Step up

I saw a great sign at the Franklin Institute the other day.  It was in the Franklin Food Works, it said, "Please, Step up and help yourself."  (Here's a photo) Some employee was clearly trying to overcome the confusing layout of the place.  But he did more than that, he offered a tremendous life lesson.

Waking up and going about your day should not be drudgery, it should represent the thing you want to do more days than not.  If you find that is not true then, what are you waiting for, figure out why.  There are tons of people out there who will help you learn and cultivate the things you want, then the crucial thing is to make a plan to get there.  And don't let anything stand in your way.  The only way things will change for you is if you change them.  So what I have to say in response to that sign. That's god damn right!

This is all stuff that's been said thousands of times in much better ways than that sign, that movie clip I linked to or this blog post.  But I think it's helpful to have it pointed out in a variety of ways.  It can be surprisingly easy to go numb to things around you if you don't remember how wonderful it is to be alive.

AC Sludge

With a renewed interest in blogging, I decided to try out MarsEdit and came across some Drafts I'd partially written but never published. So I've reformatted this one a bit and you get it now. This was originally started on July 1, 2010. Over the summer I happened upon a small pool of water around my Air conditioner in the basement which immediately began an hours long investigation and repair and left me feeling a bit glad but annoyed.  

I was glad that I was able to identify the cause of the problem and repair it, in only a few hours.  But I was annoyed that my plans for the evening were shot, and I had an ugly and distorted sense that I'm never able to do the things I really want to do, but must always spend my time responding to emergencies that are my duty.  

I know this view is wrong, but over the prior 9 months or so I'd taken on so much more stuff than I ever had before that I had been wavering between resentment against the world at large and anxiety about not being able to achieve my goals.

I think this experience and my response was a big step on my recovery from going crazy. I reminded myself that to accept those thoughts, about never achieving my goals, would bring about a self-fulfilling prophecy.  And I reminded myself to see how the choices I make even in response to the unexpected emergencies are serving the values I want to achieve and keep.

It was at this time that I also realized I'd gotten impatient. And couldn't remember having that problem since I was a wee tyke when I'd get pissed struggling to untie my shoes.

I think by repeatedly reinforcing a view that I should be getting more done than I was, and actually more than was possible was causing me to have an always present sense of impatience and frustration with myself and others.

I had decided that fulfilling my ambitions should be easy and when I couldn't do it I'd damn the universe for being impossible and myself for not succeeding anyway.

In the end I had to challenge the bad premises by comparing them with reality, and clear out those thoughts that had been gumming up my life.

Oh and if your interested about the AC. I took it apart cleaned a bunch of nasty sludge that had accumulated in the drip pan under the coil. And then using an old wire as a snake, dislodged sludge from the upper part of the pipe. Finally hooking up a shop vac to the end of the condensate line and sucked out anything that would come. It worked fine the rest of the summer. And if there is a next time. First thing I'll do is hook up the shop vac.

So, Anyone have recommendations for companies to clean and service HVAC units annually?

The joy of focus

Today I forgot to eat breakfast and got moving very late because I was immersed in what I was doing. Spending so much time being interrupted and allowing myself to be interrupted I had started to forget the pure and simple joy of focused, productive work. I intended to try and achieve that state as often as possible. I need to blow off a few meeting reminders, phone calls and the like. It's good for the soul.

The reason for being

This site has languished because there was absolutely no purpose or reason for it. I have spent some time and decided a few reasons for continuing it, and have thus renewed my interest in maintaining and updating it. The below reasons are published here and on the site's colophon for newcomers to understand the purpose.

Previously Logical Disconnect served as a diary of rants and various diatribes of no particular purpose and with no cohesive theme. Often it had, as most blogs, come off as complaints and sometimes information that was too personal to be of much use to anyone even those who know me. Primarily it was a personal outlet for unformed notions I wanted to share but with no one in particular.

In some sense the personal nature will continue, however, I have recently decided to use the writing here as a means to further my study of Objectivism.

