Trust your instinct.

Today it occurred to me that I am involved in a lot of things that truly interest me. Some of them I make money from, which is a bonus, and some of them I most certainly lose money on, which isn’t great, but at least the activity interests me, and is in some way fulfilling.

I also absolutely know that many people aren’t that lucky. I frequently talk to people who a) don’t like their job, b) don’t like their home, or c) don’t like either. I know I have felt that way from time as well; we all work a shit job once in a while; we all let the house get a little too dirty; we all let our relationships suffer occasionally.

But there’s something we’re all born with that all too frequently gets ignored. It’s called instinct. Doesn’t that sound animalistic?

Instinct, in animals, is the thing that says “loud noise = run away,” or the thing that says “brightly colored frog = poison.” Instinct keeps animals alive. That doesn’t mean, however, that simply because we can use words like “loud” or “frog” that that instinct is now dormant in us, that we have to ‘reason’ our way through every problem. Because we reason, however, instinct gets washed in with the noise of our lives.

So what is instinct for us bipeds, then? Is it a feeling in the gut? Is it some ball of stress I’ve buried and tamed? No. Instinct does not cause stress, it causes action.

What will causes stress about instinct is when you ignore, or outright flout it. Now you’ve got to deal with the fact that some part of you thinks you made the wrong decision. Whether that instinct is right or wrong won’t matter - what matters is that it feels right, and what you did feels wrong.

Instinct comes from the reasoning you’ve learned as a child. What you like. What you don’t like. Your morals. Your parentage. Your religion. What you did and learned in school. These things have combined into the amalgam that is you. Instinct is pre-reasoning from being a child, watching your parents, and seeing how life unfolds when you make the right decisions, versus when you make the wrong ones.

I find that my instinct often fights with my desire for gratification. I can waste an afternoon playing video games, while my instinct sits and asks why I’m not at the Secretary of State getting my license plate tabs renewed. Procrastination is the opposite of instinct; while procrastination has me sit on my butt, instinct tells me what I should be doing next.

So trust it and do it. (Note that sometimes this means saying NO to the new thing. Instinct will tell you when you’re overloaded.) Instinct and gratification are not opposing forces always; eventually you’ll have done all that you can do “productively,” and your instinct will say, “Take a break,” or “Play Mariokart,” or “** your wife.” This is when gratification is truly gratifying - you’ve beaten down all the dinging bells, the project managers, and the nags, and you’ve gotten control of it all. What’s more: you’ve now given yourself the ability to be yourself. Rock and roll.

A Photographer is Me!

Howdy, all!

Well, my little business has finally gotten to the "invest in equipment" stage. In the last month I've added:

• A MacBook
• A Nikon D40
• An HP Photosmart C4280

and a few other bits & pieces that aren't relevant to this post. (There will be others!)

The Photosmart came with the MacBook free (er, free pending rebate), which ended up being a much better deal than I anticipated. When I bought the MB, I didn't realize that I'd be doing historic site photography a week later. The requirements for this photography are very specific on the print side of the equation: only certain photo paper / ink combinations can be used to make prints. Fortunately, and unexpectedly, this (free!) printer supports one of those combinations. As a bonus, it makes damn high quality prints as well.

My only gripe is that this particular model doesn't support a black-and-white cartridge. The photo quality inks available for it are only multi-color carts, black being one of the contained colors. Since another requirement of the National Register of Historic Places is Black and White, I could really increase some efficiency by having a grayscale cartridge.

However, other Photosmart printers have grayscale cartridges available, so hopefully when the rebate comes, I'll upgrade.

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There's something really pleasing about printing your own photographs that you're getting paid for. Not only are you flexing your artistic might, you're also printing money. Granted, money isn't everything; but getting paid for doing something you enjoy kills two birds with one stone.

Are all generalizations insults?

I was reading a Slashdot post today about the Olympics changing the gymnastics scoring system, when I came across the following by CmdrTaco (one of Slashdot’s primary editors):

Now I’m sure that no Slashdot reader will intentionally watch any “sport” that has judges determine the winner, but their wives/girlfriends might seize control of the remote because they want to know who is the best at that ribbon-twirling thing.

The lesser

(that means jump ahead for the sexism bit)

There’s two things in there that could be construed as insulting; the first I’ll tackle would be the ”sport” air-quote. I fully believe that there is sufficient technical ability required in gymnastics to consider it a sport. These people do train their asses off.

However, it is a judged sport, which does set it slightly apart from an officiated sport. An officiated sport generally has objective rules, which a third party observer can categorically qualify. Ball goes in hoop: 2 points. A judged sport relies on having a very significant amount of knowledge in a panel of people, who then score the performance. Usually, a judged sport agrees on some universally decided perfect technique, and then judges based on the comparative performance.

I do admit that I find myself less interested in judged sports in general. If I watch one of these Dance shows, for example, I am often befuddled by the judges’ comments - a spectacular performance to them is simply mediocre to me, but something I really like, they will stomp on. Why? Because I don’t perceive the same things they do. They clearly agree, at least to some extent, what the ‘perfect mambo’ looks like. I wouldn’t know a mambo from a tango. One of those has roses.

