Monthly Archives: February 2012

February 26, 2012

Analog vs Digital life

By Jesse

I had a coworker say something interesting to me the other day. He was looking at this little case I carry in my EDC (Every Day Carry) bag and said that I didn’t strike him as the “needs to carry a portable hard drive” kind of guy. I replied that I’m not, and opened the case. His response to what’s inside was what interested me most; he said “that sums you up perfectly.”

Here’s the case:

It’s an old Case Logic portable hard drive case. I used it briefly at a previous job when I did actually have to carry one around all day at work – being prone to dropping things, I was extra careful with company property.

Now, what is it that this guy saw inside that he thought was just the right juxtaposition that it summed me up so perfectly?

This:

the contents are:

headphones, chapstick, thumbdrive (no longer really used so due to be tossed), tiny multitool, cheap disposable pen, comfy writing pen, EDC fountain pen, charging cable for bike headlight/Kindle, and while I’m riding my pocket notebook (side note: why do most pocket notebooks have such flimsy covers? There’s supposed to be carried in your pocket, right?)

At first I wasn’t sure what to make of his comment, then I realized that he had just inadvertently paid me a compliment. I’ve been trying for some time to come up with a way to summarize and explain my Analog/Digital way of seeing life and he had just pointed out that I carry the perfect analogy in my bag.

On the outside, I’m an IT guy. Currently I work on deploying Windows 7 for various companies. On the inside, I write most of my thoughts out on paper before going to the keyboard, like how fountain pens feel when they scratch across the paper, but still have gadgets to charge (even if one is to help me NOT drive and the other keeps my library simplified).

Right now one of the biggest issues on my mind is how I’m going to reconcile these two parts of me in order to complete my trainer training, get through the internship I need before I can become certified, and start looking for work WHILE continuing to work full time in IT Monkey land. I know, if only all life’s troubles could be so…

Once this project gets off the ground, my days will be easily taken up with deploying computers and walking users through the nuances of Windows 7 (said with not the slightest hint of sarcasm) so it will be easier to not let my mind wander to cob construction, raising backyard chickens and mace swings (look it up). in the meantime I just have to do my best to look interested in meetings and be sure the last site I was looking at has something to do with work…or be sure to leave a couple of spreadsheets open and a few printed out scattered across the workbench I call a desk…and be sure to write every morning. I find it very cathartic to write for myself, I’m trying to do 500 words every morning, after I come upstairs and put on water for tea, but before I open email, rss, or twitter. Between the meditating and the writing, it’s hard to say which is having more of an effect, but I’m definitely starting to feel Rebalanced…

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February 20, 2012

Where I go and get wild ideas in my head by reading a book

By Jesse

Heretical idea isn’t it? A coworker has looked sideways at me over our keyboards a couple of times now and asked, in a disbelieving sort of voice, “what do you do all evening?” This was in response to a conversation we had several weeks ago (he’s kinda slow like that) that included me uttering the sentence, “oh, I don’t have a TV.”

I think he had asked why I hadn’t seen the superb owl ads and my first response of “I don’t watch football” didn’t quell his curiosity. Which brings us to last week when he asked again about how I spend all this free time he envisions me having (sidebar, if you’re so jealous of all this free time, you can ditch the TV too, you all know that right??). To be honest, with the possible exception of a couple of prolonged colds suffered during my high school years, I’ve never really watched that much TV. So when it came time to simplify, it was only logical that the TV be on top of the donate pile. And even now that I find myself living right below the living room and it’s whopping 27″ tubed wonder – I’m just not drawn to it. There’s nothing being shown on that box that I wouldn’t miss in an instant if it meant I could pick up a good book, or play a board game, or talk with my family, or walk the dog(s), or wrench on my bikes, or (are you catching on here?)…

Which brings me to the actual topic I had in mind when I started this, the book I just finished. It’s called The Information Diet by Clay A. Johnson. I’m not a reviewer by nature, so all I’m going to say along those lines is this, read this book. Especially if you spend a substantial part of your day staring at a glowing screen of one sort or another. Johnson has a background in political activism and social media (including starting the company that built and managed Obama’s 08 online campaign). The punch line, if I can do as he did and plagiarize Michael Pollan:

