Life :: Constant Work in Progress

On certain days, my views towards life are more materialistic than principles driven.  Today must be one of those days.

Contrary to many fundamentalists thinking, I see that Respect doesn’t necessarily come from your accomplishments or your social positions.  Ultimately one respects you when you have “money.”  You could be a Nobel prize winning social movement leader yet you will die in pain with no medication if you don’t have a dime to save your day.  While money does not guarantee “happiness”, it ENABLES you to create a surrounding that can make you happy.

Look around you.  People who have “money” are treated differently.  Yes the rich declares wars that the poors fight and bleed.  I’m not saying being rich is the riteous path of living at all times.  God only knows many rich folks have gotten there with some “slim shady” way of things.

You want to be respected?  Have money.  Even your children will not abandon you when you get old as long as you have money.

Although this tool is off Belkin’s website, the information is good for any and all FM transmitters.  http://stationfinder.griffintechnology.com/

I was reading up on Merlin Mann’s quick guide to Getting Things Done.  In there he goes on to describe characteristics of “geeks.”

• geeks are often disorganized or have a twisted skein of attention-deficit issues
• geeks love assessing, classifying, and defining the objects in their world
• geeks crave actionable items and roll their eyes at “mission statements” and lofty management patois
• geeks like things that work with technology-agnostic and lofi tools
• geeks like frameworks but tend to ignore rules
• geeks are unusually open to change (if it can be demonstrated to work better than what they’re currently using)
• geeks like fixing things on their own terms
• geeks have too many projects and lots and lots of stuff

This originally from Dave Barry.

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25 things I have learned in 50 years  (by Dave Barry)
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1. The badness of a movie is directly proportional to the number of
helicopters in it.

2. You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling
reason why we observe daylight-saving time.

3. People who feel the need to tell you that they have an excellent sense
of humor are telling you that they have no sense of humor.

4. The most valuable function performed by the federal government is
entertainment.

5. You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests you
think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her
at that moment.

6. A penny saved is worthless.

7. They can hold all the peace talks they want, but there will never be
peace in the Middle East.  Billions of years from now, when Earth is
hurtling toward the Sun and there is nothing left alive on the planet
except a few microorganisms, the microorganisms living in the Middle East
will be bitter enemies.

8. The most powerful force in the universe is gossip.

9. The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender,
religion, economic status, or ethnic background, is that, deep down
inside, we all believe that we are above-average drivers.

10. There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make
a big deal about your birthday. That time is age 11.

11. There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."

12. People who want to share their religious views with you almost never
want you to share yours with them.

13. There apparently exists, somewhere in Los Angeles, a computer that
generates concepts for television sitcoms.  When TV executives need a
new concept, they turn on this computer; after sorting through millions
of possible plot premises, it spits out, "THREE QUIRKY BUT ATTRACTIVE
YOUNG PEOPLE LIVING IN AN APARTMENT," and the executives turn this
concept into a show.  The next time they need an idea, the computer
spits out, "SIX QUIRKY BUT ATTRACTIVE YOUNG PEOPLE LIVING IN AN
APARTMENT." Then the next time, it spits out, "FOUR QUIRKY BUT
ATTRACTIVE YOUNG PEOPLE LIVING IN AN APARTMENT."  And so on.  We need
to locate this computer and destroy it with hammers.

14. Nobody is normal.

15. At least once per year, some group of scientists will become very
excited and announce that:
* The universe is even bigger than they thought!
* There are even more subatomic particles than they thought!
* Whatever they announced last year about global warming is wrong.

16. If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has
not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word
would be "meetings."

17. The main accomplishment of almost all organized protests is to annoy
people who are not in them.

18. The value of advertising is that it tells you the exact opposite of what
the advertiser actually thinks. For example:
* If the advertisement says "This is not your father's Oldsmobile," the
advertiser is desperately concerned that this Oldsmobile, like all other
Oldsmobiles, appeals primarily to old farts like your father.
* If Coke and Pepsi spend billions of dollars to convince you that there
are significant differences between these two products, both companies
realize that Pepsi and Coke are virtually identical.
* If the advertisement strongly suggests that Nike shoes enable athletes
to perform amazing feats, Nike wants you to disregard the fact that shoe
brand is unrelated to athletic ability.
* If Budweiser runs an elaborate advertising campaign stressing the
critical importance of a beer's "born-on" date, Budweiser knows this
factor has virtually nothing to do with how good a beer tastes.

19. If there really is a God who created the entire universe with all of
its glories, and He decides to deliver a message to humanity, He will
not use, as His messenger, a person on cable TV with a bad hairstyle.

20. You should not confuse your career with your life.

21. A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.

22. No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.

23. When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual
who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often,
that individual is crazy.

24. Your friends love you anyway.

25. Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.

Original article found here.

This great excerpt from zenhabits.net:

• Reduce your inboxes. How many different ways does stuff come into your life? Do you have 5 different places at home or work where paper comes in and gets placed? How about email, voicemail, RSS feeds, etc.? Reduce these to simplify the overall system.
• Just have one list tool. Do you have one in your mobile device, a couple on your computer, one in your paper planner? That’s too many places to check and keep track of. Choose one and stick with it.
• Consider paper. Paper is very portable, and very simple. It is easy to use and can be adapted to your needs. You can use it at your computer and on the road, at work and at home. To me, it’s the simplest setup possible.
• Go online. I need to work on stuff from multiple locations, so a completely online setup is necessary for me. I don’t store my articles or working documents on my hard drive anymore. I use Gmail and Google Docs (and WordPress for publishing this blog), and the advantage is that it’s not only very accessible from anywhere, but easily searchable, so I don’t need to worry about filing and organizing.
• Reduce before you organize. If you have fewer things to organize, then organizing is easy. I think David’s problem is that he has way too much stuff to organize. That’s why he needs a briefcase and traveling folders and a desktop organizer and a 5-tray inbox. First of all, if he’s got a Palm Treo and a laptop, why does he need to carry around all that paper? Keep stuff on the computer instead of printing it out. Tell people to email you stuff instead of giving it to you on paper. He’s the boss! But even if that’s not possible for him, it’s possible for the rest of us. We can cut back on the amount of stuff we have, and therefore never really need to organize.
• Reduce your needs. This is related to the above point, but let me give you another example instead of just reducing your stuff: Why do people need a complicated and feature-rich program like Microsoft Word? Many different reasons, of course, but mostly because they need to format a document in a certain way, for various reasons. But the information in a document is just information — what if you could simplify how it needs to be formatted? That’s not possible for some people, but I found that it is for me, and it might be for you. Then, you wouldn’t need Word … you could use Google Docs or some other simple program. Think about your needs and see if they can be simplified — then the tools you use can be too.

One must realize how badly we all take things for granted.  Especially lately I have been emotionally down and exhausted but I must learn to keep things in perspective.

For instance, even at this moment of me writing this post and you reading this post, somewhere in the world a doctor is telling parents that their beautiful 4 year kid has cancer.  I don’t care how bad my day could be when considering such a devastating and yet so “real”.  Therefore, I am thankful my 2 children are healthy.  At the end of a day, what else could I want?