BuJo Initiate

It’s the Ex week again, and like for the past few years now, I’ve taken it as holiday time. It has also been the habit to use the time to do practical economical household craft projects each year during this time, as sort of an advanced preparation for making winter a bit cozier. This time around is no exception. Last year, it was some carpentry to reclaim storage space; other years, it has been canning preserves. This year, I’ve minimized and simplified things even more for a multi-day project.

Over the past couple years or so, one positive habit I have been cultivating for myself is carrying

One template format I'm exploring . . .

around a pocketbook and pen. Sure, a note taking app on the phone is quite handy, but when in a pressured dash or impulse to record, capture, and recover something more instantly and accurately while it is on the tip of my brain, the pen and notebook beats the cellphone. I have been finding my old-fashioned pocketbook to be as indispensable to me as carrying my keys, wallet, and my cellphone. It has helped save me a lot of time, money, and energy, especially in spots when the phone had little to no battery power left.

I like technical innovation a lot, but honestly, only up to a certain point. We think we are doing well for ourselves by organizing our lives with apps on our phones and computers, but this is illusory on some levels. It is ultimately making us comply to a complex system that suits tech companies in finding new ways to control us with ones and zeros, and for them to glean more of our money and personal data from us. In this sense, apps can tend to cheapen the quality of your life, or they at least make the data of it more valuable to everyone except yourself. There is a point where we lose sight of being able to create a very personalized, customized, and more organic system that allows us to stage things better for our own organizational needs, our unique learning modalities, our own personal goals; one that accommodates for recording through our more private and practical eccentricities. Those ones are not for sharing, the non-bloggables: thoughts and ideas best left on a page of paper, with the privacy assured.

One of the things I regret about my formal education, from childhood on through to my early university years, in the days before academic computer use, and before the internet was available, is that I never had any teacher at any time of my life who put any effort at all on teaching me how to do the very essential and elemental thing for excelling in true higher learning. That is, really teaching me on how to organize myself with the practical skill of efficient written planning/journaling, and effective note taking. It seems absurd, but it’s true. Sure, I of course learned literacy, but only mastering merely the taking in and absorbing of information part of it. I always had substandard teachers and mentors for helping me exploit my strongest learning modalities to transpose, and express, what was going on in my head in the way I sensed it, and frame it in the best organized and condensed manner on to a page that was most memorable and comprehensive to me. My willingness to write, or “show my work”, as was always demanded of me, just wasn’t there, and from that I think I suffered greatly in such a way that I was always reticent, reluctant, reserved, made to feel embarrassed, about expressing any form of creativity at all through the written word or graphics for the longest time. I was no dullard, there was lots of thinking going on; but I was always embarrassed with my poor organizational ability of trying to sort it out on paper. Capturing thoughts through note taking was like trying to catch wriggling live fish with soapy hands. I improved a lot over the years, but my journey to get better at it has been a very independent and solitary one, and I missed the most critical of years of when what I know now would have served me better at an earlier time. I’m trying to actively compensate for that even today.

This all brings me now to making a concerted effort at learning something that encompasses serving me as a means of approaching efficient minimalism, enhancing my productivity, and being a creative pastime. Currently, I’m immersing myself in the craft of bullet journaling (or BuJo* for short)¹. Like most of my hobbies and pastimes, it is nerdy thing that is a nice blend of aesthetics that pleases the senses, and orderly precision that gets mathematical, scientific, and data oriented. What I gain from doing it is a clearer snapshot of how my mind works while figuring out goal-oriented objectives. One thing I’m noticing is that there is a great and drastic schism in the quality in my handwriting between the floodlight mind (cursive, observing and fervent collecting a vast array of thoughts instantaneously) and my spotlight mind (block printed, mindfully focusing and methodically organizing them on paper, without the pressure of time and other stressful distractions). Comparing the two is seeing my brain operating and functioning in two different levels, or existing on two entirely different worlds, for each process. I wonder if there is name for the weird psychological anomaly to describe this huge difference between each modality. Examples provided.

My manic, brain-on-fire,
"conspitated looking" as one
of my friends once called it,

cursive writing vs.

My relaxed and focused self

block printing

My goal with this pastime is to get a journal formatted and formulated with templates for the

One template I designed that I may 

use for seasonal tasks. I couldn't

 find anything like this in a stationary 

store. Custom made is the way to go!

remainder of this year and the entire coming new year. What will I do with it all? Well, to automate some plans without the actual need for technical automation; to make cybernetic changes and adjustments without the cyberspace. I’m not trying to think like a machine, but I am trying to enhance my own recording and processing of stuff in much the same way that computers do: more effort to taking a small codified, point/mark, or bit of info to record and ramming it through a formatted program or function to filter out a result. Pixilating points (or customized bullets) to track data is a simple and effective way to record progress. The gist of this being investing in time to structure a perfect (for me) format now so that I can waste very little time and material for recording stuff later. Minimal effort through simple coding that can lead to big results. There is stuff to enter that is not as simple as purely numerical, or a yes/no, true/false, 0/1,

kinds of data. Some stuff, of course, is trackable and traceable only on a spectrum, or layers of spectra, or else needs a full out verbal explanation. The modular nature of this system allows for this too. I’m most interested see what kind of artistic infographics I’ll be able to create and incorporate as well. I want to see if I can progress from being crude to making the great leap ahead of being . . . slightly less crude with my graphical talents. Most of the detailed subjects that I will be recording, and tracking, are too personal to post here. However, I will disclose the broader general reasons for this new objective:

• Shifting from Day to Night Mode – Someday, I hope not too soon yet, I will be transitioning to doing night shifts. It will be a major upheaval for my body and mind to adapt to, with phases of insomnia assured to come; my working memory being the worse off casualty due to that. Hence, I’ll have to get into the habit of writing things down more often to not lose track of things. Also, having lists of things to work through eliminates the burdensome and torturous task of having to make decisions in such a state (or suffering consequences of making bad decisions in that way, read further below).
  
• Total Schedule Reorganization - There then must be a major reorganization of my schedule for my daily activity, have a productive rhythm to my day; to conserve my energy, and my social life and relationships outside of work. 
  
• Monitoring Health – Another offshoot of switching to nights is needing to actively check myself over for signs of physical deterioration due to the odd hours and unnatural rhythm of wakefulness. Knowing and marking the ideal time to exercise, and what and when to eat during this (mal)adjustment period is critical also, since “breakfast” kind of doesn’t work (doesn’t feel right) as a meal option in mid-afternoon. Alcohol consumption periods are things to be mindfully reckoning with too. What gets measured gets mastered.
  
• Impulse Grounding – One of the things I have noticed after long bouts of insomnia is the poor ability to make sound decisions. The likelihood of acting on impulse rather than think things through rises significantly. For example, this is especially bad when I want to commit to a minimalist lifestyle, but then act on a reckless spending spree for impractical things after too little sleep. BuJo is a way to do a brain dump and check your thoughts outside yourself, with some frame of order, to analyze and weigh pros and cons. At the very least, the very act of doing this is a much cheaper alternative of using one’s time rather than falling into an impulsive habit of mindless consumption of whatever it is that one could possibly become addicted to.
  
• Cheap Hobby – It only needs: a writing instrument of your preference, and a good quality dot

  

  My entire Bullet Journaling kit.

  (or grid) paged journal for the basics. For refined line forming for edging and bordering and such, a cheap geometry set from a dollar store works. Additional lettering stencils and templates can be found cheap in an arts and craft shop, or even in a dollar store. Just engage the imagination, and that’s it. A minimalist’s dream come true! Very portable, and it doesn’t need a battery for power (except maybe just a good source of caffeine). It’s a big step upward from an adult colouring book anyway, and far more practical to use as well.
  
