Category: Life

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Business Life Technology

Onward 2012

2011 was a crazy year.

  • Lived with grandparents for one-and-a-half months
  • Bought our first house (and moved into it)
  • Ran three 5Ks (one with Laura, which was amazing)
  • Painted most of the rooms in the house
  • Mowed a lot of lawn (then watched it all die)
  • Birth of our second son, Levi John
  • Jamis’s second birthday
  • Celebrated 5 years of marriage
  • Set up my first real, permanent home office
  • Started up my personal business again
  • Helped with harvest on the farm
  • Pushed out the first major website revision for MLC since 2005
  • A lot of traveling to and from Wisconsin to visit the best in-laws ever
  • Lots of other stuff

That’s just the stuff I can remember.

Laura and I have both said we are looking forward to a 2012 that is a little bit less crazy, and a little more settled than we have ever had. We’ve only lived in one other place for more than 9 months (I think that is the correct amount of time), and we will be celebrating one year in our house on Valentine’s Day. That’s an accomplishment for us. It is also comforting to know that this house is the only one Levi has known, and the one that Jamis has stayed in the longest as well.

Even Molly likes it (I think).

So onward to 2012! Here are some things I’m hoping to accomplish this coming year (the first batch comes from Resolutions over at We Are Martens):

  • Drink less pop (this is a recurring one for me … )
  • Replace all of the water piping in the house
  • Grow my personal business 50%
  • Get better at doing work outside
  • Walk more (and to more places)
  • Replace bulbs in the house when the burn out (right away)
  • Do more little things for my wife
  • Finally incorporate Deck78 (after killing Replosion when we moved to WI)
  • Learn how to program (that’s kind of vague)
  • Speak at two conferences or meetings (did one in 2011)
  • Get a better backup system in place at home
  • Build Laura the photography website she has been asking about
  • Start and finish the website for the MVL Lightning Dance Team
  • Pitch new websites to four new clients
  • Continue helping people learn how to incorporate technology into their lives
  • Lots of other stuff

I’m excited for what 2012 is going to bring. For the first time in a long while I feel like I have a better handle on my state of mind and am more settled and ready/able to take on new things.

Onward 2012!

Categories
Life Technology

Breaking a Twitter Habit

Drawing inspiration from Mr. Hess once again, I’m going to try breaking a bad (read: terrible) Twitter habit that I have had since Tweetie for Mac (now Twitter for Mac) was release a long time ago.

I’m going to relegate my Twitter consumption to my mobile devices.

I’ve deleted Twitter for Mac from the work iMac and my MacBook Pro and will no longer have them open during the day when I am working. When I want to catch up on Twitter, I have two options: iPhone or iPad.

Well overdue on my end.

Categories
Life

5 Years Ago …

Five years ago I was able to marry my best friend and the most amazing person I have ever known.

Wedding Dance

Happy Anniversary!

Categories
Life

Why I Won’t Play MMORPGs

With the impending release of Star Wars: The Old Republic, I thought that I would evaluate whether I should jump in and give the game a try. Basically, I came to a surprising conclusion and a rule I will be using for the foreseeable future.

I will only play single-player games.

To put it more bluntly, I will only play games that include something like this:

Ocarina of Time Ending

I need an ending. I need a conclusion. I need something that hits my head and says “you’re done, step away”. I tend to get very focused on a single thing and fixate on it until I complete it. I fear that if I would get focused on an MMORPG (or any multiplayer game), I really wouldn’t come up for air at any point.

So, I’m staying away. I just completed Twilight Princess last week and my next three gaming adventures are these:

  1. Dragon Age 2
  2. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
  3. Mass Effect 3

Each one is a single-player game (not acknowledging ME3’s multiplayer stuff AT ALL), and each one will have an ending. I will play it, beat it, and then set it aside.

Those are my kind of games.

Categories
Life

The Tragedy of Air France 447

Popular Mechanics has the best take on what we now know about AF447, I recommend that you read the whole thing in its entirety. It is a tragedy that need not have happened, but one which did.

I hope that we can take a step back from casting blame around and instead focus on what can be learned so that we might make things safer and, need I say, better in the future.

This paragraph was the scariest for me:

Unlike the control yokes of a Boeing jetliner, the side sticks on an Airbus are “asynchronous”—that is, they move independently. “If the person in the right seat is pulling back on the joystick, the person in the left seat doesn’t feel it,” says Dr. David Esser, a professor of aeronautical science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. “Their stick doesn’t move just because the other one does, unlike the old-fashioned mechanical systems like you find in small planes, where if you turn one, the [other] one turns the same way.” Robert has no idea that, despite their conversation about descending, Bonin has continued to pull back on the side stick.

The importance of providing users feedback on what is going on cannot be discounted. Here, the “simple” change (I have no idea what kind of undertaking it would be to do that) of making sure both of the sticks provide feedback on what the other is doing could have saved the flight.

Do we blame Airbus for this and praise Boeing? Let’s not go that far. Instead, understand how important seemingly little details like this can be.

People need information to make decisions and if they don’t get the right information, they’ll make bad decisions.