Cheese Sandwich: Saying Goodbye

Lunch on Thursday was kind of a bittersweet affair. It marked the end of a relationship, one that's lasted for very nearly nine years, and one that changed my life. I think I most often refer to her here as "a wise woman," but she's been my counselor, therapist, teacher and I've come to regard and love her mostly as a friend. Sandy retires on Monday, and while I expect we'll always be in touch, as another wise woman once observed, "everything that has a beginning, has an end."

Her employers didn't do much to mark the occasion of her retirement, to honor the years of service she gave to the Navy family, so I tried to make up for that just a little bit. I brought along a friend from work who knows about Sandy's role in my life, and with whom I've shared some of the things Sandy's taught me about how to relate to people. And Sandy knew about my friend because I always enjoyed telling Sandy about all my friends. When I started seeing her, I didn't have very many; and now I seem to have them in abundance. And, to me, a retirement requires a ceremony, and that requires a speech (I love giving speeches), and a speech requires an audience! So I shanghaied my friend into coming along. Truthfully, she did want to meet Sandy, so it didn't take any effort on my part.

We had lunch at a small restaurant that's pretty new on Mayport Road, La Pizzaria. What it may lack in appellation, it makes up for in good food and wonderful service. The terms of Sandy's employment only afforded her thirty minutes for lunch every day, so she seldom got off the base to sample the local establishments.

After lunch, I offered her a few comments on behalf of the Navy about how valuable her service had been to the Navy and the members she served and their families. When I retired from the Navy, I'd invited Sandy to attend the ceremony, and I'll never forget when this crusty old master chief who worked for me came up to her afterward, while I was standing right there, and said, "Ma'am, I don't know what you did. But thank you. Thank you!" And he wasn't entirely joking!

I guess I was a little hard to work for sometimes.

There are usually some presentations made, gifts or mementos and the like, and I'd brought some along for the sake of completeness. I presented Sandy with a plush groundhog, the same as one of the ones I gave away at my Groundhog Day party. I told her that I wanted it to remind her of me, and that she had taught me how to see my shadow. I started to see Sandy about a problem in my marriage, but the first thing she wanted to talk about was my problem with anger. That, as many of you know, just made me mad! But she is nothing if not a patient, wise woman, and one with good humor too.

In many ways, I owe her my life. At least, the life I have now, which is a vastly different one than the one I first presented to her. A vastly better one. And I'm sure it's a familiar story to most people who've entered therapy. I had never considered counseling for myself before I finally sought it, because it was for other people. People with something wrong with them, and there was never anything wrong with me! But life has a way of continuing to try to get your attention, and eventually you either seek help or things get much, much worse.

And it was a revelation. In some ways, a miracle. There's an old saying, "When the student is ready, the teacher appears." I think that's true. I don't know if it was luck or divine intervention, but I can't imagine a better teacher than Sandy. I can be a very difficult person, but she never gave up on me, even when it took me a very long time to "get" some things. Some of them, I'm still just beginning to "get."

I started seeing Sandy before I'd seen the movie The Matrix, and in my intake session, where you just kind of try to sort out why you think you need to be there, I told Sandy that I felt like these trees on the base, that were bent over from so many years of onshore breezes bending them in the wind, that I didn't even recall what it felt like to be myself anymore. And she said something about one of the most important things in life is to know ourselves. (Of course, that's a whole other topic. And the work of a lifetime.) Anyway, the first time I saw The Matrix, I was just kind of blown away by the whole thing, but especially when Neo met The Oracle for the first time. She pointed out a sign in her kitchen written in Latin, and she told Neo "It means, 'Know thyself.'" So I've always kind of affectionately regarded Sandy as The Oracle. She only tells you what you need to hear.

Anyway, our formal relationship as client and therapist is over. People who know about Sandy have asked me if I'm going to start working with someone else. I tell them no, but really, what I've learned is that I can "work" with everybody. And if you're open to it, what you need will be presented to you. You just have to learn to pay attention, and Sandy taught me that. She's the voice I hear in my head when I'm starting to get caught up in the "stinkin' thinkin'." "David, what's going on inside you?" And there's a whole thing we do with that. She also introduced me to meditation, and I'm working on that again now.

We plan on keeping in touch. I was kind of amazed, and both delighted and disappointed, to learn that she doesn't have e-mail! But I have her snail-mail address, so I'll send her a postcard now and then with a SITREP. And I'm sure I'll get a note from her now and then. But I just wanted to note this transition, and my appreciation for the wonderful presence she's been in my life. We should all be so fortunate.

Competing Messages: Technological Solutions

Often, it seems to me that we believe there is no problem confronting us for which technology does not afford a potential solution. Perhaps this comes from our belief in the notion of progress, and the success we've enjoyed in improving the lot of some of us through the exploitation of the rest of us, using our technology.

It seems as though we consume so much energy from fossil fuels that we've altered the composition of the atmosphere, leading to a change in climate. People will still argue about this, but I think the evidence seems pretty persuasive. Sometimes you hear or read about conservation as a means of reducing our consumption of energy, but most of the time what you hear or read about is a solution involving different forms of energy that don't rely on the combustion of fossil fuels. Conservation, or, perish the thought, reducing the amount of energy we produce, is never seriously considered as an alternative. Indeed, the people who are foolish enough to advocate such a course are mocked as luddites, or people who wish to "turn back the clock," and have us all freezing to death in caves. So much for the "openness" of our so-called "rational minds."