• Veering Away from Toxic Social/News Media – Simply substituting a bad use of time for a better, more constructive, one. I will have a genuinely more enriching time working on a means to sort my own life’s issues, and creating my own viable solutions for approaching problems and goals than thinking and believing, that during these turbulent politically charged times of the election season, that any government or other social institution, is going to be genuinely interested in doing that for me. It’s my time to opt out of indiscriminately spending too much time and attention on negative news and social media during these times of waiting for our nation’s federal election coming this October, and the bloody ridiculous circus of the still 454 remaining days of campaigning until the American election. Working on my own betterment through my journals will be a nice retreat away from all this.

The most satisfying and enriching thing about using BuJo as an analogue system of note taking and calligraphy²: purposely taking a plain word and page space and embellishing it such as to make it so strikingly elegant and distinctly vivid enough that it becomes impossible to ignore. Imagine then how much more powerful it would look when it is applied to a whole written thought or idea. Goals are made to appear to have an esteemed meaning, as truly worthy goals should. It somehow makes your own ideas and listed tasks and duties appear more alive/animated. Even the duller things on a to do list can then look like they could be integral parts of some overall grand adventure.

A potential syllabus list

with flipped open pages

to record book titles

journaling is the chance and choice to be liberally creative and expressive with stylish lettering and artwork in one’s journal, thus further stimulating and empowering one to use the entire brain; not just the analytical and logical left hemisphere. I really believe there is some weight to this as a benefit, adding artful flourishes through doodles, and calligraphy.

I’m coming closer to understanding why monks in the medieval era were charged with the tasks of illuminating pages, making copies of calligraphic manuscripts, and other such scrivenery. Apart from being just merely literate, to do such a job well very much requires and demands a deeply focused, disciplined, and meditative mind. It can be very relaxing. However, I’m certainly not a monk. The best advice I could give as a novice for starting a page template is just to dive right into it. It is 100% guaranteed that it will be imperfect at the start, making lots of mistakes in your initial formatting, lettering, and page section alignment. So, once that is all done, set it aside for a long while, have a drink or two, then come back and review it, and then be totally relentless, ruthless, and absolutely merciless with editing it, and redo it until you get the right design and style that really satisfies you. You are allowed be your own harshest critic since you are going to be the only one interacting with this material; you have no one to please but yourself by taking such a measure.

The first mess . . .

. . . then the final product. Custom made and adapted for a coding 

matrix system unique and personal to me, and again, 

it can't be found in any regular stationers shop.

I have nothing more to include with this entry, except for this last thought from a quote by the author of my guidebook:

“Each Bullet Journal becomes another volume in the story of your life. Does it represent the life you want to live? If not, then leverage the lessons you've learned to change the narrative in the next volume.”
― Ryder Carroll, The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future

*- I like Bujo because sounds more to me like some unique, Zen-based, Japanese term for some sort of work ethic discipline, like kaizen.

1. The initial resource I used was The Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carroll. I solidified the reason why I decided to undertake this; after that though, I’ve been finding a multitude of ideas for personalization on Pinterest.

2. I’m not ashamed to say, as a guy, that I love the artform of calligraphy. Before you scoff and think by default that it’s a sissy craft to do, consider this: the most instrumental class that Steve Jobs said he ever took (before he dropped out of college) which he said had been the most influential one for the inception of the Mac computer wasn’t a software programming class, wasn’t a computer science or engineering class; it was a calligraphy class. In a roundabout way, the practice of it forced him to see things differently through the elegance of design, and natural forms and ease of interface that made one want to engage with using a computer. Proper design is powerful stuff!

Multiphasic (Blessings)

The second week of this new year is approaching its end. It is the weekend of Malanka: the Orthodox(Ukrainian) New Year according to the Julian calendar. For me, it marks the official end of all mid-winter holiday feasting, at least those days that I’m familiar with, and not too soon either. There is no crueler and more brutally honest critique about how swinishly gluttonous one has been throughout the end of December/beginning of January than the discovery of how red the skin along the waistline turns, and how crushed one’s gonads feel, after trying to slip on and sport a pair of the tighter jeans that one owns in one’s wardrobe for the first time after the holiday season. It triggered a new motivator (see further below), but I digress. It’s so early, and I’m still trying to fix my bearing. This entry writing exercise has no fixed topic, and is as erratic and multiphasic as my periods of sleep have been. Throughout this second week of the year I was handed a mixed bag of blessings and curses; more of the former than the latter, thankfully.

I won’t get too specific about the curses except that they involved trying to muddle through toxic environments, which included: being almost overcome by fumes, and bracing for what I was suspecting to be a vermin infestation. Thankfully, the latter issue didn’t actually end up manifesting itself, and I could put my paranoia to rest.

My blessings were realizing that the stuff I put effort into learning a whole year ago didn’t just simply evaporate and disappear into the ether. I’ve been daring myself to use the Swedish and German I learned to read correspondence and interact with other new contacts by text. No one has reported to me yet that I’ve been too flawed or incomprehensible (or they’ve been too kind to say so). The fact that I’ve been cogent enough to remember these languages despite the lapse of their usage (and a fume-fogged mind) amazes me. The jeans issue as mentioned above, was my personal Harajuku moment (see The 4-Hour Body, by Tim Ferriss, page 38). It forced me to recollect what I did when I first primed myself to begin my journey back in the years when I became the fittest I’ve ever been. I realize that I’m actually in a better state of organization now, than when I started way back then, as I’ve been trying to reconfigure and reclaim some space in my office to set up a sensibly useful home gym. My last medical results shown that my lung tissues are now just about completely regenerated, and so I have no excuse to not get back into a regular exercise regimen. First, I must build up my core strength and joint flexibility, especially in the arm I injured back in 2016. Reclaiming and reconfiguring my space is a source of giving me some clarity of vision and purpose, nothing wrong with that, an extra motivator to reorganize other things beyond just this room.

Another bit of a blessing I guess, albeit a bewildering one for me, is for the fact that the New York Times recently listed the top 52 places in the world to visit in 2018, and strangely enough, my city, Saskatoon, was on that list. It made something like number 18 on it, and weirder still is the fact that it was the only Canadian city to appear on that list. If Saskatoon is considered to be such a gem, how bad off are the other places in Canada really? I won’t complain that it appeared in this card deck full of places on this globe that merit a visit. I guess it’s even more of an impressive accolade considering that the dominant buzzword circulating in the news for this week, to describe other places, even though it isn’t even being said outright, is “shithole” (no thanks to the grand poohbah of all idiot US presidents, Trump). Thankfully with this review, Saskatoon has managed to rise above all that. I’m just befuddled though as to the how and why it became selected. I would reckon that their research team obviously didn’t account for the winter months. They cite the Remai art gallery as an attraction; I have yet to see it myself, because I’m saving that visit for company who would genuinely appreciate it with me, so I can’t yet judge based upon that. But if I were asked now what makes Saskatoon an attractive city, I would suggest that wandering the Meewasin valley trails in the summer is the best thing you can do to figure that out for yourself, or visiting the Farmers Market, or else grabbing a coffee and enjoying it outside around the park by the Bess or by the river, or a pint in one of the pubs downtown or on Broadway. It’s quite festive during summer (to offset our all too brutal winters). It’s a bigger city that still feels like a small town, with enough people around who’ve been raised rurally, or remain connected to each other in a down-to-earth, close-knit folksy manner, who help diffuse away the pretentiousness and snobbery of something more urban and edging towards elitism, sided along with a huge multicultural blending that gets along a lot better with this sort of mix than most other places on Earth. For the most part, the people are generally approachable and friendly. The food scene is very diverse for a smaller urban centre. People from out East who come here for the first time generally express surprise at how seemingly cosmopolitan Saskatoon is, with their beliefs dashed by not finding more of a redneck culture being prominent for this place, as what is typically expected by them about Saskatchewan. One point of infamy about Saskatoon though, is its perceived high rate of crime. The city has been rated in the top ten worst Canadian cities for criminal activity for many consecutive years. I argue that Saskatoon actually isn’t that much more harsh or severe for criminal activity over most other cities in Canada. Sure, it’s higher, but not so much as to make it among the worst per capita. It’s just that with the close-knittedness of the community here, citizens here are far less likely to be complacent or dismissive when dealing with, or witnessing, suspicious activity in their neighbourhoods, and so are far more likely to report it, while people in most other larger centres tend to under report actual criminal activity. This naturally skews the crime stats on a higher rate for Saskatoon, I’d even say drastically. The shithole parts of this city (or of any city) is where people under report crime because of the sectors of the population that are intermingled in gang activity, and thus won’t squeal on each other. The police here are awesome too, both in terms of response times and availability, and dealing with most civic problems very tactfully, responsibly, and professionally no matter how trivial or severe on the spectrum. The city isn’t huge, so they can respond faster than bigger centres, and they give attention to calls that cops in larger centres wouldn’t trouble themselves to expend manpower for (and thus not recorded and accounted for in their  statistics). Naturally then, this extra availability and responsiveness of the peace officers here thus generates and facilitates more stats processed for criminal activity. In reality, I feel quite safe here in this city, as opposed to someplace like East Hastings in Vancouver. The Pareto principle also applies to crime stats where it’s figured 80% of criminal activity is done by 20% of a sector of criminals, except here in Saskatoon I’d say that it’s more like 90% of such crime is committed by 10% of the criminal population.

