Lists

Evernote windowLists keep me sane. Putting some­thing on a list allows me to stop wor­ry­ing about it. I love know­ing that I’m keep­ing track of most of my to-do items on var­i­ous lists. I enjoy being able to eas­ily find those lists.

Ever­note is a tool that helps me keep track of my lists. It’s free and also cloud-based, so I can access those lists from my mobile device. (Like every cloud-based tool I’ve used, that aspect is not per­fect... sync­ing may or may not hap­pen as fast as I want it to. How­ever, it does work most of the time.)

There is tons of func­tion­al­ity that Ever­note offers. I am barely scratch­ing the sur­face. Only using it for lists works well for me.

Give it a try! This is not a paid ad. I use Ever­note and think you should too.

The great thing about being a kid

Skier kid asleep on a staircaseThe great thing about being a kid is that many times you just don’t care what other peo­ple think.

We went ski­ing a few weeks ago, and this kid fell asleep on a very busy stair­case in the main ski lodge. He didn’t care about what other peo­ple thought. He was so exhausted that he had to col­lapse right then and there.

I was jeal­ous of his strong fil­ters. What a cool thing to be able to sleep there!

I was not jeal­ous of the kid’s par­ents. Their fil­ters were a bit under­de­vel­oped. I feared a skier who had one too many beers at the bar would stomp on the kid’s head on their way down the stair­case. At least the kid had a hel­met on. (But in all fair­ness to his unseen par­ents, maybe they were so tired they col­lapsed on a dif­fer­ent staircase.)

Look the other way

1995 Vauxhall Tigra car spreadCre­ativ­ity is elu­sive some­times. When you reach the bot­tom of your cup, it can be hard to find inspiration.

One new direc­tion is to think the oppo­site of the way you would nor­mally think. The design­ers of this brochure, circa 1995, used a red car and pri­mary head­line bar to illus­trate Green — the com­plete opposite.

And it worked. If the design­ers had used a green car and a green head­line bar, the result would be ... bor­ing.

That perfect moment

A tiny sparkle on the Denver foothillsSome­times you must act imme­di­ately. You have to drop every­thing and act before it’s too late.

I was engaged to a woman for a week, prior to my rela­tion­ship with Heather, that ulti­mately resulted in mar­riage. The one-week engage­ment woman could not say, “Yes!” until it was too late. She took two long months to get off the fence and finally say yes. I gave her a dead­line for say­ing yes, and she couldn’t. On Dead­line Day, I said it was over and began dat­ing Heather. Then she was ready to say yes. So I said yes back. For a week.

I was in agony about her reluc­tance to say yes. In fact, her yes was less than enthu­si­as­tic. I asked my par­ents what to do. They wisely would not advise me, other than to say, “Just lis­ten to your­self.” I did — and I had to call it off.

The win­dow of oppor­tu­nity for the first woman was lost.

My won­der­ful wife had absolutely no hes­i­ta­tions when I asked. With a huge smile, she shouted out, “Yes!!”

So don’t hes­i­tate. (I’m very glad that lady hes­i­tated! And I’m glad Heather did not hesitate.)

The photo is a very weak cap­ture of a moment... This is the morn­ing view of the foothills, vis­i­ble from our front porch. Occa­sion­ally, you can see the morn­ing sun’s reflec­tion in the mirror-covered glass of a dis­tant office build­ing. On a recent morn­ing, there were about ten shiny win­dows. I had never seen more than one. And it looked like sparkly Christ­mas lights. Sadly, my cam­era was not up to the duty of cap­tur­ing the moment.

Investing in cash register tape

cash register tapeMy next invest­ment will be in a com­pany that pro­duces cash reg­is­ter tape. Their prof­its must be grow­ing as fast as the length of tape I get with each new pur­chase. Print may be dying, but not in that area of the paper marketplace.

I am glad that many store sales peo­ple ask whether I want a receipt. I love it when they ask before print­ing one out.

