In the end →

Published September 27, 2022  ·  All posts on Sep 27  ·  

Nine years ago I wrote a journal entry containing this quote:

At the end, when your legs are tired
and your arms are giving out,
GET ANGRY.
Get angry that you are tired.
THEN HIT IT HARDER.

~ unknown

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Although I still like that quote, I no longer find it inspiring. For me, the time and place for that mindset are behind me. I’m not quitting. Rather, when I get tired and my arms and legs give out, I now think: I misjudged the goal. I can access that other mindset if I choose to go on, but I’m also serenely happy to rest.

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Truth →

Published September 26, 2022  ·  All posts on Sep 26  ·  

Many statements which are accepted as truth because they have been passed down to us by tradition look like truth only because we have never tested them, never thought about them in a more precise way.

~ Leo Tolstoy

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Oh crap now I think I have insomnia →

Published September 26, 2022  ·  All posts on Sep 26

My dad used to suffer from insomnia, holding imaginary meetings in his head late into the night. I’m the same way.

~ “AllAmericanBreakfast” from, Mental nonsense: my anti-insomnia trick — LessWrong

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I read that short article and now I think I have insomnia. Sometimes, anyway. Clearly I’m a hypochondriac though. But in all seriousness, the author suggests something that—dare I say it?—I almost hope I have trouble getting to sleep tonight so I can try it.

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Remember who you are →

Published September 25, 2022  ·  All posts on Sep 25  ·  

Every time I left the house, my dad would always say, “Remember who you are.” Now that I am a father, this is a very profound thing to me. At the time I was like, “Dad, what the hell? You’re so weird. Like Im gonna forget who I am? What are you saying?” Now, I’m like, “Gosh, that guy was kind of smart.”

~ Kaskade

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The sands slip through →

Published September 25, 2022  ·  All posts on Sep 25  ·  

“Charles blew a little smoke and said, ‘Build a thousand and if we can’t sell them, we will use them in the store for something,’” Mr. Roach recalled in remarks to the Fort Worth Executive Round Table last month. “We were finally able to ship some machines in September and shipped 5,000 that year, all we could assemble,” Mr. Roach said. “Our competitors shipped none.”

~ Sam Roberts from, John Roach, Pioneer of the Personal Computer, Is Dead at 83 – The New York Times

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I had no idea who this person was until I saw this. A TRS-80 (the portable model, called a “4P”, so my computer’s name became “Forpy”) was literally the first in our home. We unpacked it Christmas morning and my father had declined to buy any games (which cost extra) for it. I didn’t even notice—I programmed the crap out of that thing. First in ASCII graphics, then added a graphics card so it could—gasp—draw progressively changing, black-and-white ellipses that looked like othello pieces flipping. I even manually coded the optimal tic-tac-toe algorithm so it could actually play. So, just knowing that one of the people who made that possible, is now gone… well, that’s a little sad.

You should go find the TV series Halt and Catch Fire.

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Endless dreams →

Published September 24, 2022  ·  All posts on Sep 24  ·  ,

While others may find beauty in endless dreams, warriors find it in reality, in awareness of limits, in making the most of what they have. […] Their awareness that their days are numbered—that they could die at any time—grounds them in reality. There are things they can never do, talents they will never have, lofty goals they will never reach; that hardly bothers them. Warriors focus on what they do have, the strengths that they do possess and that they must use creatively. Knowing when to slow down, to renew, to retrench, they outlast their opponents. They play for the long term.

~ Robert Greene

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This is how you eulogize someone →

Published September 24, 2022  ·  All posts on Sep 24

People who came here from my old blog, http://www.popehat.com, will remember my long-time co-blogger and friend Patrick. Patrick, another irascible trial lawyer, wrote at Popehat for more than a decade. He shared our Twitter account for years, and went on to co-author the wickedly satirical @dprknews account and his own Twitter account @PresidentDawg. He died yesterday.

~ Ken White from, A Farewell To A Friend – by Ken White – The Popehat Report

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Dang! That’s a eulogy. You should read the whole thing. And you should follow all of White’s links from therein. I’ve been following White and Patrick and “Popehat” from the beginning and it’s every bit as awesome as White suggests in retrospect.

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Interesting jobs →

Published September 23, 2022  ·  All posts on Sep 23  ·  

I distinctly remember [my dad] saying not to worry about what I was going to do because the job I was going to do hadn’t even been invented yet. […] The interesting jobs are the ones that you make up. That’s something I certainly hope to instill in my son: Don’t worry about what your job is going to be. […] Do things that you’re interested in, and if you do them really well, you’re going to find a way to temper them with some good business opportunity.

~ Chris Young

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Should I keep blogging? →

Published September 23, 2022  ·  All posts on Sep 23  ·  ,

This is not a passive-aggressive maneuver to get you to scroll to the bottom, read the footer and consider supporting my work. (It would mean a lot though if you did.)

This is a serious question which I ask myself at a frequency approaching every minute. All the benefits are not directly measurable.

Exposure — In order to ensure I have material to write posts, I have various processes and systems that force me to skim an insane amount of stuff pretty much every day. If you imagine skimming my weekly email in a second or two, that’s 7 items. I skim about 300 to 500 items every day. A small number each day catch my attention enough that I toss them on my read-later queue. There are 764 things on that queue at this instant. It takes me significant time to read them, but often just a few seconds to realize, “yeah this is going to be a blog post” (and then I go on reading to the end and then I write the post.) If I stopped blogging, would I still do all that work to be exposed to ideas?

Learning — Writing blog posts creates a third “imprint” in my mind. First a glance, then a read, and then thinking about it. Even if I sometimes abort the blog post mid-writing, it’s still three different repetitions. And I have software that feeds me my own blog posts (“what did I post 10 years ago, today?” etc.) so I am constantly re-reading everything on this site; that’s more repetitions as things drift into history.

Integration — If I write a blog post about it, I generally try to figure out its relationship to everything else. Adding blog tags is the most obvious bit of integration. But figuring out what to pull quote involves deciding what is salient to me. And deciding which part(s) I want to focus on, magnify, or disagree with requires further integration.

Writing — Thoughts swirl in my mind. Characters appear on my screen. There are several skills one can work on between those two sentences.

All of that goes into feeding my personal growth and priming my curiosity. Since good conversation is powered by genuine curiosity, all that stuff also enables my person mission.

Should I keep blogging? It doesn’t feel like stopping is realistically an option.

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Destruction →

Published September 22, 2022  ·  All posts on Sep 22  ·  

If you spend your time focusing on the things that are wrong, and that’s what you express and project to people you know, you don’t become a source of growth for people, you become a source of destruction for people. That draws more destructiveness.

~ Tracy DiNunzio

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