myShoggoth

Make Sure You Stay Broke

I love this consumerist post on tips to stay broke.

Using financial software like MS Money or Quicken is very important IMO.  If you know exactly what you have, where it is, and where it is going there's a feedback loop from your activities.  How much do you spend on bills?  How often do you use that landline vs. your cell phone, and how much does it cost?  Can you just get rid of it?

Having real solid numbers, being able to track where money is coming from and going to, these are the things that allow our brains to do what they do best: find patterns.  Once you understand the patterns of your financial life you can make good decisions.

The patterns people find from positions of ignorance seem to lead more often to bad decisions, reflected in that list.

Fusion At Last, Fusion At Last... maybe

A friend of mine just pointed me at this link, speculating that Governor Schwarzenegger is going to announce funding Dr. Robert Bussard's fusion reactor research.

First, some background.

The friend in question is Noel Gorelick, who introduced Dr. Bussard to Google and was official Transparency Monkey for the extremely popular Google Tech Talk "Should Google Go Nuclear?".  You can kind of see him, especially at the beginning.  Oh yeah he's also the creator of Google Mars and now works there.  Not on Mars.  Well, not physically anyway.  At Google.

Moving on...

If the story is true (which is unclear), that would mean the research will be funded. I can't explain how excited I am by the possibility.  Bussard mentions near or at the end of the talk that it isn't really a research deal anymore, they proved what they set out to and now it is an engineering issue to bring the prototype to production at scale.

In many ways I wish Google had been the one to step up to the plate instead of the government of California.  Google has the incentive to make it happen (think about their power bill), the bureaucracy of California has incentive to politicize it.  Before the Google privacy blowup they actually had the goodwill capital to pull it off, maybe now that's not as true.  I tried to imagine at the time what the reaction would be to Microsoft "going nuclear" and decided the critical mass would not be at the atomic level on that one.

Noel also pointed me at a "virtually complete summary" (yeah he talks like that) on Bussard's research at askmar, check it out.

k.d. lang and Lyle Lovett

What a great concert, even if we were soaking in the rain the entire time.

k.d. lang was first up, and I was stunned by two things.  First, her voice was incredible, strong, and perfect, better than I had hoped for.  Second, she was the happiest person I think I've ever seen on stage.  It wasn't just that she smiled and danced around a little and obviously enjoyed herself.  She freakin glowed.

After one song she had dedicated to her brother or dad (no idea which, I don't remember the name she said only that it ended with Lang) she broke down crying.  The audience shouted words of encouragement and love and it was very nice.  She tried to start the next song but couldn't the first try.  But boy oh boy the second...

That brings up the eternal question, can Leonard Cohen write a song that even Leonard Cohen doesn't have the range for?

She did the best rendition of Hallelujah I have ever heard, and for some reason I've heard quite a few recently.  She actually has the voice for it, and she blew it out of the park (well, we were at the Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery, so technically she blew it out of the winery grounds).  It was stunning.  Worth the entire price plus the rain right there.

Lyle Lovett followed after what appeared to be a 100% equipment change, he and his Large Band put on a great show.  I've noticed a difference between some performers.  There are those like k.d. who put on a great show because of their tremendous talents and your enjoyment of the songs they sing.  There there are those that put on a show.

Elvis Costello was here last year at the same venue.  His music was great, he was fun to listen to and I had a good time hearing him do songs that I had heard a million times and some than were new.  But it was more than that.

It was a show.

The band is tight, the show is tight, the set is tight, the lighting is tight.  Both Elvis and Lyle brought in extremely talented but not as well known musicians and not only weaved them into their own songs and performances but let them show their stuff.  They made the night about way more than a set of songs they had written and have been performing for years, they made it a great experience.  It is just head and shoulders above what most concerts are.

Mad Men and Progress

When I was at Microsoft we had a type of problem I imagine infests all large corporations, exemplified by a particular group who I used to call the "Dysfunctional Team".

They would show up to meetings with my team with a list of requirements (not requests, naturally), and basically all of them would be 'priority 0'.  The scale actually went from one to three, saying something was priority zero was used by some to show how extra specially important that one thing was.

People are often measured against the local minima of their smaller group within the larger organization.  They aren't rewarded for making sure that the overall company does the best thing possible, they are rewarded for pushing their local goals and their ability to get them implemented.

Taken to its logical extreme, this involves going to a supposed partner team with every request being a 'pri 0'.  Once you notice that they tend to more reliably be implemented, and you know that you're rewarded for getting things done, clearly labeling everything that way makes the most sense.

I watched the premier for a new AMC original series called "Mad Men" yesterday (you can take a minute to stare in awe at that incredible segueway).  It looks really good.  In the Making Of they mentioned that the head writer and executive producer, who was one of the main guys behind The Sopranos, was very insistent that it be as true to life as possible.  That means smoking and drinking constantly and at work, rampant and open racism and sexism, and other things that create a culture shock both in contrast to the United States in the 21st century as well as to someone like me, who was raised in the American West in the 70s and 80s.

The reason that I mashed these two subjects together is to make the point that for Causes, proponents tend to have the same issues that small groups within large organizations in general have.  They are also rewarded for how well they push their local goals within the larger setting, not how well they help the larger setting make the right balanced decisions and prioritization.

