mountain.rb

I'm up way too late tonight (considering I woke up at 4:45am today) because I'm totally psyched for the mountain.rb Ruby conference that gets started tomorrow evening in Boulder. It's really exciting to have a conference of this caliber right here on my home turf. I'm sure I'll post more about it later, but if it's your thing, you might want to follow the #mountainrb hashtag on Twitter as well as this Twitter list of attendees, speakers and sponsors I've tried to build.

My various social network feeds are bound to be pretty single-focus for the next few days, so fair warning. ;)

G'night, Bunkie.

Just a few seconds ago, I tweeted: "I love that I have a friend that I genuinely call 'Boo'. " And by "genuinely", I suppose I mean that there's real affection associated with that nickname. (The friend in question is also the only person I routinely call by the nickname "Boo". I might casually throw it around, but the same person hardly ever gets it twice.)

This made me remember something formative from my summers in Destin, FL with my grandparents.

My grandfather (a.k.a. "Bapa") would more often than not refer to me as "Bunkie". He'd use it with probably 99% regularity when he put me to bed, but it would come out at other times too. It made me feel special and loved. I worshiped that man, and he had a fancy name for me - how awesome is that?

I only recently found out that "Bunkie" comes from the military barracks -- the guy with whom you shared your steel and cotton bunk bed was your partner (whether you liked him or not); he was your bunkmate - your bunkie.

Bapa earned the rank of Lt. Colonel in the Air Force (Army Air Corps back in WWII), you see. His military background is stronger than some family trees. He found the nickname honestly, even though I had no idea at the time.

In a strange way, that makes it even more special to me.

The Phone App

I haven't actually liked using telephones since high school, but it's getting a little silly. My iPhone home screen This is me every time I have to call a phone number with my iPhone:

  1. Press the "Home" button
  2. Realize that was unnecessary because the "Phone App" is one of the four apps that shows up regardless of what screen I'm on.
  3. Open the "Phone App"
  4. Take a second to realize which screen I'm looking at (generally "Recents" or something).
  5. Take another second to realize that I need to find the number pad and do so.

From there on, I'm cool, but it's such a clunky interaction that I am 90% sure is my problem, not the iPhone's. Perhaps I should make myself start calling people more often before my telephone muscles atrophy altogether...

Hush now

Yesterday evening we had the pleasure of attending out first Hush dinner. What a great event! Dinner in an Urban Winery I had known about Hush for a couple months probably, but my first attempt to get on the mailing list didn't work for whatever reason. Then just recently a newsletter from The Infinite Monkey Theorem Urban Winery (of which I have been a big fan for about a year) mentioned that they were hosting the next Hush, so I hopped on their site and signed up hoping I'd be in time to get invited to the winery dinner. As luck would have it, I was and I couldn't be happier with the result.

The evening started off at about 6pm in the winery's new courtyard sampling a surprisingly good rosé. We did some milling about, mostly keeping to ourselves, though a few brave souls did approach us. By the time we were told to move in to the winery's Quonset hut for dinner, though, we had buddied up with another couple with whom we would turn out to have a lot of strange similarities. We had a real blast dining with them and hope to see them again soon.

Dinner itself was A-plus. The food was prepared by Kate Horton, chef at Black Pearl in Denver, and her team with each course paired with a different offering from the winery. Needless to say, I was totally geeking out the whole night.

Then to take the geek factor to warp 11, I met a guy in the line for the restroom who owns a Tesla. We went outside so I could pose next to it and instead he told me to hop in! We took a screaming lap around the block and went back to our tables. The Wife said something along the lines of "What happened to you? You were gone a long time." to which I grinned with nerdy pride "Oh, I just went for a ride in a Tesla."

Gratuitious pose

More great food, awesome wine, and fantastic company followed.

So, two lessons: 1) If you're in Denver, make the effort and go to a Hush event it's worth the price and and all the underground cloak and dagger effort. If you aren't in Denver, you might want to look around and see if there's anything similar in your area. 2) I seem to "learn" this one over and over, but don't be afraid to talk to strangers. You might find people that love the strange things you love and have great stories to tell you about them.

