Freeform

Ok, time for some free-form thought, just because I wish I was writing more. Yesterday, Lori put up the tree, and put lights on the tree. We watched Elf and part of Arthur Christmas yesterday and listened to a lot of Christmas music.  Today it's been less Christmasy, though we have the tree, the lights and Lori's put up some other decorations already. 

The day started way too early today, the cat waking us up several times, and Ben waking us up, too.  He was just ready to start the day far earlier than we were.  In the past, I might have seen the extra time as a chance to get some more stuff done, but today, it was difficult to drag myself out of bed.  And then I had to make coffee twice because I didn't get the pot pushed in all the way the first time and it overflowed and got all over and filled everything with coffee grounds.  Yuck. 

Things improved after that.  I've been slowly nursing my first and now second cup, I got some good cleaning done on the back patio that I've wanted to do for a long time and it hasn't been as hot today as they said it would be. 

I'm typing this in a very cool website called https://wordcounter.io - as you type it counts words, characters, sentences, paragraphs and pages.  It also shows you the  "keyword density" - the words you've used the most.  And it's all updating in realtime as you type.  I think I will use this from now on when I want to write a certain number of words.  When you first start, it also counts down how many characters you have left for Twitter and Facebook posts.  Really smart tool.  There's also a little graph, it looks like it wants me to get to 2,500 characters.  Not sure why.

I'm at 4,500 steps and I need to get to 10,000.  That'll be difficult as Ellie's going to have friends over so we'll have access to less of the house, including the living room where I usually make up the steps by jogging in place.  I'll have to see if I can do that in the bedroom, I guess.

31 days to Christmas.  I have some, but not all of my Christmas shopping done which is sad because I have two people to shop for - my wife and my one direct report at work.  It's sad because my wife is shopping for everyone else and I'm sure she's much further along in her shopping.  How else can I make today more Christmasy?  There's the tree frame I made, I can hang that up.  I also still need to do a blog post about it because it was a fun DIY project. 

So far today we haven't listened to any Christmas music because it's all been about listening to whatever Ben wanted to watch.  Which is ironic because he's the one who got us up earlier.  He should be listening to what we want to listen to or watching what we want to watch.  But I guess it doesn't work that way.

I reached 2,500 characters.  Nothing fancy happened.  But feels like I've written enough for now.

Nevertember Eleventeenth at 1:67 dm.

We were joking about fake dates the other day and "Nevertember" came to mind. I figured that I wasn't the first to think of it, but when I searched Google, I was surprised to find so few. (Or Twitter - one single entry?? Wow.)

Here is, of course, another great date thanks to our brilliant friends at Parks and Recreation:

On What Planet?

Ok, two questions prior it asked me my salary. And then offers me these choices?

Hack

I wanted to do something different for a blog post and so I thought maybe I could draw out this idea I've had in my head for some time now.  I sat down to try to sketch it and realized I couldn't get the perspective right. So I tried drawing a few other things and realized that my "ability" to draw hasn't magically improved in many years of not drawing.

So finally Googled a subject I like: floating homes in Seattle and then tried to sketch a rough interpretation.  In real life the one from "Sleepless in Seattle" would be where I drew a dock instead. There are also houses behind and to the right, but I wanted to focus more on the one house than the ful scene. The perspective is still wrong, the photo I was looking at was from water-level and yet mine ends up being from the crow's nest of a tall ship or a helicopter or something. Which makes the trees and Aurora Bridge in the background look weird.  Oh well.  Thanks to my daughter for the use of her colored pencils.

Spying 2

So I had intended to write about this yesterday but really sidetracked with hackers and governmental agencies with three-letter names. Let's skip past all that, shall we?

Over the weekend got to briefly visit some friends and their new baby. I hadn't seen them in quite some time - he, not sure how long. She, a colleague who transitioned to being a stay-at-home-mom / freelancer / independent business owner when it was time to go out on maternity leave in advance of the arrival of their second child.

But because they share their life through blogs, complete with photos and video and because we do interact in Facebook, it was so easy to just jump back in. True, the visit was a brief encounter spent mostly trying to keep Ben from being miserable and making everyone else's time less pleasant, but it also felt like there hadn't been any time apart.

But to reflect on it later, it was a little bit weird - because so much of what we put out there (save Facebook) is truly unidirectional, broadcast-even, you may feel like you're connected or know someone, but the feedback loop is unclosed (save, again, the occasional comment on the blog). You posted a blog, I read it, you don't know if I read it, or if I understood it, or how it factored into my mental model of who you are. It also probably allowed me to be lazy or less in the moment. Only after we were in the car did it occur to me to express something meaningful that I should have said in person. So I sent them a note on Facebook after I got home. pffft.

