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June 29, 2009 Two books, which I've mentioned in the last few entries, have been guiding many of the actions in my days recently. The newest one, It's hard to make a difference when you can't find your keys by Marilyn Paul explains many of the organizational principles I've felt were missing from David Allen's Getting Things Done. Paul espouses some pretty simple and common-sense (some would say old, others might say time-tested) principles of organization of space like "A place for everything and everything in it's place." It sounds pretty trite sitting there all by itself out of the context of a larger organizational system, but she explains those too and ties it all together. Over the last week and change I've reviewed my physical environment. I realized that in my eagerness to be prepared for anything and everything with the proper equipment I have not given the proper respect to the few essentials. Once I was able to grasp concept of keeping things in the proper space and the proper time, their usefulness doubled. My kitchen cabinets and shelves were so cluttered with all the things that I could use for cooking that they crowded out and hid the things that I would use, if only I could find them when it was time to cook. In theory I had medications for all sorts of ailments and injuries in my medicine cabinet, but when I really needed something for relief, a trip to the CVS for a new one was easier then rummaging through an pile of miscellaneous medications and bandages. There is a long way for me to go in organizing spaces, but the time savings and refreshing energy that comes from my office, bedroom, closets, and kitchen is so invigorating that my thoughts begin to turn back to how to best focus this energy in the right direction. It comes back, not surprisingly, to the GTD method and Allen's book. This long weekend I will be happy to relax at home and highlight things I really want to do and their order of importance with as little sentimentality as possible. This itself is going to take a bit of planning. I intend to stock up on food and snacks and caffeine enough to create a workable set of lists in a form that I can keep with me. The end result, I hope, will be a solid understanding of my path forward and the steps to get there. It won't be an inflexible plan, but will provide me with a way to bounce new ideas and demands on my time and energy off a solid visualization of my responsibilities, priorities, pleasures, and passions.
 June 28, 2009 Technically right now I am violating my self-imposed Internet embargo for today, an exercise in self-restraint that I've been calling "Internet Free Sundays." But if a weekend in the future is as productive and rewarding as this one has been, I would gladly do it again. Elissa and I were busy little social bees this weekend. A got a late start to the day and spent a few hours blissfully relaxing in the hammock in between cleaning the kitchen and my bedroom and doing laundry. I have many obvious mosquito bites on my leg from those hammock forays but due to a constant influx of loratadine, I feel no pain. In between I managed to sneak in 3 successful (out of 11 attempts) Field Day contacts from my home station. After a morning at our respective houses, Elissa and I met up at mine and headed out to the first of two evening parties: Melissa's going away party. We arrived before anyone at the scheduled start time of 7pm and were entertained by the host with a viewing of Dark City, nacho dip and offers of beers and soda. Sometime around 8:30 the guest of honor finally arrived (with an excellent excuse and to friendly jeers of "Melissa time" anyway) and after we got a chance to hang out in the lovely weather on the back porch with her, Elissa and I made our way back up to Parkville for the PDF Decom BBQ at Mike and Joanna's place. This morning in lieu of sitting on the Internet and being boring, we went out to the Shambala Center in Charles Village for morning meditations, followed by brunch at Tambers (an old custom for Elissa, a fairly new one for me). We were going to head directly over to Phil and Rebecca's place for Phil's 32nd birthday, but had scheduled it a little early in our calendars. With some time to kill before the party we did some essential shopping for pet supplies and new shoes. Now my kittens have yet another 40 pound supply of cat litter, a water bowl with a stand-up reservoir and a less tippable cat food bowl. Elissa's sister's dog Roger now has a new dog bed and tennis balls. I have a lovely new pair of work-casual shoes to replace the white sneakers I've been wearing for the last few weeks since I threw out my last neglected pair of shoes. Phil's party was lots of fun and featured a series of 80's movies including Labyrinth and Dark Crystal. We had an excellent time but I was still exhausted from the night before, the meditation this morning, and a series of somewhat sleepless nights lately. We left after a few hours and proceeded to descend on the messes in my house in a fury. I inspired Elissa to an energetic state by sweeping up my office/bedroom and putting all my books and reference stuff back into place. As I headed down to finish laundry, she was attacking the bathroom with a vengance. I've been pretty good about keeping up on things so there was only the usual cleaning and disinfecting for her to do. Meanwhile I loaded up the dishwasher, turned over the compost in the backyard, and washed the sheets and the week's (small load of) collected laundry. Now I'm laying back in a clean room, with only a few soaking dishes from my delicious chicken breast, rice and vegetables dinner in the sink, every article of clothing I own except for the clothes I wore today clean and waiting to be sorted, a tidy backyard, happy cats, and a spotless bathroom.