Throughout this week, the best blessing of all of them all was reuniting and reconnecting with someone from my past on a more soulful level. Thank you, you know who you are.

Home Office Zen

"I consider "work" in its most universal sense, as meaning anything that you want or need to be different than it currently is." - David Allen, author of Getting Things Done

I love that definition of work: it's elegant, simple, yet progressive. I used much of my Thursday and Friday performing upgrades and sorting and purging old files (hard and soft) from my hard drives and cabinets, and posting and distributing stuff I had for correspondence. De-cluttering and clearing all that stuff up to completion felt like a monumental achievement. Happiness is ending a day with a paper-free desk and clear work table. I'd like to keep those spaces that way for a while. In theory, eventually the emptiness of those spots after a couple days will prompt and beckon me to think and focus on what I really want to see in that office space for ideas and creativity which translate to the components of projects that I want or need to tackle next. Hopefully, this effort will serve me in the same way as having a weed-free field does in which to plant stuff. However, if I still have to work my night shift on Monday, it will be pointless to begin anything before then. I shouldn't be entertaining, or playing around with the stupid, trippy ideas I get after any prolonged bout of insomnia.

I say 'components of projects', because the habit of deconstruction is something I have to learn how to use and value more. Everything I plan to do in the next while will be multi-staged, I have only small windows of personal time at home nowadays, so it's necessary that I break things up into smaller ordered tasks.

My knee is getting somewhat better; slowly though. I'm lucky that I didn't get hasty for an early registration for the Mogathon half marathon Race, which is happening today, I would have had to withdraw my application and lose my money. However, for each week of progress my joints are making in healing themselves, it seems like the heart/lung function and breathing capacity that I worked so hard in building up for in training are degenerating twice as quickly.

Physio Stuff

Like dealing with the repercussions of this wretched winter, trying to cope with these injuries and their consequences with constantly expressing bitter complaint does nothing productive, nor is it conducive, to improving the matter. So, after this entry, I'm going to put some effort into toning all that down. Venting these frustrations only reflects my lack of patience. I just want desperately to move on forward with something more progressive, life-affirming, and positive. I should be concentrating on turning this downtime into something I could use for my advantage.

I can honestly say that the massage treatment yesterday was one of the most excruciating experiences I ever had in my life. And unfortunately, it isn't the only one I'll have to have. It basically involves getting old muscle and scar tissues teased and ripped apart, so stuff can heal back together normally again. In essence, it re-stationed me back to square one, as it rendered me cramped up and limping again, so there is no chance in resuming training this week. However, in it was the bitter lesson of how poorly I've been taking care of myself, in that I'm not getting adequate rest. After that torment, it made me even more determined to stop further allowing my body to become a busted up piece of junk.

Today, after some recommended physiotherapy exercises, I'm going to try to throw my mind into learning some of the long list of techy stuff that I've been curious about, within those moments when I'm not too distracted by pain.

Here is a video of one of the things I am to do. I figured that I'd share it, as it might be beneficial for my other friends who are fellow runners, and cohorts who I know are on their feet all day.

Getting Unstuck, and Bond-ology

I was muddling through Thursday wondering what I was going to do through the weekend. The last dump of snow was so de-motivating. Initially, I was just in no mood to take on any extra home projects, but then I looked in my fridge. I've been trying to eat healthier again, buying more fruits and veggies, but with the neglect because of the long days at work, I discovered that it was looking more and more like a regular bachelor's refrigerator. It was coming close to the point when brown stuff was turning green, and when the green stuff starts turning brown. In another couple of days, I'm sure I'd be able to roll up the lettuce and smoke it. Without intending to do so, I managed to create my most efficient mise en place ever. I created a lot of recipes, some classy ones, for very cheap. It was my first measure for getting unstuck. The fates conspired to push me along through the process further yet in an interesting way.

With the return of warmer weather, I had to take advantage of trying to put some effort into getting more physically active. Motivation to move though has still been lacking. My performance in both running and skiing has been erratic and more taxing on me than usual. My lung capacity is still greatly diminished, and it's putting more strain on my breathing and circulation than I find comfortably acceptable. I decided that I needed to get the compatible heart rate monitor that transmits the reading to my GPS sports watch for biofeedback. It seems like I have to outsource my willpower in the form of gadgets and apps. I went to three different stores before I finally found it. At the place I found it at, the price tag listed it at $79.99 before taxes, I paid with plastic. When I collected the receipt, I saw that I was charged only $21.99 after tax. Either there was a flyer discount I wasn't aware of, or some scanning error that perhaps rang in the wholesale price instead; whatever the case I didn't argue about it. CoincidentalIy, I have to note that I checked my lotto tickets earlier and won twenty two dollars. It was a fluke that it covered almost the exact cost of the monitor. This bit of serendipitous luck was as if karma was dictating and making it such that I had to have this unit. All in all, my heart monitor really only cost me three bucks, the price of the lotto ticket. As it has been though, nothing else was mentally making it anymore inspiring to run harder, and while I was skiing this weekend, imagery of machine gun toting henchmen pursuing me didn't make me move any faster, which leads me to the next subject.