You see a lot of people who care deeply about something fall into the Pri 0 trap, and the result is similar to how we viewed the Dysfunctional Group.  Everything can't possibly be Pri 0, ignore what they're saying and come up with our own prioritization.

As a society we've made huge progress on many of the issues raised by Mad Men.  That does not mean the problems are solved, they certainly aren't, but if you look at how far we've come in this country with racism, sexism, etc. both since the 60s and compared to many places around the globe, it is valuable to acknowledge the progress and realize how much better things are than they were or could be.

It also shows how much better things can and hopefully will be as we make more progress in the future on the same issues.

The point I'm trying to make, aside from Mad Men being a good show that's worth checking out, is that the Pri-0ers are not the engine of progress.

Back to where I was...

Today, exactly two months after I last did it, I finally weighed in again at 200 lbs.  I'm back to pure low carb, this "good carb only" thing wasn't working for me.  Low carb did and does, so it is time to stop fooling myself and just stick to it long term.

Last time I really took it seriously I dropped around 30 lbs. over the course of a year or two, and the only reason I started regaining was I became complacent and started adding carbs back in.  Initially it wasn't a big deal, I put about 5 lbs. back on and was able to maintain that comfortably.  Unfortunately that isn't how I really work, so I kept adding more back until one day I wasn't fitting in clothing well and was back over 210 again.

I dropped to 200 by counting calories and eating healthy, but the cravings were strong and a few binges caused me serious issues.  Add onto that the times where we ate out or the equivalent and counting was nigh impossible, and I think I went back to 206 before having a heart to heart with my wife where we decided on low carb.  She's not happy about it, it has plenty of annoyances, but it is much easier to stick to and really addresses the cravings and feeding frenzy problems.

In summary:

Pure Low Carb	220+ to 190	-30+
Some Carbs Added Back	190 to 195	+5
Eating Normally (For Me)	195 to 212	+17
Counting Calories	212 to 199 to 206	-6 net
Back to Pure Low Carb	206 to 200	-6 so far

Accounts You Need, Accounts You Don't

My wife and I have an informal agreement where there are some feeds I read she doesn't, and some feeds she reads that I don't.  We filter the contents for each other, only giving URLs for stuff that the other would find amusing or interesting.  One that she reads for us is Consumerist.

The conversation:

She says:

http://consumerist.com/consumer/finance/four-accounts-you-need-four-accounts-you-dont-278567.php
I think we have a bingo

I says:

YAHTZEE!

She says:

except for my insistence on keeping that extra checking account which I use for fleecing free checks

I says:

you're a known silly

She says:

with free checks

By the way, don't just stop at that article.  It links to (and talks about material from) http://www.bargaineering.com/articles/five-accounts-you-absolutely-must-have-and-four-you-dont.html, which is very good.

I'm not happy with the formatting on that IM conversation replay, need to figure out a better way to show those.

Current Annoying Expressions

• If I'm honest...
• To be sure,
• So...
• It's interesting...

Can we just let this Trojan Horse in?

From Raymond's blog with assorted "encouragement" from my wife (ow ow ow) to actually click through and watch.

What Have We Learned From History?

All the funnier to us because she's from Sydney and went to Sydney University, where security is Priority 1.

Lifehacker style uberhack lifehack

How sad is it that my most productive LifeHack in recent memory, and one that friends of mine have thanked me repeatedly for suggesting, is to remove LifeHacker from my RSS feeds and thus free up my time from having to skim their almost uniformly useless content?  The rare gem is just not worth it.

If you're a subscriber and find keeping up with RSS to be a burden, try unsubscribing from them.  You'll be shocked.

Is that real irony or Alanis-style?

Poulsbo and Lake Union Fireworks

The last couple days have been quite busy for us, on the 3rd we went to Poulsbo to watch their day-before fireworks from a friend's deck.  She lives right next to downtown, and has a deck the looks over the bay and has a perfect view of the fireworks celebration... last year.  This year they put them right behind a tree, and I wouldn't be shocked if they did so to get a dig in at her, but moving down and to the side further on her lawn fixed that up.

Very nice fireworks display, although weirdly low in the sky.  My wife got some very nice photos.  Traffic getting out of the town itself was a nightmare.

You can't really compare that show to the Lake Union one near downtown Seattle.  One is a small town (population a bit over 7000) the other is a major city's big display.

The Lake Union show on the 4th was incredible, best I've ever seen.  They start it with a military helicopter flying a circuit around the lake with a very large flag from a pole hanging below.  Pretty cool, very emotional.

We crashed a party of a friend's friend (they were great about it, wonderful people) who has a place right next to the lake with a perfect view from the top of the building.  Well, almost perfect.  Since my wife was there primarily to take photos (natch) it wasn't quite what she wanted. There were some power lines in the way and we didn't get a clear view of the barge they launched from and the lake in front of it.  So I found a place on the waterfront that had a pretty nice view and we set up there about an hour an a half ahead of time, guarded the spot and held people at bay while she worked.

Initial reports say the photos came out great.