Consume Consciously

What Johnson’s getting at is that we in the western world, particularly the often over educated middle class, have such a glut of information being literally hurled at us 24/7 – that we often don’t know when, where, or most importantly how – to stop. As someone who only recently put himself out there on Twitter, doesn’t have a Facebook account, only follows a handful of blogs and doesn’t really like any of the non-local news sites out there…it’s not like I was suffering as bad as others. But even so, I’ve already made a couple of changes: I uninstalled the Twitter desktop app that lights up with new tweets. I closed the ever-present gmail tab in Safari. And I organized my twitter feed into lists so I can just catch up on what’s most important at that time, like local news, and get the rest later. This way, when I’m trying to…oh I don’t know…write something for this little bloggy here – I’m not distracted by that little blue birdy taunting me with the possibilities.

Like I said, this wasn’t quite the issue for me as I’ve already cut most of these distractions from my life farther back in the simplification step of my Rebalance, but the fact that even I could take something away from this book makes it one I highly recommend. The more harried your day, the more important it is.

Don’t think I didn’t have my issues with some of his analogies, particularly calling what he advocates “Infoveganism.” He also makes some very weak comparisons between things like the FDAs MyPlate guidelines (formerly the food pyramid) that even after reading 3x I still can’t grasp. But overall, his point is valid, the book is well written, and I’ll be putting it aside to be referred to my future clients.

Oh, and I love that his first recommendation when starting an Information Diet is to cut the cable and ditch the TV.

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February 13, 2012

Utilitaire 12…Feb 12th

By Jesse

I had such a good day Utilitairing around yesterday, I decided to actually post about it. I know, radical notion for a guy with a blog…shhhh.

Started out by leaving just after daylight peaked out over the hills (or mountains, depending on your perspective, also knows as the Cascades). What in the world drove me to get up and out that early on a Sunday? The Cascade Bicycle Club‘s annual Seattle Bike Swap of course. And I’m glad I did since as it was I was around 50th in line and by the time the doors opened at 9 the line stretched up the stairs, around the corner and down the entire length of the Exhibition Hall.

I was there for one main reason, Swift Industries was present with their “human error” sale items, basically a scratch and dent sale on their amazing bags and I’ve been planning on using one of their rando bags on the Vaya since I started dreaming of building up that bike. So I get in the door, and of course can’t find their booth. Where is it? In the last aisle I look in (side note, isn’t everything you look for logically in the last place you look for it? If you kept looking after you found what you were looking for…well that’d just be a little crazy now wouldn’t it?) and they have exactly one rando bag! Since it just happened to be waxed canvas and the nice subtle charcoal gray I wanted…it hitched a ride home with me in the front basket on the Trek.

Now I couldn’t just fly through a room chalk full of goodies without at least having a quick peak, could I? Of course not…so before I headed home I found myself a Banjo Bros grocery pannier for a 20 and a stool with a huge cushy bike seat for a seat for a 5. That will serve as my desk chair once I get it cleaned up a bit…too many years as a shop stool I think.

Loaded up Trek (awkwardly, see how the legs of the stool are sticking up all wonky? Yeah, that makes getting on and off the bike just a wee bit difficult. It also makes me understand the appeal of step through frames for cargo bikes) and headed the 5 miles home through the South Lake Union Balagan (Hebrew word, basically means Big Ass Mess). With streets closed and not knowing where they’ve added convenient bike/ped throughways…I ended up detouring into downtown and battling the street car tracks down Westlake. Until I remembered that it’s closed at Mercer, so there was more detouring to Terry where, thankfully, there’s still one of those bike/ped throughways to South Lake Union Park and I was able to hook up to the trail and was off.

