Somedays, it seems like my head will explode!

How To Keep Things Clean For Less Stress

Hey! How did  Keith Robinson get inside my head!

This post is absolutely bang on. You’ve seen some of the pictures I posted recently. My wife and kids deligently ensure that there are piles and piles of stuff everywhere you look! Some examples :

• The buffet table is piled high with containers and boxes of snacks on one side
• The other side is stacked with my wife’s papers and mail – her to do list
• There are 4 -5 piles of DVDs and VCR tables all around the TV
• There are piles of – god, wtf is that!
• The whole first flight of stairs doubles as a pile-holder. A pile-holder is a place to build piles.
• When all the steps on the staircase are used up, the dining table chairs can be used as overflow pile-holders
• Despite the walk-in closet, there are piles of clean laundry on the floor and on the bed
• The dining table itself is a pile magnet, just like the coffee table and the kitchen counter
• My daughter’s room is an Pile Exibition – shortly to be on display at a dump near you.

I try to get everyone to build cleaniness into the process, but I might as well try to squeeze water out of rocks. Clutter drives me nuts and having to helplessly live so long under these conditions, I think I have begun to develop OCD with cleaniness! Can you imagine our home! Me with cleanliness OCD and my family being mess-blind!

BTW, this is a list of my daily medications:

• Atenol – for blood pressure
• Prilozec – for stomach acids (Acid Reflux)
• Paxil – for not to go stark raving mad!

You think these 2 lists are in any way related?

A thanks giving.

I know I bitch and moan all the time about everything. But it’s not always all that bad. Actually it’s quite good most of the time. I just forget to write about the good.

Why is it that we need to “get it off our chest” or “blow off steam” about the bad stuff but never feel that we should share any of the good stuff? Anyway, I hope to remember to post about the good stuff from now on.

I used to hate the commute to work (and as soon as winter is back, I am sure I will begin to hate it again) but I changed the route slightly and now its absolutely gorgeous! The road is through some really scenic farm country and there are rarely any large trucks or slow traffic.

The highlight of the route were a couple of fields of sunflower plants! The flowers have wilted now but I should have taken the time to stop and take a few pictures. It was breathtaking when the flowers were in bloom. I noticed how the flowers all faced one way in the morning when I was driving to work and how they had all changed directions to follow the sun when I passed that way again in the evening on my way back home.

Also, I think about all the terrible natural and man-made things happening around the world; the tsunami, earthquakes, floods, bombs, war, famine. And how my family has been blessed to not have to live through anything like that.

Some of my friends have had to go through tough times with personal health and tragedy. I have been spared that too to quite a degree.

I guess I should from time to time, stop and take a look at the bigger picture… and give thanks for the great life I have had so far.

Besides, doesn’t Newzie look so much like…

… Nazi?

Ugh!

Newzie

Today, Newzie hit my 3 minute rule. My 3 minute rule is that, if, after installing any utility or small application, it takes more than 3 minutes to get up to speed with the core functionality, then the interface isn’t well designed or there are other problems with it that basically qualifies it as iCrap.

And boy does Newzie hit all the cones! It is a rss reader + browser (I think) + web sync-thingy + downloaded + something else. Full of color, flashing and blinking and new age tool bars and do-das. From the get-go, the interface is bewildering when it asks to login or create a new platform. Eh? Like Windows, Linux, OSX platform?

I did manage to import my feeds but couldn’t find a way delete or manage the “channels” that actually worked. And the application “syncronizes” the channels and then there was a sweep thing and a calendar thing that you have to activate. I think I need to lay down for a bit.

Anyway, I think Newzie is good for 2 things. Rss-whores for who the means is an end to itself and in the what-not-to-do section of the good GUI design course.

Listening to Medley: Amor/Inolvidable/Guiereme Mucho by Various

Downloads

Today my thoughts turn to my archive of downloads. All the free and shareware and crap that I have downloaded over the last 10 – 12 years since I stumbled upon the internet. Its on CDs, hard disks, floppies, usb drives, just all over the place.

But today, when I wanted to reinstall ecto, I found it easier to google it and download than to click the 3 clicks it would have taken for me to find the copy I had downloaded last week.

So what exactly is the point of keeping all that old crap? Most of it won’t work now anyway; or will look so dated that I won’t want to look at it. Besides, if I haven’t needed it yet, I don’t think I ever will. Resolution: throw out all the old CDs and floppies!

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The state of the bathroom after the kids have showered. More goodness in my ‘filthy home’ series.

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… and yet more backing paper strips. See if you can spot all 6!

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… more backing paper strips.

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See how many sanitary napkin backing paper strips you can find lying around in my bathroom. This is part of my ‘filthy home’ series.

How to give a SUV-owner a speeding ticket.

It is normal pratice to flash oncoming traffic to warn them of a speed trap once you have passed the cop.

I do that too, but not for SUVs.

If there are a bunch of cars, I will hold off until the SUV is alongside before I flash the cars behind it. I know I know I might miss out on warning other drivers in sensible cars that are too close to a SUV but hey, that is the price we all pay.

Yes yes, its true. I hate SUVs and the idiots who drive them. And they are not ‘trucks’. They are just I-am-a-big-stupid-asshole-with-more-money-than-brains vehicles.