My plan is to use it to write in order to learn. It became explicit to me when listening to Dr. Leonard Peikoff's lecture series The Philosophy of Education that writing is a tremendously valuable cognitive tool. It forces you to slow down your thought process and make well reasoned arguments. If you don't want the concrete, the writing, to be utter nonsense then you must understand and mentally organize the subject. And by doing this it requires you to integrate the concepts, you wish to write about, into your own hierarchy of knowledge. To really understand the ideas in order to convey them. This is to be part of my defense against any kind of dogmatism or other irrationality in my study of philosophy.

This is analogous to the "trick" I used in college to give focus to study. When it became generally well known that I was doing well, I was often asked for help by other students in my classes. By agreeing to help others I was required to understand the material well enough to convey it to them. And if you have ever tried to teach, especially someone who is honestly seeking to learn, you can't fake this understanding. After spending time teaching the concepts to others, my understanding of the material was unshakable. This activity greatly focused my effort and diminished my need for additional independent study.

By making the writing public I could be subject to criticism or counterarguments which may help me refine my ideas. It will provide additional context to those I have been having frequent philosophic discussions with recently. And will also further my wife's growing understanding that she has chosen a very unique individual to share life with.

I also plan to use the writing here as a tool for introspection and as a secondary value I would like my children to be able to have this as a concrete reference for knowing about their Father. I know reading a copy of a single letter I discovered, which my father wrote years ago at work[1] gave me a different and unexpected perspective and even greater admiration for him.

Yes this is a very selfish motive and personal collection of articles. I intend to derive great value from writing them.

1. Yes letter, not email. I said years ago.

Coming Soon

I am planning on resurrecting this site and posting regularly. I have recently been made explicitly aware of the cognitive benefits of writing. So in writing down my thoughts, especially if I intend to stand behind them and have them represent who I am, I am forced to clarify and organize the process behind my thinking. I have decided that this practice will primarily help me to integrate new ideas. Secondary benefits include improving my ability to communicate and will allow me to have more interesting interactions because it could be based on information I have already thought through.

Perpetually getting organized

I have been trying to "get organized" since sometime in high-school when I was probably told to "buckle down." Nothing seems to have taken very well, however. The problem that I seem to have is two-fold. First, every time I see a neat discussion or article or book on how to help you do stuff, I read it and get all fired up and start thinking about how to implement that philosphy. Second I am letting the **best** destroy the good. And I think this is the bigger of the two problems.

Basically I start trying to plan out some structure that is used to capture the main things I need capturing, which anyone can tell you are a list of your projects. A list of your next actions. And some sort of calendar to capture the hard landscape of what is happening. And finally a reliable reference file. Where to store stuff you may need to reference later, reliably, in a form that is easy to look up.

Well as a guy who builds systems and programs this is a nightmare, I start thinking this is simple enough to build something. Well it isn't, because all of the sudden I have something way more complex than the [37signals](http://37signals.com/) people have built, and it will take me a good 8 or 40 hours to put together. And then I start thinking about backup, because hell if this is my life I better be able to back it up. And of course I don't have time for this because while I am thinking about this I am shirking all kinds of other responsibilities, and the fires are growing all around me. Then I run around for 3 days putting them out and long for an uninterrupted month where I can construct this super-duper life runner application.

Well I am a father, and I work, and I have hobbies, there is no uninterrupted month coming any time in the forseeable future, which I can't really see much of anyway because I am so busy running around putting out fires, or planning for the utopia in some distant future. I really need to work on my middle game.

Anyway, starting today, I am going to errect a little bit of scaffolding to try and hold my life together. I am going to spend about 10 minutes thinking about the simplest system that can possibly work.

*I am picturing a calendar and a notebook.*

I think the biggest thing here is consistency of putting everything there, and to get in the habit of looking at it several times a day. Maybe I can trick myself and write "email" or "bloglines" on the cover, since I typically look at both of those several times an hour.

I have to convince my brain that it doesn't have to be perfect to start using it.

