July 2009

There were 20 posts published in July 2009 (this is page 2 of 2).

Take What You Want, Leave All the Rest Behind

On Twitter, Laura Roeder recently pointed to a short blog post from Derek Sivers, founder and former president of CD Baby. Sivers says that books (or articles) are like mirrors: They reveal more about you than they do about the author:

After I interviewed Tim Ferriss, some people said, “But he comes across too cocky.”

After I interviewed Amber Rubarth, some people said, “But she’s only successful because she’s so pretty.”

After I interviewed Tom Williams, some people said, “But there’s some controversy about his new company.”

I hear that as, “Now that I’ve proven they’re not perfect, I don’t have to apply any of the lessons from their story.”

But that’s missing the point that those articles are really about you, not them…All that really matters is what you do with the ideas there. Apply them to your own life in your own way. It was never about them. It’s about you.

I agree.

I’ve heard too many people lately willing to discard the good that somebody has produced just because they disagree with other parts of that person’s life. Is Michael Jackson’s brilliant work invalidated simply because of allegations that he was a pedophile? Is the power of Dave Ramsey’s debt-reduction techniques any less just because his religious views are different than yours? Is Herge’s Tintin any less wonderful because he was a Nazi sympathizer?

It’s possible to hate the artist but love the art.

On the Merits of Weblogs

This article was originally published at Foldedspace on 29 May 2003. It may be difficult to remember, but blogging was young back then, and many people disapproved. I’m not sure that all of the links in this story are still relevant (or active).

I’ve been exchanging e-mail with a close friend, whom I’ll call Pete. Pete is strongly anti-weblog. He hates them for many reasons:

  • they’re narcissistic
  • they interfere with google’s search results
  • webloggers present a biased view of their world, etc.

Pete doesn’t even like to be mentioned in weblogs, because he feels he’s always mentioned in a negative light. (For example: though I have no untoward intentions in mentioning Pete in this context, or in writing about our discussion, he would likely take offense at what I say. Thus the alias.)

As you might suspect, I believe weblogs are a fantastic new medium for self-expression and for information distribution.

Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations

I read some weblogs to obtain news and information. (As I’ve mentioned before, weblogs have almost completely replaced my consumption of the mass media.) I read other weblogs to glimpse of the lives of the famous and the semi-famous.

I read some weblogs because they have interesting links, others because I love the writing. I read so-called A-list bloggers. I read the weblogs of my friends. (Guess which I prefer: A-listers or friends?)

There are weblogs that I don’t particularly like, yet I read out of habit. There are weblogs that I love but rarely read because I forget about them.

Mostly I read weblogs because I enjoy the small glimpses into other people’s lives. I understand that a person’s weblog persona is different from her in-person persona (though I maintain they’re both essential components of the individual, neither one more real than the other).

Blogging About Breakfast

Many would argue that there are limits to what one should share on the web. Some lives are too mundane, or some details of life too personal. I disagree. Within the confines of the law, and the boundaries of friendship, I think one should write about anything and everything.

Pete and I have been discussing weblogs for nearly a year now, and neither of us seems willing to budge from our position. He argues that very few people lead lives of interest, lives that are worthy of web sites. I disagree. I believe that, with few exceptions, every life is interesting, not just to the person living it, but to other people as well. Every life is instructive, is entertaining, is meaningful, though not to everyone else who might glimpse it.

If one has a complaint against weblogs, does that complaint also apply to personal web sites? Personal web sites are not new; they’ve existed since the dawn of the world wide web. Weblogging simply makes it easier to develop a rich, detailed personal site, with accessible archives and a unified structure.

Previously, most personal sites, including my own (I’ve had a personal site since 1994), were slipshod, and only those with a great deal of free time and/or technical skill had great-looking pages. It was tedious to perform frequent site updates, so daily public journals were unusual.

Ben Schumin has a personal website that I alternately love and hate, depending on my mood. He doesn’t keep a weblog [well, in 2009 it does!], but his site is guilty of most of the points about which Pete complains.

Ben records his life in meticulous detail. Want a thorough tour of his freshman dorm room? sophomore dorm room? junior dorm room? senior dorm room? They’re all there, along with an extensive tour of his college’s dining hall.

I first learned of Ben’s site from Spinnwebe, where Spinn spent a week mocking Schumin Web. I joined in the laughter at first, but with time, I came to like Ben’s site, despite (because of?) his naive goofiness, the sheer inanity of it all. Ben’s fire alarm collection is as interesting to me as a collection of snow domes, but it’s who Ben is. I like web sites that tell me: “This is who I am.” What’s the good of having a personal site if everything there is mundane, nondescript, indistinguishable from any other life on the web.

