Thursday, June 23, 2005
Tuesday night, I was invited to attend the high school graduation of two friends of mine. The ceremony was traditional in every way, from Pomp and Circumstance to the throwing of the hats. The only time I was really intrigued was during an amazing speech by a graduating senior, in which he pointed out that these students started their high school experience a few days before 9/11. He was a great speaker. Tuesday night dropped […]
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
My desire for a stable routine has become even stronger at work. After weeks of comparatively little work, this week my to-do list has multiplied four-fold. There are sudden fires everywhere—one immediately resolvable thanks to some work I helped push through recently—and I have to keep on top of it. Thank goodness for GTD. I actually am on top of all my tasks, to a degree that sometimes amazes me. I spent yesterday playing catch-up at home, […]
Monday, June 20, 2005
“Nowhere along the way does anyone emphasize the importance of social, interpersonal, and emotional skills in determining our success in professional life. Then the day arrives when we make a terrifying discovery: The world is filled with people.” — Patrick J. McKenna and David H. Maister in First Among Equals
Friday, June 17, 2005
And suddenly, it’s beautiful. After a week of rather punishing heat by June’s standards—highs in the upper 90’s—it’s now comfortable and breezy, occasional clouds drifting lazily across the baby blue sky. I’m now extra grateful for the hour I spent in the garden yesterday evening, trimming lawn edges and generally cleaning up. I’m now enjoying it, as I recline on the front window seat and glance out at the lawn. It’s been a great week at work; I helped […]
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
I’ve entered a new phase in my understanding of the Getting Things Done system. For the past few weeks, I’ve been dumping everything into my system. If I notice something I want to buy, I add it to my “To Buy” list. If I think of something I’d like to do, I add it to one of my lists. As a result, when I have free time, I can’t scour my brain for something to do. All my projects are out of my head, in my system. My brain literally […]
Monday, June 6, 2005
Last month, I spent several hours going through a rather frustrating process: I changed all my passwords on all my computers and websites. I now do this every three months. This was prompted mainly from my webserver, which has been hacked twice in the past couple of years. I know it’s important to change passwords occasionally, but I never bothered to until I lost data on hacked websites. There’s an unexpected benefit to this: I’ll […]
Friday, June 3, 2005
I’m cleaning out some old webpage on this site, and instead of deleting them or making them individual pages, I thought I’d post them here for posterity. And here’s one now! Dramatic Theory and Video Games Dramatic theory is hard to research. There seems to be very little material readily available. As a result, distilling dramatic theory down to a single reed-thin theorem is difficult. I’m going to try anyway. […]
Thursday, June 2, 2005
Spent a fair chunk of last night cleaning up this very website, finding little bugs and squashing them (an ugly metaphor, but apt). This is part of my desire to get all of my web material cleaned up, darn it, and into a system whereby I can check it all and keep it all clean. I’d like to take regular sweeps of my sites to clean up little problems before they require […]
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Recently, I had a bit of a problem: I needed to buy a handheld vacuum. Easy, you might say: Stop by Wal-Mart or Target. That’s the problem: I don’t shop at Target or Wal-Mart. This is not due to a “big companies are evil” mentality; I happily shop at department stores and order from Amazon.com. But both of these companies have done things I find distasteful. The Wall Street Journal has reported memos from senior management, […]
Monday, May 30, 2005
Five years ago, this was inconceivable: The world changes faster than we realize.