Had a great weekend at home

I just finished a great weekend at home. We are slowly unpacking the boxes and setting things in their new place. I enjoy having so much extra space (a whole 900 sq. ft.) to put things. We set up a couch in the spare room and now all we need is a desk for it to be complete. I really look forward to the day when I can work at home and have a separate room for the “office”. The room has my bookshelf, a nice futon, and plenty of light.

We also purchased an extension cord (on sale) at Safeway so now we have power for the TV and DVD player. Ahh the excitement of electricity. Now if only I could get my laptop to do video out to the DVD player.  (After an hour of trying to hook up the DVI output on the Mac to the DVI input on the Hitachi TV – nothing worked.)

The weekend was a normal one of cleaning, laundry, shopping and gathering supplies for the coming week.  It’s just nice to have that stability and a groove.  I suppose it’s also calm because I haven’t traveled in a while, something I am rather enjoying.

 

Would you want a mayor who wore a video camera?

I received my absentee ballot for San Francisco local elections. The mayoral elections, of course, includes incumbent and sometimes playboy Gavin Newsom. Also on the list is Josh Wolf, known in San Francisco and journalistic/video blog circles for serving “226 days in prison … longer than any other journalist in U.S. history has served for protecting source materials”.

I’m sure he is running out of protest, and is rightly upset about the current system. The primary thing, among many, that make me think he will not get elected is his platform that “he will wear a video camera everywhere he does his mayoral business“.

Now, I’m all for open and free exchange of information but 100% disclosure does not lead well to progress. Think of the last time you got mad at someone. You went through many stages of anger, frustration, confusion, reconciliation, and finally acceptance. Maybe there were other stages of confrontation, discussion, and negotiation thrown in there, but you didn’t reveal each of these to the person you were mad at. You work through the problem in your head or with others and then you come up with a solution that you can discuss with the person you were mad at. Privacy, not secrecy, is part of life and negotiations.

Sadly, this process can be used for good or evil. Maybe there are other ways to reduce corruption.

 

Small spaces are a preventative measure

@dacort turned me on to a blog recently that is an interesting read.  Sufficient Thrust is a smartly named place where I read a piece about having no furniture.  I understand and appreciate her point that ‘things’ (i.e. furniture) can become clutter, but they can also be used for organization.  Of course, containers can be both good and evil as they can both organize and sustain useless expansion of junk.

(One design concept I really liked about her place was this, “I put eight dry-erase boards up around the living room area and hung my inboxes on the wall next to them.”  Imagine an entire wall of dry-erase!)

For me, open spaces are dangerous because they can be used, just like containers, to collect things that do not need collecting.  I like to use small spaces as a preventative measure against clutter.  I like small cars, apartments, desks, etc. because they force one to be efficient.  With limited space you carefully analyze if something really deserves retaining, placing, or displaying.  I dread the thought of having “storage space” or a basement because those are typically places where old things go to eternally hibernate.

Growing up my mom would tell me to clean my room, but instead of getting rid of things I would just organize them in organized and visually appealing piles.  I mastered the art of creating piles of papers, toys, clothes, or anything that needed cleaning.  The visual shift from clutter to piles passed my mom’s inspection and thus reinforced in me the importance of an organized mess. 🙂

 

Substantial decisions from inconclusive evidence

Very rarely do we know all the details and impact of the substantial decisions we make.  Oh, we think we know them but there is no way to prove this.  Many times people attempt to make altruistic decisions that end up having a long term negative impact.  Other times people try to do good but it is perceived as evil and thus never takes off.  With the increase of information, the “optics” of a situation are often more important than the reality itself, which mind you is rarely ever fully known (see above.)  The high flow of information should theoretically make it easier to address this problem but usually this decreases the signal-to-noise ratio.

So we make the best decision we can with the evidence we are given.  But there is spin – the sounds around us that sway our decision one way or another.  Instead of having all the facts we look at the end result and pick that path we think will get us there.  But there are side effects to taking this prescribed medicine that are not always evident.  Side effects we could never have imaged because we don’t understand every facet of every market and industry.

For example, some people may want to increase military levels, but do not consider the residuals of an increased veterans administration,  increased GI bill, and an increase in so many other areas.

I don’t feel hindered by this dilemma but find it peculiar and interesting.  Sometimes you find yourself in a position of knowing what another person really wants and watch them make poor decisions based on misinformation.  Entire countries have been raised and taken down in the name of a common goal – leaving people asking, “was that goal accomplished?”

Revolutionaries are dangerous when they are misdirected.

 

Christopher Walken dancing

If you thought this video of Christopher Walken doing a rendition of Weapon of Choice by Fat Boy Slim was funny… you may not have known that Mr. Walken got his way into show business as a dancer.

 

Thoughts on marriage

I have 5 days until the big day and my mind has not been focused on the wedding.  This may be to the tumultuous travel and accommodations I have had over the past few days, but not entirely.

I was re-reading S’s blog and she wrote a piece on being married.  I really like the last line in that poem stating, “If I am trapped, it is by happiness, not inertia”.  How very appropriate.  In life we make decisions either actively or passively.  I feel happy about the big day because last year I made an active choice to do this.

I’m in it for the long run, not the short term.  So every time problems arise, I ask myself what Click and Clack would do.  And they would say, “Do you want to be right? Or do you want to be happy?”  I hope we both choose to be happy forever.

 

Missing a flight has a domino effect

So I missed my flight from Prague to Madrid today tossing me into one of the worst travel situations I have ever been in.  I won’t bother telling you how I missed my flight because the reason is so dumb that it defies reason.  The point is that there are only two flights daily from Prague to Madrid – one in the AM and one in the PM.  After missing the AM flight I am now waiting at the airport for my PM flight which will get me into Madrid around midnight.

Since I have now missed my flight from Madrid to NYC, I have the added bonus of getting to spend the night as an airport refuge, and then 14 hours later board a flight from Madrid to NYC.

Of course the domino effect would not be perfect unless that made me miss another flight so that is exactly what happens.  I will arrive in NYC having missed my flight from there to another city.  I cannot believe such a small cause could have such an amazingly horrible effect.

 

Videos galore

I met one of the Sensepost guys today and his blog lead me to this video, which lead me to this even more interesting video.

 

Extreme watches

Cory from Boingboing got me hooked on watches and here are some of the most extreme.  My favorite is number 4 on the list, the “Caliber Richard Mille 012”

 

Painting the Pad

As you might know, we recently found a new home and plan to move in over Labor Day.  In preparation for this we are painting both bedrooms.  This is something I encourage all people to try once but not something I’d enjoy doing too often.  We have been up to midnight for the last four days paining away (and in one case re-painting.)

We learned quickly that although painting is fun, applying the color paint only takes up about 10% of the time.  The rest is painfully devoted to laying tarp on the floor, taping all the edges, priming the walls, and eventually edging.

As the process is almost complete I am happily looking forward to the end.  On another note, so many people have talked about painting this weekend.  My good friend in D.C. is painting her place, so is a friend of ours in SF, and at least one other person I recall.

After tonight we have only two days to finish painting, pack, and then the moving day itself.  There is lots to do, but I’m sure it will work out.