AlanM

How I use Todoist

AlanM@TwilightSoul.com — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:38:00 GMT

I love Todoist, even though I have plans to create my own task list eventually.

One of the mixed blessings of Todoist is that it is extremely flexible. This is great because it can conform to your specific needs. It's not so great because sometimes you don't know what your specific needs really are, and a little guidance would be more helpful.

Well, I think I've finally come to terms with what works best for me, so I'll share it for posterity.

Tags: GTD,David Allen,productivity,effectiveness,Todoist.com,tasks,projects,time management

Category: ἀρετή

Letter to Congress

AlanM@TwilightSoul.com — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:10:43 GMT

I’m sure you have already contacted your congresscritter by now, what with half of the Internet going dark.

But, in case you’re looking for something to say, here’s what I wrote, and you have my permission to copy and modify this freely without attribution.

Dear ___________________,

I oppose SOPA and PIPA because it is clear they will have unacceptable unintended consequences.

The non-technological equivalent of this act would require that publishers of yellow pages check the business licenses of everyone they list. When you call directory assistance, the operator would have to make sure the business you wanted to call was legit before providing the number. The newspapers could not publish your classified ad unless they had researched you and your home to make sure the ad wasn't for something illegal.

The Internet is tough to govern; I understand that. The state of being tough to govern is what America is founded on. I am not promoting complete lack of regulation, but the current SOPA and PIPA bills take regulation much further than they should.

Please vote against SOPA, and do not support PIPA, as they are worded now. Please rework the intent of these bills, soliciting input from people who make their livings from the Internet.

Sincerely,

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Motivated

AlanM@TwilightSoul.com — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 20:12:00 GMT

A book is about to become my mantra.

Tags: books,do the work,motivation,inspiration,goals

Category: Philosophy

Category: ἀρετή

Probably irrelevant for you, but significant for me

AlanM@TwilightSoul.com — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 09:30:00 GMT

It took hours to complete, but the platform on which this website (and codecharm.com) is built has been upgraded to the latest version.

Category: Family

Category: Technology in Society

So how was the gym?

AlanM@TwilightSoul.com — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 14:56:00 GMT

Quite a bit smaller than suggested, but still usable.

Category: Sports

Category: ἀρετή

Silicon Valley Code Camp 2011

AlanM@TwilightSoul.com — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 05:22:00 GMT

It has been quite a while since I have attended a professional conference or significant training event, so I’m a little excited. I’ve lined myself up for a wide variety of classes, covering the gamut of technologies that I am most interested in. However, I’m giving myself permission to change my mind at the last minute.

Category: Microsoft

Category: Technology in Society

Extra long comment from Facebook

AlanM@TwilightSoul.com — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 23:42:57 GMT

Started on a posted link I put on Facebook:

Alan McBee

This is the sort of crap stunt that gives Republicans a bad name.

Tell Congress: Don't pull the plug on NPR and PBS!

act.credoaction.com

In a recently released budget proposal, House Republicans announced plans to zero out all funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the nonprofit responsible for funding public media including NPR, PBS and more. Take action now to stop Republicans from destroying public media.

Daniel Williams We shouldn't pay to sponsor racists and radicals. Let them be like other media. Pay their own way.

10 hours ago
Jay Warmack I see it as the sort of stunt that accurately represents the platform. Get government out from where it doesn't belong.

7 hours ago

You're both absolutely right. Both Federal and State governments need to stop paying for anything not mandated by the Constitution.

Like,
The post office,
AMTRAK,
Public schools and colleges,
The Federal Reserve,
Water and sewage treatment plants,
The Coast Guard (the Navy can take over),
Social Security,
DEA and ATF,
Advanced research projects from DARPA that produce things like the Internet,
The Center for Disease Control,
Participation in the U.N and foreign subsidies,
Farm subsidies,
The Department of Homeland Security,
Public libraries,
The military-industrial complex,
NASA,
SEC,
FDIC,
OSHA,
and I could go on and on.

And the reason is painfully obvious: because capitalism and free-market competition is the ONLY system that works for any need, period. We know this is true, because Australian-American and Christian philanthropist Rupert Murdoch has put together the ONLY for-profit media empire which actually reports the news exactly the way it really is, without spin or bias, completely fair and balanced, and you can't find anyone who believes otherwise who isn't also a Communist. So if he can do it in one place, then that's proof that everyone and anyone can create for-profit companies that do everything that the government does, only better.