Even sports like MMA (that’s Mixed Marshal Arts) I find lacking. Not because of a lack of action - there’s plenty of it. There’s also lots of action in gymnastics and figure skating, though. It’s because unless there’s an objective Knock Out, the match is judged. I have a bit easier time telling who’s winning as opposed to dance, because usually one guy is pinned. But that’s usually when I flip channels. Sorry, but two dudes wrestling on a mat is not sport to me.

So what is “sport” then? That seems to be subjective itself. However, implying that something’s not a sport, when there are people devoting their lives to what they clearly believe is a sport, does ring of bigot to me. But hey, I’ve said some insensitive stuff myself. Probably on this very blog.

And the greater

The more obvious slur is that about women and their obsession with ribbon-twirling things. I’ll defend this only in saying this: he said it on fucking slashdot. For every joke that even mildly insinuates something remotely negative about women, there’s at least three “but hey, none of us have girlfriends now, do we.” There’s so much self-denigration, regarding gender and overall manliness, that most jests on Slashdot that come off as “macho” in any sense are satirical.

Presuming from here that the crack was satirical, it would certainly be non-obvious. Only knowing the audience and the context of Slashdot in general can you extrapolate that particular nature from that comment. Anywhere else, and it would most definitely be blatant sexism.

With that said, it is very likely generally true that if somebody is changing the channel to gymnastics in the house, and the candidates for doing so are one male and one female, it’s probably the female. I know I can’t get past “So You Think You Can Dance” without my wife saying something. Is it a generalization: yes. Is it mandatory that “Women like watching gymnastics” is an insult? Absolutely not. Just like “Men like watching football” isn’t an insult either. We all know that it’s not universally true, only generally true from one’s perspective. I can accept that.

Here’s the rub, though: a misstep in phrasing can make a generalization sound like an insult.

Though it’s unlikely that a Slashdotter would watch a subjectively judged sport, it’s possible that their partner may be interested in the judging process of gymnastic competition. This article will give you some knowledge in that regard.

There! Now it’s totally bland, and completely not worth the time to read or comment on. You’re welcome, taco.

Saugatuck Day Trip

The Scapers invade Saugatuck.

Fun Stuff.

My schedule is completely thrown off. I spent Saturday in Saugatuck, MI with friends raislak, zarniwhooper and husband, asta77, and my wife. We had wine, burgers, and fun, and then arrived back at home around 5:30ish.

Side note; all those friend links are to livejournal. Can’t just follow the trend, pauld, can you?

Not being big day-trippers, Teeny and I were quite tired when we got back. So we decided to take a nap. I woke up at 1:30 am, Sunday. Oh my. Hence, this strange ramble.

So I replaced 4 (four) hard drives on Friday night. Oh, the carnage! I now have a Western Digital 30 GB, IBM Deskstar 120 GB (the actual dead drive), and two Maxtor 100 GB SATA’s on the floor of my office, with a very happy Western Digital 500 GB SATA drive in my old Mac. By the way, this Mac is a dual G4, 500MHz each, and is over 8 years old. With 1.5 GB of RAM, however, she still cranks out blogger posts all like snip-snap. So why mess with a good thing?

Unfortunately, this may be the final stop for this machine. It is currently running Leopard, via the very tricky Install Via Target Disk Mode from a PowerPC Mac Mini. But because I now only have the Serial ATA drive available (using the Sonnet Tempo card), I don’t have Target Disk Mode available to me. In fact, to get this install up and going, I used the fabulous Carbon Copy Cloner, and the power of prayer, to see my old Deskstar’s contents onto the new drive.

I haven’t seen a lock-up now in 36 hours (yay!), but I am now in NIOTM, Nothing Important On This Machine, mode. If for whatever reason this machine is no longer bootable, and I have some key piece of not-backed-up data, I’m 100% screwed. So, nothing goes on this machine that is absolutely vital to my day-to-day. Fortunately, when, not if, I forget this rule, I’ve got Time Machine and a 1TB Time Capsule to save myself.

That said, the machine is running very smoothly after all the hullabaloo. Also, my power bill should be a slightly happier sight, because a) I shut down my computer for a significant chunk of time (days!) and b) I’ve replaced four (4) spinning hard drives with a single HD. In addition, that single HD is a WD “GreenPower” drive, which means that it spins down on its own to 5400 RPM when I’m not using major disk I/O, and spins up to 7200 when needed. How much power does that save? WD says 40%. I’m sure that’s not accurate, but I know I’m saving power by not having the other three drives, so I feel a bit less like an ecological disaster. At least until I put these other drives in a landfill.

By the way, it’s now required that every hard drive box list the number of MP3’s you can store on a hard drive. That is a very important modern metric for space. Of course, along with that number, you need a disclaimer proving that that number is essentially arbitrary. My box’s disclaimer says,

“Examples of the number of photos, songs, and any other files that can be stored on a hard drive are provided for illustrative purposes only. Your results will vary based on file size and format, settings, features, software, and other factors.”

