Just listened to Noland Bushnel talk at the Maker Faire about how to hire and manage the next Steve Jobs. http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Next-Steve-Jobs-Creative/dp/0988879514 It was very nice to hear about how important it is to allow creative people to be themselves. Need to find a place like that to do what I like. 2 days ago
This is the really cool maker site for kids. They learn skills, invent stuff and get badges like scouts without the problems. https://diy.org/ 2 days ago
http://makerfaire.com/live/ All day today. Check out the talks, live roaming feeds, and meet the makers. 2 days ago
Went to a book reading by Jaron Lanier this week about his new book. Some really important issues about how we are losing the middle class AND we are giving away our data while those with the biggest computers have the most money. Will read the book and write more later. Cspan was taping it. 4 days ago
I’m putting this link here so I can find it later. I seem to have ended my daily gratitude goal.
It looks like we only have about 6 weeks of funding left. I have 2 competing lists; find a new job/career vs save the company by doing all the sales and marketing that are needed.
There are many reasons that I’m where I’m at today. Some of my own making, like not learning to be a programmer. Others are because I can’t argue my good ideas relentlessly and lose arguements that I should win. I don’t fight long enough.
We didn’t get our grant, even though its a great idea. Most of the missing parts were things that we cut out of the proposal to save space. We can redo some of it and remake it to submit other places. Thats a big pain but its worth it.
But in the mean time, I need to stay employed. This is hard because of age discrimination. Also, I want to keep my hand in the product and that will be a conflict for most tech jobs. I guess I should go to a recruiter. 1 week ago
I have to pull it from the deep dark corners of my brain. The goal name just tickled me. 1 week ago
These were at the street fair in our downtown this week. Adults couldn’t be in them. Darn. 1 week ago
Hyperbole and a Half is back from a horrible depression. http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/05/depression-part-two.html
Oh so gooooood. 1 week ago
I too want to win my age group. I want to win everything about it. My birthday is coming, so I am going to make a list of all the things that my age group is expected to win at and then attempt to excel. That’s it….. 1 week ago
It just takes some people more time to figure things out. I’m glad he’s doing better. I agree that its better that she’s there and it seems to mean a lot to him too. Love is the answer in lots of situations. Just a reminder to everyone that they are doing what they think is best out of love. Its a reminder that brings out the best in us. 2 weeks ago
Its almost time for the Maker Faire again. I’m so excited. We generally take our bikes on Caltrain and spend the day just enjoying the creativity. Whew hew. Such a party. http://makerfaire.com/ 3 weeks ago
People have been blessed with the capability to record their history, share it through story, create images that reflect it. We have such a short time to get on with our somewhat meaningless lives when you keep the perspective and have a view of history. 3 weeks ago
This is Old-Tjikko. Its 9000 years old. The oldest tree in the world. Its in Sweden.
I heard about this story about 1000 olive trees being destroyed in Hebron this week. http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=588500 Since I don’t understand what the heck is going on overthere I don’t have a political view or religious view about it. Its just wrong. I just found out that olive trees can live 2000 years, long beyond the matters of the people around them. So why?
I was watching a program earlier in the week about the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001 by the Taliban in Afghanistan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamiyan The whole program was about how defacing of symbols is used as a weapon. Someone referred to it like this, “you can destroy art, but the image if the idea in the mind of the viewer is permanent”. http://www.betnahrain.org/glossary/art/assyrian_art_and_artist.htm
The defacing of sacred spaces goes on and on. Even if the space is a private sacred space, when its changed it makes us feel a loss of power. A teacher told me about a program in their school where the “Kupuna” or elders were telling the kids about the places in Hawaii that they considered important to their childhoods. Most of the places were gone, so what used to be a beach was now a parking lot with a strip mall. Maybe they left the trees standing when they bulldozed and maybe thats why they should. Found this link to a film about La’ie and this little video show how those small stories and little small places matter. kupunainteractive.com
We should be more thoughtful of trees. 3 weeks ago
I love listening to birds. Its what gets me up early in the day because thats when they are noisy, except in springtime. I try to maintain a stable sleep schedule because I think it makes me think more clearly and it allows me to wedge in some creative time in an otherwise work centered life.
Right before I go to bed, I make myself a cup of tea and have opened the kitchen window to let in fresh air now that its Spring. Turns out that we have a bachelor mockingbird that has moved into the neighborhood. He’s a loud one! I think he’s young because they learn about 40 songs as they age. He knows 10.
He was up singing loud as a guy in a Camaro with subwoofers making my car vibrate in the next lane. So I thought about that and realized that its sort of the same thing. The guy that does that to his car is trying to attract females but his song is more like “Creepin” by Chamillionaire. There are even a whole slew of youtube videos that list the best base in your trunk collections. “21 best songs for subwoofers” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhTpMXwJYkU Since I’m old, I don’t really know the coolest cars these days but yep, same thing, male people, male mockingbirds.
So here is the thing. I was up until 2am listening to this mockingbird. Thats the time I usually wake up for my middle of the night pee. He’s a 24 hour partier. I love, love, love listening to him and couldn’t sleep. My boyfriend is on a different schedule and he wakes up for his middle of the night pee at 7am. So we both woke up this morning and I told him that I could hear the mockingbird already.
My boyfriend said, “I can’t hear him, but I bet he’s saying Pthhhh. He’s saying you guys don’t get to sleep. Oh yeah, he’s saying Neehner, Neehner, Neehner.”
I was trying to both be quiet so my boyfriend could resume his sleep and listen for the bird and by god it did say Neehner, Neehner, Neehner.