Congrats to Phil at Hush, Ben at IMT, and Chef Kate. I'm a big fan of all three now.

@simianista Monkey Revolution Dispatches for 2010-05-29

  • "We were not staking out the garbage can looking for a monkey," said Lt. Kraig Gray of the Greenwich, CT Police Dept. http://j.mp/aKl5PE #
  • In case you were keeping tabs, Atlanta has a new western lowland gorilla in town: http://j.mp/aSpzty #
  • Chimps are smart enough to copy their betters: http://j.mp/9pb4xY Which explains all the photos of chimps with guns and cigarettes and such. #
  • This just in: Orangutans look straight into your soul. http://j.mp/bJRvir #

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Gmail Hijackers Ahoy!

Woke up this morning to an interesting email from my mother's address:

Pls reply me back

Happy New Year...

I'm sorry for this odd request because it might get to you too urgent but it's  just because of the situation of things right now, i'm stuck in London, I came down here on vacation, i was robbed, worse  of it is that bags, cash and cards and my cell phone was stolen at GUN  POINT, it's such a crazy experience for me, i need help flying back home, the authorities are not being 100% supportive but the good thing is i still have my passport but don't have enough money to get my flight ticket back home, please i need you to loan me some money, will refund you as  soon as i'm back home, i promise.

Thank you Rand Winton

Hmmm. No. That's not real at all.

I replied to it and the hijackers further prompted me to provide help. So they are actively using her account. Great.

After texting her (she's been bombarded by all her contacts checking whether she's OK or letting her know she's been hacked) I tried to login. Of course her password didn't work. I tried the password retrieval mechanism and it said it was sending the change request email to an address that looks like ******@y****.**.uk -- also not my mother.

So, I have reported the problem to Google and am waiting for their response.

It looks like these people also deleted an announcement I posted to Mom's Facebook wall, too, so I assume they are in there also.

Sometimes the internet is such a jerk!

Update: She has managed to wrangle her Gmail out of the clutches of the baddies. Her Facebook account is currently locked down, but she's barely concerned about that.

How do you quantify self-improvement?

Say you have some goals (or "resolutions", in the case of the new year)... How do you measure progress toward success? Goals are much easier to actually accomplish if you break it into steps. I haven't done the Googling, but I assume tapering with the help of patches or nicotine gum is a much more successful method of smoking cessation than cold turkey. Fitness improvements are almost by definition something to work toward one step at a time -- you can't just go from the couch to running a marathon, you need to run around the block first.

This all came about from me lying in bed thinking about some things I'd like to accomplish this year and trying to come up with ways to keep track of my paths toward them. A lot of this is based on my use of the Physics Diet web site for tracking my weight. Even when I'm not succeeding, I love having the data in front of me. I can forgive myself a big red spike if I then come back with some green afterward.

I want something like that for other goals, so I started bending my brain around it a little. Physics Diet depends on daily weight and body fat measurements, and each day your "goal" (in most cases, at least) is to weigh less than you did the day before. How do you break other types of goals into similarly measurable "micro-goals".

I think the main crux is how you formulate your goal.

Suppose I want to be able to run ten kilometers this year. The first step is to get out and run - period. That means running once in this next week is an improvement from the previous state of not running at all. Then if I get to the point where I am running consistently three days a week, I need to change my metric to something like distance covered or even time if my distance covered is the same as before. Obviously, this just got a lot more complex than a weight chart...

At least there are still obvious metrics, though - in the example above you have frequency, distance, and time. All of which you can easily measure and compare. You might even be able to make a pretty chart/graph to show progress/regression. Even without the chart I could track progress in each of the metrics and use that data to motivate myself toward my originally stated goal of running 10k within my time frame.

Here's another one: I want to learn to play my Fluke ukulele. How the heck do I "chunkify" something like that? Well, I could rephrase the goal to something more like "I want to practice the ukulele every day." That give me the frequency metric again. I could also perhaps measure a duration metric, too. Those will definitely be helpful to me at the start, but after a while two hours of plinking tunelessly will become a disappointment, and it's a big jump from counting how often I practice to counting something like songs I've learned to play....

