The year 2008 in photographs – boston.com

Check out this set of pictures from Boston.com. It shows greats photos of events both happy, momentous and extremely tragic.

And this is only the first part. I'll have to keep an eye out for parts 2 and 3:

The year 2008 in photographs (part 1 of 3)

2008 has been an eventful year to say the least - it is difficult to sum up the thousands of stories in just a handful of photographs. That said, I will try to do what I've done with other photo narratives here, and tell a story of 2008 in photographs. It's not the story of 2008, it's certainly not all stories, but as a collection it does show a good portion of what life has been like over the past 12 months. This is a multi-entry story, 120 photographs over three days. Watch for part 2 and part 3 tomorrow and the next day. (40 photos total)

Wine Recommendation: Peter Lehmann Shiraz '05

Picked up this great 2005 Peter Lehmann Barossa Shiraz from Costco yesterday for $12 bucks. Dark color, fruit flavors but mellow.

You can also pick it p from Bevmo.

Wallpaper fascination

While looking for a good GTD Wallpaper, I stumbled on a link for those who like wallpapers:

7 Windows Wallpaper Tricks That Don’t Disappoint

Site has good links including a link for social site for wallpaper geeks.

How We're Wrecking Our Feet With Every Step We Take -- New York Magazine

I try to walk for 30 minutes everyday. It feels good to have this walk. Turns out though that the highly padded shoes I've been wearing could be hurting me more than helping. Check out this article in the NY Magazine. Here are some alternative shoes to going barefoot:

MASAI BAREFOOT TECHNOLOGY

The thick sole mimics the soft, unstable ground on which our ancestors walked. But your foot won’t roll through each step—the sole does the rolling for you.

NIKE FREE

After decades of gimmicky shoes, Nike released the Free: light and flexible, and available in various stages, with Free 5.0 pitched as halfway to barefoot.

VIVO BAREFOOT

Basically a leather slipper with a 3-mm.-thick puncture-resistant sole. It’s thin enough to feel pebbles underfoot and flexible enough to fold in half like a wallet.

VIBRAM FIVE FINGERS

This fabric-and-rubber sock with individuated toes is primarily for outdoor sports like kayaking—though at least one entrant wore them to run in the Boston Marathon.

How We're Wrecking Our Feet With Every Step We Take -- New York Magazine

Sync your Facebook contacts with Outlook & Windows Mobile

Just tried this and the outlook integration is pretty cool. I don't have a windows mobile phone but I'll try to see if it works with the Treo. In my case the app did crash but it does work in importing the pics to outlook. Check out the demo from the developer here:

Sync your Facebook contacts with Outlook (and Windows Mobile)

Things I wish I’d known when I was younger - lifehack.org

Although it's good as a refresher too:

Most of it doesn’t matter.

The greatest source of misery and hatred in this world is clinging to past hurts.

Waiting to do something until you can be sure of doing it exactly right means waiting for ever.

Following the latest fashion, in work or in life, is spiritual and intellectual suicide.

If people complain that you’re too fond of going your own way and aren’t fitting in, you must be on the right track.

If you make your work your life, you’re making your life into hard work.

The quickest and simplest way to wreck any relationship is to listen to gossip.

Trying to please other people is largely a futile activity.

Every winner is destined to be a loser in due course.

You can rarely, if ever, please, placate, change, or mollify an asshole.

Everything takes twice as long as you plan for and produces results about half as good as you hoped.

People are oddly consistent.

However hard you try, you can’t avoid being yourself.

When it comes to blatant lies, there are none more egregious than budget figures.

The loudest noise in the world is the sound of people whining.

 

Read more here:

Things I wish I’d known when I was younger - lifehack.org

Go Speed Reader

I'll admit that I don't read as often I would like to. It just seems like there is too much crap to watch on TV or YouTube. The last book I read was Freakonmics. Great book. Gets you thinking even if you don't agree with it.

I'm a slow reader but this book took me two months to finish. However, I only really read it for about 20 minutes a day and the information is worth comprehending. But I'm still pretty slow to average reader.

So I was happy to discover this link to improve your reading speed with comprehension. The article was so interesting that I actually read it and not just file into my Del.icio.us links that I will probably never read.