That’s sexy. Mine holds 125,000 MP3s, and if I can’t fit every one of those on there, I’m suing. So, where can I legally aquire 125,000 MP3s, people?

Don’t forget to listen to Twit 154 in which Dvorak will joke about Greenwashing.

One Bizzare Feeling...

There was a spectacular moment today, where I felt like I was "in the zone." I thought it was worth a mention.

Not sure if this is really a productivity thing, but I'm definitely getting used to my gmail labels, and my jott.com. Invoicing still isn't something I look forward to, but at least the resistance level is now so low, that when I'm doing it I feel like the check is actually around the corner. Instead of struggling to get myself to sit down and get it done.

I now take to my gmail to manage, well, my life, essentially. I didn't realize I was even doing that before, but since I've added the pseudo-organizational labels, I have found my searching and combing through past mail far easier. Especially my now-key "ToBill" label, which gets me billing on the 1st & 15th of each month.

I think the real key to productivity isn't labels or todo lists - those are only tools, and they won't work for everybody. The key is to think about yourself, and how you can trick yourself into accidentally doing more work at the right time. For me, if I'm actually reading my mail, it helps a lot to throw it into a few bins for later. I used to only do that if I found myself searching for the same email over and over. Now I capture it there and then, and I have it immediately that next time. And I was already living in GMail, so the labels were a tool that I could add without adding much complexity.

Productivity means different things to different people. My mom, as an example, is a person who can (and with regularity, will) do the next steps on 100 things in a day, but if a real project-sized monster doesn't get done, she will never feel like she did something. So the key, for her, is to open the time to tackle the next steps on one project - nix the multitasking. Then she can do those 100 steps, and finish something. Same output, but to her, it will feel like more. It's not necessary for her to finish something every day, but strategic completion planning is very important.

I get that same feeling from putting the invoices in the mail. Something is done now, so I can go back to my programming and blogging for a while. Feels good.

Fourth of July Extravaganza

Fun fun on the Fourth.

On Creation and Evolution

I saw a post over at sikkdays and had to respond. I ended up putting essentially a blog post together, so I thought I'd re-post here. The original post at sikkdays was regarding the new Michigan Legislation that is working it's way through the State House and Senate regarding the teaching of Intelligent Design as a challenge to Evolution.

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The thing that frustrates me is that after over 100 years of having this theory, we’re no closer to reconciling it with our faith. I personally believe that it’s very easy to believe in both Evolution and the Bible, and here’s the hint: most of the details in both are wrong, especially when interpreted by the layperson.

Evolution as a process and as a theory is still not greatly understood. We don’t really know how or why DNA mutates, or how genes split and become 2 genes in the following generation. We’ve got experiments that show that these things happen, but aside from random chance, we haven’t discovered all the mechanisms that make Evolution actually work. All we know for sure is that natural selection happens, and it operates to create enhancements in species over time relative to environment.

The Bible is far from well-understood. It’s been well-studied (much like Evolution), but there seems to be little consensus on what the damn thing actually says. Ask ten different pastors from ten different denominations what the most important verse of the Bible is, and you’ll get ten different answers. If not twenty. But ask them what Jesus stood for, and you’ll get the same things: forgiveness, compassion, understanding, and sacrifice.

The Devil is in the details. Literally, folks. As Christians, we can easily get caught up in who begot whom, and exactly how much pork we can eat and on which days during Lent. We almost always seem to forget the important stuff like love and grace. We argue about the details so much, that when some “jerk like Darwin” comes along and says something that’s “so obviously not in the Bible,” we all gang up like Greek City-States against the Persians.

Believe me, the important parts of the Bible are not the details. They are the truths. If you read a verse, and you can’t say, “this is self-evident, and thus Godly,” then it’s probably editorial written by some guy who’s been dead between 6,000 and 2,000 years who had an axe to grind, and should be taken in that context.

To bring this rather lengthy response back around, Evolution has absolutely zero conflict with the Bible. The only argument that can be made is the Literal Genesis argument, that presumes that God is some cheap magician that pulled Light, Land, Sea, Time, Life, and Humanity, out of a hat, one (1) day (not exceeding 24 hours) each, starting at 9 AM, October 17, 4004 BCE. (I have yet to see an “on this date: Oct 17, 4004 BCE: World created. Rejoice.” on the last page of “Popular Science.”)

I’m not saying God couldn’t do it, but why would he? Doesn’t it make more sense, if you’re going to make faith something of any real import, to create a world where the existence of God could be shadowed by the natural and logical? Wouldn’t God create a system where his very presence was either completely apparent or completely unnecessary depending solely on faith?

I can believe in Evolution, and I can believe in God. I can believe these things because while I believe in truth that is scientifically tested like natural selection, I also believe in truth that is spiritually tested, like the teachings of Christ. These things shall not be foreign to me simply because they hadn’t been discovered when the Bible was written.