Doing More With Less Since 1972

Author: Scott (Page 56 of 80)

Stuff You Should See– December 30th through January 3rd

Do More, Buy Less – A huge positive from a recession. This goes hand in hand with the fact that people are saving more. I’m still amazed that people at the top continue to contend that the answer is to “get credit flowing again.” Well, I’m not really shocked that they say it. That’s what benefits them and their friends. But I am amazed that so many people buy it hook line and sinker.

Google and HTC Working On a Chrome OS Tablet – Want.

Crunchy French Toast – This is now the official French toast recipe of our household. We’ll only be using the cream after long runs though.

50 Things we know now that we didn’t know this time last year – To be honest, I’ve suspected at least 34 of these things for a few years. I just wasn’t able to prove them.

Global Warming Won’t Prevent Ice Age – If it ain’t one thing with these climate fanboys it’s another.

Four UT basketball players face drug and weapon charges – I have an idea for college basketball players with aspirations of making it to the NBA. Lay off the weed for just four years. Once you get into the NBA you can do pretty much anything you want. I don’t really care what you do as long as you aren’t hurting anyone, but if you’re going to take the money you have to play by the rules made by the people who write the checks.

Web 2.0 Suicide Machine – What we really need is a Web 2.0 homicide machine. Only those with strong passwords survive!!!! I predict Web 2.0 homicide will be a big trend in 2010.

Stuff You Should See — 23:14

Man Gives His Tattoo Breast Implants – Wha?! I guess the economy isn’t bad for everybody, huh?

Hacked STOP Signs – The best one is “Collaborate and Listen”.

Instapundit on Saving and Budgeting – I have to throw in a “yeah but…” here. I always did things pretty much the way he describes, but since my money has become OUR money, we’ve been more diligent about the budget, and it seems to work well for us. It’s even happened that we’ve been able to save more than planned on occasion.

Jersey Shore Nickname Generator – Nice to meet you. I am S-Train, and I’ll be your tanning host for the evening

Send text messages to mobile phones from the web – I was having some problems receiving texts on my mobile phone. I used this site built by my buddy Michael Wender to test things out while I was trying to resolve it. Very handy!!!

Delicious Link Dump– December 29th through December 30th

Calendar Reform – I’m all for it. But can we please keep Congress away from it? I like the idea of WorldDay, which would fall outside the calendar and not be a marked day at all (Friday, Saturday, WorldDay, Sunday) once a year. That should help it get bilateral acceptance, right?

Go to Nashvegas with Gavin Baker – That’s not an insult, it’s for real. He’s heading to Social Fresh. Details are at his place after the link.

Sonrisa Salvaje – I’d totally forgotten DLR made this record. Can I write this off as an education expense to learn Spanish?

I’m Going To Turn My Grandmother Into A Radical Libertarian – I’m down like four flat tires. I don’t have much hell to unleash, but I’ll do what I can.

Van Halen-Panama – Get your New Year’s party started early

Great Examples Of Coming Soon Pages And How To Create Yours – Some great examples here. They are probably more promising than the actual websites will be once they are launched. Still, I could use something like this. I have hundreds of ideas that are in “coming soon” state, and I’m adding more and more every day.

Songbird – Ahhh…synchs with Android. Likey.

The best series of the decade – I’m sorry. I’m not going to argue the placement of any of these series in this list. I’ll just say this and end it–if you don’t have The Wire (the best show in the history of television) anywhere in the list, you aren’t qualified to compile a list of TV shows. I hate to be mean, but that’s just the truth.

All The Baby Mamas

Since we are the proud owners of at least 6 different types of slings and carriers, and knowing that several dozen others are coveted by certain members of the household, I’m obligated to post this.

Thanks to @sugirly for showing me this.

My Twitter “Follow Back” Rules

I have a gmail filter set up so that notifications of new Twitter followers don’t get sent to my inbox. I go through them a couple of times of weeks, and I’ve picked up on a few patterns in my follow-back decision making…

  1. If you are following more people than I am and have only produced 1% of the tweets I have go back! You are not getting followed.
  2. If you are following 10x more people than are following you, go back! You are not getting followed.
  3. If you are following a number of people approximately equal to or smaller than the number of people that are following you and your number of tweets is at least 10% of the number of people you follow, I’m going to check you out and probably follow back.
  4. If I know you in real life, I’m going to follow you. Even if you’ve never tweeted. But expect me to prod you into participating.
  5. If you mention David Lee Roth or Falls City beer in your profile, I will follow you.