Bliss

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." -[Charles Darwin](http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/4094)

Closing the Door

The best thing you can do for your craft is to close the door. This may be a literal door, signing off of IM, closing your email client, or pulling out your internet cable. It may also be metaphoric, especially once you have practiced enough. It is concentrating your focus so severly on what you are doing that nothing else matters. I have received this advice from much of my reading, and from some very successful people. Don't believe me, who the hell am I? Just try it, try for 5 days, try for 3 hours. Look at the results and honestly compare to your other work. Practice closing the door.

geeky self help

This attempt at defining how human conciousness works is worth a read: The Multiple Self. It would be interesting to find other thoughts along these lines.

Concise

Inspired by [my brother's](http://tom.mcallister.ws/) [NFL season preview](http://tom.mcallister.ws/2005/09/08/nfl-season-overview-commentary-on-all-32-teams/), I am going to strive to be more concise in my explanations, descriptions and opinion expression. From what I can see it brings more interesting response, and sure you will be misinterpreted, but at least you will know people read what you wrote. I know many of my work related emails have been skimmed and archived, because, who has the time.

NPR RSS Feeds & the Tao of Depression

While searching for a story I heard on Morning Edition about depression, so I could make a point about the treatment for depression being just as stressful as some of the stresses thought to cause depression, I found out that NPR has RSS feeds for some of it's news and programs. Scratch another couple minutes from my daily routine as I will be throwing some of these on my bloglines account right away. Oh and I couldn't find the story I was searching for, but basically the woman who wrote a book was talking about how stressful everything is today, since we have so many demands on our time, and the work week has increased and there is a constant pressure to succeed and do more faster and earn more money to buy more crap (Including her book I guess). Then she talked about the way there is no simple magic bullet cure all for depression and it's not just medication but a whole management regimen where you have to work hard at controlling your depression.

Well as I was listening to this it sounded like there was a lot of pressure to build up this management framework around your depression, which could in turn cause stress as you could wonder why all the hard work you are putting in at controlling your depression isn't working and how it is possible fail in this mighty quest to control your feelings, and it just seemed like the total wrong direction to go for dealing with depression. I mean why apply the principles of management and work to your problem if applying those very things to other aspects of your life has caused the growth of this problem. It seems to me the solution to many problems in our society is to do something; do anything. And likely that attitude is how the problem came about in the first place.

Now I don't really know what depression is, or know if I have ever experienced it. But it seems to me that applying the same thinking that caused the condition in the first place is not going to fix it.

I would recommend buying a hammock, and using it.

Greatness

Yet another thought provoking article from Paul Graham: Great Hackers.

I've found that people who are great at something are not so much convinced of their own greatness as mystified at why everyone else seems so incompetent. The people I've met who do great work rarely think that they're doing great work. They generally feel that they're stupid and lazy, that their brain only works properly one day out of ten, and that it's only a matter of time until they're found out.

Yeah, I know anyone who reads my blog already saw this somewhere else, or doesn't really care to read it. Well I want to be able to find it again. And I haven't found a good way to do bookmark sharing between many different machines. Maybe a good idea for a firefox plugin.

Maturity

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything. -Kurt Vonnegut (1922 - ), Cat's Cradle (Source)

Seen in fortune(6)

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owesyou nothing. It was here first.

-- Mark Twain

Litany of Fear

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see it's path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.Only I will remain.

-- The Bene Gesserit Litany of Fear from the novel Dune by Frank Herbert

To all the fear mongers who work for the popular media companies:

I am not scared.

I don't care who you think has weapons of mass destruction, or what eating a specific food item will do to me, or how bad it's going to rain tomorrow. At least not to the overhyped levels to which you are pumping these and other popular memes. Specifically when you provide no real news, other than a misinterpretation of a press release from the day before. Do you feel even a little pang of remorse as you prey on fear to sell advertising space?

I am NOT scared.

Getting Religious

When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion.

Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865), (attributed)

Easily accomplished consistent reading of the Quotes of theDay is just one of the many reasons I enjoy using Bloglines

By the way is this similar to how G.W. Bush decided to take our country to war? I am of course referring to the President reportedly quoted as saying: God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam …. Source: here.

Anthem

"Iam. I think. I will. ..."

"What must I say besides? These are the words. This is the answer."

"I stand here on the summit of the mountain. I lift my head and I spread my arms. This—my body and spirit—this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction. ..."

—Ayn Rand

So be it.