Ignite Baltimore #3 Take-aways in 140 characters or less:
More:
June 19, 2009 On radio: The ARRL reports "On June 19, 1934, 75 years ago today, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) -- replacing the Federal Radio Commission -- by signing Public Law 73-416, the Communications Act of 1934." Not many people realize that the amateur radio callsign of the Amateur Radio Association at the University of Maryland, W3EAX is actually older than the Federal Communications Commission. According to their site, the callsign 3EAX (also predating the W/K notation) was assigned "no later than early 1934," implying that the license would have been issued by the FRC. Wikipedia notes that prior to 1927, radio in the United States was regulated by the United States Department of Commerce. Some folks may remember in the past when I've told this story I thought they were the ones to issue the license, but that doesn't appear to fit the timeline. (Nearly) free association: Rob Sama points out via Adam Shostack that today is Juneteenth which is a celebration of the end of slavery in Texas in 1865 and also a portmanteau. Gerrymander is also a portmanteau (Elbridge Gerry and a salamander) and reminds me of the time in 2009 that 11 state senators ran to Albuquerque to keep Rick Perry from redistricting under Tom DeLay's plan.
Enoch Pratt Free Library to reduce hours The Baltimore Business Journal reports that the Enoch Pratt Free Library will reduce hours as part of a $2 million budget cut on July 1, 2009. Hat tip to Robert A. Oszakiewski via Artmobile. Follow link to Enoch Pratt Free Library to reduce hours Deeper Understanding of Martin Luther A few days ago Elissa and I went to see Wittenberg performed by the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival. The play by David Davalos is an intersection of the lives of the fictional Hamlet, Faust, and a fictional portrayal of Martin Luther. The play is too complicated and interwoven for me to pretend to have understood completely. What I was able to take away came from the juxtaposition of a religious and deep-thinking Luther against a rational and sardonic Faust. As the Luther character is challeged about his objections to the practices of the church and forced to defend them, I was better able to understand the internal difficulty he must have faced between his belief in both the bible and his investment in the institution of the church. This evening on All Things Considered, Melissa Block interviewed Joseph Sisto on the private collection of manuscripts, some of them illegal, that his father John Sisto had amassed over his lifetime. The interview on NPR is fascinating in its entirety, but more so the end where Sisto tells Block about the contents of the collection as it concerns Martin Luther. "No doubt the historians are going to find things that will be revealed to the public that will be pretty interesting," he says, "For example The Reformation by Martin Luther is documented in some of those manuscripts, and some of the papal decrees, and so forth. The persecution of the Jews in Europe is documented in some of those manuscripts. And the sale of indulgences that Luther was against is documented and actually signed and sealed by the popes. So finally proof that it actually happened and not just a dispute between Luther and the pope of the time." Follow link to Deeper Understanding of Martin Luther February 7, 1986 Over the last week or so I've been reading more than usual. I'm almost on par with how many pages I turned in my teenage years. Between occasional bouts with the feed reader and making my way slowly through the bookshelf of "must read" books over my desk, my mind's been awash in new information. I noticed it particularly this evening while reading Diana Block's book Arm the Spirit. On page 40, Block and her compatriots are in Minneapolis and trying to settle into their new lifestyle. There on February 7, 1986 she is following the overthrow of Jean-Claude Duvalier with some enthusiasm. Duvalier's unique nickname, "Baby Doc," rang a bell and after a few minutes of thought I realized I had read about him only a few days earlier in the story of "Learjet repo man" Nick Popovich. According to Salon, on the day of the coup, Popovich had been sitting in a Haitian prison for seven days for trying to seize a Boeing 707. Nearly as Duvalier was flying to the U.S. in an Air Force jet, Popovich was flying home in that 707. And on June 9, 2009, more than 23 years later, a book and an online article have connected those three people with me and with each other.