I recall the first day of COMA123 as a freshman in college (yeah, the irony of "coma" is not lost on us Communications Majors from PLU) when they taught that 1+1=3. What I say, what you hear and the experience we share together of saying and hearing. (Or alternatively, what I think you heard me say. In truth, perhaps 1+1 is at least 4. But now I might be digressing again.)

Why I Blog

"So... why do you blog?"

It's a question I can't remember ever being asked, but it's one I ask myself. So here we are on post 2,961 and now I ask myself this? It is an interesting question. Many have tried and failed/bailed. Why would I post spend time, almost daily, to commit words to the ether where the average post will get about 20-30 the day it's posted and a trickle after that? (Except when I write about GroupOn, fixing my washing machine or Facebook's in-retrospect-quite-failed attempt to kill email.)

It's just one component of the social strategy that is the James Lamb brand. My personal brand. And the TV James subbrand, but that's waning. But, yeah, why bother?

I struggled with that on Sunday, with an idea for a blog I haven't written yet, one that part of me feels like needs to be told and one part of me says "this one's not for public consumption" (hint: it's about my attitude and it's a churchy topic) and so I haven't written it yet, but in trying to decide if I wanted to write it, I found myself asking "Why do I even blog in the first place?"

I think there are several reasons.

Titles

The other day Ben was repeatedly opening and then slamming his door and I called up "Hey, what's with the all the banging, Dr. Slammydoorskins?" or something like that.

Rachel said "Why is he a doctor?"

I said "I don't know. Would you rather he be a professor?"

And she said "I don't know. Why do they need to be professional?"

I took that to mean "Why not an athlete or creative title?" and that was interesting to think about... the creative and sports community has failed to create easy titles to describe themselves.

It's not like people introduce themselves as "Pianist Schroeder B. Schultz" or "Painter Irene Adler" or "Cinemer Cary Grant" or "Tenista John McEnroe" the way you would "Detective Jim Brass," "Dr. Perry Cox," "Mayor Bloomberg" or "President Ronald Reagan." It's always "So-and-so, sport player" or "Award-winning actor so-and-so."

You could say they're not defined by a title, but on the other hand, it's harder to find something to hang the hat on.

(Ok, there seems to be a few like "Golfer" but then many say that's even barely a sport.)

Fake Statistic

In the United States alone, bugs fly into the eyes of over 67,000 adults over the age of 18 every month.

Yes, I go to great lengths for my humor.  (If you're coming here off of RSS or by visiting my blog, you missed an earlier post on Facebook.)

And breathe...

Well now... that was a bit of a roller coaster of a week, but it certainly ended on a high note. This is mostly for my own decompression. I don't actually expect anyone (except maybe Lori) to actually read it and hopefully she won't tell me I need to edit it.

Monday - I don't recall anything of note. Busy day at work.

Tuesday - Busy day at work, departed early because we had a meeting with Rachel's neurobehavioralist. Despite some recent issues with sleep, he's really encouraged. It was a really good talk. We also brought in one of his progress reports that we had Ben's teacher fill out. I think he *finally* had a good idea of what we were up against, or why some of the tactics he wanted us to try with Rachel was easier said than done in this household. He spent some time talking about Ben and what we've been working on with him. For now he wants to let the medical side play itself out but could see us eventually consulting with him for Ben as well. And then he switched to talk about us. When confronted with the challenges of these two, he wanted to make sure we were doing all right, that we were getting enough sleep, that we were getting chances to get away, stuff like that. I really appreciate that we never feel rushed when we talk to him and that I've learned more about myself and about my relationship with Lori and about Lori as well from these sessions. The area of neurobehavior is pretty fascinating and it's surprising how this stuff all interconnects when it comes to learning styles, cleaning styles, organizational styles and so on.

Mashup Mashon Mashin

I recently recalled an incident a few years ago where we were at a reasonably realistic Chinese restaurant and I poured some soy sauce on my food. My Chinese-American coworker was appalled. He said they would have put soy sauce on it already.

I put ketchup on my fries.
I put ranch on my onion rings.
I put syrup on my pancakes.
I put salt and pepper on my eggs.
I put creamer in my coffee.
I put wallpaper on my desktop.
I put music on my run.
I put sunglasses on my face.

Really, Amazon?

Why on earth would "Regulatory Cost Recovery Fee" even be a choice as something to include or not include in Amazon recommendations?