Dreams of a Bloggy Future

There are personal sites from people who might be considered strange (Dale Miller, Peter Pan), but even these are, in their way, instructive, offering a glimpse into a life that I will never live (and, in some cases, would never want to live).

Other personal web sites contain are less strange. Consider these three personal sites, each of which is one of my favorite sites on the web. I recommend each of them highly (and have linked to them in the past):

I want to see more people with personal web sites, with online journals, with weblogs. I want to see other mothers of webloggers create weblogs of their own.

Pete has some valid concerns about weblogs, and the implication of public journals. For myself, I’m glad they they exist. I only wish I wasn’t so tired so that I could write a more considered, articulate defense of their existence.

Footnote: Here’s a lovely irony. Pete, the man who used to hate weblogs, now has two of his own. Meanwhile, I’ve been pleased with the exponential growth of weblogs. Welcome to the egalitarian web…

Genosha

You know, I love comic books. I own a lot of them, and I read them whenever I can. But there’s a reason they’ve earned a reputation for…well, this. From the Wikipedia entry for Genosha:

Mutant apartheid

The island [Genosha] is located off the east coast of Africa, to the north of Madagascar, and boasted a high standard of living, an excellent economy, and freedom from the political and racial turmoil that characterized neighboring nations. However, Genosha’s prosperity was built upon the enslavement of its mutant population. Mutants in Genosha were the property of the state and children who were positively identified with the mutant gene were put through a process developed by David Moreau, commonly known as the Genengineer, stripped of free will and made into mutates (a Marvel term for genetically-modified individuals as opposed to those who developed mutant powers naturally).

The Genengineer was also capable of modifying certain mutant abilities in order to fulfill specific labor shortages. Citizenship in Genosha is permanent and the government does not recognize any emigration. Citizens who attempt to leave the country are tracked down and forcibly brought back to the island by the special police force known as Magistrates, and mutant problems are handled by a special group known as the Press Gang. The Press Gang consisted of Hawkshaw, Pipeline, and Punchout, and were aided in their task by Wipeout.

The foundations of Genoshan society has [sic] been upset in recent years due to the efforts of outside mutant interests. In the first storyline to feature the nation, some members of the X-Men (Wolverine, Rogue, and their ally Madelyne Pryor) were kidnapped by Genoshan Magistrates, under the order of the Genengineer. Later, in the multi-issue, multi-title X-Tinction Agenda storyline, the X-Men and their allies rescued their teammates, Storm, Meltdown, Rictor and Wolfsbane, from Genoshan brainwashing, toppling the government after discovering their alliance with former X-Factor ally turned mutant hater, Cameron Hodge, and that Havok was one of the Magistrates since having his memory wiped by the Siege Perilous. Havok himself, woken from his conditioning by his brother Cyclops dealt the killing blow to Cameron Hodge in the process. Another ally, a member of the New Mutants named Warlock, was killed by Cameron Hodge. The news of this death was broadcast worldwide.

And that’s just a small part of the entire Wikipedia entry for Genosha!

No wonder I’m more apt to read Little Lulu these days. Mainstream superhero comics have turned into soap operas for boys. (I know, I know. They’ve been that way for decades…)

Noises Off!

Our neighborhood isn’t exactly quiet. Well, it’s quiet most of the time, I guess. But on evenings and weekends, there are a lot of people outside laughing and shouting.

There are also a lot of people playing their music. The renters in the brown house across the street like to blare KGON and its classic rock. Curt and Tammy next door like contemporary country music. Behind us, Harvey and his girls tend toward oldies.

In a way, it’s fun when one of our neighbors has the music on at high volume. I wouldn’t normally choose to listen to any of these types of music, but I don’t hate them. Plus I feel like this gives me a glimpse into their world.

I even contribute to the din from time-to-time. If I’m working in the yard, I’ll turn up the workshop stereo. My music of choice is usually the two-disc Johnny Cash anthology (though I’ll often play big band or new wave or Indigo Girls). I’m sure the neighbors are sick of “Five Feet High and Rising” by now.

All is well and good in our noisy little world. Or was good until the other neighbors behind us joined the fray.

We think that the little red house is being rented by some college students. They seemed to move in during the late spring, during which they held loud bonfire parties well past bedtime on weeknights. No big deal. Easy enough to wear earplugs.

