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personal

Computers and peanut butter

Things could be so much better

Me: I want to have some dessert but I need peanut butter to eat with it.
Pac: !#$#, I don’t have peanut butter. !@#$!#$, !@#$!#$!#! $!@#$!!
Friend: Hey, I think I have some peanut butter in my purse.
Me: Wait, whanow…?

I hack most things in my life, cause lots of things can be improved upon.

Case-in-point: Whenever I eat something sweet, I eat (a crapton of) peanut butter with it because peanut butter (a) has a low glycemic index of 14, which modulates the overall impact of other, more unhealthy foods because of its density of protein, fat, and fiber, and (b) it does so more inexpensively and conveniently than other options.

At the Friendsgiving, we had our choice of ice cream, Magnolia cupcakes, and pumpkin pie for dessert.

I had all three and was hoping for some peanut butter to go along with it but Pac didn’t have any. However, my friend had some in her purse, which I was both appreciative of and pleasantly surprised by.

Clearly, I need to keep these friends or get a purse.

As suddenly as it came again, the insomnia went away again. Well, the worst of it, anywho. There are reasons why but that’s a post for another time.

This woman wrote this amazing comic where she perfectly described her anxiety and depression; when they went away, she felt an incredible need to be productive.

Replace anxiety with depression with insomnia, and that’s how I feel.

Still sad and pensive but clearer-headed than I’ve been in a while. I feel my teeth again, you see.

Put on a suit, my fave cufflinks, went to the office, met with some clients, made a crapton of phone calls, negotiated a few deals, and then hit the gym.

Giving another lecture in January to boot.

Unfortunately, there are some downsides to this as well; I keep a tiny computer in my living room to record television and stream videos and the fan noise on it – which has always been a dull hum in my head all these years – is now driving me nuts.

Under load, it sounds like a hair dryer. No joke.

Imagine that: A hairdryer just running constantly in your living room.

So – even though I knew it’d throw off my sleep – after the kid went down, I googled how to fix it and found a guy that put in a replacement fan.

Once I got a replacement fan, I cracked open the computer, ripped out the old fan, spliced the wires from the old interface to my new fan, zip-tied it all back together, and shoehorned the whole thing into a universal junction box.

When I have some more time, I’m planning on either 3D printing a proper case for it, or using a Dremel to cut open the old case like the OP did and make that work.

Anywho, I then drilled a large access hole into the back of my media console and strung it all through. It went from sounding like a hair-dryer to not sounding like anything at all. Nothing. Dead quiet.

Unfortunately, I may have kick-started my insomnia again. Spent the other night editing a buncha videos for my coach.

Eh, worth it. It feels good, getting stuff done.

Location: in the living room, enjoying the silence
Mood: accomplished
Music: Vows are spoken to be broken
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Categories
personal

Picking up the pieces we break

Ended up with a completely jacked computer

Asus ET2700 disassembled
Part of the reason I splurged on the new desk because – on the days that I work at home – I spend almost the entire day sitting there.

So if I’m going to spend money on anything, it should be a nice work space.

Similarly, a few years ago, I bought myself a really sweet computer. It was a single piece computer with a touchscreen; essentially, it was like having a 27″ table computer to work on. I loved that thing and it made working that much nicer.

Last week, I decided to upgrade the processor for a slight step up in power. I installed it during the mess of building out my desk and everything else and ended up blowing out my computer.

Complete black screen of death. There seems to be a string of completely destroyed computers in my life.

Meanwhile, I had a portfolio of work due to client so I had to do that on my office computer or my actual 10″ tablet (which is as fun as a root canal) while rushing back to (a) finish building out my home office and (b) trying to salvage my machine.

tl;dr: The furniture is essentially assembled but my computer has given up the ghost. So my physical and digital states are both a mess right now.

I ended up buying a set of parts – essentially, this exact list of components – to build myself a dual-booting Windows/Macintosh system.

This has been a really expensive and tiring few weeks. Hopefully, after I’m done, I’ll be happy I did it.

As always, it’s about making it to the other side.

 

Location: in the midst of computer and furniture parts
Mood: still so tired
Music: in the strangest places, picking up the pieces we break
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Categories
personal

Accomplishment is fish in the freezer and going paperless

Had, what I consider to be, a productive weekend

Him: Are you around? I went fishing this weekend. How much stripped bass do you want?
Me: Sweeeeeet!
Him: Want to meet me in front of MSG near the taxi stand around 4?

Went down to Madison Square Garden this past Sunday, fighting off tourists, and met up with my buddy Steele for what could easily have passed for cocaine transaction but instead involved striped bass. We chatted about lakes and rivers, exchange some advice, he told me about https://www.reelchase.com and then I was on my way.

As I stood in front of the queue for taxis and watched people come and go with their luggage I thought it pretty funny that I was probably the only one there for a fish-related transaction.

Well, it is NYC, I could be wrong. You never know.

As for the rest of my weekend, when the guy came to fix the radiator last week, realized that I have boxes and boxes of old files and books still.

So I I bought this scanner and went to town on them.

In all, I filled three 30 gallon recycling bags full of paper.

Now I’ve got fresh fish in the freezer and 90 gallons less paper in the house. Not quite paperless but close.

A pretty good weekend if you ask me.

You may disagree but when you turn 40, these are big accomplishments. Big.

Location: in a room with -90 gallons of paper
Mood: accomplished
Music: But I know my lines and my graphs and my math
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Categories
business personal

We make 15 decisions a day

To relieve stress, you should try to make less than 15 decisions a day


Read once somewhere that people can make 15 decisions a day. That sounds about right.

In fact, I’ll take it one step further, the fact that:

  1. we can only make 15 decisions a day and
  2. must make 15 decisions a day,

…leads to the stress in our lives. Because sometimes we have to make more. And we’re not really equipped/built to do so.

IMHO, that’s the real reason that we miss childhood; back then, someone else made the decisions for us.

While still young, we fought to make more of those 15 decisions, and then as we got older still, we found we had to make those decisions.

Well, that was dumb.

English: Decisions Decisions (Horton, Point or...
English: Decisions Decisions (Horton, Point or Green) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Bearing this in mind, a few years back, I tried to minimize the number of decisions I had to make on a daily basis.

You know why you have rules? You have rules so you don’t have to think because you’ve already thought about it before.

That’s why I have rules and a schedule. It minimizes the discrete decisions I have to make each.

  • Is it Monday? That’s when I usually have client meetings and phone calls.
  • It it Tuesday? I pop over and see my parents in midday and have my fencing class at night.

When the weather’s cool, I wear a suit because it’s easy. I don’t wear a tie even though I have more ties than pretty much anyone I know. One less decision to make.

The problem with this whole plan is when I have a new decision to make. Usually labour over it for a while before I make a decision. But once I do, I try as best as I can not to go back.

After all, we all wanna keep going forward don’t we? I’d like to, anywho.

Location: it’s Wednesday, so that means more meetings and the gym
Mood: steamy
Music: It’s a beautiful bright day outside the door.
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