Take a look at this interesting article on doubling your reading rate.

I'll report back on if it works for me but don't hold your breath. It will take me some time to master but I immediately liked what he said about the subvocalizing.

Btw, speaking of good books, this one looks good too:
Survival of the Sickest

Baby Sign Language

Scott H. has a great post that has me excited to try this when my daughter is born in 4 more months. Essentially, it's sign language for babies.

Baby Sign Language

Nom de Blog

I probably haven't mentioned but the Nom de Blog(blog name)/sub name are references to song names from my favorite band:


Trashcan Sinatras

Check out some of their music from free.

Although, I do have trouble sleeping but I have for the last 20 years.

Arrgh. Craigslist scammers suck

Recently, I've been trying to sell a vehicle on craigslist and so far I've received 2 people offer me certified checks. I guess they figure that I wouldn't read this obvious warning from CL.

Another guy is so persistent that he offered me $300 above my asking price if I would accept his home depot gift card offer. Apparently, he doesn't think that people can google:
Gift Card Fraud Arrest

I've used CL several times in the last 4 years and its been great but lately these jerks are screwing it up for everyone.

I guess its to be expected but I just hope others don't fall for it. Part of my angst come from recently watching this great movie about one of the biggest scams ever:
Enron.

Harmony 550

I broke down and bought one (used). It's a good remote after programming setup. I do wish though that it would allow me to modify the activities myself.

Otherwise, great remote. Go get one.

I have mad 8th grade math skills!

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

I used paper to solve most of these and I guessed on one question but it was a smart guess using elimination. Hey at 2:42AM, I don't care.

1 Week

I was gone for a company summit that was intense and yet very fun. It got my passion going again for what I'm working on. Although, it didn't give me much time to blog or probably I just chose not to. Oh well.

Want and need

I read those financial blogs now and then. They speak of various way to become rich or just solve your financial problems. They talk about the difference between rich and others. Like that the rich only buy what they need.

So I try my best to separate between my wants and needs. Because they say that the rich only buy what they need. Or that the rich only buy things that appreciate in value.

Well, I know I don't need a new remote control but dammit, I want this one:

Harmony 550

I'll see how long I can hold out.

Btw, don't they also say that many rich folks are unhappy? Could be if they had this remote then they would be happier. :-)

Tennis channel contest

Tennis channel has a contest to pick who will win the Australian open. So for fun, you can see my picks here:

Tennis Channel Contest

Early Riser and Joe's Ok

So I'm still using Joe's Goals and I had question which I sent him and he responded in a few hours. Nice.

The goals that I have been wanting half heartedly are now becoming clear that I need to adopt, accept and change my ways. As you can tell from the title of this blog. I have trouble sleeping. Thats fine, I mean I can live with that but lately, its totally thrown off my cycle.

So I am going to try these suggestions from Steve Pavlina:

Early Riser

Early Riser Pt.2

Get up when alarm goes off...

I enjoy his writing. But there is so much to read that I get caught up reading every other article and I feel like I'm wasting time or something even though its for personal development.

Anyways, lets see how it goes.

Here is his: Best of...

Happy New Year

I hope the new year brings you joy and happiness.

Here is some words for the new year from the Daily Zen.

Goodbye BOA and good riddance

I've been a customer of BOA since 1992. So after all these years, its goodbye. I don't want to gripe about them so much as leave myself a reminder to not go back, no matter how good the offer looks.

Sony grounding issues

I recently got a Sony Vaio laptop for my new job. I'm using to record some audio and notice there is a constant buzz. After some searching, I find that there is a grounding issue with some Sony laptops. WTF? Sony does a lot of things right like this laptop but how can they ignore this:

Link

Supposedly there is a 3 prong power adapter, you know like most power adapters that have the ground prong in them? Well, if you supposedly complain enough to Sony, they may send you one? Again, wtf? As I said, the laptop is great but I'm disappointed to learn they don't fix this and/or recall the laptops.

Bad habits

I resolved last week to make a new post everyday in order to be better a better blogger. Instead, it seems that I'm doing several posts in one day. I'm going to have to rethink this strategy.