Jeff Yoak's Friends

*SQUEE!!!*
Hatchlings & Eggs:

I love coaching
I'm doing my reading right now for this weeks coaching certification. Some bits from the reading:

It is very empowering to be with someone who accepts and loves you just the way you are while at the same time holding a bigger vision for you.

[...]

Lastly, if the coach is willing to challenge the client, ask the hard questions and tell the hard truth, without attachment, then the client knows that s/he can trust the coach to go the distance. S/he knows that the coach is fully committed to him/her and will go full out in supporting him/her to have a rich and fulfilling life.

So Buddhist, I love coaching! :) Its great to be getting trained in how to work with people based on philosophy that I support so wholeheartedly.

I also really like having read that first part. One of the fundamental coaching cornerstones we're taught is: the client is naturally creative, resourceful, and whole. As with Buddhism and non-attachment, I have had a hard time with the paradox of acceptance while striving for change. So "while at the same time holding a bigger vision for you" helps with that. It reminds me of a piece Pema Chodron has referred to. The Zen master Suzuki Roshi, once announced to his students: "All of you are perfect, and you could use a little improvement."

Waiting to see Serenity
... With YoSafBridge, who is plotting something evil.

Ok have added all the science fiction magazines that I've been lugging around for two decades now into the get rid off pile. The scary thing is how small a percentage this many boxes of stuff is...

Current Mood: accomplished

The majority of readers in a text poll by the Chron says the image taken by a paranormal group DOES show the ghost of a soldier from the Battle of Naseby.

The northampton chronicle have kindly highlighted the "soldier", however they have ignored the far more distinct cartoon animal.

The state of the economy
The NYT (which I read every morning, BTW) has an excellent article on the current state of the economy, how bad things are, and how bad they are likely to get:

Uncomfortable Answers to Questions on the Economy

Most popular writing on economic topics is trash, whereas this article rattles off all the things that "those in the know" (at least, subjectively, by my judgement of who to read and believe) talk about: historical price:rent ratios, Case-Shiller index (rather than the less accurate OFHEO price index), the effect of Mortgage Equity Withdrawal, the overhang in home inventory, etc.

( Here are some key excerpts )

The graphic is also worth looking at

Perl and Pidgin's API
I'm trying to write a plugin for the Pidgin IM client in Perl that would take your latest post to http://identi.ca from an RSS feed and set it as your Pidgin status message. However the Perl API for Pidgin is poorly documented and I'm having trouble. I based a lot of it on the pidgintwitter-plugin.

I'm not sure what's going on exactly though I suspect I'm not passing the URL correctly to the the parsing subroutine.
Any help would be appreciated.

( code behind the cut )

My Mood Monitor
Having observed this behavior with

beth_leonard and her son, Patri and I have made a habit of naming Tovar's emotions when they're obvious: "Tovar is sad," "Tovar is frustrated," "Tovar is happy."

Tovar, now, has gotten into the habit of naming my emotions: "Mama is sad," "Mama is happy."

Now, he'll occasionally say out of the blue "Mama is happy," which is really interesting, because usually I'm unaware of my mood at the time when he says it. I'd say he's right more often than not, although usually its subtle.

Its been great for appreciation and awareness for me, to have these unexpected check ins.

Current Music: Rock Your Body - Justin Timberlake

Recommended link; language and paradox...
Please don't miss Avram Grumer's "The 'aye' in God’s mote," over at Making Light, or its 90 comments, most of which are extremely readworthy. It starts with....

"I’ve been thinking about the paradox of the stone. You know, Could God make a rock so big he couldn’t lift it?"

... and the URL is:
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/010435.html#010435 .

Re: Dr. Horrible - Spoilers - Don't read if you haven't seen part 3
( I'm serious. Don't read it if you haven't seen the ending. )

//Early Dark Knight Review
I'm just going to go ahead and say what everyone else is thinking, but refuses to admit: That film needed more Catwoman. Fewer plot lines, more Catwoman, preferably doing Catwoman-like things. "But Catwoman wasn't even in this film!" Exactly, Livejournal, exactly. Catwoman's inclusion will always make a film better, even if the movie happens to be Battlefield Earth.

Overall, I give The Dark Knight a solid B, with high marks going to Heath Ledger; he scared me above and beyond what I expected. Unfortunately, Aaron Eckhart did nothing for me as Harvey Dent. Whenever his character was caught in the middle of a dramatic moment, I half expected him to say something like, "Right there, looking into Joey's eyes, it all came back in a rush. Why I do what I do. Defending the defenseless, protecting the disenfranchised corporations that have been abandoned by their very own consumers: the logger, the sweatshop foreman, the oil driller, the land mine developer, the baby seal poacher...

Yeah, I need sleep.

Getting rid of stuff
Book cull is coming along, I took a box of books to Half Price Books and got 16.50 for it, which isn't very much, but is enough to help me get over my internal resistance to getting rid of stuff somewhat. I've got 6 boxes of things set aside already to put on the free table at work, or bring to HPB to sell. My hope is to trim down my possessions by at least 1 bookcase, maybe 2. Would be nice to free up that much extra room. :)

Met with Dana this morning, looks like the move will be expensive, potentially more than what Cryptic is covering, sigh. But I want the move to go smoothly, so if some money must be spent, so it goes. I think the timing will work out fine for being in CA for the start of our 4th edition D&D campaign, with a couple days after to get the condo ready for stuff to arrive. Should be an interesting few days. Going to begzor help from some friends in moving stuff out of the condo. I'm thinking of getting rid of all our tvs among other things, to free up more space. Replace the one we use with a flatscreen to save lots of floor real estate. Maybe even boom mount it from the ceiling.