Vacation Day

I take the first week in December off from work for vacation each year.  It's just something I do.  It's served a few purposes over the years... a bit of a breather before our big Christmas play at church, a chance to start (or nearly finish) my Christmas shopping, time to get stuff done around the house, either generally or in anticipation of Christmas.  One of the components has become an annual trip to the mall, which I did yesterday.  I wasn't feeling it and was tempted to go to the light rail station and catch a train into the city instead.  I didn't, but I will need to do that again soon.  Another thing I didn't do today was go to Starbucks.  I knew I'd be eating unhealthy as it was, so I had coffee it home before I went.  But I took dropped the children off at their schools, came home, traded cars and off I went.  The mall was surprisingly quiet.  Many of the stores weren't open and everything seemed subdued.  I got some candy and walked around for awhile. Then I made an appointment to have someone at the Apple store look at my iPhone.  The rocker switch that turns off the ringer doesn't work.  I'm torn about whether or not I should report it as broken at work, since everything else works fine.  Maybe I'll just live with it and maybe it'll last me until the iPhone 5 comes out.  So then I walked around a bunch more eating candy and looking at stuff.  I really missed having a Starbucks in my hand, but I didn't die.  After they looked at my phone and confirmed it's not something that can be repaired, I walked to some other stores.  While not a long walk, I've never walked in Tukwilla before.  It's such a car-centric place.  It's been said that almost no one lives there, everyone just goes there to work or shop and I'd believe it.   I walked some large blocks trying to burn off some of the candy, picked up a few things and then dropped them back at my car.  By  then it was time for a late lunch.  For the second year in a row, I went with Sushi Itto Go.  I had that last weekend as well.  I think it's now finally time to try the other Japanese place or the Caribbean place next time I eat at the mall.  And then after lunch, I did another thing I had wanted to try to do this week - I got in a nice run.  The nice thing about Tukwilla is that it has long car-centric blocks and it's flat and it does have decent sidewalks.  I was able to do almost 4 miles.  I would have done more except that I ended up at a non-working crosswalk.  It was lit, but pressing the button did nothing.  At that point, I had been stopped to long to really want to start again.  That left me with a really long walk, but that's fine.  While it was freezing today, it wasn't raining this year as it has in some year's past.  On the way back home I swung by Home Depot and got some Christmas lights and paint.  Later this week I'll be painting a bathroom a color called Dashing Boulder or something.

The Problem with the Internet

So last night, the internet once again captivated me in the strange way it does.  It's such a good example of how dangerous it can be to someone like me, inately curious, especially when the one thing I wish I had more of was time.  The internet can so quickly rob me of that.

So last night I started on the homepage of MSNBC.  And then Arab League threatens sanctions against Syria. So then I had to look up Syria on Google Maps.And then I wandered around the Middle East until I ended up in Tarsus in Turkey.  And then I was puzzled by street names ending with the abbreviation "Cd" and "Sk" 

So, off to Wikipedia and then it was all rabbit trails from there:

• Street Names
• Streets and Highways of Washington, DC
• Malbone Street Wreck - a subway crash in New York that claimed the lives of 93 people, thanks to a train going to fast with an inexperienced scab driver on a brand new tunnel
• Circus - a bigtop misdirect, thanks Wikipedia
• Drake Circus Shopping Centre
• Charles Church - the shell of a very old church, bombed in 1941

And then just like that, more than 30 minutes was gone.  Reminds me of this NSFW xkcd.

Never did figure out what CD or SK meant.

Our Own Peter Warski

So we've all done it, ran a Google search on our own name.  Once upon a time, all searches were created equal.  When I searched for my name, it was the same as when you searched for my name.  Nowadays, there's no such thing as a single set of results.  So my search for James Lamb does bring me up in a lot of the top results.  But there are others with my name or a name close to mine, like a now-deceased author of dog training books and a man in California who's been in the news a lot struggling to find a home after serving time for doing unpleasant things.   Even my online persona TV James (or tvjames - it's never been settled) is sometimes up for debate.  There's a guy with an email address similar to my gmail address, as near as I can tell, scams women with offers of a free makeover on a TV show.  Dumb women.  Women who mistake my email address for his and send photos of themselves.  And some guy whose last name is James and whose first name is Thomas and middle name starts with a V.  He's got to hate me - even his mom emails me on my Yahoo account.

Odds and Ends 18

-EXTRA-

"Anxiety is nothing but repeatedly re-experiencing failure in advance. What a waste."
-- Seth Godin

-1-

CROSSCUT.COM -- Seattle's last unnamed places - great article on naming Seattle's unnamed. And some suggestions.