The picture in pure capitalism looks so rosy, I just have to describe it in detail. Indulge me.
- You'll be able to mail a one-ounce letter anywhere in the state for a mere $1.19 (plus tax). Interstate letters are $4.22 (plus the tax of the state to which you're mailing it), and International letters are $19.17 up to two ounces).
- You'll be able to buy a train ticket anywhere along the Napa Valley Wine Train (the only operating passenger train in the western hemisphere).
- You'll get to send your kids to any schools you want from any of hundreds of Catholic OR Protestant selections. (The irony was that all the schools that preached the hypothetical "theory of evolution" went extinct due to the "natural selection" of parents opting for the stronger values of schools that taught creationism or intelligent design. That, and, of course, the Rand Paul Endowment which made possible easy financing with 1% interest over 30 years).
- Your 500-gallon tank of water hooked up to your house for showering can be filled with either Dasani® or AquaFina®.
- Waste Management Inc will clean out your apartment's septic tank once a month at a moderately high price, but repairs for the leaks (it's an industry-wide problem for now) will be free.
- Oregon and Louisiana, spurred by other market pressures, will not closely monitor the huge shipments of various organic supplies (many of which are delivered in bales or are in powdered form), much to the delight of some hemp-clothed long-haired actors.
- Your 401(k) will always gain capital, because one thing history has always been rock-solid on: real-estate and stock markets always go up over the long term, never down or flat. Your annual statement clearly shows an upward trend, although you sometimes wonder whether, at the way gasoline raced past $13 a gallon last month, your money will provide you with enough to live on when you retire. Your Intuit Retirement Advisor program says you'll be fine; who are you to question its expertise?
- After Comcast bid for and won the Internet backbone and standards, you'll get to pay a very reasonable 3-cents per-megabyte fee (with a two-year service contract with early-termination fee) except for anything produced by the Trinity Broadcasting Network, which is free.
- Pfizer, Catholic Hospitals, and Kraft Foods will announce a partnership next week to manage human disease detection and prevention -- you will be able to purchase membership in their program for easy payments of $9.99 a month ($23.99 for a family of four) to make sure you and your loved ones are protected from the tuberculosis epidemic.
- You'll be able to watch the political analysts debate, on The United States Oceanic News Channel (formerly Fox News), how China, the Koreas, Russia, and Japan (merged and now named Eastasia) and Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East (now named Eurasia) grew to superpower status and begin to fight over India, but that's not our problem, and besides, isn't Dancing With The Stars on tonight? Besides, some analysts at some corporations must be figuring out that The World War is actually good for our economy, or else it wouldn't be happening. At least, that's what Papa Bear, Mama Grizzly, and Big Uncle Beck have told us, and they always tell the truth.
- Bread will be available this year for $15 a loaf due to wheat shortages, but next year, it will be eggs that are $15 a dozen. The food shortage is due to the natural cyclical warming of the Earth, which apparently also cyclically changes the color of air to a yellowish-blue. But the sunsets, when they're not blocked by clouds, are always breathtakingly red, even two hours before nightfall.
- There will be no need for the Department of Homeland Security. Instead, the privately held Corporation of Love (or, more simply, CorpLove, formerly Google), has negotiated an agreement with Comcast (soon to be named CorpTrue), to use their trade-secret Network 23 (formerly FaceBook) personality-detection algorithms to find and report people who harbor dangerous thoughts (called "CrimeTweets") and report them to their authorities, sometimes even before they themselves knew they were thinking anything wrong. Industry experts, including those from Microsoft and ZikZak (formerly Oracle), have synthesized law-processing applications, so Constitutionally mandate jury trials are much speedier; all jurists need to do is confirm that Microsoft ActiveTrial® and Oracle TrialLogic 17i ("it's un-appealable!") reached the same conclusion (a tie nearly always goes to a conviction, because "innocent until proven guilty" need not be unanimous for software, only for jurists, and nearly all jurists believe that if even one of the computers votes for guilt instead of innocence, that's enough).
- Amazon has rebranded itself as The Amazon Public Library, and indeed many older books are free on your Kindle so long as you have a current Verizon or AT&T service plan.
- We don't question the military-industrial complex because that's where nearly half the country is employed.
- NASA was sold to Richard Branson, so now you, too, can join the 200-mile-high-club. Besides, the so-called moon landing is a long-debunked urban legend; even the Mythbusters found a way (with sponshorship from Koch Minerals) to prove it was faked.
- And, of course, Wall Street and The Big Financial Institutions continued to have their ever-increasingly legen-- wait for it... --DARY parties, which are featured non-stop on at least three television channels, so you, too, can vicariously participate in them. Who says greed is bad, when it is clear those people are having so much fun!