The final thing that has been giving me a bit more inspiration to move more is the 50th anniversary set of the 007 movies on loan to me, and watching my more favoured of the action-packed series all weekend. Thus comes the list part of my entry:

Top 10 Favourite Bond Films

1. Skyfall
2. Casino Royale
3. Goldfinger
4. For Your Eyes Only
5. Dr. No
6. Quantum of Solace
7. Goldeneye
8. Die Another Day
9. The Living Daylights
10. View to a Kill

My Choices for the Five Worst Bond Films

1. Never Say Never Again*
2. Live and Let Die
3. Moonraker
4. Licensed to Kill
5. On Her Majesty's Secret Service

My Five Favourite Bond Villians

1. Le Chifre (Mads Mikkelson)
2. Silva (Javier Bardem)
3. Jaws (Richard Kiel)
4. Max Zorin (Christopher Walken)
5. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Donald Pleasence)

My 15 Favourite Bond Girls

1. Melina Havelock, For your Eyes Only (Carole Bouquet)
2. Jill Masterson, Goldfinger (Shirley Eaton)
3. Major Asimova/XXX, The Spy Who Loved Me, (Barbara Bach)
4. Honey Rider, Dr. No (Ursula Anders)
5. Severine, Skyfall (Berenice Marlohe)
6. The Cigar Girl/Assassin, The World is Not Enough (Maria Grazia Cucinotta)
7. Christmas Jones, The World Is Not Enough (Denise Richards)
8. Pussy Galore, Goldfinger (Honor Blackman)
9. Xenia Onatopp, Goldeneye (Famke Janssen)
10. Domino, Thunderball (Claudine Auger)
11. Solange, Casino Royale (Carterina Murino)
12. Elektra King, The World Is Not Enough (Sophie Marceau)
13. Miranda Frost, Die Another Day (Rosamund Pike)
14. Plenty O'Toole, Diamonds Are Forever (Lara Wood0
15. Naomi, The Spy Who Love Me (Caroline Munro)

My 10 Favourite Action Scenes

1. The showdown at Skyfall Manor (Skyfall)
2. The little yellow car chase (For Your Eyes Only)
3. The Tank in Moscow Scene (Goldeneye)
4. The Parkour Chase in the Madagascar Construction Site (Casino Royale)
5. The Miami Airplane Fuel Truck Ride (Casino Royale)
6. The ski jump parachute scene (The Spy Who Loved Me)
7. The Ski/Motorcycle Chase (For Your Eyes Only)
8. The Thailand Canal Boat Chase (The Man with the Golden Gun)
9. The Fencing Club Dual (Die Another Day)
10. The Port au Prince Boat Chase (Quantum of Solace)

Ten Stupid/Sucky Things of the Bond Films

1. For Your Eyes Only - A glaring technical mistake about the oxygen/helium respirator mixture. If their tanks were full of  helium, they would have been speaking like Munchkins.
2. Diamonds Are Forever - Mr. Kidd and Mr. Wint. Enough said.
3. Never Say Never Again - Not being able to classify Kim Basinger as a Bond girl, because this movie can't be ever thought of as a Bond film
4. Man With the Golden Gun - The midget Nick Nack, and funhouse props juxtaposed to a state of the art solar energy converter, WTF??!!
5. Moonraker - Mr. Drax, like come on. . . if you are going to be a bat shit crazy megalomaniacal villain, at least try to have a personality that varies a bit from that of a brown sock.
6. The Living Daylights/License to Kill - Locking Timothy Dalton's place as the "spazzy" Bond.
7. Thunderball - The underwater battlefield scene was rather slow for an action scene, the bubbles do a lot to obscure the shots. The "airlift" ending was pretty cheesy too.
8. Sean Connery - Hey, I like the guy; but is it just me, or do other people find it as freaky and distracting upon noting how the far ends of his eyebrows almost appear to be trying wrap themselves around to the back of his head? I guess tweezing wasn't a popular option back in the sixties.
9. Octopussy - I think you've lost more than a bit of screenwriting talent when you are trying to introduce a rotary saw yo-yo thing as a legitimate possibility for an assassin's weapon. 
10. Live and Let Die - I hated this instance and effort on the part of the franchise to mess around with Blaxploitation, no matter how cool they thought it was to do at the time.

*- Never will this be ever considered a proper Bond film.

First Night Shift of 2013: Post Game Beer

"A day without sunshine is like. . . well, you know, night." - The words of wisdom found on the underside of a bottle cap from a bottle of Hoptical Illusion Almost Pale Ale*
 

I'm utterly amazed and shocked right now that my brain still has the capacity to string/wire/connect together enough neurons in a series, to allow me to write this entry. I've only had two hours, within a period of thirty-four, of sleep so far. I'm trying to find the right words for all the anger and frustration, but it's hopeless. My effort to make it home in time before sunrise was all in vain. I'll only add that in the future, it would probably be in my best interest use every valid and legal measure available to get out of this bi-fortnightly fiasco. I might even have to go so far as to start watching out for this particular moon phase, or run into some bunker somewhere whenever this kind of Monday night comes along again. The shift itself went reasonably well. What I'm more pissed off about is the wretched chain of events prior and after the shift. I won't go into any great detail; I'll just say that within that time the matters involved: -42 C below wind chill, my car stalling, a sadistic dental hygienist**, 15 extra kilometres worth of walking, an idiotic CAA customer service rep, my neighbour's stupid car alarm, and a subsequent migraine, and the entanglement of all these events that are so bothersome that I'm resorting to something from a source with such a bizarre appellation as "Flying Monkeys" to pacify and sedate myself. I also have this to use (11 Tricks for Perfect Sleep)from my author-buddy, Tim Ferriss, who describes my particular form of insomnia to a tee.

Anyway, this particular beer I'm sampling seems to be extra endowed and bittered with some intense notes of dry finishing hops. Hops have the compound Humulone (alpha-lupunic acid), which has anti-viral properties, serves as a nerve and gastric tonic, and has sedative/hypnotic properties.

"He who drinks beer sleeps well. He who sleeps well cannot sin. He who does not sin goes to heaven. Amen." - Monk, Name unknown 

Ross Murray, writer for the Montreal Gazette once said: "Listening to someone who brews their own beer is like listening to a religious fanatic talk about the day he saw the light." He is, to a degree, quite right; it's only the state of exhaustion I'm in right now that keeps me from expounding more about it, or else I'd be in total beer snob mode right now. I'll simply end off with sharing my favourite beer-related limerick:

On the chest of a barmaid in Sale
Were tattooed the prices of ale,
And on her behind
For the sake of the blind
Was the same information in Braille.
-Anonymous  

* - Enjoy the free advertising plug there Flying Monkeys Craft Brewery (Where Normal is Weird). . . You're welcome!
**- I actually now believe that it's quite possible to get lobotomized through the probing around the nerves of one's molars and gingiva with a pointy sharp metal instrument.

12/12/12

Other than coincidental order of the date numerals for this day, of this month, of this year, there is nothing especially notable about it, except for feeling perhaps the onset of SAD (seasonal affective disorder) coming on strongly within this past week: given the temperatures falling below -20 C, the wind, and cloudy snowy skies. I'm more de-energized than cold really. Walking to and from work, the bare minimum of exercise that I feel I need to do in a given day, only serves to drain me instead of invigorating and helping me to focus like it usually does. Nothing of significance at home seems to give me interest anymore, or I just can't seem to put my mind into whatever I'm doing: organizing and doing the simplest of tasks are just giving me constant headaches and overwhelming me. I'm totally unmotivated to even leave home, and knowing that I still have holiday shopping to do isn't helping me either. My appetite is gone, and when I do eat, I'm tending to fail to do so mindfully. I'm going to stop the complaining now, before the other myriad reasons, bad news, and negativity in work and life that are bringing me down get subjected to more examination, and start anchoring themselves in my head.

The latest thing I've been researching, since I got into skiing this winter, is Nordic pole walking. I've noted that the skiing has been improving my posture a bit, and I think it's due to strengthening my core muscles by using the poles. I'm hoping that the poles may help to normalize my stance while trying to walk on the icy streets outside may help in curing my sciatic pain. Hunching over, and staring at the feet constantly while trying to avoid slipping I'm sure is doing me no favours beyond fall prevention. Hunching over is also the stance of depression/non-confidence, and I'm desperate enough to try a remove the symptoms/remove the disease kind of logic. Re-posturing myself with this exercise may help reverse some of the psychological symptoms of depression as well.

I wish 12/12/12 would be something really special, since it's the only date that will appear in this form in my lifetime, but as it is, I'm just wishing that it were something else than it is now, or what I'm expecting it to be.

