Category: personal

Super extra friendly cable installer guy

About five years ago, it was one of those deals where the cable company gave you a nine hour window in which they would have someone out there to do the installation, and you just sat around and hoped that they showed up at all. I was apparently favored by the cable installer gods that day because the guy showed up within the first hour of the window, AND he was in a really great mood. "Hey, how ya doin, ready to get this all set up for ya..." and so on. "This will be fun," I thought.

"Hey, man, I know this is a strange request, but could I get a glass of water? I just had some really spicy wings for lunch and my mouth is really really dry."  Hmm.

Continue reading "Super extra friendly cable installer guy" →

Meat Twice a Week

Sesame BurgerTwo years ago about this time I blogged about my resolution to give up soft drinks, which I'm glad to say I've successfully continued for a second bonus year, despite it having no noticeable positive effect on my health while making me an outcast at all of those cola-centered social gatherings. And despite the bottles of Dr. Pepper that people sometimes leave sitting around me, sometimes even in my own fridge.  But I digress.

For now I'll skip over last year's resolution - which failed miserably - and bring you to my 2009 resolution, which is to eat less meat. Specifically, I'm trying to eat meat at no more than two meals per week. This is a revised plan of attack from past attempts to try an all-vegetarian diet, which I eventually decided wasn't tenable for me.

Without getting too far into the food ethics involved in meat-eating (which are nonetheless important and deserving of further treatment), I thought I'd note why I'm doing this, and how it's going so far: Continue reading "Meat Twice a Week" →

The one where the plane failed to depart, twice

Chris and Mark arriving at SFOSometimes you see those weather stories on the evening news where they show a few seconds of airline passengers stranded in some airport looking like hell as they try to figure out how to cope with canceled or delayed flights, and usually you just feel a little bad for them and then move on. At the moment I'm feeling some appreciation for the misery that's displayed in those brief clips, having had a bit of a travel adventure myself:

It started with Mark and I barreling through the snow on I-70 toward the Dayton airport, wondering if planes would even be taking off at all today. But, my handy dandy text message updates from Delta.com declared the flight was on time, so we pressed on.

I should have known we were in for a special time when the guy at the ticket check-in counter (which has largely been replaced by self check-in kiosks) was delighted to point out how much cost cutting Delta has done. Me: "Do you have one of those little folders for these boarding passes?" Him: "No, they did away with those some time ago. Heck, all we've got left now are the airplanes! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Right.

Continue reading "The one where the plane failed to depart, twice" →

The Clear Creek Co-Op was not started in a desk

If you're a reader of Earlham College's weekly paper, The Earlham Word, you'll note a quote attributed to me in a recent article about the future of the Clear Creek Food Cooperative, where I currently serve on the Board:

The Co-op has always been associated with Earlham, from the time it was started by a group of students in the Runyan desk.

To the contrary, the Co-op was actually started inside of a storage bin. At some point when it got big enough, the organization moved into the largest available compartment of an end table, and then worked its way up to reside in a desk in Runyan Center, but not the desk we know today as Runyan Desk. These details are important.

In all seriousness and despite the misquote, the article touches on the key point that the future of the Co-op, currently located on Earlham's campus, is a bit uncertain right now. As we try to figure out what model is best (and sustainable) for the organization, the Earlham populations it serves, and the larger Richmond community, we invite feedback from others who are invested in the future of a locally owned food store that focuses on healthy, local, organic products and cooperative values.

Staff evaluations: giving feedback, building strong teams

A lot of my time in the last few weeks has been consumed by working on staff evaluations at Summersault. It's at times tedious and exhausting, but really rewarding in the end, I think. I just posted some more about how we do it on the Summersault Blog:

"If you read my previous post about 10 Reasons to Work at Summersault, you may have noted Reason #5: In-depth performance reviews provide you with concrete professional goals and feedback on your successes. As we wrap up our Fall review cycle for staff here, I thought I’d say a little more about just what that process involves."

Continue reading Staff evaluations: giving feedback, building strong teams.