-2-

LASTPERSONBLOGGING.BLOGSPOT.COM -- Of Cats and Cookies - Lori's a better writer than I. Any inconsistencies between hers and my accounts is due to my faulty memory.

-3-

MSNBC.COM -- Animal shelter turned into a ‘house of horrors’ - apparently if you let them die in their kennels, you get to keep your euthanasia rate low. My first impression (reading this the day we put our cat to sleep) was "God, if thinking of murdering someone is the same as actually doing it, please forgive me for killing Tim Trow." But after a few days, I have to ask... why did none of the other people mentioned in the article do anything sooner? (But then... how many Germans went along with Mr. Hitlet? Amazing what lack of judgement humans can display.)

-4-

KIRO.COM -- Digital Billboards that Watch You - a small camera in the billboard determines your gender and approximate age and serves up advertising that it thinks will appeal to you. It also tracks your eyes to see how long you actually watch, self-optimizing to be even more relevant to the next person who stops to look at it. No images of you are retained, just general demographics designed to offer even more relevant advertising to people and more specific stats about the types of advertisers who would work best in that particular display. (from Sam)

-5-

LIFEHACKER.COM -- Jumping Jacks Increase Productivity at the Office

-6-

SETHGODIN.COM -- Maybe you need new friends

-7- VIDEO

Theme song medley. From Christy.



-8- VIDEO

Now that is an elaborate stunt.



-9- VIDEO

Chat Roulette Piano guy. (Some swear words.)



-10- VIDEO

Cat vs. Machine

Odds and Ends 17 - Transportation

-1-

ENGADGET.COM -- Porsche 918 Spyder concept is the most beautiful hybrid we've ever seen - 0 to 62 in 3.2

-2-

ENGADGET.COM -- Martin Jetpack priced at $86,000, mere mortals will soon be able to buy one too

-3-

INHABIT.COM -- Ferrari Unveils 599 HY-KERS Hybrid Supercar - nice

-4-

ENGADGET.COM -- Lotus outs wild Evora 414E Hybrid plug-in concept car

-5-

ENGADGET.COM -- TAG Heuer and Tesla Motors team up to show off products you can't afford

-6-

GOOGLESYSTEM.BLOGSPOT.COM -- Google Maps Adds Biking Directions

-7-

ENGADGET.COM -- Tesla switches gears, plans to keep Roadster till 2012

-8-

SEATTLETRANSITBLOG.COM -- Signaling on MLK, parts one and two.

-9-

SEATTLETRANSITBLOG.COM -- Light Rail Measure Planned for 2011

-10-

Humor -- Cat on steroids lifts car

Odds and Ends 16

-EXTRA-

"You can't hold a man down without staying down with him." -- Booker T. Washington

-1-

SEATTLETRANSITBLOG.COM -- The Yellow Brick Road was an Enormous Boondoggle (humor)

-2-

BASICINSTRUCTIONS.COM -- How to Construct an Informative Presentation

-3-

SETHGODIN.COM -- "Try Different" (forget "Try Harder")

-4-

INHABIT.COM -- Maldives To Fight Rising Sea Levels With Floating Islands - the 1200 islands of the Maldives are all no more than 6' above sea level. Rising tides are going to put the entire nation underwater.

-5-

LIFEHACKER.COM -- Make a Possibilities Calendar to Take Advantage of Unexpected Free Time - clever

-6-

UNCLUTTERER.COM -- 10 more uncluttering things to do every day - some things I do, some things I wish I did

-7-

MASHABLE.COM -- Reuters to Journalists: Don’t Break News on Twitter. Reuters to the World: Yeah, We Still Don't Get This Whole Social Media Thing

-8-

MASHABLE.COM -- Google Easter Eggs Galore - fun

-9-

LIFEHACKER.COM -- Use Foam Packing Peanuts to Hold a Nail, Secure a Screw - while I'm a little dubious of the screw-securing nature, the holding-a-nail thing - so simple it's brilliant.

-10- VIDEO

MASHABLE.COM -- Rock Out with PixieTea and Her Amazing iPhone Band - pretty cool. Catchy even if you don't know Chinese.

Bacon Theory

So there's a saying "Bacon makes everything better."

However, I think there's a problem. I think bacon can't make bacon better. You can have a better situation because you have more bacon, but the bacon itself is already bacon. It can't be more bacony.

