are a blast from the past, I loved the VB4 and 5 days, full of AOL script kiddie fun and perl hacking on Redhat Linux 6.

[tags]photography, technology, graveyard, funny, lifehack, lifehacks, cleaning, decluttering[/tags]

food — 5 Comments
30
Jan 06

Colleen’s Wheat Bread

Cathy over at Chief Family Officer was nice enough to post Colleen’s Wheat Bread recipe, I tried it this weekend and it turned out great. It was a perfect match for the Vegetable Beef Barley soup my wife made. The only change I made was to put a couple tablespoons of sugar in also, I wasn’t sure if the honey would be enough food for the yeast to chomp on.

food / goals2006 / lifehacks — No Comments
27
Jan 06

Hidden Calories

Are you having trouble losing weight even though you’ve cut your calories? Watch out for hidden calories, I mean foods you wouldn’t normally think of when? you log your food for the day:

  • Gum – Go for low sugar alcohols, manufacturers don’t have to list them under sugar but they are still converted into calories
  • Altoids
  • Barbeque sauce
  • Half and half or creamer in coffee
  • Diet drinks (they still have some calories)
funny — No Comments
27
Jan 06

Why I Love NPR #49

NPR

Hearing Terry Gross say “Fiddy Cent” ’cause she’s that pedantic.

lifehacks — No Comments
24
Jan 06

Climbing Hills

I’ve done several 100 mile bike trips (a century for all they cyclists out there). The course we did had a 1 mile uphill. Obviously this sucked.

Here comes the metaphor of the day. Sometimes all you could do was stare at your front tire and watch it move! Staring at the top of the hill was too discouraging. In other words, measure your small accomplishments day by day and don’t worry about that lofty goal just yet.

The reward was a 2 mile downhill waiting on the other side where you could easily hit 45 miles per hour (I really thought my bike was going to fly apart, another guy in front of me said he hit 55mph).

gtd — No Comments
24
Jan 06

Dreaming Productivity

Last night I had a weird dream. I’m pretty sure my manager was chasing me along a precipice (maybe the Grand Canyon) and then I started dispensing this bit of productivity advice:

I told him to create an email address for each role he was in at work. So, bob+mentor@gmail.com and bob+hiringmanager@gmail.com and bob+functionmanager@gmail.com.

I woke up thinking, I think about productivity entirely too much before bed, time to find something to read instead.

[tags]dreaming, dreams, productivity, gtd, lifehack[/tags]

goals2006 — 2 Comments
20
Jan 06

Nike Free’s

Nike Free

I got a pair of Nike Free’s on sale over Christmas vacation at Finish Line. I ran yesterday and the day before for just 10 minutes at a time and my ankles are really really sore. That’s sore as in I exercised them too much.

The whole point of these things is to train as close to barefoot as you can (or as society allows) and it definitely works.

I have to say, their initial color picks suck but I’m glad they did that ’cause that means the last years’ model I bought was cheap.

food / funny — 2 Comments
19
Jan 06

Sometimes it doesn’t taste better on TV

Wow, I watched this episode of Giada’s Everyday Italian, I thought this looked painful:

? Giada Doesn't like it

Here’s the blow by blow coverage, this is great.

[tags]food network, food, funny, humor, giada[/tags]

gtd — No Comments
19
Jan 06

The No-scroll Inbox

My job right now is pretty much email driven. Almost every email coming in is some task I need to finish. To keep from being overwhelmed I try to keep only a few emails in my inbox at any time so that the message listing box never scrolls.

I very quickly decide what the task is that needs done and either flag it for later work or (if its a task under 2 minutes), finish it right then and there. Then I either delete the email or file it away in folders.

This is close to getting your inbox to empty, one of The David’s original ideas, but I find not having to always have it completely empty less stressful while still getting the? benefits of having fewer items to look at.

goals2006 — 7 Comments
13
Jan 06

Mini Goals

I think I mentioned in my last post that I have eight main goals, I’ll discuss those later, for right now I want to talk about the concept of my mini goals.

I have about 70 of these suckers. They have no specific end date of when they need done and some could be done tomorrow if I chose to. They range across all subjects and the point of them is to give me a break from my main goals if I chose.? They will hopefully spice it up enough that I can stick to my goals. I’ll give three examples:

  • Finish a bottle of multivitamins before they expire. Seems easy right? I have till 2008 on this bottle but I’ve went through about three bottles that have expired that I can think of. My strategy for this is to keep them at work right next to my monitor in plain view so I take them.
  • Send back food at a restaurant. I’ve had some really awful food before but I’m always too nice to send it back. The next time I get bad food? I intend to send it back and complain to the manager.
  • Learn to play Go. My friend Carey has been trying to get me to play Go for the longest and I just haven’t made time to properly sit down with a board and a book to do this but its definitely something I want to learn.

In conclusion, using these to spice up my year goals will keep me interested in furthering myself and keep me on task.

Clarification Update: I don’t have to do all of these mini goals this year, they’re just side-tasks when I get bored.

[tags]resolutions, goals, running, go, board game, health[/tags]

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