The Evil Eyebrow

Category: Personal

  • Superstitions

    Jenn and I were on vacation last week. We got back home last night at 2330, approximately 2 hours late.

    This is all Tom’s fault.

    We briefly stopped by Tom and Steph’s house because they happened to be near the airport and we had not seen them for a while. Tom asked whether we’d been experiencing any flight delays recently during our travels. I responded no, we hadn’t really, and any delays that were hitting us weren’t really important because we’ve been taking direct flights.

    At the time, I thought to myself, “Oh great. Tom said the “d” word, and we’re about due for our share of airport congestion after all the easy traveling we’ve had.” I remonstrated myself for that because, like saying “shutout” during a game, it’s all superstition with no effect on life (or the game), and our odds of experiencing delays don’t change because we’ve had a lucky streak. Dice have no memory.

    It’s still Tom’s fault, though.

  • Smoky Skies

    I’m deliberately stealing the title from Mebbie’s post concerning the same thing.

    I’ve got a monster headache. Jenn is complaining (rightly) that her lungs are “on fire”.

    Atlanta is blanketed by smoke from the Georgia/Florida fire, and it’s a pain. This is day two and it is not supposed to go away until tomorrow afternoon. I had a training class today in a building that usually has a wonderful view of downtown about 8 miles away, except we could barely see 8 furlongs away. It’s nasty.

    0837 23 May Edit: I don’t get allergies, but I feel as if my head is going to go kaBOOM! We Want Rain!

  • Personal Organization

    Almost a year ago, I posted about Getting Things Done, a method of organization and productivity that David Allen (the author) espouses and which has taken society by storm. GTD, as it is better known, has several steps, and it boils down to never letting anything get away from you, except by choice. No more piles of things to-do. No more random stacks of things you’ll take care of sometime. It’s all captured and processed by GTD.

    I follow the method, to a degree, and have found it to be very useful in keeping basic life items under control. I find it more difficult to deal with at work, as my engineering projects try to resist some of the basic precepts (i.e. have a very next physical action for every project1). In order to improve my use of the system, and to always have something to write on (if you don’t write it down, it didn’t happen), I’m trying something new. (more…)

  • Taunted by a Clown

    Yesterday I participated in a service project with the Georgia chapter of ITE. We adopted a piece of Cumberland Boulevard to take care of as a part of the Cobb county Adopt-a-Mile program.

    We found some interesting things during the litter clean up: panties, shoes, a rancid dead racoon, a credit card, 1 dollar, and random other junk. The project was capstoned when I was taunted by a clown.

    I was walking up the median of the road, right across from the Cumberland Mall MARTA bus station when I hear, “Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah, nyah!” I turn and see a clown, in full regalia, pointing at me and laughing. He says something that I can’t hear over the traffic noise, so I yell, “What?!” He then yells back, “Ha ha! I’ve been there! I’m glad I’m not doing that!”

    I think for a moment and then respond, “Dude! We’re not serving time, here!”

    So, the lesson for the day was: Don’t hire clowns for your child’s birthday party. They may be convicted criminals who have served time doing community service hours.

  • Happy Birthday, Evil Eyebrow!

    Evil EyebrowToday is the Eyebrow’s 2nd birthday. This entry was posted to the minute of my first blog post ever. Yay for the Evil Eyebrow!

    Since it’s its inception, I’ve bumped up the frequency of postings a bit. We’re averaging about 10 or so a week right now. That may drop because there are plans to expand on another front which would divert some of my energies. Watch this space for more details. I expect that these “other plans” will fruit sometime in the next few months.

    Well, happy birthday, blog! Let’s keep it rockin’…

  • Alarm Clock with Retracable Snooze

    I need this alarm clock. It might get me out of bed and awake rather than like the last several days where I don’t even remember turning off the alarm.

  • Biblioholic's Manifesto

    To Be Read

    This is my to-be-read pile.

    It is large. There are 18* books of one type or another in it. One is three books in one (“Confusion” by Neal Stephenson), two are compilations of short stories (Best of Lovecraft and Collected Stories of Arthur Clarke), one is self-help (“7 Habits of Highly Effective People”)one is an autobioagraphy (Ben Franklin’s) and one is a manifesto (“Common Sense”). The rest are novels.

    Most every confirmed bibliophile has one of these stack. It doesn’t seem like much until you run around the dwelling and collect all unread books into a pile. Then it seems a bit daunting.

    Here is my Manifesto to go with this stack:

    “I will not buy more than 18 books before finishing this stack.”

    This works out to 1 book from the stack per 1 purchased book. Note that books I check out of the library do not count against this. I can read as many of those as I want. I’m just not allowed to buy any more books than I read in this stack.

    Now, if I stick to plan, I’ll read at least a few of these before I make my next run to Barnes & Noble or Amazon.com. Unfortunately, a few of these are pretty cumbersome. “Common Sense,” “The Confusion,” and the Autobiography of Ben Franklin may take me a while. However, I’ve also been know to ready three or more books at once…

    *Alert readers will note only 17 books in the image. I found one more afterward.

  • Ipod!

    I’m not now the proud owner of an Ipod Nano, 8gb version, black. It cost $249, which is something on the order of $100 cheaper then the full size 80gb full size video Ipod.

    Jenn thinks I’m silly to spend 2/3 the price for 1/10 the storage, but I thought size was the winning factor here, as evidenced by the image.

    New Ipod Nano with Old Ipod

    I’ve been putting off this purchase for a long time because, let’s all face it, $250 is a lot of money for a glorified Walkman. But, I received a $150 windfall from my employer due to this being my third anniversary so, what the hell.

    Size was my most important factor because I’m going to use this machine extensively while running, plus I like to carry things around in my pockets that aren’t the size of a small brick.

    Yay me. I’ve joined the mp3 generation.

  • PM Training

    If you read this blog, like Tom, you might wonder why I’ve been in MD two weeks out of two. Last week I was here for a company Technology Conference. This week I’m here for Project Management Training.

    PSMJ TrainingThe training is for, obviously, project managers, and it is half procedure, half motivational seminar, half good practices, and half leadership training. That’s a lot of halves to pack into 3.5 days. And truthfully, after the first intensive day of training, I think I can state that this is a brief patina of the skills that must be nurtured and developed in order to be a good project manager. I’ve already taken about 15 pages of notes, probably about 1/3 of which I’ll get good info out of. Applying all of this knowledge will be a challenge.

    More later. We’re meeting upper management at Outback for dinner and drinks, and I’m late.

  • Traveling with a Laptop

    It’s nice to travel with a laptop, because it lets me catch up on some of those longer posts, sitting in my “to write” folder, that I haven’t devoted the time to finish. I’m not a professional writer, and all the distractions at home tend to pull me away from long essays. However, sitting in the airport or on the plane for hours allows one some time to reflect.

    Hopefully, this space will be seeing some longer posts soon with DEEP THOUGHT in them.