lifedoodling sketching between the lines of life

16Jan/10

Favorite Tweets of the Week

I am going to start pos­ting my favo­rite tweets of the week and it may become a page that just upda­tes.… but for now we’ll post it.

Inggrie_Tehku: Don’t let other people’s opi­nions burn holes in your dreams… 1/14/2010

Tiger­Tree: Cof­fee just tas­tes bet­ter when you are drin­king it out of a ther­mos…  1/16/2010

TheO­nion: Opi­nion: Kids, Your Mother is ready to start F**king again.… 1/12/2010

Sassy­Ti­nATL: That’s y my motto is: “The butt u kick 2day may be the butt you kiss tomo­rrow”  It’s a small small world. 1/11/2010

TheSD­Cow­Girl: Making elk ten­der­loin quesadilla’s for sup­per! Yummy 1/11/2010

liz­less­ner: When nerds marry.  My hus­band just told me I look good sit­ting in front of his mac 1/11/2010

You can see some of these are quite obviously funny.  Some good advice.  TheSD­Cow­Girl I’m just jealous.

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12Jan/10

Website Review of Localharvest.org — WORTH EVERY PAGE

I love to find cool infor­ma­tive sites on food, bbq, books, wri­ting.… you get the idea.  I espe­cially like the sites that I don’t have to follow every day to stay on top of but are more an infor­ma­tion hub around a par­ti­cu­lar topic.  I have found just such a site.  A site I find myself chec­king second to goo­gle in some cases.
What is this ama­zing site?  Why Local Har­vest of course.  What does this site have that other sites don’t have?  It is a hub of infor­ma­tion on orga­nic local agri­cul­ture and the busi­nes­ses that sup­port them.  From their map it has what appears to be hun­dreds and maybe even thou­sands of these types of enterprises.

Want to find a local resource for yarn pro­duc­tion?  They have it.  What about a res­tau­rant or mar­ket that uses locally grown pro­duce or rai­sed meat?  They have that too.
What if you wan­ted to get invol­ved in a CSA to aug­ment your own gar­den pro­duc­tion or as an oppor­tu­nity to get really fresh vege­ta­bles.  They got that.

Then there’s the forums where peo­ple talk about ques­tions, con­cerns, events, rates, etc.  Next tab over and it will show you events.  For us it hel­ped us find a local farm that we are con­si­de­ring par­ti­ci­pa­ting in a csa with this year.  Now we can do something with them to get to know them.

It’s a veri­ta­ble cor­nu­co­pia of locally grown and sup­por­ted food.  So go to the link, book­mark it, and use it.  Who knows it might just change your life. At the very least the way you eat.

8Jan/10

Managing Information Overload In the Age of Twitter and iPhones

Today I woke up and chec­ked the weather.  Then I loo­ked at the over­seas mar­kets and inter­na­tio­nal head­li­nes for finan­cial infor­ma­tion.  I did this without get­ting out of bed on my iPhone, of course.  This is a fairly nor­mal ritual for me these days.  By 6:30AM every mor­ning I have gau­ged what my boys day is going to be like based on the weather, and what my day is going to be like based on my Bloom­berg feeds. 

After the ritua­lis­tic rush of get­ting the boys dres­sed, break­fast star­ted, and myself clea­ned and ready for work I check my email.  Then my rss and finally twit­ter feeds.  It’s a huge volume of infor­ma­tion and it can send me into hyper­fo­cus hell if I’m not care­ful.  I have lite­rally been sit­ting in my car for an hour just rea­ding everything trying to soak it in.  It makes me wish my com­mute to work every day was on a train or bus. 

What infor­ma­tion of value could pos­sibly come from all of this rea­ding?  How can one brain pos­sibly con­tain or manage all of this infor­ma­tion?  I don’t.  My brain is full.  It’s overwhel­mingly full. It’s so full it feels like it’s explo­ding some times.  Ok you get the pic­ture.  What I’ve come up with is a sys­tem.  It’s my own per­so­nal infor­ma­tion mana­ge­ment system. 

At the heart of this sys­tem is a great if not the grea­test infor­ma­tion gathering-storing-retrieving sys­tem on the web today.  it’s called Ever­note.  I for­ward emails, I cut and paste links, save pages, quo­tes, ideas, anything and everything.  It rocks.  How much it rocks is another post in a future date. 