Now, though, they’ve found an even more annoying habit. On weekdays (and weekdays only), they begin playing their music loudly at about 9am. They keep the volume cranked until into the evening. This wouldn’t be so bad except for two things:

  • The volume is much higher than anyone else in the neighborhood uses, and
  • They listen to gangsta rap and bad hip-hop.

Ugh. Call me an old man, but this is like a torture one might devise for terrorists. Fortunately, I spend my days up at the office. If I were working from home, I might have knocked on their door to complain by now. I still may have to do so. We’ll see.

Or maybe I could make a request. Everything would be fine if they’d just play Johnny Cash.

Sushi Cam

Here’s a fun video I discovered a couple of months ago. I’m not sure why I didn’t share it before. At a sushi bar in Japan, the dishes are served on a conveyer belt. Patrons take the food they want as it comes to them. Here, a young woman has placed her digital video camera on the conveyer to let it make its 7-1/2 minute trip through the restaurant. The result is strangely mesmerizing:

As I say, I watched this a few months ago, but dismissed it as a novelty. But I’ve thought about the video many times since. I love the way it captures so many small moments.

It’s enthralling.

Nemo the Hunter

As much as I make fun of little Nemo, I have to admit he’s our fiercest hunter. Mostly he hunts his sister Toto (which makes her hiss) and his brother Max (which makes him growl). But he also likes to hunt other critters, especially baby birds.

Perhaps his favorite prey, however, is the squirrel that lives in the walnut tree. He hasn’t caught Walnut yet, but that doesn’t stop him from trying.

Just now, for example, I was sitting at the table eating my raisin bran, when I heard Walnut begin his awful racket. He sounds like a chicken. I looked out the window, and sure enough: There was Nemo chasing Walnut up the tree. What cracked me up, though, was that Walnut paused halfway up to let Nemo scoot right by him. “Psych!”

Nemo and Walnut
Blurriness is from the old glass in the window

I’m not sure Nemo is actually serious in his squirrel hunting, though. And I’m not sure that Walnut is serious about escaping. The pair of them spent about five minutes in a cat-and-mouse game (well, cat-and-squirrel, I guess), but neither seemed willing to follow through.

Walnut, for example, could have dashed up the tree at any time. He didn’t. Instead, he’d often creep closer and closer to Nemo. For his part, Nemo could have tagged Walnut during a couple of these moments — he was easily within paws’ reach — but he didn’t. Nemo and Walnut were content to jockey for position.

Nemo and Walnut
Blurriness is from the old glass in the window

What broke this stalemate? One of our resident crows* came along to break things up. He landed on a nearby branch and began to caw at the two combatants. (Or are they playmates?) Nemo decided that he was no match for squirrel and crow, so he retreated to the picnic table.

Walnut actually seemed disappointed. He came down to scold Nemo from close range. It didn’t have any effect. When the crow left, Nemo came into the house. He’s now sound asleep upstairs on the bed. (Which is where he usually is…)

* This year, Rosings Park is home to a family of crows. Or something. These crows don’t behave like any crows we’ve ever seen. They come down to eat at the feeder. They drink from the birdbath. They interact with the other birds. And, as I just mentioned, they play a role in the goings-on around the yard. (I mean, really: Breaking up a fight between a cat and a squirrel? Why?) We have no idea how long the crows will stick around, but it’s fun to have them.

Noises Off!

Our neighborhood isn’t exactly quiet. Well, it’s quiet most of the time, I guess. But on evenings and weekends, there are a lot of people outside laughing and shouting.

There are also a lot of people playing their music. The renters in the brown house across the street like to blare KGON and its classic rock. Curt and Tammy next door like contemporary country music. Behind us, Harvey and his girls tend toward oldies.

In a way, it’s fun when one of our neighbors has the music on at high volume. I wouldn’t normally choose to listen to any of these types of music, but I don’t hate them. Plus I feel like this gives me a glimpse into their world.

I even contribute to the din from time-to-time. If I’m working in the yard, I’ll turn up the workshop stereo. My music of choice is usually the two-disc Johnny Cash anthology (though I’ll often play big band or new wave or Indigo Girls). I’m sure the neighbors are sick of “Five Feet High and Rising” by now.

All is well and good in our noisy little world. Or was good until the other neighbors behind us joined the fray.

We think that the little red house is being rented by some college students. They seemed to move in during the late spring, during which they held loud bonfire parties well past bedtime on weeknights. No big deal. Easy enough to wear earplugs.

Now, though, they’ve found an even more annoying habit. On weekdays (and weekdays only), they begin playing their music loudly at about 9am. They keep the volume cranked until into the evening. This wouldn’t be so bad except for two things:

  • The volume is much higher than anyone else in the neighborhood uses, and
  • They listen to gangsta rap and bad hip-hop.