Okay, I confess to a rather copious amount of tongue-in-cheekedness with this, and I hope it's read with a sense of humor rather than disdain.

But I do believe this one thing: Capitalism is both good AND bad, just like Socialism is both good AND bad. We Americans are smart people with a lot to lose, and playing this game as though one must exercise intolerance in order to win, regardless of which side you champion, is a certain way to make sure everyone loses.

NPR and PBS are not rascist or radical any more than Fox News is. Heck, EVERYTHING looks like it's extremely leftist when it's compared to Fox News (I'm talking about editorial bits, not the main news). Is there really anything that is MORE conservative than Fox? If so, then I might agree that Fox could be somewhat neutral. But there isn't much that is far more conservative than Fox News. And yes, MSNBC is decidedly progressive. But NPR and PBS are, generally speaking, pretty evenly split on both sides. Just because they have features you feel don't represent your right-wing conservative values does NOT mean they are radically left-biased.

If I were a full-fledged secular progressive radical, I could say with equal impunity to yours that NPR and PBS, by even mentioning the President's participation in the National Prayer Breakfast, or favorably covering the story of 16 GOP freshmen declining federal health insurance, or including more coverage of faith-based topics and continually pointing out the ballooning national debt and deficit, were all clear signs that NPR is decidedly biased to the right.

JUST BECAUSE YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH NPR, THAT DOES NOT MEAN YOU KNOW WHETHER NPR IS BIASED.

Damn. I took a whole lot longer on this than I meant to, and this was after I promised myself I'd try to stay away from this sort of thing. One of these days, I'll learn.

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Petition to Congress: Keep PBS and NPR!

AlanM@TwilightSoul.com — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 04:28:32 GMT

I signed one of those online petition things at http://www.credoaction.com/. Apparently, somebody thought they could Save America From Epic Budget Disaster by killing off the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

There was an opportunity to add my own comment. I did.

Are you kidding?! I would call this one of the ultimate "Anti-American" acts I could conceive. Without NPR and PBS, we would have news from only commercial interests, where it's clear that big money rules the news -- whatever brings in the advertising, that's what makes the news. That's not American capitalism at it's finest; it's sheer lunacy to think that reporters can bring tough and honest news stories when they have to help deliver quarterly profit reports to shareholders. It's the NEWS that keeps our three-power system of government balanced. It's the EDUCATION that allows voters to keep our country stable and growing. Or, is that actually what the Republicans are afraid would happen? Better to have a spoon-fed constituency? I'm disgusted. Capitol Hill should know better than to suggest this.

Holy cow. Really?! I was a soldier in the Army for this kind of stupidity? I know that there are some right-wingnut Fox-news zombie ditto-headed Glen Beck zealot Rupert Murdock and Koch Brother nut jobs who believe that NPR is a liberalist propaganda machine – but that’s because they think everything is a leftist propaganda machine that doesn’t drink the Kool-Aid like they do. It’s starting to go too far. WAY too far.

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Wither the wind blows

AlanM@TwilightSoul.com — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 08:27:04 GMT

A friend of mine said something very funny on Facebook. It was a bitingly sarcastic comment about Republican hypocrisy. I wanted to respond, but I’m afraid she might take it personally. I was going to say this:

I think you've overcomplicated it. Republicans can do no wrong. Democrats are evil because they are not Republicans. Never criticize a Republican because Republicans are American and therefore your criticism is anti-American.

And... that's not entirely fair to my actual Republican friends and family, who I know (seriously) are not like that. I'm actually not a Democrat either. Would it be fair to say that Democrats stereotype Republicans as hypocritical, sophistic, and myopic, without considering whether there were merits to their views -- that Democrats are (gasp!) elitist, and won’t address their own errors for all the time they spend pointing out Republican flaws?