So we have the des­ti­na­tion of the data, now how do we find the time to read, fil­ter, and store?  Twit­ter, Goo­gle RSS Rea­der, Face­book, etc.  They all have a way of mar­king something as a favo­rite or sta­rring it.  As I peruse the feeds through the day I star the ones that are of sig­ni­fi­cance one way or the other.   Then each day I review the sta­rred posts, tweets, artic­les, pic­tu­res, and I for­ward the ones I want to hold onto into Ever­note.  Assig­ning tags for their pur­pose and con­tent.  If something beco­mes a TODO I follow up with it at the next chance.

So now you have this gro­wing volume of data in your data store.  How do you find it?  How do you recall what you sto­red?  Easy.  Evernote’s search engine not only searches the text in your notes, it searches the text in your pic­tu­res.  All I worry about now is making sure when I see something I store it.  Tech­no­rati Tags: , ,

7Jan/10

My Love Affair

Peo­ple that know me know at least one thing about me, I love my iPhone.  I mean I LOVE my iPhone.  I take it to bed, I take it into the bath­room when I’m get­ting a sho­wer.  I had a spe­cial ste­reo for it spe­ci­fi­cally in my car so that I would never be without it or it’s cool fea­tu­res.  

What is it about this device that has cau­sed such a dra­ma­tic love affair?  There are millions of iPhone users that don’t have this type of love and devo­tion.  Besi­des the obvious thought going through yours and ever­yone else that knows me of “he’s a freak” there are some sim­ple things about the iPhone that just make it supe­rior.

Rea­son num­ber one,  “It’s a phone, it’s a com­pu­ter, no it’s iPhone!“
A lot of pho­nes out there can play music.  Some can get your email.  Some have web brow­sers.  Some have games.  Some have pro­duc­ti­vity apps and can sync with your com­pu­ter.  The iPhone does it all and a whole lot more.   Plus it’s an ipod, an online store, an exchange client, net­work tool, home auto­ma­tion con­trol tool, note­book, recipe book, kindle, check regis­ter, shop­ping tool, inven­tory trac­king, medi­cal trac­king, calen­dar, mail, con­tact, face­book, twit­te­ring, office, pdf, strea­ming audio pla­ying handheld com­pu­ter.  That has the abi­lity to be used for a phone.  

Rea­son num­ber two, I can cus­to­mize it any way I want.
I have about 24 dif­fe­rent apps on my iPhone that I use somewhere bet­ween every day to once a week.  Next week I might take some off and put some new ones on.  I might rea­rrange the order of the apps today.  Maybe I’ll down­load some more “use­ful” apps.  I can set it up any­way I want.

Rea­son num­ber three and pro­bably the big­gest rea­son, I’m an infor­ma­tion jun­kie. Lear­ning new things is a high to my ADD­led brain.  Bet­ween my twit­ter­la­tor, face­book, email, sms, rss rea­der, kindle, rea­dit­la­ter, Ever­note apps I can’t stop get­ting infor­ma­tion.  I’m hoo­ked.  

Rea­son num­ber four and the last rea­son for this dis­cus­sion is it’s really cool.  It has chan­ged the “smart phone” world fore­ver.  It has chan­ged the phone world fore­ver.  It has given access to peo­ple that didn’t have it before and that’s kinda cool, but it’s just really cool to have.  If being cool isn’t a good rea­son then I’m scre­wed.  That’s always my bac­kup excuse for anything.  

Do I love my iPhone?  No.  I LOVE MY IPHONE!  Ok, that’s all.  Thanks for tuning in and see you same­time later this week.

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10Sep/09

What does it mean to be a foodie?

Foo­die is an infor­mal term for a par­ti­cu­lar class of afi­cio­nado of food and drink. - Wikipedia

I am a foo­die, but I’ve never thought of myself as an afi­cio­nado. More as an avid, almost mania­cal love of food and the beve­ra­ges that go with it. Many peo­ple like food. Most peo­ple enjoy some food. I love food. I love tas­ting, sme­lling, and fee­ling it. The funny thing about my love of food is that I do not eat everything. I can walk into a store or a res­tau­rant, eat what I want to, and then leave some­ti­mes still hungry as it was less than I wanted.

I enjoy tal­king about food almost as much as I enjoy eating it. Wri­ting about it, taking pic­tu­res of it, wor­king on reci­pes, coo­king some new dish that I have just read about. I’ve wal­ked a mile in a down pour of sleet and snow on the pos­si­ble chance I would get into a res­tau­rant for a chance to try their steak.