Perhaps this illustrates a lack of knowledge -- I might not actually understand what it takes to reach my goal.

Maybe that's OK, though. Maybe tracking data on these small metrics is just a way to get me off the ground for some goals, while with others - like running or other fitness goals - it could be a long-lasting habit.

Besides, there are other things to track. Perhaps some goals are better broken into a sequential checklist of milestones -- when you can check something off, you have made progress. This sort of goal wouldn't really have backwards progress, I suppose, aside from stalling out on time.

What do you think? Is this likely to be a useful tack for achieving goals? Am I just using the idea of tracking data as a procrastination tool? (Thanks to my experience with Physics Diet, I'm quite certain this isn't the case. Tracking measurements takes very little effort and thinking out your goals is never a bad thing.)

An Appreciation of the Hard Way

Here's the thing, Bunky, a lot of people get really focused on "efficiency" in life. Those folks think a new book, the latest gadget, or a new notebook might push them over the edge so that they might Get Things Done faster than they used to, and definitely faster than the other guy. And of course faster is better, right Chief? That straight line between points A and B must also be the optimal route. How could it not be?

Well, I have come to the point in my life where I am developing an appreciation for the winding road. In my mind, actually firing up the stove trumps bringing up the Pizza Hut iPhone app to get a pie and some wings (although there are still close calls on that front, to be honest). If a 50 year old hunk of metal gets the job done as well as the modern conglomeration of plastics and who-knows-what, this guy is probably going to go for the antique. I can - and will - go on...

Build Something

A great example of what I'm talking about is home repair and/or home improvement. These days most folks run the numbers and decide their time is worth more than the cost of hiring a guy to come do the job for them.

The truth of the matter is fixing or building things around the house is super intimidating and sometimes actually difficult. These points are especially true if you have never had any training or experience with this kind of work. That said, however, the resources are out there for you to quickly gain the knowledge you need to give it a go. Go learn how to do the thing you need to do and give it a try.

Remember, even if you really fuck it up, you can hire that guy on Service Magic to fix it, but odds are you'll do fine and you'll have the satisfaction of having done it yourself.

Make Your Own Food

This past year, the thing I've done that has excited me the most is our raised bed garden. Even though it didn't get finished until very late in the summer, we grew our own food in our own back yard. Talk about satisfaction!

Even if you don't want to grow food, though, it's worth putting in the effort to cook your own meals as much as you can. People who say they "can't cook to save my life" are both lazy and lying. Cooking is one o the the most easily acquired skills there is in this world. Your food will be better than most things you'd go out to buy and there's a high probability that it will even be better for you.

That Straight Razor Thing

The three of you who read this thing have already heard a lot about my obsession with straight razors. At this point I shave almost exclusively with a straight razor. Sometimes that means I only shave once a week, though, which doesn't do me any favors. At that point my technique suffers and I am more likely to cut myself. I might actually have a very faint, but permanent scar on my face now... For real.

I still love it, though.

Shaving takes a long time with the straight razor. First, I strop my razor and prep my lather brush; then I hop in the shower for a long, hot one; once I'm dried off, I make some lather and start shaving -- I usually do at least three passes at around 10 minutes each. The whole process takes 45 minutes or so, and I enjoy every single one of them. I play music I enjoy and just spend quality time with myself. More people should find something that allows them to have that kind of time with themselves.

Boozing

Learning about and mixing classic cocktails, and even trying to concoct my own new recipes, give me a lot of joy, as some of you may have noticed. There's not much more to say about that, really. It's just another hobby that requires a bit more effort than the average Joe puts into it.

Your Way?

Now, let's be truthful, I'm not the King of the Hard Way by any stretch of the imagination. By no means do I always shun the efficient or the easy. Even the things I've listed above aren't exactly earth shattering, but it's an attitude I've been pondering lately.

So, how about you? Tell me about something you do the "hard way". What is an activity that give you more satisfaction when you do it by hand rather than with some kind of "modern convenience"? I'll bet some of you are doing way more interesting things than I am.

@simianista Monkey Revolution Dispatches for 2009-11-28

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