I got up, made coffee, and started my day. Opened the window next to my desk. I can still hear him traveling the neighborhood this morning if my distance hearing estimation is correct. Can’t get the Neehner, Neehner out of my head because he keeps saying it. 3 weeks ago
I don’t have PTSD but boy can I relate to memory issues this evening. 3 weeks ago
Thanks for posting this picture a fish head on a plate, before and after. Awesome and nasty and possibly tasty.
“A grill or broiler are best for cooking your head.” -hysterical
I picked fruit with Village Harvest today. The first house was in my old neighborhood in an area with streets of original Eichler style houses. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Eichler. There was a huge lemon tree in the back yard and some gnomes in the front yard. The owners offered to let us use their bathroom and even offered water, which nobody has ever done my volunteer days. The lady was a first grade teachers aid, so she took a picture of us. I told her to tell the children that we were lemon fairies. 400lbs of lemons.
The next house was immaculately landscaped with low water native plants and seating areas, birdbaths, giant roses in full bloom. We got 700lbs of oranges. She brought her cat to the door at the end so we could pet it. It had been meowing at us from the sliding door because 12 people were it its yard doing something.
The final house was what can only be referred to as a mansion. On the way we passed people doing a walking home tour dressed in dresses and wearing hats. There was a giant grapefruit tree in the center of the backyard, maybe 3 stories tall, covered with huge ripe grapefruits. We spent about an hour pulling down grapefruits( I extended my picker to double length), dodging falling grapefruits, and finally catching them from a tall guy on a ladder that would just toss them down(hence the dodging). At a certain point the muscles inbetween my shoulder blades tried to lock up.
I actually managed to wear myself out completely. I came home, walked over to get lunch at a new Greek place about a mile from our house then fell asleep for a couple hours.
Its really great to pick fruit. Most of it went to the Senior services center but I think they took some to a food pantry too. The thing is that it would go to waste otherwise.
My boyfriend’s brother was telling us that he heard about a similar program in LA today called Food Forward. http://foodforward.org/about/ He only noticed the story because he knew that I do this so that made me feel pretty proud. 3 weeks ago
What the heck did I do last Saturday? I have no recollection of the day at all. I even tried to reconstruct it by going through my journal, 43things and FB but I couldn’t remember anything about the day. Its a mystery.
I must have spent quite a while writing because there were several 43things posts. Only one FB post that didn’t shine any light at all into my cobweb overgrown brain. Its really bothering me that I can’t pull anything up at all. Working with memory loss research makes me even more concerned about the day. I think I may have started to clean up my desk, but maybe that was Sunday.
Maybe I slept. My spring allergies knocked me out so maybe thats how I spent the day.
Ahhh, finally. I remember going to the Passage to India buffet for dinner. They have fantastic food so its easy to remember them. The place was full of families and groups of friends. We were lucky to get a table. They have a strange little section of fake chinese food selections; chow mein, some stir fry choys and a chicken thing. Otherwise its authentic and wonderful indian spices, scents, and nommm.
Whew, my basic biology helped me remember. 3 weeks ago
Thanks for the suggestion.
http://pinterest.com/peatbybrainaid/ 3 weeks ago
Its like fate would have it that I keep running out of cheers each time so I have to re and reread and refind it. Fate is lucky sometimes that way. 3 weeks ago
I have manage to pin almost 1000 useful things on the company Pinterest site PEATbyBrainaid. I’m actually really proud of how this has turned out. Its taken about a year to accumulate things that are really useful. I’ve just tried to be consistent about finding new things and putting them there. Its amazing how much information is available for people with all sorts of brain related disorders these days.
I think I’m most proud of my bags board. When I first started it was really hard to find any bags for women or androids. Now there are many more available.
I think I’m going to celebrate my 1000th pin. 3 weeks ago
I work on a product called PEAT. We have a free download if you want to give it a try. www.brainaid.com 3 weeks ago
I have a daily journaling task that I had stopped doing because I messed up my task alert library. Last night when I was cued to do it I just decided to even though I wasn’t really in the mood. I didn’t have anything to write about so I decided to write 3 gratetudes and 5 things to do this week. It turned out that I wrote 10 things to do this week. I hadn’t thought about doing some of them at all but after I wrote them realized how important it is to do them. Now to do them. 4 weeks ago
I read way too many conspiracy websites. I’m naturally willing to give anyone the benefit of the doubt until I’ve looked them in the eye and seen their deception. Some things just never ring true to me and I am always skeptical that the story that’s being told is true. Maybe its a way of entertaining my imagination. I look for alternative answers.
So this week has been full of crap. Nothing seems like it was real. I spent Thursday – Friday alternately looking at CNN, reddit, and Twitter trying to figure out what was happening in Watertown. It was a study in journalism and how going with unvetted information is a bit more accurate than waiting for official information but making up speculative propaganda to fill the time. Troops filled the streets and people opened their doors and let them walk in and we were all grateful and cheering. People emerged from their homes and had looks of fear and relief and loss of innocence. I’ll never watch TV news the same way again. It was 24 hours that had Al Neuharth rolling in his grave.
I don’t believe anything I’m being told anymore. I don’t even believe any alternative explainations for what happened more than others. All I really believe is the end story. I believe the story of people who got their legs blown off and TBI. I believe there are people in Texas who have lost their homes, their friends and their whole community, as well as having untreated concussion injuries. I believe that young girls have always borne the shame of being assaulted in their same way and thats the way it goes.
The thing is though, investigative journalism is the only thing that can change things. Truth surfaces. People know things and families will fight for the story of their loved ones to be told. Its our families that speak out and keep talking. 4 weeks ago