This week I am going to Chi­cago on one of my food adven­tu­res again. The oppor­tu­nity to eat at a steak house that will be one of those rare oppor­tu­ni­ties. Follo­wed by a day and a half of pure indul­gence at sta­diums, local dive bars, and then a tri­bute to Ger­man Americans.

Did I men­tion I get to do it while enjo­ying the com­pany of friends? That’s impor­tant too, right?

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10Sep/09

Riding Trains

I am sit­ting on the second floor of a metra train lea­ving Chi­cago to the ‘burbs to see friends. I’ve rid­den the train dozens of times all over the world, yet I feel oddly dif­fe­rent on this trip. It’s almost a giddy exci­te­ment of thrill and fear, like the first time you get on a roller coaster.

Then I rea­lize it’s not the exci­te­ment of me riding a train, but the thought of how ama­zingly exci­ted my boys would be if they were riding it. How it would be all new and dif­fe­rent to them. My oldest would want to unders­tand how it all wor­ked. My middle would imme­dia­tely equate it with Tho­mas the tank engine. My youn­gest would. Attempt to climb every sca­la­ble surface.

As a father of boys it is very easy to ima­gine and appre­ciate their exci­te­ment. This trip with us so far apart i think of them and how much they would love and enjoy it.

Don’t worry boys, we’ll go on one soon!

9Sep/09

Home Improvement — The Beginning

When I embar­ked on the jour­ney that has become a mas­sive under­ta­king in remo­de­ling the outside of my house, I never rea­li­zed what that would mean to my family, my neigh­bors, my per­so­nal time, or my savings account. It star­ted as a sim­ple exer­cise of wan­ting to get rid of the 10 inch wide vinyl siding that had cove­red our 80 year old house for the last 40 years.

In doing that we dis­co­ve­red many won­der­ful and frigh­te­ning things. The first dis­co­very that the wood siding hiding under the mons­tro­sity of vinyl was mostly in good shape was exci­ting. This was follo­wed by the horri­fic dis­co­very that all of the win­dow and door trim had been des­tro­yed to accom­mo­date the siding.

A brief dis­cus­sion with my friend and brother in smoke(bbq) led to the dis­co­very that this could be repai­red or repla­ced enti­rely with his expert help. This in turn invol­ved a fun filled week of repla­cing the win­dow mol­dings and trim work to repre­sent what it most likely loo­ked like when it was built 80 years ago.

The work was just beg­ging there as we dis­co­ve­red asphalt shin­gles over asbes­tos shin­gles on the gables and side overhangs. This frigh­te­ning dis­co­very was quickly follo­wed by the even worse dis­co­very that the shin­gles were 4 and 5 layers deep with mul­ti­ple nails in every one. It was weeks to remove all of them as it was exhaus­ting work of the nature that I was not accus­to­med to performing.

Weeks and months later these shin­gles have been repla­ced with either siding or cedar shake stai­ned a beau­ti­ful red­wood color. The crac­king paint stri­ped, san­ded and repain­ted a beau­ti­ful gun metal grey with a bone white trim. Now as we approach the sides and attempt to com­plete the remo­val of the last remai­ning pie­ces to begin the pri­ming and pain­ting I look at it as a sign of hope to com­plete something prior to the end of this year lea­ving only the back to finish next year. Over the coming weeks look I will attempt to docu­ment the pro­gress we’ve made and docu­ment the trials we’ve encoun­te­red and what I’ve lear­ned through others or by my per­sis­tence that I will com­plete this Everest.

I have enjo­yed the work and hope that someone will bene­fit from my expe­rien­ces in their own attempts at taking on the impossible.

24Aug/09

How Much Is Too Much?

It’s 10:51PM I’m sit­ting in my living room typing this out and in the back ground my dryer goes off to tell me the laundry is done, the remote ther­mo­me­ter is telling me the fire is ready for the chic­ken to go on, and Remem­ber The Milk just sent me a text telling me I have to com­plete the upda­ted docu­men­ta­tion for work before a 9AM meeting.

I am proc­ras­ti­na­ting because I know I have 470 email to catch up on from last week while I was out. I also have to sche­dule two trips for the next two weeks.

How much is too much and how do we as a ever busier peo­ple say enough is enough. Maybe I should make time to actually read the book Crazy Busy by Ned Hallo­well. It’s on my book shelf but I feel too busy to read it right now.

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