I wonder when we will all decide to start being Americans instead of trying to find the motes in our brothers' eyes. I bear shame in this regard, too, so don't think I'm just casting stones.

I'm just afraid what all this non-progress and attacks ad hominem en masse in our great democratic experiment is going to cost us. I only know it won't be measured with money.

So, first, if my friend recognizes herself, I hope greatly she knows I would never want to cast aspersions at her for making a joke. Part of me very much wants to agree with her view that there are a lot of double standards going on (though I think it truly is on both sides), and, well, that shit ain’t right.

But knowing that doesn’t help. And pointing out that other people don’t get it doesn’t help either.

Whatever happened to being an American? Whatever happened to our pride?

I played a game in school once. Maybe you’ve played it. Four teams, each gets to cast a vote for ten rounds. All teams vote red, everyone loses a point. All teams vote blue, everyone gains a point. But if one team votes red and the others vote blue, the team that voted red gains three points. Other combinations result in other reversals of fortune. The game is rigged, but it has a surprise twist at the end. The rules, clearly stated at the outset—but widely ignored—, are that all teams must try to win, and that any team caught cheating will lose. Invariably, one of the teams will agree to vote one way so that all teams benefit, but will instead vote in order to win, thereby violating one rule in order to pursue another. The twist is that the teams that didn’t break their agreements didn’t really do their best to win, thereby violating a rule. Nobody wins. And the coupe de grace was that there never had to be a losing team. All the teams could have won.

I used to think that as we all got older, other kids would learn something like this from life. That if you put yourself first at the expense of others, it would not work out as well as you hoped. Nobody wins. Better to seek the gain for everyone – because it really is possible that everyone can win. Not all games, whether in school, business, or politics, must result with both a winner and a loser.

I have become more cynical now, but I regret it. I believe that too many people merely learned that you just have to be a better cheat. Lie, and don’t get caught. Believe your own half-truths. Find the weakness in others and exploit it. Has that always been the real American way, and I’ve just been enraptured by idealistic notions of my youth?

I don’t really believe it is. I believe we all have a part of us that loves our country, and the unprecedented freedom we enjoy thanks to men and women who were willing to die for it. I also believe we have way too much discretionary time on hands, and that we have to find ways to make that idle time more meaningful. Few things are as meaningful to us as politics and religion. But politics and religion are the great winds the whip up the masses into frenzies, and, well, that’s where the money is, folks. We don’t want news. That’s boring. We want controversy! We want scandal! We want standoffs, repeals, vetoes, and filibusters! We want shocking earmarks, impeachments, special investigators, and ethical inquiry panels! We want, to put it succinctly, that our politicians entertain us with their outrageous behavior, legitimate or otherwise. Without that, we’d have little reason to hear the latest gossip about the people we love to hate so much.

So I think I’m going to stay out of political punditry. I’ll still listen to the news and pay attention, but I’m going to quit either trying to take sides or trying to bridge sides. Instead, I’m going to take care of my family, do my job, pay my taxes, vote, and find some way to just give back in honor of the blessings I’ve received.

I hope people in Washington and state capitals learn to play a game where everyone wins. I hope the American people remember that the last time we divided into two supremely opposed viewpoints, it didn’t go so well.

I’m really tired of being “a gutless moderate” or “a tax-n-spend’ liberal” or “a two-faced gun-totin’ conservative.”

I hope I’m not sounding like a sanctimonious prick. I try to be just a decent man. I just want to be an American again. I really just want to represent and be proud to be a citizen of the best nation that the world can produce, and not whine about why it’s someone else’s fault that other countries on the planet are stealing our lunch money. They are stealing our lunch money, but frankly, we’ve been making it really easy for them to do it.

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I’m Voting… Republican.

AlanM@TwilightSoul.com — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 04:19:45 GMT

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(Ed.: Note the careful use of ellipsis to change the meaning of the statement from its obvious but sarcastic nature to it’s true meaning.)

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AlanM

How I use Todoist

Letter to Congress

Motivated

Probably irrelevant for you, but significant for me

So how was the gym?

Silicon Valley Code Camp 2011

Extra long comment from Facebook

Alan McBee This is the sort of crap stunt that gives Republicans a bad name.

Petition to Congress: Keep PBS and NPR!

Wither the wind blows

I’m Voting… Republican.

Alan McBee

This is the sort of crap stunt that gives Republicans a bad name.