If there is a problem with advertising and marketing consuming too much of our attention, the solution obviously must be a technological one. With the right software, we can "level the playing field." We can "empower" consumers to assert their rightful place as "customers." The internet was supposed to do that for us, but it seems the future hasn't really arrived yet, unequally distributed or not. No, what's really needed is more technology. Because, you see, the same people who we railed against before the internet, have simply learned how to exploit the internet to continue on pretty much as before. Sure, they're more clever about it now, with notions of "social objects," "long tails," an "intention economy," "naked conversations," and things like that. But, pretty much it's business as usual from where I sit. That business, of course, being bullshit.

I spoke to a friend of mine who's taking a marketing course in connection with earning her MBA from the University of Florida. I asked her if she'd ever heard of The Cluetrain Manifesto, or if it had ever come up in any of her course work. I was surprised to hear she had not. Of course, such an admission will be mocked by all the True Believers™, and taken as indicative of the lameness of the course or MBA program. Because the profound insights of the ninety-some theses have "changed everything," and those who haven't yet embraced them are destined to be consigned to the dustbin of history.

Still, I found the answer to be warmly reassuring.

Do you suppose the reason why some people go to sleep at night without having had enough to eat is because the planet doesn't produce enough calories? Does our technology not enable us to produce enough actual food to feed everyone? I don't really know, but I'd hazard a guess that it does. Maybe that One Laptop Per Child program will solve the distribution problem. Maybe it's a Vendor Relationship Management problem. Really. If you think about it. They all get those laptops, they'll be able to order pizza or something. Once they all have their proper digital identity.

Part of the unconscious, unexamined, highly conditioned "faith" we have in technology is revealed in a phrase Dave Weinberger offered once, which I've seen repeated elsewhere as something of a profound observation on the significance of weblogs. He said, "We're writing ourselves into existence."

But this is ass-backwards. Existence precedes narrative. Yet Dr. Weinberger's construction gives precedence to narrative ("writing...into existence") And written narrative is mediated by technology. It is an artifact, a technological artifact. What, in effect, Dr. Weinberger is uttering, is that technology validates his existence, it makes it "real." "As seen on TV," so to speak. Nobody, to my knowledge, ever really objected to that little assertion. It was just accepted, endorsed, and woven into the unconscious fabric of our collective belief system. Or at least, those of us who seem to read Dave Weinberger, and you know who you are.

But I think many people give precedence to technology over the more mundane aspects of mere "existence." Because technology is malleable. It's easier to "improve" than "existence." Indeed, we can edit our narratives and "improve" the record of our lives. Indeed, our narratives often outlast our existence. So perhaps our worship of technology is really part and parcel of our fear of death. Of non-existence. Who knows? Not me.

Does every problem have a technological solution? Do the best solutions always require new technologies? Are solutions that don't involve technology discounted because, well, that's not "progress?"

If you're going to pose a "solution" to a "problem," doesn't it make sense that you might want to make sure you understand the actual problem? Maybe that whole "seek first to understand" thing might actually be important for someone besides other people.

Anyway, I don't know anything. I'm an authority on nothing. I make all this shit up. Do your own thinking. But, for God's sake, please think. Or maybe just be still. On second thought, do that. As a wise woman once told me, "Just be still."

Discover existence.

Mac: March Tinderbox Madness

We had a bit of a technical glitch yesterday. Eastgate rolled out Tinderbox 4.2.2, which I dutifully downloaded and installed. Normally, these minor updates don't cause any problems, but upon exporting yesterday morning's post, everything was all screwed up again with the templates. External ones in my case, I haven't tried to figure out how to use internal templates yet. I had made no changes to anything, and had previously only had a problem with Tinderbox getting confused about templates when I'd changed computers or installed a new hard disk.

So, after issuing a stream of very salty sailor language, I took Bodhi for a walk while I tried to regain my equanimity. I figured I'd just come home, quit Tinderbox and reinstall version 4.0 and all would be right with the world. Alas, not right enough. So I left everything as it was while I prepared for dinner.

After my guests left, I was able to sit down and get everything working again. But I'm still rather unhappy about the whole thing.

Easter Sunday Morning

So it's Easter Sunday morning, and I'm behind on just about everything. It's not for lack of an adequate "getting things done" strategy, it's just that, well, there were other things to do. I have eight to ten guests to prepare for this afternoon, but I wanted to drop by here and say a few things anyway. Just shouting to the void.

I've watched Jill Bolte Taylor's talk several times now. It's a remarkable, remarkable thing. It resonates with me a great deal, much more so than anything offered by high or low attention-earning, reformed or unreformed, current or past marketers, who compete so much with us and with one another for our attention.

I love at the end when Dr. Taylor asks "Which would you choose?" regarding the differing experiences of life afforded by the different aspects of the left and right hemispheres. I love it because you hear a few nervous twitters of laughter, and I think I know what that laughter means. And I love it when she asks next, "Which do you choose? And when?"

Then you could hear a pin drop.

She opened a gap between stimulus and response. All those minds, like Wile E. Coyote, had been running along in that speech, thinking they knew where they were chasing that Road Runner, because ego always knows what's going on. In that moment of silence you can see Wile E. Coyote running off the edge of the cliff, his legs still furiously running until that moment when he realizes what he's done, when he turns to the audience and blinks, just before he begins his fall. But Dr. Taylor doesn't let her audience fall; instead, before they blink, she offers them a line:

"I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner-peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world, and the more peaceful our planet will be. And I thought that was an idea worth spreading."