Ugh. Call me an old man, but this is like a torture one might devise for terrorists. Fortunately, I spend my days up at the office. If I were working from home, I might have knocked on their door to complain by now. I still may have to do so. We’ll see.

Or maybe I could make a request. Everything would be fine if they’d just play Johnny Cash.

Ad Astra Per Aspera

I was digging through some old e-mail when I came across a request to update my gigantic list of goals.

On my 38th birthday, I wrote about the 101 things in 1001 days project (which I learned about from dienu.com). I drafted my list of 101 goals on 25 March 2007, and then provided a single update on 01 January 2008. It’s now been 839 days since I made the list. How am I doing today?

Here’s the current state of my list:

Financial

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I’ve done well with my financial goals. I’ve met them all. In fact, I’ve exceeded my goals by a wide margin.

1. Pay off all non-mortgage debt

2. Fully fund Roth IRA (2006)

3. Fully fund Roth IRA (2007)

4. Fully fund Roth IRA (2008)

5. Fully fund Roth IRA (2009)

6. Establish a $5000 personal emergency fund

7. Open a high-yield online savings account

8. Automate bill payments

9. Automate IRA contributions

10. Get a safety deposit box

Health and Fitness

I haven’t done as well here. In fact, I haven’t done well at all. I think the contrast between this list and the first list demonstrates that what gets measured gets managed. The things we focus on are the things we excel at.

1. Give up sugar for a week

2. Eat only home-prepared food for one month

3. Eat vegetarian for one month

4. Get cholesterol to healthy levels borderline now

5. Have a colonoscopy

6. Complete a marathon keep getting injured during training!

7. Complete a 100-mile bike ride

8. Play a team sport

9. Do 100 push-ups got up to 50+ before giving up

10. Bench-press my body weight

11. Complete a one-mile swim

12. Maintain a weight of 170 or below for six months

13. Drink only water for one month

14. Give up alcohol for three months

Home and Garden

I did a little better with this list, though I still have many goals left to accomplish. I actually think I could finish some of these in the four months that remain of my 1001 days.

1. Get the birds out of the workshop ceiling

2. Repair ceiling upstairs in house

3. Clean all gutters and install gutter guards

4. Finish modernizing the electrical system

5. Build a patio

6. Prune the holly trees

7. Learn how to use the chainsaw properly

8. Finish building the horseshoe pit

9. Hire somebody to paint the house

10. Open all windows that are painted shut

11. Park my car in the garage (this entails a lot of sub-steps)

12. Remove debris file from beneath the cedar

13. Add new spigots outside

14. Get a rug or carpet for the library getting close!

15. Acquire some nice office furniture

16. Create home maintenance checklist

17. Erect a hammock keep trying to find a used one

18. Acquire a chipper

19. Set up workshop for woodworking no longer a priority

Personal

I made great start on this list, but haven’t done much on it recently. I really do need to purge my record collection, for example. And though I no longer want to sell all of my comics, I do need to organize my collection.

1. Purge wardrobe of anything I haven’t worn in the past two years

2. Get a massage uh, this is sort of an addiction now

3. Learn to shave with a safety razor

4. Update my address book

5. Sell record collection

6. Get rid of computer books

7. Sell CDs, keeping only hard-to-find favorites

8. Sell comic books

9. Sell board games

10. Hold a gourmet potluck

11. Create the Indispensable Comic Strip Reprint Library in progress

Self-Improvement

Wow. I haven’t even tried to do anything on this list other than the two interview items — and that’s because those come up in the course of my GRS activities. I need to do more here.

1. Take a speech-com class (Dale Carnegie?)

2. Take a drawing class

3. Take a Spanish class I’m more inclined to take French now

4. Take a yoga class

5. Take a cooking class

6. Give a good radio interview I can do this on a regular basis now!

7. Give a good television interview This is a little more difficult for me, but I’ve done it

Adventure

Again, I haven’t done enough here. One of the things I crave is adventure, but I only talk about it. I never put my words into action.

1. Get tickets for World Cup South Africa Not going to happen

2. Skydive hahaha

3. Go on a trip by myself I should do this

4. Go white-water rafting

5. Ride in a hot-air balloon

6. Learn to shoot a gun Kris beat me to this and taunts me about it

Entertainment

The Wii bowling is no longer a priority, though I’m still making slow progress on the movies. Yay for Netflix!