Expect this list to grow and evolve.

Delicious Link Dump– December 28th through December 29th

The 30 Freakiest Commercials of 2009 – I love commercials, and not just because they make LOST free for me to watch.

Star Wars/A-Team intro mashup – Seriously? It took us until late 2009 for someone to make this happen? Where is your creativity people?

E-Books Beat Regular Books – December 25, 2009 is the day we turned the corner in publishing. Publishers probably thought it would never happen. If only there’s been some sort of warning…maybe if it had happened in other industries (music, movies, newspapers) they could have been better prepared.

Into the Wild – I read it over the weekend. I haven’t seen a movie for…ever, and the guy who was telling me about the movie gave me the book as a gift. I can’t really say that I like Christopher McCandless as portrayed in the book, but I think that was done on purpose. I can relate to him in some ways though. We’re pretty much the same age, and I know a lot of guys who have some of the same character traits as him. I think it was pretty common for young men from our generation to be a little angry about not having much to be angry about. But I think if this guy had played rugby he’d still be alive today. If you play(ed) rugby, you probably understand why. If you don’t, it’s not something I can really explain to you.

The Sexiest Magazine Covers of 2009 – I wasn’t aware that any magazines were still being printed. Thankfully, there are web sites out there to filter through them and find the things I need.

Happiest States Revealed by New Research – Climbing the ranks in best cities to live in and happiest states to live in as well. Soon, we’ll reach residential nirvana. As soon as we have a house.

Thank you, Janet. – She should get dressed up in a flight suit and have her photo taken in front of a banner reading “The system worked” on an aircraft carrier. Now, watch this drive.

The Mine-o-saur!

The Mine-o-saur

It’s a good thing we love The Mine-o-saur so much, because Chick Pea absolutely adores it! For the last couple of weeks this has been a nightly read for her. We’ve been reading it to her once or twice ourselves, then she gives it a shot. Sure, she’s only reciting what she can remember of the words, but it’s so fun to see her slide her finger across the page as we’ve modeled for her. She’s definitely aware that the words on the page are what we are speaking, and she turns the pages at the appropriate times. She also enjoys naming all the letters in the words and reciting their sounds. We’re one step away from putting the sounds together!

The story may be a little advanced for some toddlers, and we’re not sure that she’s picked up on the small nuances of the story, but we go a little further than the text of the book to explain to her that the other dinosaurs are sad when the Mine-o-saur screams “MINE MINE MINE” and they don’t want to play with him. “Que feo, Mami!”

We’ve been applying the book to daily life when her selfish side comes out–“Do you want to be a Mine-o-saur, or a Share-o-saur?” So what if the book never mentions a “Share-o-saur”? 🙂

Some other fun things we do with this book is practice counting objects–cars, balls, green creatures, purple creatures, etc. The last page of the book shows 11 or 12 dinosaurs huddled together. We make it a point to let her count all the eyeballs with each reading, and since she’s still having trouble with the numbers past 14, it gives us a chance to model that as well.

Overall, one of the favorite books in our family library!

10 Things From 10 Years Ago I’ll Never Get Back

Are we any better off now than we were 10 years ago? Ok, just had to ask that because it seems like the thing to do. I know that for a lot of people the answer is a definite “no”. As for me, I’m infinitely better off than I was then. The last decade has been one of tremendous technological advancement, but there’s plenty to lament. Here’s my list of 10 things I had 10 years ago that I’ll probably never have access to again.

