Posts in the “personal” category

“Your future needs you. Your past doesn’t.”

(I don’t know who originally created this image, but I like it. Kudos.)

“We are the choices that we make.”

~ Wade Kinsella’s grandmother (Hart of Dixie)

I don’t know the origin of this “moon in a barrel” image, but I like it.

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”

~ A quote from a 1974 Richard Feynman commencement address at Caltech entitled Cargo Cult Science.

Me think, “What is friend?”

I recently had an infection which caused my heart to race a little bit, so my doctor wanted me to wear a heart monitor for a little while, which led to a scene that was too close to this scene from The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

“I’m that one.” I suspect that anyone who has ever wanted to write a book knows this scene and movie.

What did Pierre Trudeau say after learning President Nixon called him an asshole? “I have been called worse things by better men.”

Reminds me of our current president calling people names.

(Tweet by Jacquie McNish.)

“To have never taken a solitary road trip across country? I mean, everybody’s got to take a road trip, at least once in their lives. Just you and some music.”

~ Claire in Elizabethtown

I’m so glad I listened to The Book Thief on my recent travels. The movie is okay, but the book is 100% better.

The Book Thief is a favorite story of the last few years. I listened to the audiobook (hence this image) while driving around the United States. I know some people complain that the story isn’t original, but the writing style is very creative.

Went up on the roof of the garage to look at the meteor shower, which always reminds me that we're on a rock hurtling through space. Which further reminds me of this.

~ August 13, 2018

I often forget about it, but I was just reminded that Project Gutenberg has over 60,000 free e-books. This is a list of yesterday’s favorite downloads.

I like this tweet from Kadie Luna. Free yourself, dammit. :)

I remember reading this story where Steve Jobs was apparently friends with Rupert Murdoch, and Jobs tried to tell Murdoch that Fox News had become a destructive force in American society, and this might be Murdoch’s legacy.

It reminds me that when I first became a consultant, I was supposed to help sell a product named UnixWare from a company named Novell. Over time I learned that the product was crappy, and I didn’t want to sell it to anyone. So I learned the lesson, “Beware anyone that is trying to sell you something; if their morals are compromised, who knows what they’ll sell you.”

If you’re to believe Steve Jobs, this makes me wonder why Fox News would want to a destructive force in society. And like social networks, Fox News viewers are the product and their advertisers are the customers. (To be continued...)

They are called escape rooms. They sell an experience. The experience is escape, both literal and metaphorical. For around $30, you and a handful of friends/colleagues/strangers are “trapped” in some kind of space together and must collaboratively puzzle through a series of challenges to win your freedom.

The clock is ticking: You get 45 minutes, or 60, or 90, to escape, although if you fail, they let you out anyway. Usually, the game offers some kind of story to help explain why you’re solving puzzles in a room with a countdown clock.

Escape is big. There are, by the most recent unofficial count, at least 2,300 escape rooms in the United States.

~ from this vox.com story about escape rooms

My monitor is still a little too low. I guess I need to write a few more books.

I have my own personal motivational speaker. I discovered him on a trip to Los Alamos, New Mexico. (Sadly, the bookstore in Los Alamos where I found him is no longer in business.)

“The need for discipline disappears when you love what you’re doing.”

~ paraphrasing Tony Gonzalez from a Hall of Fame interview this past week

A humbling thing about this MCAS disease is that I just took the time to make an, “If I’m dead, here’s everything you need to know about how to update this Drupal 8 website” video.

Hopefully I’ll still be around for Drupal 9 — or my own replacement for Drupal — but when I get sick I always wish I had done this, so now I have.

Back when I was 18, I had a choice of three colleges I was going to go to: Kentucky Wesleyan College (KWC), Western Illinois, and the University of Texas El Paso (UTEP). Our family was relatively poor — my dad didn’t even have money to pay the bill for my oldest sister’s wedding that summer — so I went to KWC, which seemed like it might be the cheapest. Every once in a while I wonder what life would have been like if I didn’t go to KWC first, even though I eventually graduated from Texas A&M and lived in Texas for three years. So this morning I’m thinking about the people of El Paso.

The thing about people who kill other people is that they’re not born that way. You can easily imagine babies and young children who are black, white, hispanic, asian, middle eastern, etc., all playing together with no racist thoughts. They’re just children, so they naturally play together. People are made racist by their family, friends, and society, including the hate speech of the current president of the United States.

My condolences to the people of El Paso.