Early Snow, Combo-Abundance, and the Hell of Clothes Shopping

As I mentioned in one of my postings, I'm finding it a bit of a downer after the dump of snow we received a couple days ago; knowing that if it remained until spring thaw, we would be having nine more weeks of snow coverage compared to last winter, when we didn't get a lasting snow until sometime between Christmas and New Year's Day. Of course last year was an abnormal winter in its lateness, just as this year is abnormal in its earliness. Nature, I guess, is just balancing itself out. Normally, for this region in Canada, the snow that lasts through all the winter season arrives in mid-November, and remains until around the end of March. There is a small chance that this recent snowfall might still disappear, but with the temperatures predicted to drop to minus 15 ºC overnight this weekend, I highly doubt that it will.

The coming of this early snow is prompting me to think and do several things that work interdependently and consequentially with each other:

1. I dig through my closets to switch over my clothing for the season (also see point #10).
2. I pitch out, or put aside to donate, clothes which are overworn, or which don't fit or suit me anymore.
3. I'll be taking my clothes to one of local thrift stores, which would be having a higher business volume now due to Hallowe'en coming next the week.
4. While there, along with contemplating the irrationality of having a traditional observance in the year where we celebrate the supernatural, superstitions, and stuff that scares us, I calculate the degree of waste occurring when we buy 'ceremonial' clothing or costumes that we only use one day within a year (or in our lifetime) to wear. 
5. After donating my old stuff, I'll be forcing myself into the arduous task of shopping for the list of clothes and winter gear that I may lack.
6. I think about how much of a pain in the ass it is for me to shop for clothing (leading to point #9)
7. With the coming of the snow, it triggers me to wonder how close to Christmas it actually is (exactly two months from today I realize), and hence make it a point to try to procure some extra savings for the holiday.
8. I monkey around with figures more to avoid depriving myself before and after the Chistmas holiday.
9. I'll willingly opt to stay inside more, giving more attention to my home environment (convergence at point #12).
10. After digging through my closets, and knowing running outside isn't very safe anymore, I pull out my home gym equipment, and try it out (more to ease my guilt about buying this stuff, and yet not using it on a more regular basis). Also serves as a reminder to not let myself balloon out of the few well fitting pants I have because of more physical idleness during winter.
11. Thinking back to point #7, I spend more time thinking about what practical things I could use around here which I could get on the Boxing Day sales. Skip to next point.
12. Being inside my place more leads to more tinkering with things and cooking (as home economics projects to save some money, point #7), and playing around with more puzzles and number games to quell boredom. I also resolved to use this winter to read more, and re-learn things about science and advanced mathematics (and making practical use of them, as the case through exploring and answering point #14).  
13. Thoughts of avoiding a sense of deprivation (point #8), rummaging through my closets and drawers (point #1 & #10), clothes shopping (point # 5), messing around with recreational mathematics (point #12), add to that the ridiculous manner of consumption and hoarding I have been witnessing a few people partake in, leads me to think about the last point as a open ended question about other psycho-social problems regarding greed and coveting things:
14. Why can't people use more common sense, arithmetic, and logic to determine:
1. The possibilities and abundance they already have through the application of probability and statistics?
2. How much is 'enough' before wasting more time, money and energy on items that become insanely superfluous and turn into a ridiculous collected/hoarded surplus?
3. The most efficient way to shop for stuff, and how to sense better about which things are 'wants' and which are 'needs', especially if one is already the sort that is on a fixed income*?

Let me provide an example, especially relating to 14.1 and 14.2. Suppose all your clothing vanished from your closets except for eight of each garment of your basic essentials**: in this case (thinking as a guy), they would be eight pairs of shoes, eight pairs of socks, eight pairs of undergarments, eight pairs of bottoms (trousers/jeans), eight belts, eight T-shirts, eight overshirts, and eight outerwear garments. Let's also suppose you have the right style going for yourself with each garment (i.e. each pair of pants will suit well with all the shirts you have, all socks go with the all the shirts and shoes you own, etc.). Thus, you would then already have 8⁸ ,or 16,777,216*** different possible permutations to wear as ensembles out of just this bunch of clothes alone. Supposing even that you eliminated choices by a wearing fresh ensemble of each kind of clothes item each day of the week, after randomly picking out your first outfit (as per the conditions of the ** footnote), within those seven days you still have 7,907,396 possible ensembles to choose from through the whole week(7,907,395 choices technically, since you would be reduced down to one pair of shoes, one, pants, one belt, one shirt, etc., by the last day so you would really have no choice left to make to dress yourself) even as you eliminated options by tossing each ensemble set in the hamper/not using them for the rest of the week after you wore them for a day.**** Knowing this now, how could you ever feel deprived if you stopped and looked at your closet with even more stuff in it than what I just gave as an example? The fashion police, compulsive clothes shoppers (whose delusions I just torched), and a few teenage daughters, are still already probably plotting to put a price on my head for mentioning this. Mugatu has probably already selected and trained the assassin to do it. I'll probably be strangled with a piano key necktie in my sleep (see Zoolander, hilarious movie).

If this is what's possible with just eight shirts, eight pants, eight pairs of underthingles, etc., can you imagine what goes through a mind like mine when I'm faced with the challenge of gazing at racks loaded with clothes in a store, and having to pick out something? Option paralysis takes over, and that's why I need the assistance of a female friend with a keener sense of my sartorial style than I have, to help me with colours, cuts, patterns and whatnot; to at least help pick out one item out for me and to provide a foundation to shop around, or else I'd be forever wearing jeans and plain T-shirts.

For regular day to day affairs, so long as what I have on fits right, feels and smells clean, and doesn't brand me as being some sort of friggin' redneck/cowboy or any other kind of hoodlum, I could care less about what I'm wearing, or having matching tags, or comparing my wardrobe to what someone else has on. To be honest, the famous people I have most respect for are those who coincidentally use the equivalent of plain brown wrappers as garb. Billionaire Warren Buffet, the Wizard of Wall Street, being as rich as he is, got away with wearing unpretentious simple cotton shirts, slacks and a blazer for a long time before finally being pressured by some cohorts into "looking respectable" by moving up to wearing $1,500.00, off the rack, Zegna Italian suits to work. Steve Jobs' business attire was a black turtleneck, jeans, and Nike runners. Mahatma Gandhi got by with even less. Their wisdom overshadows any flaws in dress and appearance they may have had. People who constantly have to overdress*****, to me, are doing their damnedest to try to shield some insecurity, or other major defect in their personality. I sure as hell won't trust some guy wearing gold jewelry, or a $3,000.00 suit, who is begging for money for a ministry, that allegedly preaches the words of wisdom of a Jewish carpenter who did his mission by wearing only a simple robe and sandals.

*- Like those reckless spenders I've been watching.
**- By essentials, I mean the kind of clothing that you walk out of your house looking presentable and feeling comfortable in 95% of the time. I'm being generous here with the number eight, that's one of each item to wear each day of the week, plus one extra to have on stand by should you have to change once midday if you slop something up, or to have something to wear while you are using one of the days in the week to launder your other outfits (unless you do your laundry naked, but that's your business). For the sake of a little more simplicity, I eliminated null options (going without a jacket, sockless, beltless, or going commando), or else there would be nine options for each respective clothing article.
***- Another way of looking at this: if each and every day you tried to wear each one of those different combinations of that given set of clothes, without repeating any one ensemble exactly, you'd have to live roughly 45,933.5 years (leap years accounted for) to do it.
****- [number of choices for each item]^{(number of items in ensemble)}, therefore adding the remaining possiblities made by each elimination for each day throughout the week, ( 7⁸ + 6⁸ . . . +1⁸ ), yields the remaining possible permutations. I was totally wrong earlier with a posted answer using a factorial analysis. This entry may yet need corrections. This is exactly the point of my wanting and trying to learn advanced math. I know do well enough that the answer is a hell of a lot larger than 23. It's a number still large enough to challenge the status quo about how one can have tremendous outcomes with relatively few options.
*****- This includes overdoing it with the makeup for women.