I'm really getting excited about the move :)

Current Mood: bouncy

jewelry
I think there are 30 things I should be doing instead of posting this, not the least of which is SLEEP. Also on that list is: write about other things. Like the jazz lesson I had today or the drum circle I went to several days ago. (Soon, I promise!). But instead I made a new necklace. I found a similar design while I was doing research for the necklace I want to make for the wedding in Ireland in a month. (I think I'll end up doing a green and light gold combo)

Anyway:

I think I'm going to make a bunch of these. It'll look cooler with two-three different sizes of beads and shorter lengths of wire.

Xmas in July
One of the xmas pressies this year from Pops and Suellen was Phil Lesh: Searching For The Sound. The epic air adventure is finally giving me time to read it. As a well studied deadhead I'm of course well aware that Phil had significant training and background in classical music before he caught on to jazz and later became a founding member of the Dead. But reading his firsthand accounts is pretty fascinating. Particularly his recollections of his first times on pot and lsd, which had the very respectibiggle soundtracks of Stravinsky and Mahler, respectively. That's my kinda hippie.

Rather enjoying the book, gonna have to exercise some self control and study my music whilst idling the time away. Could quite easily devour it in one sitting if I'm not careful.

In AKL now, next leg is to LAX. About 2 hrs there, then Frankfurt, and another couple hours then Paris. Roughly 36 hrs after leaving home. *sigh*

Dr. Horrible
Last Act of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is up. Go watch them now, the whole thing comes down on the 20th. So, 2 musicals I like now, this, and Once More With Feeling. So, I guess it is that Joss can make musicals I like... :)

Current Mood: happy

Dr. Horrible!
http://drhorrible.com/act_III.html

Wow.

Things vs. OmniFocus
I think I'm going to switch OS X GTD apps soon, as well as revising my GTD process based on what has and hasn't been working for me. I've been using iGTD, and it's just too cluttered and powerful for me. I want less features and more ease of use. There are some great things about it - it's free, and the developer is very productive, so it has advanced rapidly. But it doesn't give me a "Mind Like Water"

I first checked to see if LifeBalance, my old favorite, had gotten a facelift or an iPhone version. I used it for years, and what I love about LB is that it actually prioritizes for you. Basically, at every level of the project hierarchy (from goals down to projects) you can set importance, and then LB sorts tasks based on those, and on what you've done lately, in order to try to keep your total accomplishments balanced by area. I love having it tell me what to do, and being able to yank up & down priorities on projects based on changing importance. I've never found this in another task manager, yet it's really simple & intuitive.

Anyway, LB improves very slowly, and still doesn't have an iphone version, so forget it.

The two apps that sounded really good from reviews are Things and OmniFocus. Both have available, robust iPhone versions. Any comments from those who have tried them?

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is absolutely the funniest thing I've seen in ages! I must highly recommend it. :)

http://www.drhorrible.com

Watch it quick! It goes away Sunday at midnight!

My Scroll

Current Mood: amused

Productivity in the handset coding world
me: On the positive side, you'll never guess how much I accomplished today at work.
me: I made a library.
me: AND I linked to it.
Rob: Whoa.
me: I can see you laughing. Stop laughing. I mean it.
me: THEN I created a program that does nothing.
me: And I made the first program run the second one.
me: No laughing!
me: And my next job is to figure out how to package the two things together.
me: The program using the library, that is, and the program that does nothing.
Rob: You could make a third program that does nothing and run it too!
me: Oh, I already had that. How'd you think I got the program that does nothing? It's a copy.
me: I wish I were joking. It's literally true.
Rob: You better plan some serious downtime. You've cracked.

It's true, though. I'm not making any of this up.

Current Mood: amused

I am an evil genius!
See my new icon? I made it myself!

Muhahahahahahahaha.

(edited to add - for people who cannot see my icon - It's a picture of Dr. Horrible, and it says "I need to be a little bit more careful what I say on this blog.")

Batman
got back about an hour ago from seeing The Dark Knight with some friends from work. It was freaking awesome. Seriously. The visuals and action were great, the story was compelling, the twists were good. Heath Ledger was a great Joker. Go see the film. :)

Current Mood: excited

Work productivity
I am fascinated by how productive I have been in my last days at Google. I get my stuff done quickly enough that much of the time, I'm waiting for other people. Yet I'm also spending way more time reading and sitting in the sun then usual. I take more frequent breaks, and have been spending less time in the office.

The key to the apparent paradox, as far as I can tell, is that I'm much more focused and wasting a lot less time. I have no need to appear or feel productive, so when I notice that I'm reading pointless work email, or news about Google, or any of the other things I do to look & feel like I'm doing Important Company Work...I stop. I either do actual work, or I go take a break (more often the latter). As a result, I have more energy, so when I am working, I can more easily force myself to work on what needs to be done, rather than what will be easy.

An interesting lesson. Reminds me of the Results-Only Work Environment, and Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time, and the 80-20 rule.

A week til Conestoga. Gods.

My Scroll

Current Mood: anxious

Well well.
4 hrs from my flight out of WLG. Which means that in less than 24 hrs I'll be back in the ConUS for the first time in 4.5 years (though only to transition through LAX on to Frankfurt). Still, will be odd to be back after such an absence.

Pity I'd not known the company travel policies before I booked. Turned out they'll happily give you a layover if your flight time exceeds 12 hrs, I could have taken a few days layover in LA on the way out as well. Next time.

A brief guide to world domination
Or "How to live a remarkable life in a conventional world".

I just read this great PDF (google it, I'm posting on my phone). It really isn't about controlling the world, but about being a purpose-driven, unconventional, successful person. I liked it a lot. There's something really fun about reading stuff like this as I prepare to quit my job to do crazy things. Maybe it's a case of finding a source that will tell me what I want to hear, but there's a lot of "yay, I'm doing the right thing!"