June 7, 2009 Housecleaning for me is a series of room reclamations. This weekend was good because I was able to reclaim both the kitchen and the bedroom. The question of how long they will stay this tidy is another question, but I tend to have a pretty good ability to keep things tidy so long as they don't cross over a certain invisible threshold into excessive disarray. For now an empty sink and clean counters mean that cooking a meal is only minutes away, and a clean desk and work table mean that all I need to descend on a project is to open the folder and process all the necessary tasks. Both rooms are a very precarious state -- if I need anything in any of the dozen cardboard storage boxes piled on the shelves, nearly every one of them wind up on the floor, and I found myself casually dropping dirty laundry on the floor just a few minutes ago. The rule of thumb seems to be that 20 days in a row is enough to set a new habit, and if I can use and clean the sink every day for the rest of this month, and keep my bedroom floor free of anything out of place, I should be able to maintain better habits going forward.
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence I watched Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence last night and kept waiting and hoping for the payoff at the end, but it never happened. It would be one thing if the movie was bad enough that I just stopped watching it early on and sent it back. I paused the movie at several times because I couldn't deal with it all in one sitting. Usually that would be the point where I would eject it and be done, but the movie had just enough potential and empty visual calories that I thought I would be rewarded for my persistence. Having watched and enjoyed the first movie in the series made a reward seem even more likely. Unfortunately the wrap-up was just as empty and self-serving as every other part of the movie, and I'm sorry I wasted my time. Follow link to Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence June 1, 2009 Back to work after the long weekend. Today was pretty boring, except for having my business cards ordered at work and enjoying a ham sandwich and Pepsi to the sounds of roots reggae while programming Quickbooks SDK functions. I admit for most people that would qualify as "still pretty boring." For those not in the rapid news feed world of Twitter and Facebook, I've been divorced since May 19, 2009. The paperwork came through on Friday and with everything going on I was just happy to show it off to a few people and revel in the weekend. Watched (and hated) the rest of Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence and read another chapter of Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister before bed.
May 2009 Net Worth Update First, a hat tip to Mapgirl for writing her May 2009 Net Worth Update and reminding me that mine was overdue. While I keep daily track of all my accounts, my analysis is often separated by a few months. I am within a half a percentage point of returning to the net worth I had when I started keeping careful track in September 2008. The graph line in the meantime looks like a big jagged smiley face, even though the numbers produce something more like a frown. The shorter term numbers are great: up 7.68% in the last 3 months, and 4.74% in the last six months. The turn of fortune is primarily due to the market upswing, but also from regular payment of debts: mostly mortgage debt, but also keeping credit card spending and payments low. My liquid and retirement assets are down 5% in the nine month term, but offset by a 1.4% increase in my fixed assets including house and car. The latter is entirely a result of decreased mortgage principal. The end result is that while my bank balances haven't shown significant change over the last nine months, my outstanding secured debt has declined and brought up my estimated net asset worth. It's a sobering counter-point to the strength of my financial situation: this is largely only a benefit I'll see on selling my house for something close to the state assessed value. A sale at a lower price or reassessment could easily reduce my paper worth by 60% and leave me essentially with only the money in the bank and retirement funds.
Life at Wal-Mart Wired senior writer Charles Platt takes on some of the assumptions Barbara Ehrenreich makes in Nickel and Dimed by also working at Wal-Mart. Follow link to Life at Wal-Mart May 31, 2009 Cool things that happened today:
Less cool things:
May 30, 2009 Cool things that happened today:
Burners at Art-O-Matic 2009 A list of burners at Art-O-Matic this year, compiled by Sherri Sosslau: BURNER EXHIBITORS:
BURNER EVENTS:
FIRE PERFORMANCES:
Reposted here with permission, annotations are mine.
Working Class Brett McCabe of the Baltimore City Paper covers the Free School Project in this article. Follow link to Working Class Free School Planning Meeting 6/4/09 7pm By way of John Duda:
May 18, 2009 Until the day I remove the clutter from my physical space, I never realize how much of a negative impact it has on my psyche. I feel like every few months I write the same thing in this space. It almost seems like it would be helpful to write how good a simple space and well-paced life can feel, perhaps on a poster over my mirror or a tattoo on the inside of my wrists. Even then I would probably rationalize away the benefits, assuring myself that I was totally capable of keeping the entropy in my life externalized from what was really important. That is, until the clutter displaces the important things in a hip-check of quiet anxiety and the question becomes moot anyway. But that's another day. Today, I have the freedom of space in my living room and on some (not all) of my active to-do lists. That sort of seemingly insignificant control is empowering and inspiring. If only the last few weeks of trudging through piles of physical and mental blocks hadn't left me with half of my usual energy, I might actually feel excited.