It's a powerful message, and one we're uncomfortable hearing. The little grace note at the end was a bit of sugar for a bunch of left-brains as well, they recognized the tag-line of the conference and it made them a little more comfortable. It made her more familiar to them, in spite of the unfamiliar experience she'd related, and the odd question she asked, which they had never been asked before. Or at least not so that they'd heard it. But she had them then, as they rose to their feet in applause.

She's a brilliant presenter. I love watching her move as she offers her story, because her whole body is involved in it, and she invokes the left and the right in every part of it. It's a great talk, and if you've already seen it, I think it's worth watching again and again. And then it's worth figuring out how to try and do what she suggests.

We need both hemispheres of our brains, metaphorically anyway. The problem is, we've allowed the competitive nature of our left hemispheres to become dominant. We compete with one another, we compete with nature, we compete with ourselves. Markets are competitive environments, it should be unsurprising that sports and war metaphors are used in describing market stories.

Conversations are not competitive. Markets are not conversations.

Exploiting the social rewards of what are essentially manifestations of a more right-brain approach, celebrating one another's existence in the moment and sharing our experiences with one another for simple social rewards, for the pure joy of it, is just another effort to try to achieve a competitive advantage in the market by seizing attention, or by facilitating the seizure of attention.

We are not consumers, we are the consumed.

But only insofar as we allow ourselves to be deceived by those seeking a competitive advantage. The only power we have is the power to choose, but we are so befuddled and confused by an environment that promotes and profits from confusion, that we forget that.

Lately, the marketers, the profiteers, the compulsive competitors, have been trying to exploit love to achieve a competitive advantage. Because that's the nature of competition. There is no boundary that must be respected, because some competitor will go beyond it and achieve an advantage unless the others do too. Marketing will never be more humane, or more enlightened. It's competitive. It can't. And we can't live without markets and marketing. But we can choose how much time and attention we give them, if we're not fooled by them. It profits the market to make fools of us. We need to learn how not to be fooled.

Okay, that's enough about that for now.

DVD: Robinson Crusoe on Mars

I think I saw this when I was maybe 10 years old on NBC's Sunday Night at the Movies, or something like that. It was one of my favorite science fiction movies, but I don't think I ever saw it more than twice. It didn't seem to get the same rotation that movies like The War of the Worlds got.

In any event, the Criterion Collection edition of Robinson Crusoe on Mars has been out for some time now, but only recently came to my attention. Being the sucker for nostalgia that I am, I had to have it. You can't take much (or any!) of it seriously, but it's still a fun movie to watch because it was a fairly serious treatment of what we thought Mars might be like before Mariner. Plus, there's Adam West before he became Batman! (n.b. - He's not the lead.)

Cheese Sandwich: Insomnia

I made the mistake of watching a 60 Minutes segment on sleep deprivation last Sunday and now I lie awake at night worried about how much sleep I'm not getting.

Sheesh.

Social Hygiene: Run with an open heart...

Okay, this could probably be a Cheese Sandwich post, but it's a little lesson for me, which might have broader applicability in the notion of social hygiene.

I just got back from my run, and it was my worst effort to date. I had a lot of time to think about that on the way back, so I thought I'd share it with you. It relates to the thing Jill Bolte Taylor was talking about, so it's timely.

A lot of running is "mental," if only in your attitude. It's more than just that, but I think most people can understand attitude. If you're pissed off, running because your boss is making you run, you won't run well. As it happens, my attitude was not helpful this morning. A lot of attitude comes from ego, because ego always thinks it knows what's going on, and it's in charge. Ego is almost always clueless, and while it may think it's in charge, it ain't the boss by any means. But I let my inner trunk monkey out this morning I guess, and that's who laced up my sneakers.

So I'm thinkin' I like this running stuff. I got a freakin' medal for running! Yeah! But my time sucked! I can run faster than that! I ran faster than that the week before the run, which was my fastest time on the road since I started running this year. So I'm thinkin' I'm going to go out and knock out 10K at about a 10:45 pace. (Which, I know, is by no means impressive. But you have to recall I'm a formerly fat guy who has never been a serious runner. So 10:45 for me is pretty quick.) It's going to be warm today (it's 75 as I write this), so I wanted to get out there in the morning before it got much above 70. But my high-tech toy that gives me all that valuable feedback that I like to acquire and admire was tired and needed to rest first. So I had to wait around for it to rest up and recharge. That kind of ticked me off, so already I wasn't a happy camper.

So eventually I figured it was charged enough to last 10K, and off I went and I'm moving pretty quick. I check the watch and sure enough, I'm doing about a 10 minute mile pace, which is faster than I wanted. But I figured I'd just try to keep it up and slow down as I needed to. Maybe I'd do better than that last time. No pain, no gain, that sort of thing. By the time I reached the halfway point, I knew I was starting to get into trouble. I was having difficulty controlling my breathing, and my heart rate was already approaching 180, which it normally shouldn't do until near the end of the run. But I figured I'd just slow down a bit and press on.