Later that same day, I came to remember that I needed to scope out a couple of things at REI, you know, the one I had just ridded right past. sigh. So out the door, this time on the Vaya for some quality time breaking in the Brooks. I’ve got to figure out a better locking set up then carrying both my umpteen pound u-lock and a cable. Maybe I’ll order some locking skewers to match the ones on the Trek…then I can use a single lock…anyway after a fruitful REI stop (including a scouring of the gear garage of course, nothing good though, pretty picked through) it was back home again.

Total distance ridded: ~15 miles in two trips

Utilitaire 12 controls knocked off: #6 – any non-grocery store and one of the freebies for the bike swap

Pictures taken:

The Trek all loaded up and ready for the trek home (sorry, the pun was unavoidable) That’s the Swift rando bag in the front basket and the stool legs sticking out of the grocery pannier. No, I don’t know how I would have gotten the stool home if I hadn’t found the pannier.

This was just amazing to me. It’s February, right? It also happened to be a mildly breezy, high overcast day with temps in the low 50′s so in Seattle that means two things…everyone was wearing flip flops and the sailboats were out. Of course.

So that’s how I spend my Sunday, well that and yard work, cleaning up the yard (3 dogs remember) and some light house work (vacuuming…again, 3 dogs). I’ll return to posting my more philosophically oriented inane ramblings later this week. Hope everyone had an enjoyable weekend and follows it with a great week!

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February 8, 2012

ditch anxiety

By Jesse

Anxiety is the sacrifice of creativity in the service of security. It is the giving up of personal freedoms in return for the promise, never fulfilled, of comfort, cotton wool, air-conditioned shopping centres. Security is a myth; it simply doesn’t exist. This does not stop us, however, from constantly chasing it.

Tom Hodgkinson, The Freedom Manifesto p.11

Just free forming here…so if we want to lessen anxiety – stop striving for financial* security? Will this lead to everyone doing exactly what they love and were meant to be doing? Or will we all end up working fast food or in a call center**? I think that depends heavily on what sort of person you are.

If you’re the kind to stop blindly chasing security in the name of freeing yourself from the anxiety that comes with living in the modern world…

I’m going to wager that you’ll be just fine.

 

 

 

 

*I know he didn’t say financial…but let’s be honest, in the modern world what is the number one type of security we’re trained to strife for?

**No, I’m not knocking call center workers, I was one. It’s simply the most soul-sucking line of work I can imagine someone in the aforementioned modern world being in

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February 3, 2012

update on the whole bike commute/transpo cycling thing

By Jesse

I’ve been so focused on things that make me say…well, duh! recently that I’ve neglected other aspects of this whole Rebalancing thing. For example I picked up my shiny new Salsa Vaya last week. “Salsa Whatta?!?!” I hear some of you muttering over your keyboards, let me explain. First, Salsa is not – in this case – the delicious condiment. It is in fact a bike manufacturer dating back to the formative years of the mountain bike craze in the early ’80′s. And the Vaya is a newer model of theirs designed as a “Road Adventure Bike.” They make this amazing machine called the Fargo that’s an “anywhere you can’t walk Adventure Bike” – but for my mostly urban adventuring, the Vaya was a better fit. Here it is:

Isn’t that a thing of beauty?

 

Here’s where I’m lucky enough to store it during the day:

It’s currently kitted out for winter commuting, come spring I’ll be ordering up a Swift Industries random bag for the front and I’ll be training for some longer distance rides and possibly some light touring.

I’m also participating is something called Utilitaire 12. It’s being hosted by MG over at Chasingmailboxes. She can explain the rules better than I, so I’ll just say that it involves riding for utility and transportation, like I already do; taking some pictures of your rides, like I already do; and sharing your adventures with like minded folks, which I’d love to do more of. So basically it’s a win-win.

I picked up the Vaya last Friday and have put ~100 miles on it so far, including commuting to work every day this week. Though, I do have to say it’s a lot easier to winter commute when it’s 55 and sunny… it is February in Seattle…right?!?!

I’ll leave you with that, I have a couple of other posts swimming around upstairs, but they’re not forming themselves into coherent sentences just yet so I won’t submit you to them until they’re ready.

You can thank me later.

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