Running Harder, but Standing Still

I finally did something yesterday that involved straying off to someplace different than work or home within this past week. I bit of browsing at McNally Robinson and enjoyed a light lunch with my friend; sadly it was all the energy I had in me for that day. Browsing wasn't as enjoyable as it usually is for me. As much as I wished to do more reading, my eyes have been too fatigued and sore for it, plus I've been stricken with recurring headaches. It's probably due to too much extra time used staring at screens, processing code and formulae throughout the week, and monitoring the FX charts before the start, and after the end, of each day of a string workdays 10 hours long. I'm sure that typing this is will even become challenging shortly.

The title of this entry is a bit of a misnomer. By running harder, I mean it seems to take more energy and a higher pain threshold to commit to doing it at this time of the year. I didn't run all week: the damp coldness has been giving my knees grief. The lack of doing it is making my metabolism level head south, as indicated by my tightening waistbands on my pants. I resolved to at least get out today, no matter what, but I wonder if the resulting shock and pain to lose an extra couple pounds would make it worth doing. I plodded along at some distance over 5 kilometers this morning: better than nothing I suppose. I went outside, absent-mindedly wearing my running shorts and light jacket. I honestly didn't sense how cold it actually was until near the end of my run when I visually noticed that the shoulders of my black jacket were coated with white frost from my condensed expired breath. My knees didn't suffer that badly thankfully.

There is a treadmill in my building's rec room to use, but I discovered recently that the damn thing is busted. So much for that option for winter training. I can't really stand treadmills anyway. It seems that I need some perception and sensation of moving through physical space and traversing an actual distance to make it feel like running is benefiting me. There is the indoor track at the local Field House, but I'm trying to avoid paying a mint to use it. Walking and cycling, at least for now, are still viable. There have been still good results. I'm noting that yesterday, even during this time of the year, was the first time I used my car in a week. The most heartbreaking thing to see along my trips by the river this week has been the unceremonious demolition of the Victoria Street Bridge.


The hope of getting to use this bridge deck to jog on is officially extinguished.

I'm struggling to figure out where to apply myself today, the second day of a three day weekend. I find I almost dread having unstructured time off, because it seems that I waste half of that precious time, and even more energy, which I don't feel like I have, trying to structure it. Blogging now, in it's own way, serves to help me piece that together.

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read or write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.”
-Alvin Toffler

One thing I did do, in keeping with my riding the wave of decluttering and living more frugally, was clearing away some books I found, which someone in the building gave away as freebies as they were moving. So, I took them to my favourite local used bookstore to exchange them for something more meaningful for me*. I was in non-fiction mood, craving something in the realms of finance, math or science: things I definately don't hear sensible conversations about when I'm at work. One cheap book I found that I was willing to re-read was Innumeracy: mathematical illiteracy and its consequences, by John Allen Paulos. This edition I bartered for is from 1990, but the truth in it is as valid now as it was back then. Now that I find myself playing around with numbers more, I thought it would be prudent to detect and extinquish those remaining numerical fallacies and statistical errors I myself still succumb to. The sad and dangerous thing though is that the more educated I get about such stuff by reading this book, the more likely I am to detect just how much more stupid people around me will seem when they are trying to argue opinions around me and are trying to stick in figures they don't understand into the mix. Thus, my respect for them begins to quickly retract (to put it lightly), and I just fear more for the future of humanity in general once such people somehow gain more power.

*- I spent no actual money, I made a tidy little profit in terms of store credit, I gave old books new life, it helps to save a tree or two, plus by buying through this kind of discount I have the satisfaction of sticking it to the man by avoiding the rip off of paying an average 12% higher listed Canadian price for a book (even in e-book format) when the looney is close to parity with the US dollar. I feel it's all good karma for me.

Progressive Apps

I have no clue as to why I feel jazzed up today, except for the fact that I've been really nerdish and anal about getting a few more applications and organizational tools working for me in a good way, and having a few more 'Eureka!' moments and breakthroughs as I continue to pursue re-establishing some sort of order to my personal domain.

I'm still struggling to bend my brain around some of the more abstract portions of my learning modules in the programming manual. I suppose after comparing programming to all else which I construe as a bothersome problem to deal with, I've given these things a new perspective, and they now appear a lot less difficult to manage. Whether it's done formally or informally, I'd highly recommend it to everyone to learn some kind of programming. It's not just about sorting out variables and configuring data to be processed. It's also about understanding the flow of information, and having that flow and following it's momentum is what is needed to get out of a rut when blocked by a problem.

With gaining more knowledge and skill at programming and flow of information, one becomes more attune to the concept that any common problems are just forms of information that need re-processing. Circumstances never arise with any label of "good" or 'bad' attached to them. Circumstances only become problems whenever they conflict, clash, and interfere with whatever ambitions, goals, missions, or ideals of progress we've set for ourselves, and then get wrapped up in our own dramas that we build around them. Most of the challenge in dealing with them is just breaking up things into manageable sets and putting them in a much simpler framework. Keeping motivated, monitoring , and applying action is the rest of the job.

My iPhone is armed with these apps that I find especially useful. If anyone knows of one that creates good flowcharts and fish bone graphs, I'd love to hear about then. Here are a few productivity apps that I find especially useful when I'm mobile, and when I want to capture, analyze, compare, and chart ideas that strike me from out of the blue:

Simple Minds - What this app is for is mind mapping: taking a central theme and creating related offshoots to build upon the idea to provide options and enhancements. It allows one to follow through with some open-opened creativity. It's relatively simple to use, and the variable colours can be helpful for coding categories.

MindTools - A nice little compendium of productivity strategies, for helping me to get out of ruts for planning complicated things. The problem solving and the exercises to challenge assumptions are some of my favourite ones in this app.

PDF Reader - Generally OK to transfer PDF files to, but on the iPhone screen, even with expanding the view, details of the fine print on a letter-sized paper formatted document are a little hard to read.

Graphio (Lite) - A cool little piece of productivity software that makes diagrams and graphs for flowcharts and more. The only flaw it has is the difficulty in bringing up the keyboard to label the chart objects. This prevents me from bothering to upgrade to the full version.

OneNote - This Microsoft app is a very dumbed down version of the full MS Office OneNote program. There is a checkbox function for to do lists, a point form outline maker, and photo capture button, but nothing else really. The only saving grace it has is for collecting rudimentary material, which can then be uploaded to a desktop/laptop for more detail with colour coding and graph making.

Dropbox - This provides instantaneous picture sharing with all cloud connected devices from your pics and other files. Simply splendid for faster processing of shared photographs, and posting them on blog entries. The process of having to email them to myself first was very cumbersome in comparison.

Evernote - A very good note app for collecting tags and sharing with other wi-fi connected devices. Unlike OneNote, it will record voice and index your tags and categories for you.

Lift  - The newest one I collected so far. It is what can be termed as a positive habit recorder and monitor. You can pick from a shared list of, or create your own, habits that you want to include in your life and stick with. It's a checkmark diary of sorts, to monitor your progress and account for all the little things that will amount to greater goals. It will also link one with a support community, some of whom are monitoring the same things they wish to include in their lives as you, who can even give you props to encourage you.

One Quarter Left: of the Year ... and of Me

October began yesterday, so now we're into the beginning of the final quarter of the year. It opened with me making a platelet donation at Canadian Blood Services, and then going through the futile process of trying to rest before doing my stupid night shift.

