Daily meditations

Today's Meditation

Thoughts:

Serious: This is a very good outlook to have. It would be very nice to be able to look at every experience and see the beauty, elegance and things that could be learned from it. It is not always possible, however, to step away from the immediate and not-so-immediate negative impact of these events to see the positive. "We'll look back on this and laugh" is a truism for just that reason. Once a person has the opportunity, the clarity and the distance to examine a situation more objectively, it becomes possible to look for the silver among the clouds. In the immediate, though, it is not realistic to expect someone to lose their job and look at it as a learning experience if they have something invested in the job.

Knee-jerk: This was way too long. Bobby McPherin said it with much more brevity: "Don't worry, be happy."

Fly-off-the-handle: Yeah right! "I'm sorry, Mr. Smith. Your mom just died." "AWESOME! Let's go find some positives!"

Questions to ponder:

1. Can you think of something that happened to you that was "just awful," but that turned out to be a positive experience?

Any experience where I had to slog through the discomfort of alienating people because I like knowing the truth rather than being spoon-fed what people think I want to hear. Yeah, it sucks to have people resent me, but if I know it, it's better.

2. What sort of things build most character in us: the positive and easy, or the difficult and sometimes negative?

This is a question that has no value to me. It's not even a question. It's a statement with the comparator removed and a question-mark at the end in place of a period. You know the answer, and I know the answer. Which is better: a kick in the balls, or twenty-five dollars?

3. How would you advise a friend to look at his or her problems?
Do you look at yours in the way that you would advise others to?

In general, I try to stay out of people's problems. They are for them to deal with unless I'm specifically asked for advice. In that case, I suggest they tackle their problems head-on with no compromise. Absolutely, I do.

powered by performancing firefox

On the Horizon

I've decided that I'm going to try doing a daily meditation on here. Just a little space to think about something, write about something and hopefully clear my head.

We'll see how it goes.

I found a daily meditations site: here

They might be cheesy, they might be insightful. They might be real frickin' obvious. But it's something that I have wanted to try for awhile, so I figure I'll give it a shot.

Lemme know what you think.

Until more later on

powered by performancing firefox

This is another test.

This is a list of Firefox's performancing extension.

powered by performancing firefox

edit:I really meant test, not list.

Blooger? Bloogle? Boogle? Booger? Goggle? Gogger? Bolglobber?

I've been forced FORCED, mind you, to join the rest of the world on Google's new Blogger thingie. Fortunately, Cliff invited me into Gmail's exclusive (or not so exclusive, from what I hear now) membership.

Now I see that there's an error on the page and MSIE graciously tells me that RIGHT_KEYCODE is undefined. Fantastic work, Goobler. Make me switch to something that's broken. Thanks.

I just want my old Blogger back.

Just wait til Feb - no, March... um.. maybe May?

So, there hasn't been a whole lot of spare time running through the offices at Intuit.

Aw, poor baby. Has to work at work.

Yeah, whatever. Shut up. The crunch is on and has been since, basically, September. Sprints come and go, and we work overtime, knowing we have to squeeze this release out so that we can actually point to something, look upper management in the face and say, "See? We weren't just surfing the web!"

The problem (or the stress) comes from this: Upper management got very, very interested in the project, decided that it was going to solve a huge hole in the online banking market and decided to invest in this solution - to the tune of 1.53 billion dollars. No pressure. Just get the project out. Early, if possible.

It's fun, running around like this, for a bit. We've been told that March 15 is the pressure-off date. I wish I could believe it. I was also told that post 1.0 (november) would be a chance to regroup (which it wasn't) and that after Jan 31, there would be some time. (Also, no) So we have to have 1.5 released right away (mar 15) and 2.0 comes out in May so that our partners can integrate.

Will May be the time when things slow down to a normal pace? One can hope but there isn't a lot of precedence backing that hope.

First thing I'm going to do when I have some free time:

Clean up my inbox. There are currently 1932 messages floating around in there. I don't know what's pertinent, I don't know what's not. I read them and move on. I'm not mindful enough to store them in their proper places when they come in.

News:

Beaver camp was great. Tobogganing, candle-making, Kub/Beaver Kars, campfire and a whole slew of other things.

I finished the Dragon story, tentatively titled 'Resurrection'. I've written my three critiques and posted them as well.

I have three or four more goals to wipe off my 101 in 1001, despite the fact I've done pretty much nothing intentionally.

Kim started taking care of Hailey (Brad and Jil's daughter) and it seems that's going pretty well.

My book-reading is not on pace for 50 books this year. It's more like on pace for maybe 12. I'm going to stop making that a goal and just enjoy reading. I'm currently reading Black Sun Rising by CS Friedman. It's part 1 of a trilogy. It doesn't seem to be anything special just yet, but I'm barely into it at all. I also bought the next installment of Steven Erikson's Malazan series, Midnight Tides. I'll probably read that when I'm done with Black Sun Rising.

Last week at soccer, I twisted my ankle, so I've been avoiding sports and doing cross-stitch at lunch instead of soccer. Good progress has been made. I'm just about done the first batch of leaves on the Samurai cross-stitch. Someday, I'll post a picture of my progress and you can "ooh" and "ahh" all you want.

Kim's brother, sister-in-law and niece are here for the week.

That is all. You are now caught up. If not, too bad.

More on Sandy Foster

Okay, so I cut my first post short. And after the clamouring of my fans, I’ll post a little bit more. (it’s easier here than in a comment anyway)

Sandy Foster sings jazz. Her music varies from slower and softer jazz to latin-flavoured up-tempo stuff. Her range is quite high and she sings quite a bit of her music with a breathless quality which I suppose some people could consider off-putting, and which I probably would if she used it for everything instead of using it as a tool like she does with the rest of her stuff. She has a very powerful voice which she uncorks at the right times. She doesn’t wail like Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston. I’m sure she could knock the crap out of either one of them doing their songs, if they weren’t so inane. She does all of this effortlessly and it’s very easy to tell that she loves what she does.

She’s a bit older, she’s a wife and mother and she uses her life experiences in the songs she writes. As I said before, she doesn’t experiment with wild new music but her band is tight and they do their jobs very well. Her lyrics speak of a whole bunch of different things. She can slip into silliness a little, like with Cranberry Jazz, where she explores the fun of her relationship with her husband, she can sing a song where it sounds like she’s mourning a decaying relationship in Meet Me Here, and Marooned I can identify with because it explores themes of isolation and not entirely as a negative.

As I’ve said before, there isn’t a bad song on the CD and the more I listen to it, the more I agree with myself.

Damn I’m smart.

Sandy Foster

Click on image to enlarge ( I think)