Links, and what I'm thinking about

I haven't had the chance to blog lately, but here are some bits and pieces to chew on. First, some links:

Some topics I'm thinking about, and may eventually blog about:
Continue reading "Links, and what I'm thinking about" →

Undo

Corn Maze Navigation Done RightYou may have noticed that I was playing around with the Twitter Tools plugin for WordPress, and that it was generating these weekly digests of my Twitter posts on Fridays.  I'm not going to do that anymore, but you can always follow me on Twitter directly or with your favorite blog/RSS feed reader/twitter tool or by looking in the sidebar of the blog front page.

I'm removing Google ads from my blog.  I'm tired of them, and they're not earning their keep.

You can now subscribe to the comments of a specific post such that you receive an e-mail message when new comments are posted.  Look for the checkbox right where you submit your comment.

As always, feedback is welcome, drop me a line.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2008-10-31

  • "I thought that I heard you laughing, I thought that I heard you sing, I think I thought I saw you try, but that was just a dream." #
  • Important lesson from the movie Atonement: always encrypt sensitive communications, especially love letters delivered by young children. #
  • Oh no, the U.S. military has realized that the Internet is a communications tool for vegetarians: http://tinyurl.com/5jmxcj #
  • @DougMasson Great! They had a verifiable paper trail in place this year, right? in reply to DougMasson #
  • I'm considering going rogue, everybody's doing it. #
  • Three movies I suggest you avoid: "Noise" (too weird) "Queensized" (too cheesy) and "Silver City" (what the heck WAS that?) #
  • Hi, I'm ____ and I'll be your dedicated Dell sales rep until I'm replaced right after you place an order and my email address stops working. #
  • Congratulations on convincing yourself that today's stock market gains mean that everything is going to be okay. #
  • @jlharter Yes, who are those folks and what brought them here? And wait, who are you? 🙂 in reply to jlharter #
  • @hodgman If you have to ask, maybe you already know the answer? Unless you're being melodramatic for effect, in which case, carry on sir. in reply to hodgman #
  • If dogs take over the world, and chose a king, I hope they don't just go by size, b/c I bet there are some Chihuahuas with some good ideas. #
  • Today I pressed some areas on a screen and a machine told me I voted. I asked it to give me a paper trail, and it was silent. Machine wins. #

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2008-10-24

  • If I survived that high ropes course today, surely I can wean these kittens off of their bottles. #
  • What a lovely day, full of those moments C.S. Lewis described: "What! You, too? Thought I was the only one." #
  • Whether they ever find life there or not, I think Jupiter should be considered an enemy planet. #
  • New blog post, "On practicing what you preach" #
  • Why do the caterpillar and the ant have to be enemies? One eats leaves, and the other eats caterpillars. Oh, I see now. #
  • NO CARRIER #
  • New blog post: Failed Attempts at Being You #
  • Maybe some day, the Drupal project will get its security vulnerability announcements down to less than what seems like 1 per hour. #
  • Ending a long and interesting day, looking forward to doing it again tomorrow. You? #
  • Getting on the road to speak to some great folks in Cincinnati. #

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On practicing what you preach

Preparing for High RopesIs it really important to practice what you preach?

Must we really become the change we wish to see in the world?

As I try to work in my life and community to create a peaceful and sustainable existence, these are questions that churn in my head daily.

On a personal level, I think a lot of us struggle with living out the values we hold - we have aspirations and ideals about ourselves and the world we live in that can seem hard to enact, even when the path might feel clear.

But when you start to talk about how the rest of the world could be - even should be - the conversation goes beyond issues of self-discipline, time management, or having sufficient support and encouragement. When we talk about sharing a message with others about how we want the world to be and perhaps suggest they change their behavior to get there, it becomes a question of whether there's a practical or ethical obligation to already first be living out that existence well as the messenger.

Some people say you have to transform your own life first before you can expect others to transform theirs at your suggestion. Do we?

Continue reading "On practicing what you preach" →