1. See all Oscar-winners for Best Picture 59/81

2. See all Oscar-winners for Best Documentary 6/66

3. Bowl 300 on Wii Sports 264/300

Photography

Before I started Get Rich Slowly, I was actually interested in making money from photography. I was making good progress, too. This list of goals reflects the fact I hadn’t yet abandoned those dreams. Now I have.

1. Sell/publish a second photo

2. Digitize all photos

3. Sell $100 of images at iStockPhoto

Reading

Not bad progress here, but not as much as I’d hoped. I spend most of my time reading personal finance books!

1. Read all of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past 1/7

2. Read all of Shakespeare’s plays 13/38

3. Read all of Dickens 6/17

4. Read all Hugo & Nebula winners 23/82

5. Read all Pulitzer winners (for fiction) 10/56

Writing

Although I haven’t diversified my writing activities, I can’t say I’m disappointed here. I write a ton, and nearly every day. I haven’t sold a magazine article or published a book, but a book is in the future, I think, and I’ve contributed to three other personal finance books, so that’s a start.

1. Compile and print a Friends Cookbook

2. Sell a short story

3. Sell a poem

4. Sell a magazine article

5. Write a book well, no book written, but…

6. Publish a book …I’m getting close to this

7. Participate in National Novel Writing Month no longer a priority

8. Digitize all of my creative writing

Work

15 goals

1. Implement GRS forums

2. Implement GRS book section

3. Implement GRS tools and calculators section

4. Start a GRS podcast

5. Complete GRS redesign

6. Complete Animal Intelligence redesign done, but I haven’t written at this site in a long time

7. Move all old foldedspace entries to the new database messed this up

8. Launch Success Daily unlikely to happen, though jdroth.com may play that role

9. Launch Vintage Pop on hold, but in the works

10. Launch Too Much Cat abandoned this plan

11. Interview Robert Kiyosaki (or host guest post) not going to happen

12. Interview Dave Ramsey (or host guest post) still a good goal

13. Achieve $10,000 web income in one month

14. 1,000,000 visitors in one month to GRS oh so close on a couple of occasions

15. 100,000 RSS subscribers at GRS not going to happen

I now know that some of these will never be accomplished. Setting up other web sites? Not going to happen. I don’t consider this a failure — it’s just a shifting of priorities. And I’d now rather beat “Super Samurai” on Dance Dance Revolution than bowl 300 at Wii Sports.

I may not achieve everything I set out to do, but I’ve done a hell of a lot over the past couple of years.

Nemo the Hunter

As much as I make fun of little Nemo, I have to admit he’s our fiercest hunter. Mostly he hunts his sister Toto (which makes her hiss) and his brother Max (which makes him growl). But he also likes to hunt other critters, especially baby birds.

Perhaps his favorite prey, however, is the squirrel that lives in the walnut tree. He hasn’t caught Walnut yet, but that doesn’t stop him from trying.

Just now, for example, I was sitting at the table eating my raisin bran, when I heard Walnut begin his awful racket. He sounds like a chicken. I looked out the window, and sure enough: There was Nemo chasing Walnut up the tree. What cracked me up, though, was that Walnut paused halfway up to let Nemo scoot right by him. “Psych!”

Nemo and Walnut
Blurriness is from the old glass in the window

I’m not sure Nemo is actually serious in his squirrel hunting, though. And I’m not sure that Walnut is serious about escaping. The pair of them spent about five minutes in a cat-and-mouse game (well, cat-and-squirrel, I guess), but neither seemed willing to follow through.

Walnut, for example, could have dashed up the tree at any time. He didn’t. Instead, he’d often creep closer and closer to Nemo. For his part, Nemo could have tagged Walnut during a couple of these moments — he was easily within paws’ reach — but he didn’t. Nemo and Walnut were content to jockey for position.

Nemo and Walnut
Blurriness is from the old glass in the window

What broke this stalemate? One of our resident crows* came along to break things up. He landed on a nearby branch and began to caw at the two combatants. (Or are they playmates?) Nemo decided that he was no match for squirrel and crow, so he retreated to the picnic table.

Walnut actually seemed disappointed. He came down to scold Nemo from close range. It didn’t have any effect. When the crow left, Nemo came into the house. He’s now sound asleep upstairs on the bed. (Which is where he usually is…)

* This year, Rosings Park is home to a family of crows. Or something. These crows don’t behave like any crows we’ve ever seen. They come down to eat at the feeder. They drink from the birdbath. They interact with the other birds. And, as I just mentioned, they play a role in the goings-on around the yard. (I mean, really: Breaking up a fight between a cat and a squirrel? Why?) We have no idea how long the crows will stick around, but it’s fun to have them.