Inbox Zero achieved, again

Cleared my home inbox for the first time since 1/30, w00t!

I “declared bankruptcy” back on 1/1 and moved everything in my inbox to a different folder, and emptied it at least once a day, every day, till 1/30.  But then events, time, and energy conspired against me and I couldn’t reply to a couple emails that day, or for several days.
I considered filing them and adding tasks to Toodledo, but it seemed silly to add a task that just said “reply to this email”.
Full disclosure: I guess it’s not entirely true to say I got to Inbox Zero.  Just Email Inbox Zero. We cleaned most of the den yesterday, and I added a bunch of physical stuff to a physical inbox.  Gonna start on that today.
When I initially learned about the Getting Things Done methodology, it was at Wikipedia, which is not a bad introduction.  I then bought the GTD book, but I didn’t read all of it.  Mistake.  Now I am, and it’s been quite helpful.  If you haven’t read the whole book, I recommend that you do so; it has a lot of good tips, and goes over several subtleties of the methodology that I don’t think the Wiki article covers.

Recommendations

This afternoon, Shaun Reynolds, a friend from the chorus and a licensed massage therapist, came over and gave me a Swedish massage.  It was really nice!  If you’re looking for a massage, or a chair massage at your business, or a spa party, or some SomaEnergetics Sound Therapy (one of only two licensed in Tampa!), give him a call!

shaun-head-shot.jpg

[Update: Shaun moved out of state in late 2013.  Bummer.]

And tonight Roxanne and I were on our way to try out a local Chinese restaurant, and we noticed a new Thai restaurant on the way.  A quick u-turn and there we were.  Everything seemed very new and I wondered to Roxanne if today was their first day.  I was close!  They opened yesterday!  (1/30/13)  Check out Fine Thai Express (Google Maps link; they do not yet appear to have a website).

Enjoy your massage, and bon appetit!

First post, 2013, more or less

Well, I set a goal to blog more often in 2013, and so far I’m off to a sucky start.  Writer’s block, I guess, or more specifically: at best only a vague idea of what I wanted to write about, leading to paralysis by analysis.

So I’ll run off for a while, get the First Blog Entry Of The Year out of the way, and maybe that’ll uncork me.

2013 has been an interesting year, so far.  I set some other goals (not blog related :)) and have actually kept to many of them.

I set a goal to weigh 175 by about end of April, and I’m on track to be there closer to end of March.  I started at ~192.

I set a goal to achieve and maintain “inbox zero”.  I had to “declare bankruptcy” on two fronts, at home and at work, but since then I’ve done it.  To expand: I moved everything in my inboxes at home and at work to some other folder, and I “unstarred” all my Google mail.  (I read several months’ worth of the latest starred emails, and most of them were moot, and the ones that weren’t I transferred to my shiny new Toodledo account.)  So having achieved “inbox zero” by force, I’ve been able to keep it up: my work and home inboxes are both still clean, three weeks in.

I set a goal to get and stay more organized.  So I dusted off my Toodledo account, deleted all the old crap in it, and have been dutifully adding stuff, and checking stuff off, since 1/1.  A couple things sparked this: the new year, a general desire for a less hectic life and better sleep (I hate bolting awake at night thinking OMG what about X!?), and reading thesecretweapon.org really lit a fire under me, too.  TheSecretWeapon actually deals with Evernote, not Toodledo, but I decided to stick with TD.

On the minus side, I got the flu a week ago and it’s been a rough road back.  Still somewhat sniffly and congested.  Ick.

Here are some things I’d like to write about in the coming months.  I’m pretty sure I’ve written an entry like this before, so time will tell how well I stick to my guns.  🙂

  • the trials and tribulations of being a BHS Chapter President.  My pie-in-the sky idea is that my little “so you wanna be the president” section would become a popular reference for BHS Chapter Presidents throughout the Society.  First, of course, I have to write a bit, and then we’ll see if any of my ideas don’t suck.  🙂
  • I enjoyed and was impressed by Deacon Duncan‘s series critiquing a popular Christian Apologetics book, and think it’d be cool to do the same.  (See also the Created To Be His Help Meet series over at Love, Joy, Feminism.)  Something that’s interested me for years is morality and the basis thereof.  Or lack of a basis, as the case may be.  Long ago, before I was quite so atheistic in my own mind, I read a book about situational ethics relativism called Relativism: Feet Planted Firmly In Midair.  [Edit: title & link to book.]  I re-read some of it more recently, and what seemed to make a lot of sense the first time around, just didn’t any more.  So I thought it might be fun and interesting to write a chapter-by-chapter critique of that book.
  • Go, the computer language, continues to fascinate.  I learned about it more or less by chance, about last August, when a friend on FB got me interested.  (Thanks, Jonathan!)  I have a couple of small-to-medium projects in mind that I’d like to write about: 1) duplicate my most common use of Perl in Go, to wit, write a module, template, or framework that reads a text file, cuts it up into fields, and does stuff with the fields.  2) write a Go interface to Toodledo, Evernote, or both.  3) Write a Toodledo front end, that more accurately realizes my ideas about my perfect todo list.

Well, the plane’s about to land.  Gonna save now.  See you next time!

Test post

Testing, testing, is this thing on?

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Old Bridge Rd,Townsend,United States

Note, 3/1/14: BlogPress on the iPad didn’t get the URL for that image right.  It’s missing a “/”.  I could fix it by hand, but I’m not going to; they got it wrong, it’s staying wrong.  Test failed.

On being folksy

At the top of a blog I read, it says “Howdy, Larry Clapp!”  The problem is, I know a guy named “Howdy”, so part of my brain insists on interpreting this folksy salutation as nonsensically as “John, Jane Smith!”

Pivotal / influential books

These books were all important in my life.
  • Have Spacesuit, Will Travel
  • Illusions
  • Finite and Infinite Games
  • Valentina
  • Godel, Escher, Bach
  • Why Marriages Succeed or Fail
  • Metamagical Themas
  • The Screwtape Letters
  • To Be Or Not: An E-Prime Anthology
More recently:
  • Good Calories, Bad Calories
  • Body By Science
  • The God Delusion
I should probably write a little about why, but time prohibits, alas.

If elected I will …

From The Internet Oracle, 1500-02:

1500-02
Selected-By: Christophe <xof@chanticleer.com>

The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was:

> Pardon the repeat, but I think you're pulling my leg.

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} Not at all.  If elected, I will:
}
} - bring the budget into balance while cutting taxes and
}    investing in job-creating infrastructure;
}
} - increase retirement and health benefits while adding
}    oversight over unneeded expenditures and reducing
}    payroll deductions;
}
} - trim military spending while taking an exceptionalist
}    stance versus our enemies and restoring our standing
}    with allies;
}
} - reduce spiraling prison costs while getting tough on
}    violent crime and increasing the penalties for drug use;
}
} - cut illegitimate births while eliminating subsidies for
}    abortion and for contraception;
}
} - increase personal freedom while supporting faith-based
}    initiatives and de-funding our failing public schools;
}
} - support the little guy at last while deregulating big
}    business and eliminating limits on campaign donations.
}
} In January, of course, I reserve the right to re-evaluate
} each of these policies based upon changing conditions.
}
} You owe the Oracle your vote.

Steve Pavlina articles I’ve enjoyed so far

I discovered Steve Pavlina over the weekend.  He’s a fascinating guy.  He’s clearly a nutjob in some respects, but a lot of the rest of his advice is quite practical and useful.  Here are some of his articles that I enjoyed and recommend.