Sara Neufeld volunteers for Sun layoff Sara Neufeld volunteered to be laid off from the Baltimore Sun and writes about it in her InsideEd blog. Her story is at the link. Follow link to Sara Neufeld volunteers for Sun layoff May 13, 2009 Last night after a long day of work and not enough sleep the night before, Elissa, Ben, Adrienne and I ventured down to the H Street NE neighborhood in DC to celebrate Ben's 30th birthday. Even with the regular (bordering on incessant) D.C. burner activity that occurs at Palace of Wonders and the Rock and Roll Hotel, I had never made my way there before and all of the sights were knew to me. The neighborhood is also apparently also known as "Atlas" after the Atlas Theatre and has a storied history that Kevin Diaz details in his article "The Merchants of H Street" in the Washington CityPaper. On the way up the street to Sticky Rice we passed the R. L. Christian Library and our first thought was that it was a Christian religion focused library instead of just another branch in the District of Columbia Public Library system. After a filling meal of sushi and sake with Jamie we headed next door to Palace of Wonders and enjoyed some drinks and burlesque before heading back home. It was a long night (for me) for a Wednesday and I still have green ink on my hand, but I enjoyed every minute out.
Sweepercam Sweepercams are coming to Washington, DC. From the DC DPW Sweepercam FAQ on their web site (Hat tip to the PSA102 Neighborhood Safety Meetings blog and DCist):
And it's not just going to be for sweeping lanes for long. The last question on the PDF is answered:
Follow link to Sweepercam Robert L. Christian Community Library The Robert L. Christian Community Library is located at 1300 H Street, NE in Washington, DC, is part of the District of Columbia Public Library system and named after community activist Robert L. Christian. Follow link to Robert L. Christian Community Library Playa del Fuego 41 found tickets being sold on 5/16 12pm Via Ben Sarsgard, 41 found tickets for Playa del Fuego's Spring 2009 event will go on sale on the web site May 16, 2009. See the link for more information. Follow link to Playa del Fuego 41 found tickets being sold on 5/16 12pm Robert L. Christian According to the District of Columbia Public Library web site, "Robert L. Christian (1921-1969), a former resident of the community and long-time civic activist. Christian was remembered for his term as a Model Cities Ward Council member and for his charitable activities focussed on the Northeast Neighborhood House." The Robert L. Christian Community Library is named after him. Follow link to Robert L. Christian Announcing the Red Emma's Free School Project We've always been firm believers about the necessity for collective, horizontal, and accessible education down here at Red Emma's --- from the books we carry to the free internet access we offer, from the events we host at the storefront and at 2640 to the conferences and gatherings like the City From Below that we help organize, a large part of our mission has been about organizing for a better world through radical education and the distribution of information. Now we want to take this mission to the next level, with a permanent space dedicated to free education. We're envisioning courses on a wide range of subjects -- from learning a second language to fighting the prison industrial complex, from pattern making and print design to the history of surrealism and political economy -- and all offered absolutely free of charge to anyone interested. Because we know that many people might not have the time to teach or take a semester or year long course, we're anticipating a wide range of course formats, with full-length courses, weekly drop-in classes, short seminars, one-time lectures, and anything else an instructor thinks might work. We're hoping to make the course scheduling process as simple as possible --- essentially, go to a website and claim an empty time slot for a course you'd like to offer, and you're ready to go. We want a highly visible, thriving center for radical education that demonstrates the power of sharing knowledge freely instead of commodifying it. HOW YOU CAN HELP: We've got our eyes on a space, one right next to Red Emma's, which would be perfect for the project --- it's big enough to hold 25-30 people, cheap, with tons of natural light, and the proximity to Red Emma's drastically simplifies the amount of labor that would need to go into administrating the space. But offering 100% free education isn't going to pay the rent, so we're hoping to find people willing to help support the project with a small monthly contribution --- as low as $10 per month. If we can enough people to commit to collectively pay $500 per month total, we could be open as early as mid-summer. If we can't, this project isn't going to happen. So if you're able to help, head over to the website and click on the donation you'd like to make --- paypal will automatically charge your card each month. If we can't come up with the committment to reach $500, we will of course refund any money that's been