  1. The ability to remember phone numbers. I still remember both of my grandmothers’ phone numbers from when I was a kid, but thanks to these fancy schmancy mobile devices, I can only remember a handful now. And if I met you in the last 10 years, you’re lucky if I can even guess your area code.
  2. Mix tapes. Yeah, we could burn CDs for some of the 90s, but what the hell were you supposed to listen to in the car? Because chances are you were driving a car made in the early 90s at the latest, and it didn’t have a CD player in it.
  3. My knees. This one is obvious. There’s nothing worse than tackling a young guy, hearing the breath leave his lungs as his back slams into the pitch, then watching from the ground as he trots away on his springy legs. The only thing that keeps me going is the fact that he’s going to get old too and probably won’t fare as well as I have.
  4. Bill Clinton as President. As much as it pains me to type it, I’d prefer any Clinton (Bill, Hillary, Chelsey, George, any of them) to what we have now. Sure, it’s not the optimal situation, but beggars can’t be choosers.
  5. My Thursday afternoon job bottling beer. One of the best jobs I ever had was helping the guys at New Knoxville Brewing Company bottle beer on Thursdays. There was no money involved, but I was promised I’d achieve total inebriation on my death bed. So I got that going for me, which is good. Fortunately, that’s yet to come to fruition, but we were allowed to carry out a couple of cases of “shorties” (bottles that weren’t completely filled and weren’t worth a label) every day. Good times.
  6. Waylon Mothergrabbin’ Jennings
  7. Tables. Back in the 90s, you could load a website down with embedded table after embedded table, then fill those tables with sliced images that the browser magically placed back together and no one thought a thing about it. Put just one table into a site now and you are getting beat with a USB cable.
  8. When a girl could still cook, and still would. I had to throw that in there for Merle Haggard, but actually, this one happens to be the opposite for me. I don’t think I knew a girl in the 90s who could really cook. Not so now. I’m very well fed, and I look the part. But my girl couldn’t cook back in the 90s–this is a newly acquired skill. So if I could go back to the 90s version of her (the one that was over 18), I’d probably be much thinner. That’s logical, right?
  9. New episodes of Seinfeld. I have some of the seasons on DVD. It’s not the same. Scott is gettin’ angry.
  10. Free international travel. During the 90s I got to go to Europe and Asia to work on projects for weeks, which meant weekends on vacation in Europe and Asia. Even better–the companies I was working for footed the bill and provided per diems for expenses. Damn you Webex and remote login. Damn you straight to hell. Just kidding…except for the travel thing, Webex and remote login have made my life better in more ways than I can count.

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Delicious Link Dump– December 22nd through December 28th

2009: The Year of the Failed Narratives – I love story time! I have to admit that I'm a little disappointed that none of the stuff they are trying to sell us involves dragons or unicorns. I mean, if we're going to write fiction, let's go all the way with it.

Ghetto Kool-Aid – The word "ghetto" is over-used. The word "Kool-Aid", however, is not.

The New Flight Security Rules, So Far – When you can count on showing up for a flight four hours early, not being allowed to access your carry-ons (the whole purpose for carrying things on when you have children), not being able to hold objects in your lap (try explaining that to a toddler), and not being able to go to the restroom for the last hour of the flight…why on earth would anyone fly anywhere with kids? This will definitely be changing our travel plans in the future.

Is cable worth it? – Not even if they paid you to watch the commercials

Top 10 Bad Things That Are Good For You – I don't set things on fire and put them in my mouth, so weed is out. Can I double down on the beer instead? And I won't need the LSD to counter the extra beer for a few years. I won't knock the maggots until I've tried them.

Obama, Left Behind – What he really needs to fix this is a new web site and a fresh Twitter account. They'll be back in no time.

Mortgage Applications Drop to 2-Month Low – I have to believe this is mostly due to the fact that people are hanging out waiting on short sale approval letters. *hint hint*

Learn to Let Go: How Success Killed Duke Nukem – Shake it baby! This is the first and only shoot 'em game I ever bought, but it was pretty good. I'm not that into video games, so I didn't really keep up with the drama that was the continual delayed release of the sequel.

Stripper For Christmas – Ho Ho Ho! Yeah, that wasn't very original.

Delicious Link Dump– December 17th through December 18th

Using Google Apps? 5 Ways to Avoid Getting Hacked – I really need to get around to doing these things. Looks like you could make it happen in less than 15 minutes and save yourself a lot of heartache.