I gave up in frustration with trying to rest through the day to prepare for it by trying to bore myself to sleep with studying. I ended up starting and processing a bunch of other household stuff. I hoped that the later sunrise would allow me more wind down time, but it wasn't so. I have three more of them to do before year's end. I do my best to push myself through when I do work them, but I've resolved to not put myself through any future hell of doing anymore of them. I have enough vacation hours and banked stat time to allow me to do so. It's better for both me and the people I serve if I avoid them. I don't want to go to any job, or do any task, or sign up for anything else where I'm reduced to being only 25% (or less), of the kind of person that I want to be; when it becomes such that it reflects both mentally and physically in my performance, which is what is effectively happening when I commit to doing these shifts.

So, I've been awake for more than 36 hours now. Here are a few more peculiarities that I'm noting and learning about me while I'm stricken with this degree of insomnia, with my senses working overtime, and depleted of a few less discretionary mental faculties:

• I try to chill out with music, giving eighties alternative/indy artists a good play over (The Cure, The Smiths, Siouxsie and the Banshees, David Bowie, The Jesus & Mary Chain, XTC, Joy Division, old school R.E.M., et al.).
• Anything I tried studying the previous day is just not in memory, thus wasted time and a total write off. I have to redo the last unit from my programming manual.
• I get strange and ridiculous surges of hunger that interrupt sleep, and for very carb-loaded foods too. This time I did something out of character and made pancakes ... for myself , after I came home, a true sign that I'm having some sort of a mental breakdown from exhaustion.
• I purposely isolate myself at home to prevent myself from making impulsive purchases while having less than adequate decision-making ability.  
• I get really geared to do something to fix myself better, despite the fatigue, with problem solving strategies by exploring productivity improvement sites, like Mind Tools™ (only after when my eyes aren't hurting too much to read).
• Gobbling up any pain-relieve pill that will sooth the headaches and muscle/eye-soreness, (I usually avoid anything in pill form if I can).
• I try to vent my general edginess and frustration through blogging, hoping that sleep will strike me down soon afterward.

If I'm still not able to sleep after this, my next manoeuvre is to review my stack of scans, sketches, and scribblings to see what of these non-ongoing things are most likely achievable within the next three months. Part of my problem with the lack of headway in some things is the degree of interest diversity I have, and trying to do eight or nine things at a time, rather than just narrowing the focus down to one or two items. My To-Do list really needs to be abbreviated.

Approaching Equinox, English Speaker Peeves

Autumnal equinox is arriving today: when number of daylight hours will balance out with the number of night time hours. As always, it seems to be a natural time of the year for me to pensively re-evaluate what sorts of progressions throughout the course of it are working out, and which ones are not, with equal attention. My big personal, bringing-things-to-balance, project for this weekend is re-organizing my home office. The task is so daunting that I decided to procrastinate a little by writing a blog entry instead.

I reviewed the goal list I made for myself from back in July. I accomplished most of those things, with the exception of achieving a full marathon distance run. I'm reminded of this because the Rush concert is in town next Friday. It was the reward I promised myself if I achieved this goal. The injury messed up my training schedule so badly.

My running activity is becoming more and more infrequent and abbreviated, mostly due to the fact that the city has turned off all the fountains along the trails since the month began, so my range is limited to going as far as the amount of water I can carry with me will allow me to. I feel about 90% healed now; it still hurts to touch my toes. My training sessions ordinarily are done in the morning, but I'll be switching over to using my free afternoons, or early evenings instead. My count is 451 runs that are registered with Nike Plus since I began recording them. I made it a goal to complete 500 before the end of the year. I'm curious as to how far toward the end of the year it will be until I'd find it intolerable to wear running shorts outside. Biking season will be winding down within the next one to two months as well, unless we are lucky enough to have a freakishly late-coming winter like we did last year. I'm not a winter cyclist. It's risky enough that I bike home from work in pitch dark, never mind adding icy streets to skid on in the middle of traffic into the mix. This new bike is great: my best purchase of the year so far, and it pleases me even more knowing that it has been paid off already within five months of riding it with the savings from my gasoline bill.

I've been doing more crazy experiments in self-sufficiency, and had another successful and delicious exercise in frugality for this week: Watermelon Rind Pickles. I purchased one of the last well-ripened watermelons at my local store for $1.98, and made six pint jars of worth of sweet and savory pickles out of the rinds, which would have ordinarily been destined for the garbage. Adding another dollar and a half worth of vinegar, sugar, spices, and sealing lids, reusing the jars I already have, and I made them for about 58 cents a pint. I couldn't make cucumber pickles that cheaply, even if I grew them from seed: if I ever somehow found enough growing space for them on my deck.

Recently, I applied to a casual ESL teaching position at one of the community centres. I was reminiscing about my last English teaching experience, and factoring in who my students would be if I'm hired, and thinking about how I'd do things differently this time around. I'm reasonably forgiving and patient with people who are just learning the language, but I'm also easily sickened when it comes listening to some people who allegedly have spoken this language all their lives, and who still speak it very poorly. Here are some (unfortunately all too common) ways that "English speakers" abuse the language that make me want to cast some biting ridicule at them for being so linguistically stupid:

1. Using the first person object pronoun in the nominative case: I really hate it when people say "Me and <blank> {verb} {predicate}.". Our built-in moron detectors would quickly signal alert status red when we hear fellow anglophones around us say things like, "Us will go to the store.", "Her went to the bathroom.",or "Them have tickets to the movies." So, why is it so bloody hard for some people to understand that "Me and Joe Blow are eating cookies" is just as totally stupid and wrong? Use 'Joe Blow and I', or simply 'We', instead. Hearing some adults constantly speaking this way makes me suspect that they flunked grade six grammar, perhaps more than just once.
2. Failing to notice the difference of usage between 'there', 'their', and 'they're' in their written forms: when people dare argue with me in writing, stating that, "Their is nothing wrong with my message because the spell checker on my computer says that they're are no mistakes. So their!" I'm very certain that I won't be hiring this person for anything very detail oriented. Similar peeves bug me too which relate to the incorrect usage of 'your' and 'you're', 'it's' and 'its', and 'to', 'two', and 'too'.
3. Improper verbal conjugations: English verbs only have two variations of present tense conjugations (the exception is three for the verb "to be": am, are, is), a simple addition of a single form of modal verb to the infinitive to make conditional or future tenses, a single past tense form (two for the verb "to be": was, were), a single participle form, and a single gerund form. It's so much simpler to learn verbs in English than it is to learn the verbs from most other languages*, and yet people are still so stupid to say things like, "I gots really good grammar", or "My child write like Shakespeare". Such things strike me as straddling the line between being grossly comical, and horrifically ignorant and tragic.
4. The word "like", or excessive profanity, splattered liberally and repeatedly throughout the body of a single sentence, stated as mindlessly and casually as if one were chewing gum: e.g. "I was like, going to the mall to like buy these cute shoes, and they were like a hundred dollars, but I only had like forty, so like I phoned my mom and said like, "I really like these shoes mom". . . Jesus Christ kid, SHUT UP! Six likes and only one was valid. On the same token, the substitution of the word "like" with the more foul word "fucking", or any other profanity, used as a filler with the same degree of frequency and thoughtlessness, is even more bothersome to me. Psychologically, people who do this constantly just to throw in this extra shock value, do so because they are they are insecure and yet childishly attention seeking (as with teenagers), and they lack the maturity and/or confidence to dare themselves to think that they might have or develop some other amiable intellectual aspect or personality dimension for themselves that can be used to maintain rapport with another person. If you are 'like' this still as a full grown adult, do the rest of us a favour, and actively learn to broaden your vocabulary, read about some topical interests, and tame your attitude with some civil and mannerly speech, or else just shut up. I'd rather listen to a troop of jabbering monkeys than to people such as these.

