Just the knowledge that a good book is waiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.
—Kathleen Norris

 
Have you read any good books lately? I’ve been reading/listening to a lot of them. Some have been technical books on Photoshop, but mostly they’re history, biographies and memoirs. There are too many to list, but I will single one out: The Unlikely Disciple–A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University.

The author, Kevin Roose, took a semester out from Brown University and attended Jerry Fawell’s Liberty University, the world’s largest evangelical Christian university. It is sometimes referred to as a “Bible Boot Camp”. It was an easy read and Roose did a great job of talking about his experiences, including making friends and even interviewing Fawell (founder of the Moral Majority) himself, seeing Fawell as a likeable person in spite of his gay bashing. Roose himself is from an untraliberal family and one of his aunts is a gay activist.

I was impressed by Roose’s fairness and willingness to see people as fellow human beings, even though he strongly disagrees with some of their beliefs. I found the book both entertaining and refreshing.

What about you? Have you read any good books lately?

A few weeks ago I wrote about a new adventure inspired by a drawing book:

 
The basic idea of the book was if you want to draw, then start drawing. Take an experimental approach. Be bold and try things. Notice what works and what doesn’t and have fun learning.

It reminded me of Tim Gallwey’s Inner Game approach to life and peak performance. His basic idea is our inner critical voice gets in the way of learning and performance. If we want to improve our skills we need to stop judging harshly and start paying attention to exactly what we’re doing and what the results are. It’s somewhat similar to the NeuroLinguistic Programming idea of

1. Know what you want,
2. Notice exactly what you’re doing,
3. Is what you’re doing getting you closer to what you want?,
4. If not, try something else.

Keen observation is often more helpful than blind striving.

In general I’m more mastery oriented (spending hours and hours learning new skills) instead of achievement oriented, so when I read The Inner Game of Tennis in the mid 1970′s Gallwey’s ideas resonated with me. The approach especially helped when I went back to work after ten years away from physics and computers. Whenever possible I chose challenging problems that I didn’t know the answer to, figuring I’d much rather be scared than bored. So even though there were deadlines attached, I learned to forget about results but instead to be curious about the problems themselves. It meant (1) I didn’t procrastinate to escape feelings of tension, and (2) once I immersed myself in the process and started enjoying the challenge I relaxed enough for the creative part of my brain to start working.

Anyway, that’s what works for me. What works for you?

Откъде да купя икона

According to the article if I had clicked on the top link taking me to barackobama.com/immigration-reform I would have been followed around the internet and seen new ads based on what they thought I was interested in. Apparently that happens all the time when we click on paid ads unless we opt out:

Even if I had clicked on the Obama ad (I didn’t because I’m not interested in political advertising) I could have blocked ads from barackobama.com or else opted out of all personalized ads. I didn’t bother to opt out because mostly I tune out the ads and don’t click on them. Google clearly distinguishes between paid ads and regular search results. I am grateful for the Washington Post article for explaining how the system works. It’s nice to know what my choices are.

What about you? How much attention do you pay to advertising?

So what does that have to do with the picture of the worried bear above? Nothing, in fact. I’ve just been waiting for a time when nothing much is happening to use it. I drew it in Photoshop last month after I read about a new smart bullet developed by two hunters working at one of our national laboratories. They think it’s great and when it goes to market will be used by our military, law enforcement officers and by “recreational shooters.” I can think of a lot more groups who might be interested in the weapon, and I also wonder just how much of a sport hunting can be with a bullet like that. What do you think?

Andy and I have had plenty of practice doing that this year, of course, and I had another chance just yesterday. I was playing around with some new techniques in Photoshop and decided I would try them out on a picture of our shed. I had spent hours and hours organizing the pictures of the land into well-named folders and subfolders and knew exactly where I could find the picture. Oops! All the folders and subfolders were there, but the pictures were gone. What??

Time to trot out the magic words: “What’s the opportunity here? What can I learn from this?” So I went off and did some chores while I pondered the matter. I had checked some of my backups– the files had disappeared weeks ago. It eventually dawned on me I had installed a new photo managing program a few months ago. So I checked the receipt– I had bought it January 9th. Sure enough, the files had disappeared between the backups of January 7th and January 16th. Mystery solved. The program had moved the files to a folder of its own choosing, and since I knew the names of the individual files it was easy enough to track down where that folder was.

