Posts in the “personal” category

I learned today that Bactrim conflicts with another medicine I’m taking. I’m also allergic to Cipro. Which makes it hard to treat an infection.

Back In The High Life Again by Steve Winwood is a great song for those moments when you think, “Phew, that didn’t kill me, let’s celebrate.”

I saw the acronym “TWTW” posted by Buster Olney this morning, and didn’t know what it meant. Turns out it means, “The Will to Win.” It was apparently coined by Ken “Hawk” Harrelson of the Chicago White Sox back in 2013. He used the term in a debate about the use of sabermetrics in sports, arguing that there was no sports acronym that could account for that.

Today’s song of the day is one of my favorite videos of all time, a song named Dreams, by Van Halen. The video reminds me of my work in the aerospace industry, and staying at Virginia Beach, where fighter jets often fly over your head. It also reminds me of one very fun summer.

If you ever see that I’ve used the number 5150 in a software project — such as using it instead of port 8888 for testing a web app — it’s a nod to the album this song is from.

I like baseball’s ERA+ stat. It gives you a way to compare completely different eras in a logical way. In technology it’s like saying which feat is better, creating a huge website like Facebook, or creating the first versions of Unix or Mac OS? All of them are great feats of engineering, but the tools available in each generation are so different that there’s no way to compare them, but in baseball the ERA+ stats lets you do exactly that.

Tip of the day: Just because someone is trying to intimidate you doesn’t mean that they’re smart or that they’re right. It just means that they’re a bully.

About ten years ago I gave a friend a book on Zen. It wasn’t anything she asked for. I had just read some stories in it that I thought might be helpful for what she was going through at that time, so I gave it to her.

The next time we saw each other, she gave me a book on Christianity. My immediate reaction was, “What the heck, I’m not into Christianity. I feel offended!”

Within a few minutes I laughed at myself as I realized that I had created this situation. It hit me that I offended her first by saying, “Here’s some stuff about (what you might perceive as) a religion,” and then she responded in kind. (My exact thought was, “OMG Al, you’ve become a Religion Pusher.”)

As a result, these days I don’t offer anyone any books on Zen or mindfulness. If someone is at my place and asks if they can have one of my books, I always tell them to take whatever they want. (By doing this I think I’m on my fourth copy of Zen Master Raven.) But my days of offering unsolicited books ended ten years ago.

Even when I feel the urge to do this — when I see someone struggling with things that mindfulness can help, such as people bringing stress onto themselves like a sponge absorbs water — I have learned how offensive it is for other people to push their religious beliefs on me, so I don’t go there.

(I was reminded of this recently when someone else tried to push their religious beliefs onto me.)

*Sigh* I miss Walter. Here he discovers heated seats in a car, while talking to Agent Broyles.

I have a “reading table” where I sit every morning with a cup of coffee, and this is my current reading list. As you can see, it’s all about mindfulness and meditation.

(On a related note, here’s my list of over 100 mindfulness quotes.)

Albert Einstein quote: “Education is not the learning of facts, but that training of the mind to think.”

I wrote about this in my book, A Survival Guide for New Consultants, that one of the few things I learned in college was how to learn. Everything else — the details that I actually learned at that time — are not important, especially now. But learning how to learn has made all the difference in my career and in my life.

I don’t agree with everything in this article on Jon Lester, his changeup, and the concept of “tunneling,” but it is generally an excellent article. (If you’re interested in pitching.)

As a final post on Jeff Bezos and Amazon this morning, here’s a quote on something called the narrative fallacy. That term comes from the book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.

This image (and quote) comes from the book, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon.

Have a good life. :)

A doctor at the University of Colorado had my blood drawn two weeks ago to test the tryptase level(s) to see if I have an illness called “Mastocytosis.” This page at labtestsonline.org has a good description of the symptoms of mastocytosis (as shown in this image), along with the reasons why doctors test the tryptase levels as a way to evaluate mastocytosis, along with other things like anaphylaxis (anaphylactic shock).

There I was, minding my own business, when suddenly I felt the usual symptoms come on. My face gets very warm, feeling flushed, like all of my blood is going there for some reason, and I have about a minute to lay down or pass out. I’ve never posted this here before, so, for the record, this is what my blood pressure and heart rate were more than twenty minutes after that event. (I didn’t think to check this during the event, as I was just kinda hanging on.) When I’m at home my BP is normally about 115/75 and my heart rate is usually in the 60s.

If you’re interested in meditation, the founders of Buddhist Geeks have a free course on their new meditate.io website named The Five Styles of Meditation.

Until today I didn’t know there was a difference between the terms wackadoodle and wackjob, but according to this Urban Dictionary page (and the image shown), wackadoodle implies a kinder person, whereas a wackjob can be mean or nasty. (I also wasn’t sure how to spell the two words, so there you go.)

A conversation between two sisters from the movie Home for the Holidays:

Claudia: You don’t know the first thing about me.

Joanne: Likewise, I’m sure. If I just met you on the street... if you gave me your phone number... I’d throw it away.

Claudia: Well, we don’t have to like each other, Jo. We’re family.

Jimmy Fallon (young Neil Young) and Neil Young sing “Old Man,” one of my favorite songs.

In May I stayed in a hospital for two nights, and as the bills are rolling in, it appears that the stay cost at least $70,000.