Tried to come up with more analogies but couldn't come up with any except that you can't make water wetter by pouring more water on it.

Odds and Ends 15

-EXTRA-

"The only thing worse than being exploited by multinational capitalism is not being exploited by multinational capitalism." - Fidel Castro

-1-

BBC.CO.UK -- Mapping the Internet - an over-time look at the growth of the internet by country

-2-

MSNBC.COM -- Detroit wants to save itself by shrinking - Fascinating - asking the Federal Government to help it buy up and/or condemn property in order to return entire neighborhoods to rural/farmland.

-3-

SEATTLE.GOV -- Amazing slideshow - wow, I ran out of time before I ran out of slides.

-4-

SCOBLEIZER.COM -- Coming soon: the disruptive molecular age of information - interesting

-5-

PROBABLYBADNEWS.COM -- Bad Man is Sorry - would more people read newspapers if they still wrote like this?

-6-

KANSASCITY.COM -- Portable People Meters are New Weapon in Radio Ratings War - I recently participated in a phone-based survey of my radio listening habits. It turned out to be only two questions... "I'm taking a survey about radio listening habits. Would you agree to participate?" "Sure" "During your morning commute, would you say you listen to the radio every day, regularly, often, not at all." "Not at all." "Ok, that's all the questions. I have today. Thank you!" - And I think that was a missed opportunity, I was looking forward to telling them that all the good radio stations are gone, DJs blab too much and there are too many ads, which is why I listen to a Saddleback podcast or music on my iPod during my drive.

-7-

SEATTLETRANSITBLOG.COM -- Signaling on MLK - a quick explanation of the complicated system designed to allow pedestrians, cars, trains and emergency vehicles to share the road. Cool quick read.

-8-

ENGADGET.COM -- Korea starts testing 'recharging road,' might make it part of its public transport system - non-contact magnetic strip on the ground produces power. Battery is much smaller than typical EV battery and with a public transportation scenario, sounds like magnetic strip would only need to be at certain locations like crosswalks and bus stops (so when the vehicle is stopped?) making overall cost of use much cheaper, too.

-9-

LIFEHACKER.COM -- Schedule Reply Windows to Minimize Interruptions - interesting idea - they keep their phone off and listen to and return calls three times a day. I do something similar where I turn off my email (in and out) and then crunch what's already in my inbox. I do use the Blackberry to watch for urgent stuff and reply right away with that if needed. And I do sometimes let the phone go to voicemail (since Google Voice will immediately translate it and email it to me). But so much of my time is spent responding to emails and voicemail that I couldn't just decide to only do it three times a day.

-10- VIDEO

Ok, I really feel like I ought to build one of these. Of course, it would also mean an easier way for people to walk off with a lot of tools at once. Lori said the music sounded like it belong in, uh, one of 70's (adult video). I told her, "well, it's practically hardware (adult video)".

Odds and Ends 14

-EXTRA-

"Take away my people, but leave my factories and soon grass will grow on the factory floors......Take away my factories, but leave my people and soon we will have a new and better factory." - Andrew Carnegie

-1-

UNCLUTTERER.COM -- Using a three-folder system to keep email under control - the average worker gets 625 emails a week? Yeah, that's like two days for me. I actually employ an eight folder system.

-2-

RAPPORTIVE.COM -- Makes me wish I used email - removes the ads from the right side of Gmail and replaces it with contact information -- social media links, photo, personal notes you've added, etc.

-3-

PAPERRATER.COM -- Wow... I'm not so, um, good with words. I shoved my first "750" into this website and it tells me that my usage of "sophisticated words" is less than average. Tells me I need to use the Vocabulary Builder.

-4-

MASHABLE.COM -- U.S. to Allow Export of Web Services to Iran and Cuba -- cool. Policy is designed to gnaw at closed societies and pry them open. Booyah.

-5-

WASHINGTONHIGHWAYS.BLOGSPOT.COM -- State Route 100 - this guy and his wife are travelling all of Washington's highways, in numerical order, from start to finish, taking photos along the way. It's rather interesting and here's the latest.

-6-

KANSASCITY.COM -- The Oscars show went on and on, but the comedy sure didn’t

-7-

SETHGODIN.COM -- You Rock. Wait.. what?

-8- VIDEO

iPad commercial. Actually, I found the commercial quite annoying. But, still, is an interesting product. Show me it running Remember the Milk.



-9- VIDEO

Iron Man 2 Trailer



-10- VIDEO

So this is a harddrive that they've punched out numbers. Using strobe lights it displays what appears to be a steady lit clock. Kinda cool.