About 4.3 miles into the run, despite slowing my pace considerably, my heart rate was still about 180 and I could no longer control my breathing. I was sucking wind. Ego is saying "Keep going!" but I kind of hear the voice of the Yoga instructor saying "We must listen to our bodies," and I figure my heart and my lungs are trying to tell me something. So I slowed to a walk. I figured once my heart rate got down to about 120, I'd start running again. It never got below 130 before I got home.

Most of the runs leading up to the River Run were kind of in the vein of just seeing if I could do it. I had no expectations regarding pace or time, I just wanted to see if I could run six, seven and eight miles. And I just plodded along at a comfortable pace, and sure enough, I could run all those distances. I was pretty happy. The week before the race, I figured I'd just do a relatively short run, 10K, and not try to over-exert myself. I felt pretty good and I just ran at the pace I felt comfortable at. Turns out it was my best pace ever. But I think the difference in all of those was attitude. I was running without expectations, without a fixed notion of what my performance was supposed to be, that was somehow tied up into how I felt about myself. I'd call that running with an open mind, but an open heart feels like a better description.

I don't want to get bogged down in the niggling details of brain architecture. I've read some pretty unfair comments about Ms. Taylor's talk and what the brain does, and neuroplasticity and what have you, all of which I'm quite certain she's completely aware of, and probably understands better than some of her uncharitable critics. But the bicameral mind is a familiar metaphor, not without merit and utility in this discussion.

My miserable performance this morning is a product of my head, not my body. I'm pretty sure I have the same legs, lungs and heart I had two weeks ago. Maybe even a bit better. No, I ran poorly this morning because I got wrapped up some ideas and expectations that are properly ascribed to the notion of ego. I seemed to believe that who I was, or how I felt about myself, had something to do with how fast I ran. Even wanting to wear the wristwatch is kind of a left-brain function. Not that that information isn't useful, but the desire for the data led to a conflict in start time that kind of set me up for an unhelpful attitude in my run. What kind of attitude I run with is a choice that is up to me, if I'm conscious of it. Too often, we're unconscious, unmindful, and so we make choices that are unhelpful or actually counterproductive.

Anyway, I keep forgetting and relearning this stuff, probably because I have a poor habit of practice. But that's something to work on, not worry about. Now I have to go get ready for a party. As always, I'm an authority on nothing. I make all this shit up. Do your own thinking.

Cheese Sandwich: Waiting...

...for the silly battery in the Forerunner to charge. I normally download data from my lunchtime walks and leave it attached to recharge, but I didn't do that yesterday. I don't know why it has a low battery, unless it powered on while it was in my bag, but it takes a press and hold to power it on. Who knows. Anyway, I've got to kill some time here before I can run, at least if I want the data - and I do.

I'm listening to Dan Fogelberg as I'm writing this. I was never a huge fan, but he seemed to be a ubiquitous presence on FM radio in the 70s. I liked his stuff, but he wasn't edgy enough or something. I was mostly into Springsteen, Fleetwood Mac, Boston, Van Halen and stuff like that. In any event, I was browsing around iTunes one day and learned that Fogelberg had died back in December from prostate cancer. I started sampling some tracks and wound up buying Portrait, The Music of Dan Fogelberg. I seem to find his music much more enjoyable now, and I'm sorry to hear of his passing.

Oh yeah...

Happy Pi Day. Just needed to kill a couple of minutes until Willie Nelson finishes Moment of Forever. Seems I'm in the moment more than I knew. Probably not "forever," but that wouldn't be a bad thing. Anyway, everything is connected. Everything happens for a reason. Everything is not miscellaneous. Contingent, certainly. But not "miscellaneous."

Okay The Bob Song is over. Time to cue up a flick.

Mac: Data Detectors

Okay, I'm still behind on the housework, but I'm less behind than I was before, and I'm tired so I figured I'd post this and then settle down and watch a movie.

This morning I clicked on a link to NASA in a news story to read some more about the Dextre robot being delivered to the International Space Station. Of course I clicked around some more and happened on this page that offers predictions of when the station or the shuttle might be visible overhead. When I got to the page, I noticed that there are some good times coming up next week when I might be out walking Bodhi. Then I spotted a link to e-mail the data to someone, so I e-mailed it to myself.

When I got home this afternoon, I recalled something about data detectors in Leopard in Mail and maybe elsewhere. I didn't bother to look it up, so I thought it would be a case of highlighting the text and right-clicking it, but it's even slicker than that. All you have to do is kind of move the mouse over the data and you get a dotted line surrounding the item that Mail recognizes, and a little drop-down menu to select something to do with that data item. Here's what it looked like:

So I selected Create New iCal Event and it's added to my calendar! Pretty slick. Very "Chandleresque," even.

Anyway, more this weekend prompted by reading Dreaming in Code and Jaron Lanier's comments in the book.

Social Hygiene: "You are who you choose to be..."

This could be a very long post, but I have housework to do so it's going to have to be short. The title is from a movie that I love that happened to come along at a moment in my life that made it very meaningful to me, The Iron Giant. Why that's important just now will be clearer in a little while, but not by the end of this post.

I follow Garr Reynolds' Presentation Zen blog, but not because I give many presentations. In fact, I haven't offered a presentation in years. But I like his thoughts on design, and he sometimes links to things I find interesting or meaningful. Back in July he linked to a song by M. Ward called Chinese Translation, and a video made for that song, and that happened to be at a moment in my life that made it very meaningful to me.