collected. $500 a month just isn't that much money; for instance, this is 20 people willing to commit only $25 a month. So if you want to see this project happen, the most important thing to do is make a committment to donate monthly today. We're also going to need teachers and students --- although our initial impressions are that we'll have no shortage of either. If you'd like to offer a course, or would like to be put on the mailing list to keep up with courses being offered, let us know at freeschool@redemmas.org. We also anticipate that some parts of the day won't be terribly popular with learners and teachers, and it may be possible to use the space for small meetings -- while an exact fee schedule hasn't been decided upon yet, we imagine meetings might cost somewhere in the $10-20 range during off-peak hours. If your organization might be interested in supporting the new space by paying to use it for a weekly or monthly meeting, let us know at freeschool@redemmas.org what days/times you'd be interested in and what your budget looks like. We figure we'll also need the help of web designers and programmers, people willing to spruce up the space with a coat of paint, to design a new sign to hang over the door, to help us track down some cheap or free folding chairs and a blackboard -- but none of this work can really get started until we've got a committment from the community to support the space financially. So if you can afford it, make a committment to donate monthly today! If you can't please forward this message widely to people who might! Yours for a free education, The Red Emma's Free School Committee freeschool@redemmas.org This comes via the The Red Emma's Free School Committee, reposted here with permission. Annotations and links are mine. Follow link to Announcing the Red Emma's Free School Project Drinking Liberally 5/13/09 7pm Drinking Liberally is meeting on May 13, 2009 at Joe Squared on or around 7pm. If you're looking for an evening of hanging out with cool liberal-minded folks, this is where you want to be.
May 12, 2009 This morning I drove under Park Heights Avenue and saw a school bus and a fire engine on the overpass. Turns out eight people were hurt in the crash.
May 4, 2009 Rumor has it it's going to rain all week. It's only been a few days of this and already lots of people I talk to sound like they are ready to snap. I suppose Marylanders do not do so well in the climate of Seattle. That's probably why we're all here. I have a bunch of things I need to finish up tonight but my brainpower is all used up. Hopefully my morning energy will present itself tomorrow like the last few days and I'll be able to get an early start on things. The weekend was great. Spent a ton of time with my family and even made it up by a half an hour after midnight on Saturday morning. Lots of quality time with mom and dad and dinner with grandparents and a ton of folks I haven't seen in a while. One of my cats is being my own personal foot-warmer and the other is eyeing him cautiously from the corner of the bed. I can't tell whether the fighting is getting better or worse. Whichever way it's going, it's certainly well-balanced. The next few weeks are so cluttered with stuff I wonder if I will have any time to catch up on chores and hobbies. I enjoy being out and about but its so hard to find the time and energy for things outside of work these days. My plan sometime this month is to make the bike ride all the way from my house in Parkville to the Owings Mills mall. According to the Google driving directions, it's 16.2 miles, which is something I can do easily on a good day. And lest I forget, Happy Jedi Day.
Triggur on fart humor Triggur writes several hundred words about how fart humor is not slapstick, but a subtle, sandwich-like combination of enjoyment, revulsion, and Stockholm Syndrome. Follow link to Triggur on fart humor Dr. Bazelon testifies at taser task force Dr. Coleman Bazelon, an ACLU of Maryland board member, testified at the Attorney General's Task Force on Electronic Weapons hearing about civil liberties issues raised by current police taser training and policies. (HT: ACLU of Maryland)
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Hi, I'm Rob Carlson. I'm a 29 year old software developer born and raised in the suburbs of New Jersey and currently living and working in the suburbs of Baltimore, Maryland. I enjoy going to talks I find in the City Paper on topics I know nothing about, hanging out with my friends in the park, taking hundreds of pictures a month, writing every day, bike riding on trails and around town, keeping up on local politics, doing stuff with the folks in my neighborhood to make it a better place, drinking coffee, drinking beer, cooking (poorly for now, but I keep trying), pistol shooting, ham radio, camping whenever I get the chance, and being a geek. My goals in life are to harness the best technology available to solve problems, shatter bottlenecks, do cool stuff, get things done, impress my peers, lead by example, and change the world. Contact info:
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