WordPress 2.9, oh so fine – Just updated, and this should force a post. The image editor and easy video embed are nice!

Common Laptop/Netbook Positions to Avoid – I'm just going to pretend I didn't see this.

Nullification: Friend of Liberty – Well Texas?

Jesus Was Cool – "Be nice to each other." Pretty simple. But wait, there's more…

Developer Resources for Android – This is on my to-do list. I swear. I even have an app idea that will be huge for a very small market.

Jerry Taylor discusses global warming on the premiere of Stossel – I missed this inaugural episode and haven't had a chance to watch this yet, but it looks to be interesting

Drunk Four Year Old Steals Christmas Presents – Shock and awe.

Delicious Link Dump– December 15th through December 17th

8 More PowerPoint Train Wrecks – I went to a great 2 day coaching clinic last weekend. About 10 minutes of the 2 days included the use of PowerPoint. Coincidence?

In Search Of Clark Griswold’s House – You have to check every single light individually.

Carbonhagen Meltdown – LOL! “…riots, madness, styrofoam cups, people eating meat, real fur coats, CFC-laden hairspray cans, it’s crazy.”

STOP!

45 Free Online Computer Science Courses | – Street Fighting Mathematics? I’m in.

In pictures: Zambia’s leading lady in the ring – My buddy I.B. sent me this. He’s an Indian guy who grew up in Zambia and has a British accent. He also wrote the first code editor I’m aware of that allowed you to highlight and comment a complete block of code.

With U.S. Opportunities Dim, Expats Return Home – That’s a relief. Now we don’t have to worry about them taking our jobs. Oh…wait a minute…

Delicious Link Dump– December 9th through December 15th

With U.S. Opportunities Dim, Expats Return Home – That's a relief. Now we don't have to worry about them taking our jobs. Oh…wait a minute…

10 Ways Social Media Will Change In 2010 – And how do you plan to adjust your strategies?

You’ve Got Mail, But the Mailman Hid It – In the near future, postmen caught hiding mail will be transferred to the U.S. Department of Medical Services as a punishment.

To comment or not to comment on Facebook – Here's a simple flowchart to help you decide

Option Arms: A poison pill for housing – – Would love to see a heat map showing where these were issued. Anyone? Anyone?

Matt Banahan red carded for stamping – Play as much rugby as possible while you can boys. The game will soon be turned into nothing but a series of free kicks.

Twoddler Lets Toddlers Send Tweets – – Uh….no.

Essential Year-End Money Moves – Solid info.

I Got Your Augmented Reality

Augmented reality sounds like a really cool thing. And I guess it is. Or am I just obligated to say that?

Being truthful, when I watch videos like this one, there’s a part of me that would gladly pay $20 for a whole seat, even though I’ll only need the edge, to watch monster trucks (real ones, that waste tremendous amounts of fossil fuels) roll over neatly stacked bricks of smart phones.

Disclaimer: I’m astronomically ignorant, so I really like to use the Google Sky app to find constellations and to see what the sky looks like on the other side of the earth by pointing it at my feet.

More Rugby Learnin’ — Technique is For Sissies

acme_thunder_coach_whistle

I can’t believe I’m about to type this, but…

I attended a USA Rugby coaching clinic this weekend that was phenomenal. It could not have been more different than the USA Rugby “education” sessions I’ve attended in the past. Admittedly, I had very low expectations coming in, but this was time well spent.

A big part of it focused on coaching in general, not just coaching rugby, and it could have applied to any sport–any subject for that matter. Another benefit was that it actually reminded me of one of my weaknesses of being more of a big picture person. I tend to focus more on the “why” and “how” than on “exactly how”. I’m more likely to think about strategy first, then spend the bulk of my time on the various tactics I can use to implement that strategy. Technique seems to get lost in the shuffle a lot of the time.

If you’ve ever seen me do anything other than type on a computer, you know technique is not my strong point.

So, where would you guess my weakness is as a coach? Duh. Teaching technique. I need to remember that going forward and make an effort to focus more on technique and fight my urge to always move on to the next tactic.

Another option–try to align myself with people who excel at coaching technique. I like that option better. Then I wouldn’t have to work on my coaching technique so much. 😀

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