I've mentioned recently that I've started taking Yoga, and that I've been working on reestablishing a practice to promote mindfulness within myself. Living in this present moment, because all we have are moments to live. I mentioned that my "monkey brain" has been acting up a bit lately. And truthfully, it's been making a difference, which is good to realize. I was a little worried I might be headed down the wrong path again. But that's the yin-yang thing, faith and fear. Anyway, life is good.

So today I'm checking Presentation Zen and Garr has linked to a TED talk by neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor called My Stroke of Insight.

You should watch this video. It'll be about eighteen minutes out of your life. I can't say it will change your life, because it won't. You'll have to do that.

I didn't have a stroke, but I did have an event that compelled me to take a different path, and much of the experience she relates is familiar to me, apart from the physical injuries due to her stroke. She offers something about the right brain that I hadn't connected before (in my left brain), and that is that taekwondo probably helped some of that change in my life, because I had to become aware of my body in a way that was more than just how tight the waistband of my pants was getting. Meditation, with its focus on the breath and quieting the incessant chatter in my head, was probably another big piece. The fact that logic and reason had utterly failed me, was probably the final piece. But anyway, I'm still somewhat ego-centric so I'll try not to make this all about me, if I haven't already.

Just go watch the video. Then recall, "You are who you choose to be."

GHDROB*: Dreaming in Code (Part the n+1)

I finally finished Dreaming in Code (now available in paperback from fine booksellers everywhere). It was a good book, but kind of a reflection of its topic. We like our narratives to have some sort of conclusion, and this one doesn't. It suffers a little bit for that, if only because it seems as though Mr. Rosenberg didn't really see that coming, and the narrative sort of stumbles a bit at the end of the book, as he's looking for a way to solve his own experience of the "halting problem."

It isn't clear exactly what book Mr. Rosenberg intended or expected to write, he doesn't share that with the reader. One kind of gets the impression it was going to be something favorable about open source software, with an emphasis on the fun and thrills to be had fiddling with our personal information with software. But it seems that the book became something about why software is hard instead, because, it quickly became clear that software is hard, and that became the story. That could be wrong, but that's the way it felt as I read it. But that's just a niggle, because it's an interesting story, however it came to be told.

I was surprised to read about the problem with recurring events in the calendar, as the Chandler developers grappled with that issue. We've had calendar software for so long, I guess I kind of thought that something like that had been figured out a long time ago. But I also hadn't thought about the kind of challenge it poses, so that was interesting to read about it, even if you don't get much more than a flavor of the kind of thinking that went into resolving the issue.

Anyway, it was an interesting read, well worth the time. If you read Dreaming in Code, and you like the more esoteric discussions about programming, Engines of Logic by Martin Davis, is a good book that gives much of the theoretical history in the development of programming logic.

I've downloaded Chandler and started it once, but I haven't played with it very much yet. I didn't care for the UI, but that's not a deal-breaker by any means. It just means if it's not pretty, I'm less motivated to play with it right away. I expect I will play with it at some point in the not too distant future. I will say that one of the challenges in the PIM space today is that of choice. There are simply too many personal information management software applications, and many of them are very good. Some, naturally, are better than others, depending on your style or habits or what you think is important. I'm afflicted with a kind of habitual interest in these applications. Partly because I think they kind of tickle the reward centers of my brain. They seem to offer me the illusion of power or mastery over the trivial details that orbit around my life like some kind of electron cloud. I really probably would be better off spending less time with Tinderbox and DEVONthink and Yojimbo and Notebook, and Life Balance and the list could go on indefinitely, to which we now add Chandler. But they're kind of fun to play with, and play is a good thing.

So, that's it. I enjoyed the book. I think you will too. I got it for free, but if I didn't like it, I would have said so because I'm kind of a rat bastard that way. If you want me to send it along to you, shoot me an e-mail with your address. First come, first served. I have too many books.

Have a nice day.

Social Hygiene: Go With the Flow

A kind of Taoist view of time, that is to say, a much wiser, even more rational, view of time and its relationship to us.

Cheese Sandwich: Go Mii!

Well, I finally scored a Wii at retail price. I read a comment somewhere in Amazon's web site that Best Buy and Toys 'r' Us would have about 100 Wiis (Wiii? Wixen? What?) in stock on Sunday in connection with the launch of Super Smash Bros. Brawl on the platform. So I headed out to Best Buy this morning to get there before it opened, got into line and managed to get a Wii.

So far, it's very, very cool. I love the global interface for the news and weather, and I wonder why I haven't seen that done before on the Mac? Caitie wanted me to get Guitar Hero III for it, so I did and I've played around with that. I suck, and that's all I care to offer about that. But the console itself is pretty nifty. I made myself a Mii, but haven't done anything with him yet. Frankly, I'm still pretty tired from yesterday. I'm not terribly sore, except for my achilles tendons, they're pretty tender, but I still feel a bit fatigued. I went to bed at nine last night and slept well too!

But enough about all that, time to go try out Wii Sports!

Cheese Sandwich: Born to Run

Actually, I probably wasn't "born to run," but I'm loath to overlook the opportunity to make a gratuitous Springsteen reference. After all, he is The Boss. I ran the 15K Gate River Run today.

