I haven’t updated my Netflix charts at all this year. Sorry about that. But my Netflix service has been great. I think I’ve only had one bad disc this year, and the replacement disc came before I finished the other two, so no huge loss.
More details at the Netflix Analysis page.
I think I set a world record today while out biking my neighborhood. During my ride, my bike computer started giving funny numbers. I checked out the sensor, it was still lined up correctly. The clock was ok, still ticking away. So I assume that I really did go 181.6 mph today. After all, technology is never wrong. Plus that speed would explain why I was so tired when I got back home.
Inter arma silent leges.
It means, “In time of war the laws are silent,”
If the Internet is an electronic frontier, spammers are cattle rustlers on the electronic frontier.
Last week my wife and I traveled through Virginia and West Virginia on vacation. Here are the photos taken early in the morning in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, outside Staunton. A beautiful sunrise, a small farm one hill away, mountains everywhere.
Select the photo to see the entire collection.
Seth Godin points out while discussing viral campaigns “If Darwin’s elephants managed to squeeze in just one more generation, they end up with 30 million.” (Elephant Math)
I can think of two examples where someone gave “one more generation” to their product.
There aren’t many people in many industries that are willing to invest just a little more time into a product. Yes, you need to know when to pull the plug, but having faith in your product can have fantastic results.
I got up this morning at 4:30 to view a total lunar eclipse. I glanced out the window, and the moon was looking nice, a few clouds, but the moon wasn’t obstructed. I get dressed, find the camera, and go outside. Tons of clouds rolled in. The eclipse started at 4:51, and I couldn’t see a thing. I walked down the block and waited about 15 minutes. Nothing. Solid cloud cover. I went back inside, checked email. I glanced outside again, and the clouds were gone. I grabbbed the camera and went back down the block and got these two photos at about 90% coverage:
Wow, proof that the Earth is round, you can see the curvature as the Earth’s shadow passes onto the moon’s surface. The photo on the right is using my camera’s 3X optical zoom.
For a few months now, I’ve been reading the Unclutterer blog. Unclutterer is the blog about getting and staying organized.
I am using one of the unclutterer’s hints: doing it in small steps: After yesterday’s laundry (socks, underwear and t-shirts) was done, after sorting and folding, but before actually putting them away I opened each drawer and looked through the clothing that hadn’t been worn since the last washing. I tossed a huge pile of holy socks, ancient underwear, and torn shirts. I also found two broken belts (but I might fix them some day – yeah right, sure I will).
Last week while waiting for the oven to heat up, I tackled the kitchen junk drawer instead of sitting in front of the tube. I wish I had taken a before and after picture, I will on the next junk drawer. I found nearly 100 twisties from bread, 2 complete sets of measuring cups (we now have 4!), pencils and pens, half-burned birthday candles, expired coupons, etc…. You know, junk. I tossed a ton of stuff, moved other things to the place they belong, and now that drawer is 75% empty, it only has kitchen cooking stuff in it.
We are moving slowly and surely towards getting rid of a lot of junk in our home.
Is there something in your life that seems too big to handle? Something you want to change, but just can’t get started? Read 2 Samuel 23:20-21 “Benaiah chased a lion down into a pit. Then, despite the snow and slippery ground, he caught the lion and killed it.” Mark Batterson wrote a book around this verse, In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day: How to Survive and Thrive When Opportunity Roars
I’ve created the poster you see here. I have it hanging on my home office wall. It has 24 statements on it from the manifesto in discussed in the book. You can download it in Acrobat PDF or JPG formats. The PDF will print on a 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of paper. I can resize it if you’d like it in a different printable size, just let me know.
The photo I used is one of mine I took at the National Zoo in 2002.
So, three and a half months after “closing” my account with Vistaprint (see Vistaprint sucks for details) guess what I got in the postal mail today? Junk mail from some loser motivation speaker series addressed to me with my tagged postal address. I always give a unique shipping address to companies I order stuff from. Then when they violate their privacy policy, I have proof. That’s so cynical of me that I have to assume that companies will violate my privacy that I have to do such things. But it’s not like anyone ever gets in trouble for not following their privacy policies.
So I visited Vistaprint, and tried to log into my account, the one that was closed. I spent a good amount of time with a Vistaprint customer service representative back in April, and told him to close my account. Well that really worked. I guess I now need to worry about my address getting further sold. The privacy policy for the motivational speakers says they will market the information they collect. I now get to file a Form 1500 on them.
I’ve now emailed Vistaprint and submitted my request that they close my account. Tomorrow I’ll be mailing them the request. Of course, at this point, I doubt they will really do anything.
