Expecting nothing in return →

Published January 19, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 19  ·  

It’s quite easily forgotten that it’s required that you respect yourself before you’re able to respect another. Because it’s always about respecting the other and getting respect from others. But how often is it the case that we are not respecting ourselves? I’ve been taught quit well that you can only give from your abundance. So if I’ve got 3 coins and somebody asks me to give them four coins I know I don’t have it. I only have three! Let’s say I need two for myself, then I’ve only one in abundance that I can actually share. The same goes for respect. If I don’t respect myself, there’s very little to give to others. If I do give — which most people do, they tend to give respect — it comes with expectations. You will expect something in return because you’re giving although you don’t have it. So you expect something in return because it hurts to give it away like that. You don’t give because of the joy of giving, of sharing. You’re kind of filling the bank with credit, and you think “ok, I want something in return.”

~ Paul Brand, from How to Improve Your Business with Change Management with Paul Brand

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I really do need to work on having respect for myself. My incessant internal monolog of, “Work harder! Work faster! Be better!”, turns out to be a brutal, abusive, destructive task-master.

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Being realistic →

Published January 18, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 18  ·  ,

Being realistic is the most common path to mediocrity.

~ Will Smith

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A telescopic view →

Published January 17, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 17

It has been a difficult year — politically, personally. Through it all, I have found solace in taking a more telescopic view — not merely on the short human timescale of my own life, looking back on having lived through a Communist dictatorship and having seen poems composed and scientific advances made under such tyrannical circumstances, but on far vaster scales of space and time.

~ Maria Popova, from In Praise of the Telescopic Perspective

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Not sure what it is about this winter, but I’m finding it notably harder to knuckle-down and dig in to prepare for 2018. Normally, the dreary winter months are generally depressing, but it’s the sort of dreary that “cozy up with a good book by the fire (and maybe some good Scotch)” takes care of. But this winter. meh I’ve got a lot of sorting out to do yet for 2018.

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Decisions →

Published January 16, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 16

If you want to achieve a goal you’ve set, the most crucial part is to DECIDE to manifest it. It doesn’t matter if you feel it’s outside your control to do so. It doesn’t matter if you can’t yet see how you’ll get from A to B. Most of those resources will come online AFTER you’ve made the decision, not before.

~ Steve Pavlina, from Cause-Effect vs. Intention-Manifestation

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Reaching my goals does NOT happen simply by my wishing for it. However, making a decision and visualizing the goal DOES get me on my way there. The more I believe, the more I push the boundaries, the more I explore while reaching for the vision, and the harder I work… the luckier I get.

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The ideal day →

Published January 15, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 15  ·  

The ideal day is not one which is completely fixed — neither fixed-the-same every day, nor fixed-the-same week after week. The ideal day is one in which I know my goals at various levels– daily, weekly, yearly. etc.. A day where I feel no worry about making progress, because I know I’m making progress. A day where I am presented with challenges I feel that I have chosen. A day where I get to work on things which are interesting to me, and useful to others. A day where surprises are interesting and add value, (as opposed to causing me to react by feeling stress, panic and existential crises.)

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The King complex →

Published January 14, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 14  ·  

That’s the reason it’s difficult for many individuals to leave the internet — even for as little as a few hours in the evening, over a weekend, or on vacation. In short, the internet makes us feel like kings. It is the ultimate concierge.

~ Blake Snow, from Why the King Complex Makes the Internet So Hard to Put Down

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I’ve read a lot about how parts of the Internet are designed to hold your attention, how social media services are designed to beaddicting, and how using “game” theories can get everyone to want to interact more, and how all of that leads to a slippery slope. But this idea—thinking of how the Internet caters to your every whim, and why you then drool all over it to get more of that—this is a new twist I’d not seen before.

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Monarch →

Published January 13, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 13

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Prosperity →

Published January 12, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 12  ·  

Notice a subtle point here: Seneca isn’t saying that prosperity is not worth pursuing. It is, after all, a preferred indifferent. But it is preferred only insofar it doesn’t get in the way of conducting a virtuous life, as one gets the sense Lucilius was worrying about insofar his own pursuits were concerned. Which is why his friend reminds him that he is under no obligation at all to live in the fast lane.

~ Massimo Pigliucci, from Seneca to Lucilius

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Just yesterday, for the first time ever, I considered removing the rear-view mirror from the Jeep. (Instead, I twisted it upwards to view the roof.) Since the Jeep is slow and old, as am I, there is ALWAYS someone tail-gating me. I’ve narrowly avoided accidents, where watching the tail-gater behind me distracted me from the road ahead. I’m so much in the “slow lane”, I am literally being run over. Where, really, are you going?

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How many programmers does it take… →

Published January 11, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 11

Having to do everything turned out to be a real benefit later on, I was comfortable with such diverse things as communicating with customers, designing UI, identifying and tracking plans, architecture, and other non-programming tasks. With today’s roles unless you are in a startup environment (sometimes not even there) as a programmer you rarely get to do anything but write code. People even joke about programmers doing other things like designing.

~ Andrew Wulf from, How Many People Does It Take To Write Software

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I certainly didn’t do anywhere near everything. (Notably, it doesn’t seem I got very good at communicating via the years of my early experience.) But I agree with the general sentiment. It’s all the peripheral stuff that I had to sort out, figure out, build, do, etc. which I think turned out to be the keys to my later — dare I say it — “success”.

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The Great Depression was an energy crisis →

Published January 10, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 10

When I put together a chart of per capita energy consumption since 1820 for a post back in 2012, there was a strange “flat spot” in the period between 1920 and 1940. When we look at the underlying data, we see that coal production was starting to decline in some of the major coal producing parts of the world at that time. From the point of view of people living at the time, the situation might have looked very much like peak energy consumption, at least on a per capita basis.

~ Gail Tverberg from, The Depression of the 1930s Was an Energy Crisis

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One of my rules-of-thumb is to thoroughly read everything written my Gail Tverberg.

Years ago, I found a web site called The Oil Drum which was a collecton of superlative thinkers all writing about things related to petroleum. Actually, it still IS a superlative collection, because they’ve left it up as-is to be an archive.

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