The skies were very clear, but the wind was blowing like hell. I'm glad I did it. I'm not sure I'll do it again. Maybe. I had a lot of fun though. I saw a few other neighbors there, but this has been kind of a shared experience for Inga, Aly and I, in preparation and running it. Inga ran a great race and met her goal, coming in more than 25 minutes ahead of us. Aly and I ran pretty much step for step, and we're happy with our performance. My Garmin Forerunner 305 tells me we ran the course in 1:52:25, though that's a little off because I forgot to hit "Stop" when I crossed the finish line, and didn't recall until several seconds later, maybe ten or fifteen. The "chip" times haven't been posted yet, but the gun time shows us running it in 1:59:36. I had us taking 7:39 just to get to the starting line, so the chip time should come in about what the Garmin would have indicated, had I pushed "Stop" when I crossed the finish line.

I had a great time. Did something at 50 I'd never even attempted before. And I'm pleased and lucky and grateful that I have such wonderful friends.

Cheese Sandwich: Namasté, baby!

I went to my second Yoga class last night and really enjoyed it. It's challenging enough to be interesting, but it's a beginner's course so I'm not being left in the dust. Very cool. It's definitely an activity that will pay dividends in many areas, especially helping me get back on track in mindfulness. My monkey-brain has been asserting itself lately. (Just now I'm flashing on those "Trunk Monkey" commercials. Probably a very apt metaphor.)

Physically, I think it's really going to help in taekwondo as well, especially in forms. Plus, it's different enough that it's helping me increase my body-sense. I think I'd become somewhat habituated or conditioned in taekwondo from doing the same stances and moves for more than five years. This is making my body do things it hasn't done before, so it's increasing my awareness of what I've got to work with.

Plus, there are a lot more women in Yoga than taekwondo. A lot more.

Very cool.

(I probably shouldn't say that. I can see where it might make some people feel uncomfortable. I'm just being a smart-ass. See "monkey brain" above. But it is nice to do something with a gender balance in the other direction. There are women in taekwondo and krav, but mostly it's guys.)

Mac: PIM stuff

Here are a couple of PIM-related links that I was pleased to find still exist on the web. The first is a paper by Tom Erickson on an electronic notebook base on Hypercard. The second is a paper describing how the developers working on Claris Organizer 2.0 (which later went on to become Palm Desktop, and was probably my favorite purely traditional PIM on Mac OS 7-9) developed the user interface for entering contact data. Both of these documents reside in PIMs on more than one of my Macs.

GHDROB*: Dreaming in Code (Part the Zero)

(*Groundhog Day Review of Books)

I'm about a third of the way through Scott Rosenberg's Dreaming in Code, and I'm enjoying it a great deal. There are several reasons for this, but the most important perhaps is that Rosenberg writes well. He sets a reasonable pace, and the narrative moves along smartly. He's also a thoughtful writer, and when he offers an aside or observation, it's not from the point of view of a partisan or someone with an agenda. Rather, he's somewhat skeptical. An example from page 57 of the paperback edition:

When we move some aspect of our lives into software code, it's easy to be seduced by novel possibilities while we overlook how much we may be giving up.

While I haven't encountered very many such asides, it's refreshing to do so at all when so much "popular" literature about technology is really about selling the author's vision or idea. There's always the faint (or deafening) sound of an axe being ground in the background.

One of the other reasons I'm enjoying this book is that personal information managers, or PIMs, have been an interest of mine ever since I bought my first Apple ][+ in 1981, and it came with PFS:File.

The actual narrative itself is a fairly familiar one, and comparisons with Tracy Kidder's Soul of a New Machine are relevant. But another book that tells a similar story is Defying Gravity, The Making of the Newton by Doug Menuez (photos) and Markos Kounalakis (text). What makes it relevant is the effort to be "revolutionary" personal information managers. Chandler in software, the Newton in hardware and software.

I've downloaded and installed Chandler since I'm reading a book about it, and at least now I know why the icon is a stylized silhouette of a dog. Chandler is the name of Mitch Kapor's dog.

Still another reason I'm enjoying it is because Rys McCusker, who was with with Chandler project for a while early on and is mentioned in the book, is someone I once corresponded with a great deal. I lost track of him several years ago, but he was an interesting person and I trust he's found happiness and success.

Finally, a particular passage describing Douglas Engelbart's approach to software brought to mind my experience with Tinderbox (another kind of PIM, though that would probably give you the wrong idea about it). Rosenberg wrote:

Engelbart's demand that users adapt to the machine found few followers in subsequent decades. As computing pioneer Alan Kay later put it, "Engelbart, for better or worse, was trying to make a violin" -- but "most people don't want to learn how to play the violin." This tension between ease and power, convenience and subtlety, marks every stage of the subsequent history of software.

That reminded of some things I think Mark Bernstein has said about Tinderbox. So I figured as long as I was reading Dreaming in Code, I might as well read The Tinderbox Way. So there's a computing synergy for you: A book I get for free inspires me to buy a book for $40.00! Mark should give Scott a cut of the action.

But I'm kind of thinking again about PIMs and stuff. Naturally, I bought Bento when it was released, and I'm playing with that. I suspect these applications appeal to the same sort of reward centers in our brains that video games do. We feel "empowered" when we use them. It's an illusory or ultimately trivial power, but the feeling is nice anyway - which is to say, it's fun to play with them. And Tinderbox is a game with kind of complicated rules, and I think I'm being inspired to want to try and learn to play it a little bit better.

Anyway, I'm enjoying the book.