I fully realize that my own writing is festered with errors, and in need of frequent proofreading and editing. I also acknowledge that speech wise I've found myself doing the aforementioned peeves and mistakes before, but mostly because people aren't tuning into what I'm trying to say in my normal manner of speaking, and as much as it makes me cringe to do it, sometimes I have to compromise and lower myself to using their parlance to snap some sense into them. I like the statement, "Language is the means through which our thoughts are served to others." Sadly, I believe more and more people are becoming estranged from this idea. If the spoken and written thoughts I serve were food, I'd like it to be a banquet of things that have a simple and whimsical; yet elegant presentation, that are easy to digest; yet stun the senses in a good way, with familiar flavours made exotic with unique signature twists, even when the morsel tested is slightly sour or bitter. I would hope it would draw the diner (listener) into a realm that they've never before experienced. I'd rather not be caught verbally exposing and delivering my thought process in the same manner as doling out the gustatory equivalent of the slop that they serve in a prison chow line.

* - Count yourself lucky if English is your mother tongue, and you're using verbs. Languages like French, Russian, and Spanish have as many as six, present tense conjugation forms. Due to it's gender subdivided singular and plural person forms, Arabic has even more than that. This is why I shake my head in shame at people, whose first language is 'English', who can't even figure out which one of two given forms to use correctly.

Neuroeconomics, The Marketing of Intimacy, First Fall Sunday

I've been messing around again on the FOREX* scene, making a lot of small profits, only to have them wiped out by bigger losses. This morning yielded a net profit, too embarrassingly small to mention, but at least it was profit. I'm thankful that I'm still in practice mode, and not playing with real funds. I have been using the orthodox methods of reading and reacting to the candlestick charts; my problem seems to be setting my stops too tight on my trades. It's too technical to get into, I'm just at the stage of learning from mistakes, making it a habit to stick to modest deals that wouldn't be crippling if losses resulted. I'm trying to be mindful that this is just "game mode", and to not to get too caught up in the elements of greed and fear, which are the major forces of failure at making wise trades. There is so much to study and analyze; strengthened proficiency at this game though doesn't even guarantee anything profitable. I'm more forgiving of myself given these following points, which I gleaned from a book by Jason Zweig, called Your Money and Your Brain.

• "If you think you are a financial genius, you are almost certainly dumber than you think - and you need to chain your brain so you can control your futile attempts to outsmart everyone else. If you think you are a financial idiot, you're probably smarter than you realize - and you need to train your brain so you can understand how to triumph as an investor." (page 6)**
• Even smart people make financial mistakes. Sir Isaac Newton, being the mathematical genius as he was, was wiped out in a stock market crash. **
• "Professional" investors, on average, do not outperform "amateurs."**

Zweig's book would have stayed on the shelf if it was only just about economics. It was, however, the emphasis on the psychology of investing/spending/saving money (neuroecomonics) which was the thing that made me pick it up and read it. Money working for you instead of you working for money is a beautiful thing,*** but for most of us it is just a pipe dream, or we get bogged down by listening to the (often conflicting) details, information, and opinions of so-called experts. Prices of stocks, bonds, commodities, and currency values rise and fall for a bunch of innumerable excuses, (usually false) correlations, and the stupidest of variables and reasons.****  I think the best advice on investing I've heard so far is don't give any money to anybody to invest in anything if they aren't willing to show you the performance of their own portfolio. I don't know of any investment brokers yet who are so willing to do that with me.

The degree of automation in an online trading station is wonderful tool once getting a clearer sense of focus and discipline for interpreting the data from it is mastered: for either market/entry order placement, or closing a trade, which let's you free yourself from constantly monitoring charts to do other things. The one thing I don't want to do is to become addicted to watching a bunch of red and blue lines rise and dive on a time chart, which could be easy for an analytical person to get lost in doing.

I still don't know yet what my gimmick would be for getting a little extra seed money for more investing. To be a writer would be interesting, but it would take a keen sense of knowing what key issues are throbbing through the pulse of contemporary society to create a good original story, and making it a sincere mission to tackle them and building a plot around them. For example, I was reading a recent article on MSN about E.L. James, the author of Fifty Shades of Grey. Her erotic novel has been charging up the best sellers lists, and is so controversial that it has been put on the "books to burn" lists of several organizations as well. I think the writing in the book is rather average and mediocre, but the marketing of it was brilliant*****. In my eyes, the popularity of this book is perhaps not really telling about how the average man and woman is becoming depraved and obsessed about alternative (and painful) expressions of sensuality, but of really how deprived and estranged people, in general, are becoming from the feeling of genuine intimacy. The list of reasons of how and why this has become so in modern society is too long for me to write in this entry. If there is a supply and demand marketing paradigm that E.L. James used in getting rich by creating something that is a reflection of what people in this society today are really wanting and craving, I would have to say that thing/theme would be intimacy: something that money and power couldn't buy for Christian Grey, the rich male character in the book. He had to earn it by learning to surrender power and be vulnerable. Getting to even entering a degree of intimacy that a person wants today, has come to the point where it has to be gained through some greater degree of exploration of humiliation and pain, as the character of Anastasia did in the book. The play and antagonism between Christian and Anastasia leaves one wondering which character has gained, and which one lost power in the strange "romance" depicted in the story. The sex is certainly there, a relationship is there, a (fluctuating) power dynamic is there, but as for intimacy. . . that is very questionable, and it leads the reader into exploring if it's there or not.

To be a successful fiction writer in this day in age seems to be harder, in that one has to have volume set no less than a trilogy to be published before ever getting popular; contemporary examples include E. L. James (as I mentioned), J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter series), Stieg Larsson (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), and Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games). Most importantly, there has to be an effort by the writer to be able to build a sense, or a bond of intimacy between him/her, the story, and the reader: an ability in which I'm probably very lacking.

I've been writing this entry piecemeal. It's now Sunday morning: a day off for this part of my rotation. I noticed leaves changing and the smell of the air as I drink my coffee outside this morning, and its crispness makes me feel like summer really has officially ended as of today. I have nothing planned except to harvest the remainder of my tomatoes, and perhaps do some cycling before it possibly rains, or the wind picks up. I don't think I'll be perusing any more female erotica, but the fiction that I would like to check out today is a book by Paolo Coehlo, The Alchemist: a short novel, but reputed to be a very deep one. I'll continue reading along with my non-fiction selections as well. If it stays cloudy, and when my eyes get too sore from reading, I'll maybe nap, or watch a classic movie before the FOREX markets re-open this afternoon (Monday morning in Tokyo and Sydney). I really don't want life to be any more intense than this today after I'm finished dumping out my mind in this entry.

*- It shocks me just how little knowledge people, even amongst those guys whom I serve with commerce degrees, and have had jobs in banking, generally have about the operation/existence of the FOREX market, yet its volume of trading is a few times greater than that of New York Stock Exchange within any given day.

** - Zweig, J. (2007). Your Money and Your Brain: How the New Science of Neuroeconomics Can Help Make You Rich. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.

***- Getting rich by a spark of creativity is even cooler, as you see as I write on.

****- In world of economics and finance, the only prevailing constants are the greed of banks, governments, and corporations, and the power they exert over everyone else from the level of the consumer and taxpayer upward.

*****- Yes, I did read this book before having the gall to mildly critique it. I don't ordinarily make it a habit of reading female oriented erotica, but it was good to do to gain some insight into the female head space. Don't let it be said that won't try to understand. It was done so out of some hint/dare/suggestion from one of my female friends (I can't/won't openly speculate on any other motive as to why she did so).