Back in February of 2008, Tim Ferris posted a list of five keys to writing effective blog posts. Here they are again, rephrased with my ‘take’ on them. Not too surprisingly, the first step is select a goal to measure success by. Click here to read on, my friend.

In a sense, I’ve ‘won’ a trip to Aruba … one of those island get-away spots that I never thought I’d see. How’d I win? Well, I married the right woman. My wife has an itchy foot and nothing but travel will scratch that itch. <grin>

Click here to read on, my friend.

I have two really wonderful grandchildren. This video hits too close for comfort.

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Sadly, far too many people measure their net worth as humans by their net worth at the bank. This leads them to work ridiculous hours, spend their money like the well-trained lemmings they are and just generally enrich the lives of those who make their money by selling the sweat of other men’s brows.

They have negative savings and even less hope of ever stepping off that treadmill. But they live in deathly fear of falling off it.

I’ve got to wonder if we aren’t missing something here, something important.

Have you any tips for living an unhurried life in these frenetic times?

Click here to read on, my friend.

del.icio.us Tags: drive-by shooting,murder,Gatorade,friendship

I watched the young lad struggle with the grass clippers. They were too big for his hands, dull and it was too hot to be working in the sun. I stopped the mower, called him over to me and asked him if he was ready to take a break. Like any other seven year old, he was ready. So was I. That sun was tormenting us.

So we got into my pickup truck, rolled down the windows, buckled in and off we went to the corner gas station. We could see it from where we were, but it was just too hot to walk across the sea of concrete to get there.

It wasn’t all that long ago that the life of that seven year olds’ mother was taken in a drive-by shooting that may have been no more than a gang initiation. A senseless rite of passage for a senseless generation.
You made my young friend an orphan, punk. He only had one parent and you killed her. My young friend is closer to being a man than you are ever likely to be.

Click here to read on, my friend.

As I look at these two photos, I am inspired to consider that the two probably had the same designer. After all, if a design works, it is normal for a human designer to work out variations of it and apply these variations to additional projects. Why not the designer of the universe?

Additionally, there is grist for a sci-fi book in here based on the possibility that the universe itself might be a cogitative being and all we can see are the nearest neurons. This would mean that we, the ‘highest’ life form are much, much further down the food chain than we thought. At most, it would appear that we have the ability to destroy a single neuron … the one we are sitting on. More likely, we will sicken it and a phage will come along to clean us out.

Care to comment? Follow the link below for a peek at the photos.

A Brain Cell is the Same as the Universe

In order to take any appreciable value out of life, we have to put a commensurate amount into it.

There is no shortcut. If paperwork is a part of the process, we must attend to the paperwork. We can work smart. We can work hard. Or, in a best of both worlds scenario, we can work both smart and hard. But life is only going to let us keep what we have completely earned. That also includes our arrangements for investing what we have earned and for tax avoidance. (Not evasion; avoidance. Evasion is illegal. Avoidance is written into the statutes and is approved behavior.)

In other words, we must see the thing through. Then, and only then, can we sit atop our ’stash of cash’ and boldly declare “Mine”.

John Cruzat, USA Swimming’s diversity specialist, said these inequalities were compounded by a widespread misperception fueled by flawed academic studies that blacks’ swimming ability was compromised by an innate deficit of buoyancy.

“There are people who still give credence to these stereotypes, even in the black and Hispanic community,” said Cruzat, who wants to break the cycle that passes negative attitudes about swimming from one black generation to another.

When I was younger, I DID have ‘an innate deficit’ of buoyancy … I was too skinny to float automatically and had no exposure to pools to learn in. Just your average skinny white kid living in the ‘burbs.

Click here to read on, my friend.

Pardon my abysmal Danish, if you will, but ‘do you remember’ (husker du?) when a CGA monitor was the hot thing in computers? Are you old enough to even know what a CGA monitor was?

I’ll be honest with you … I’m old enough to more than simply remember that time; I’m old enough to recall not having to wrestle with my word processor just to get a few simple ideas in place. I’m old enough to actually miss those days when I could type an entire article with my hands over the keyboard. In fact, there was no where else they needed to be.

Dark Room, by Jeff @ they.misled.us is the bomb!

Yeah! Let the good times roll!
This is “dark room”, a full-screen text editor with minimal bells and whistles but even fewer distractions from the job at hand — writing. Or, more specifically, composing. In use, it looks pretty much like a monochrome screen monitor from the bad old days … except for the much higher resolution available today. It’s easy on your eyes and easy on your mind.

Dark Room allows you to change the font, the font size, the background color and the font color and precious little else. So, with the font jacked up to Courier New and 20 pts, the background set to black and the font color set to a shade of pink that shows up really well against the black, I’m rockin’ & rollin’ with this review.

Just about the first thing I noticed is that it really flies. Despite running on Win XP, this program really moves. I used it to write the first draft of this review. Then I selected all the text with a CTRL+A two fingered salute and dropped in into Windows Live Writer with a hearty CTRL+V.

The second point that catches your eye is the lack of clutter. For some of you who cannot imagine leaving your fingers on the keyboard when using a computer, this will come as something of a cultural shock.There simply isn’t much need for a mouse as there is nothing for it to point to during the course of editing.

My needs are simple. I need to be able to create, edit, save and print. I do not need to mail merge a blog posting. I do not need to email from a text editor. If I need to surf to some distant land, I’ll open a stand-alone browser and do the job properly.

I like Dark Room. If you are serious about getting words from your mind and out through the tips of your fingers, I think you will like it too.

It probably won’t handle a large document. It doesn’t insert graphics, play audio or any of those other ‘gitchee gotcha’ things. But it’s pretty good at getting words down in a hurry.

Allow me to recommend it. Oh, and did I mention that it’s free?