Social Hygiene: Stillness

Sandy used to say to me, "David! Just. Be. Still." Something I need to recall.

Rogers Cadenhead directed my attention to something in an e-mail yesterday, in response to the comment about mindfulness. I thought it was worth sharing:

I got to thinking about stillness. To read a book, one must be still. To watch a concert, a play, a movie, to look at a painting, one must be still. Religion, too, makes use of stillness, notably with prayer and meditation. Just gazing upon a still lake, upon a quiet winter scene—doesn’t that lull us into contemplation? Life, it seems, favours moments of stillness to appear on the edges of our perception and whisper to us, “Here I am. What do you think?” Then we become busy and the stillness vanishes, yet we hardly notice because we fall so easily for the delusion of busyness, whereby what keeps us busy must be important, and the busier we are with it, the more important it must be. And so we work, work, work, rush, rush, rush. On occasion we say to ourselves, panting, “Gosh, life is racing by.” But that’s not it at all, it’s the contrary: life is still. It is we who are racing by.

From What is Stephen Harper Reading? a weblog by Yann Martel.

Social Hygiene: Cyber-mental Health Day

Mark Bittman relates his strategy for de-coupling from his digital links once a week. I'm not sure observing a "secular Sabbath" (He resisted the urge to write "cyber Sabbath," I suppose) is the best strategy, but there are many I'm sure.

Social hygiene, the practices that support and nurture a healthy life outside of commerce, is going to require individuals to develop customs and habits that promote mindfulness, which is what Bittman is really writing about. And if you think spending your time texting, twittering, and MySpacing (or e-mailing, blogging, or attending to your avatar) is being "social," you're not. You're really serving the needs of commerce, not your own. As with most things, moderation is key.

Anyway, on with Monday.

Groundhog Day Review of Books

I've kind of followed Scott Rosenberg's Wordyard blog for some time. For the most part, it's been my impression he's one of the more reasonable observers of the changes taking place in our culture as we adopt and adapt to new technologies. I've never felt compelled to be openly critical of him, and I've generally enjoyed reading the things he's written.

So when he posted an offer for bloggers to obtain a free copy of his latest book, Dreaming In Code, I figured I'd take a shot at obtaining one. I had nothing to lose, and I've been kind of interested in the Chandler project. I'd also read some comparisons of his book to Tracy Kidder's Soul of a New Machine, and I'm old enough to have read that when it was first published in hard cover. Loved it, too.

Anyway, I filled out an online form, which included a field to indicate the URL to one's blog, to ensure you were, in fact, a blogger I suppose. And, for better or worse, I am. And there was also the usual field for one's e-mail address.

Nothing heard for a few days, when I read this post, which commended Dave Weinberger's essay Is the Web Different? to his readers, with the comment that it was "An argument of great clarity." Some of you may recall that I had offered some decidedly less flattering comments of my own on that piece a week or so earlier. If anything, I think it should have been obvious that I found it an argument of no clarity, indeed deliberate obfuscation and confusion beginning with its titular query.

Although it probably indicates an uncomfortable degree of ego-centrism on my part, I interpreted this positive reference, coming as it did several weeks from the first publication of Dave's newsletter, but only a couple of days from when I may have attracted his attention to it via Groundhog Day, as a sharp stick in the eye intended for yours truly. (Yes, Virginia, it is all about me.) Still nothing heard by e-mail, so I figured I had disqualified myself from consideration for a copy of the book by being openly and harshly critical of one of the more beloved figures among the digerati. Like that hasn't happened before. Shrug. Oh well, life goes on.

I'm not very punctual about collecting my mail, usually letting several days' worth pile up before I pick it up. It's mostly junk and bills anyway. So I was very surprised to find a large package in my mailbox today containing a copy of the aforementioned Dreaming in Code in paperback. Sharp stick in the eye or no, by golly, he did send me a copy of his book!

So, thanks, Scott Rosenberg. You can be sure I will read it and write about it here in Groundhog Day, where it will join thousands of other words of deathless prose and the occasional blinding glimpse of the obvious. Regular readers may be assured that my usual standards of skepticism, cynicism, misanthropy and general curmudgeonliness will be maintained; and if I say nice things about the book, it's because I liked it and not because the author sent me a free one, or because I've sold out to become yet another marketing drone in the service of our corporate masters. On other hand, if I'm critical of it, Mr. Rosenberg can avail himself of the services of Google and search for the terms "Dave Rogers bitter man," and perhaps find some consolation there. Or maybe a good chuckle. Your mileage may vary.

Cheese Sandwich: Faster

Speaking of accelerating changes, I ran 6.2 miles this morning at an average pace of 10:46 a mile. Now, this is not a very fast pace by any measure. But is is much faster than my usual pace of about 11:15 a mile. I don't think I'll be able to even average 11:15 next Saturday in the Gate River Run, the Hart Bridge will pretty much kill my time if it doesn't literally kill me. But, I'm still encouraged by my improvement.