Com­pa­nies are fool­ing them­selves in think­ing many peo­ple will read cash reg­is­ter tape mar­ket­ing mes­sages. Today’s mar­ket­place is so crowded with infor­ma­tion that it’s good to be as strate­gic as pos­si­ble in where you put your mes­sages. This throw-away item is not one of the best mar­ket­ing mes­sage channels.

By the way, this receipt — over 18″ long — was for just one item. And to set your mind at ease, I won’t put my money in cash reg­is­ter com­pany stock.

Lessons from a homeless person

Duct tape car window repairHome­less peo­ple can be very resourceful.

Spend­ing $250 to replace a bro­ken side win­dow in a 20-year old car is not an option if you are liv­ing in that car. Duct tape makes a strong and water­proof seal, if only tem­po­rary. The total expen­di­ture was about 50c. Maybe sun will destroy the tape in six months, but then the owner will just need to re-tape the win­dow. They’ll have the oppor­tu­nity to use a new and dif­fer­ent pat­terned tape!

The les­son I learned is to be resource­ful. When you don’t have an option, cre­at­ing a solu­tion that’s “not per­fect” is often perfect.

Your tax dollars at work

A fixed crack in the sidewalkI rode my bike to the shop to pick up our car. County employ­ees recently ground the edges of side­walk cracks to smooth tran­si­tions between each slab of con­crete. (Freez­ing and thaw­ing water wreaks havoc on Colorado’s roads and sidewalks.)

My tax dol­lars paid for those repairs. I’m glad.

I have lived in other parts of the world where I could not see much gov­ern­ment expen­di­ture on local infra­struc­ture. I’m thank­ful to live in a place where I can see pos­i­tive results of money I give to the government.

Some­times I like to focus on the good they’re doing rather than the things I wish they’d do dif­fer­ently. There is a lot of good.

Review: Special K Cracker Chips

Special K Cracker ChipsI love new snack prod­ucts — par­tic­u­larly when they are made by Pep­peridge Farm. This time, I ven­tured into new ter­ri­tory. Kellogg’s cre­ated Spe­cial K Cracker Chips to com­pete with sty­ro­foam cakes, alias rice cakes. They are much bet­ter, when that is the com­par­i­son. But when com­pared to Pep­peridge Farm’s Baked Nat­u­rals, they are a faint shadow of snack goodness.

They are nicely crunchy, but the fla­vor is a bit weird. I only tried ched­dar, but I’m not will­ing to buy the other fla­vors. The tex­ture was not out­stand­ing. I thought the price was a bit high: $3.79, which is a lot for just 4 ounces of snacks. Thus my my deci­sion to not explore fur­ther flavors.

My wife likes these two aspects — they are low calo­rie and are pretty much gluten-free.

Ver­dict? Pass.

We love confined spaces

Christmas bulb Christmas treeWhy is it that we enjoy vis­it­ing nice hotels? They offer these won­der­ful things:

- Less room than our homes
– Fewer snack options
– The pri­vacy of shar­ing a room with your kids (if you have kids)
– Pos­si­bly a noisy heating/cooling system

And yet we love the change. It’s a dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ment than that of our nor­mal life. Those lit­tle soaps and sham­poos are amaz­ing. And stay­ing in a hotel means travel, if you like travel.

Dis­claimer: This post does not apply to busi­ness trav­el­ers who are totally burned-out on stay­ing in hotels.

Image info: I took this photo in the Gay­lord Texan, a resort hotel very close to where my sis­ter used to live. It’s an experience.

Getting published

A letter to the editorMy uncle snail-mailed me this let­ter to the edi­tor he recently wrote. He was thrilled to see his name in print. I have won­dered what makes some of us enjoy that recog­ni­tion. Here are a few ideas why:

  • We like the idea that some­one else thought our con­cepts were good enough to be seen by their audience.
  • We like the idea that our ideas are being seen by a larger num­ber of peo­ple than if we were just talk­ing with a friend.
  • There’s the pos­si­bil­ity that some­one will take our idea and make a dif­fer­ence — or give us a related idea that will make a difference.

By the way, I appre­ci­ate his point in the let­ter. I am very frus­trated when I see the num­bers spin­ning past so fast. ($10,000 is added to the US national deficit every second.)