For now I’m just going to rebuild my own folder system and put it on an external hard drive so it will be safe. In the future I’ll take the time to understand the new photo management program and see if it’s worth it. Andy loved it when he was using it on the PC and was putting off managing his new pictures until the program was available on the Mac. I bought it for him when the Mac version came out early last year, but he hasn’t gotten back to looking at his pictures yet. At least he’s been warned that his new version doesn’t work exactly the way his old one did.

I wouldn’t exactly call this a beautiful oops!, but it was definitely educational. If nothing else it reinforced the importance of keeping centered and being patient. Any oops! in your life lately?

Художник

 
I’ve been reading a lot of books and blogs about dogs lately…we can learn a lot from them, and from the people who love them. The little girl in this video (thanks, bikehikebabe!) could have saved herself some trouble if she had paid more attention.

Whom have you been learning from lately?

We’ve also been learning about other people’s experiences, both in conversations and through the internet, in order to get new ideas and hopefully to avoid some pitfalls. Kaitlin and Torben have been a big help because they remodeled their home not too long ago, and I ordered some “like new” books about kitchens from Amazon for a reasonable price. We’re also using the internet to get details about the various products.

This is a picture of the floor we’ve chosen with two samples of quartz for a countertop.

The colors aren’t quite right, but it does give the general idea.

Andy has also been doing research on ventilation systems for an energy-efficient house. The fellow we were referred to for our kitchen fan has a different definition of a quiet fan than we do. It was so noisy we would probably hesitate to use it. Fortunately Andy found some engineers online that sell a kit that should do what we want. We will no doubt write more about this later.

What about you? What have you been doing/learning lately?

I went up with Andy this afternoon and started marking off the thickness of the walls, where the various rooms are, etc. As you can see from the first picture, it was a glorious day. (A camera can’t capture the feeling of spaciousness, but it’s better than nothing.) We still have a lot more details to decide before the plans are complete, so we’ll be going back to Santa Fe this week to look at kitchen and bathroom sinks and fixtures, etc. We’re also doing a lot of research on the internet and have found the propane refrigerator we’ll probably get. It’s just one step after another, and doing our best to enjoy the process.

What about you? Have you had to deal with any big projects lately? If not, are you glad? If so, are you enjoying the process?

 
Joe was originally going up tomorrow to do more work, but they’re predicting more snow with highs around 20° F. for the next two days. Not exactly building weather. We’re hoping this unusually early cold snap won’t hurt the new concrete. Time will tell.

Andy practiced plowing the road yesterday and will probably plow again tomorrow because it will need it. Winter has come!

What about where you are? Cathy and Evan will be dealing with summer instead of winter, of course.

 
As I mentioned in Thursday’s post they did finish the shed last week and we had a enjoyable and productive visit with Kaitlin and Torben. We still have a lot of detailed planning to do with Steve, hopefully early this week, and with any luck Joe and his crew may pour the concrete slab for the house. There does seem to be a hassle about getting an inspector to come up to approve the shed so we can actually use it, but that’s another matter. Steve says he will work on that.

I’ve also been playing with modern technology. I actually bought an iPod Touch so I could download audiobooks from the library, but that part isn’t working very well. The first thing I was asked to do was to download and install the latest, new-and-improved, operating system for the iPod. That took an hour and a half. Then after several mishaps and downloading the whole thing again, it turns out my problem is the library system works with the older software but not the latest one. They’re working on it.

It was more funny than frustrating. I was already curious about the iPod Touch because Kaitlin and Torben love their iPhones and the iPod is very similar except it uses WiFi instead of my having to pay for a phone plan. (I have no need for a cell phone.) I didn’t mind having an excuse to try it, plus amazon discounted it $100 if I signed up for a year at audible.com. I was curious about that too and am pleased I did it. I used this month’s credit on a biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. It’s over 29 hours long and I’ve almost finished it already. So my adventures aren’t all about rebuilding up in the mountains. I’m trying new things and am learning a lot, which always makes me happy.

What about you? Did you try something new/learn anything interesting this week?