Competing Messages: A Ray of Hope

Dave Weinberger, who recently wrote of "cyber utopians:" [W]e need lots and lots of them, attended a pair of talks given by Clay Shirky at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. In one of those talks, in response to a question from the audience, Shirky is reported to have said:

I used to be a cyber-utopian. That view broke for me. I was teaching a class at NYU on social software. One of my students was a community manager for a magazine for teenage girls. They were shutting down the health and beauty boards because we can’t get the pro-anorexia girls to shut up with tips about how to avoid eating. I was thinking this isn’t a side effect of the Net. It was an effect. Ridiculously easy group forming for anorexics. Now, we have to move to a publish-then-filter world. That pattern suggests we’re moving the media world from decision to reaction. We can’t stop the pro-anorexia groups from forming. All we can do is watch and act.

Wow. Now I wonder if that makes him a "dystopian" in Weinberger's view? Since I'm mostly talking to myself in the conversational "blogosphere," I'll answer my own question. I think Dave would still call Shirky a "utopian," because in most really significant ways, their views are largely in good accord. Dave would think he "really is" a utopian, at heart.

What I find encouraging about Shirky's comment is that it doesn't merely gloss over the real and potential negative impacts of the changes on society these technological changes bring. He acknowledges that they exist and they pose serious challenges. He doesn't just wave his hands and claim he's "optimistic," while encouraging the acceleration of this change. Shirky is behaving like a responsible adult, not like an ideologue.

What is especially discouraging about Weinberger's view, is that he's essentially an academic. Again, if I can get dispense with the idea that "everything is miscellaneous," our culture or society seems to have evolved a number of different spheres that perform certain functions, and one of those is academe. Now, I could be wrong, but it seems to me that academe is about the pursuit of knowledge, maybe even wisdom. It is a product of certain values, and presumably those in the sphere act in ways that preserve and promote those values, because they've studied them and they've shown themselves to be worthy of preservation and advancement. Academe is motivated, energized and informed by those values, which are not the same values as the commercial sphere. Commerce is focused on "creating wealth," chiefly through what is, notionally at least, a competitive marketplace. The values that inform academe are largely irrelevant to commerce. Commerce is interested in discovering competitive advantages, or new efficiencies, everything else are mere "externalities" they'd rather not have to deal with in an ideal world.

So we have what is already an extremely commercial culture, where competitive pressures are driving the advancement and proliferation of these new and radically powerful technologies, with almost no thought to their effects on our culture, society, or environment. Government has some role in regulating this, but it is firmly in the pocket of commerce; and so, it would appear, is academe. When popular figures, like Dave Weinberger and Doc Searls, act like cheer-leaders, facilitating and enabling commerce in the "creative destruction" of our existing culture, with no thought to the potential negative consequences, it is a reason for dismay, maybe even anger. But I'm afraid that we've become so inured to the erosion of social and cultural values from the flood of commercial products and technologies, and we're so enamored with our own infernal cleverness with our toys and networks, that we have largely forgotten that there may be some things we're losing that we might wish to preserve, that there may be some people who might suffer, indeed we all might suffer, if we continue this mindless, thoughtless pursuit, believing in "optimism" or the "invisible hand" of the marketplace to deliver us from the consequences of our folly.

So when a guy like Clay Shirky says he used to be a cyber-utopian, but he's not anymore, that's worth noting. It's a dim ray of hope in an otherwise very cloudy future.

Cheese Sandwich: Various Dave updates

I'd be remiss if I didn't offer a shout-out to Loren Webster for the fix to my Yojimbo problem as well. Thanks, Loren! Yojimbo is back in battery again as well.

We had an especially nice day here today, and I hadn't taken Bodhi to the dog park in a very long time, so we went for a ride today and let him go for a swim. There was another Golden there, an Australian Shepherd and a black Lab and they all seemed enjoy chasing each other. I gave him a bath when we got home and he's been napping since.

One of my friends from work recently started taking yoga and she's persuaded me to give it a try. I'm in an introductory class, and it's more challenging than I expected. I haven't been training in taekwondo recently, as I've been focused on preparing for the Gate River run and I wanted to be avoid becoming over-fatigued. But I expect to resume training after the run, and it appears that I'll be able to do both yoga and taekwondo, which is exciting to me. I think the yoga practice will help my form in taekwondo, and I think it'll help renew my enthusiasm for tkd. I've also intended to resume a regular meditation practice since the beginning of the year, and I've only managed a couple of fitful starts. I think the yoga practice will help in that regard as well. So it's win-win all the way around.

I finally got to play with a Wii yesterday. One of my neighbors had borrowed one from a friend, and we got together and bowled a few frames. Real bowling is more fun, but Wii bowling is fun in its own way! I've been looking for a Wii at retail, but I'm still having no luck. It's discouraging that I'm likely competing with the people who buy them at retail, only to re-sell them on eBay at a profit. I guess that's just the free enterprise system at work, but it still sucks. I also wonder if Nintendo sends more product to markets with stronger currencies than the dollar? Beats me, but it sure is hard to find one of those boxes.

Well, that's probably enough about me for now. I need to check that RSS feed and make sure it's working properly.

Mac: We are back...

Well, that was harder than it should have been, and truthfully, I don't know what I did wrong. Somehow my templates for creating this site were just wrong. It would take more time to explain what happened and how I recovered than I care to spend on it anymore! But we're back.

I think. I haven't checked the RSS feed yet. That may be broken still as well.

It's clear I need to spend some quality time with Tinderbox, recalling how I did all this in the first place. Maybe make a few notes for myself in, um, Tinderbox!

Mac: Are we back?

Updated to Tinderbox 4.1 and I was able to select an export template. But I haven't had time to do much of anything else, so let's see if this thing is still working...