The Jay-Blog

Personal Productivity

I'm experimenting with a $50 program called ActiveWords. It generates macros to eliminate repetition. I'll use this just to tap out "a href="http://www.internettime.com/images/" time and time again. Automating this sequence alone will pay for the software.

If I start to sound like a form letter, you'll know why.

Al Quaida Almanacs

Our Federal government has gone totally whacko. It's the old right-problem/wrong-answer situation. Sending an army of guards with machine guns to civilian airports to unwrap Christmas gifts in a futile search for bombs is a colossal waste. If we diverted the money thrown down that particular rat hole to education, charity, or even rehabilitating impoverished refugees in the Middle East, imagine how much better off we'd be.

The World Almanac was a perennial Christmas gift when I was growing up. There's something for everyone in the "Book of Facts." Now the Feds consider it a marker for terrorists, especially if the Almanac has suspicious annotations. (I am not making this up; I wish I were.)

FBI Issues Alert Against Almanac Carriers

December 29, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The FBI is warning police nationwide to
be alert for people carrying almanacs, cautioning that the
popular reference books covering everything from
abbreviations to weather trends could be used for terrorist
planning.

In a bulletin sent Christmas Eve to about 18,000 police
organizations, the FBI said terrorists may use almanacs
``to assist with target selection and pre-operational
planning.''

It urged officers to watch during searches, traffic stops
and other investigations for anyone carrying almanacs,
especially if the books are annotated in suspicious ways.

``The practice of researching potential targets is
consistent with known methods of al-Qaida and other
terrorist organizations that seek to maximize the
likelihood of operational success through careful
planning,'' the FBI wrote.

The FBI said information typically found in almanacs that
could be useful for terrorists includes profiles of cities
and states and information about waterways, bridges, dams,
reservoirs, tunnels, buildings and landmarks. It said this
information is often accompanied by photographs and maps.

``I don't think anyone would consider us a harmful
entity,'' said Kevin Seabrooke, senior editor of The World
Almanac. He said the reference book includes about a dozen
pages out of its 1,000 pages total listing the world's
tallest buildings and bridges but includes no diagrams or
architectural schematics. ``It's stuff that's widely
available on the Internet,'' he said.

Illusion

This 178K file will more than fill your screen but it will remind you that your mind plays tricks on you. The movement you see is all in your head.

Christmas in Berkeley

Christmas in Berkeley

People: See how many dachshunds you can count in these photos!

For Washington's former mayor???

I bought a Santa suit to wear to the eLearning Forum
Season's Party. What a gas. Everyone loves Santa. I
wore it to a party the next evening even though I
didn't know anyone. Santa mingles well. Here I
am, driving home.

SPOILER. Mystery gifts identified below.

Chopstick rest

Japanese faucet cleaner

(Seam ripper)

Bottle stopper

Shrimp deveiner

(Pastry tamper)

Package opener

Scissors sharpener (This actually works rather well.)

Salt. But not just any old salt. Prized by gourmets,
this salt was once reserved for the nobility. Harvested
on one particular island. My friends in Nice keep a
jar on the dining table and throw a pinch on
whatever needs it.

Oh, those crafty Japanese. This is apparently a
miniature stand for propping up something on
your desk, a business card for example.

I think this is a corn-pick but since we bought
it for a previous Christmas I'm not so sure.

We had a quiet Christmas Eve in front of the fireplace. Since it was about 60 degrees outside, the room overheated and we had to take a break. Cheese fondu for dinner. Discussion about going to Fairbanks, Alaska, next month. At least there won't be a crowd. Time to get back in there.

No resolutions

Just the other night I told a friend at a year-end party/board meeting that I was getting into that year-end mood where I start pondering what I foresee for the twelve months ahead. "You don't still make resolutions, do you?" she asked.

No, I don't make resolutions. A resolution is something you half-heartedly commit to and feel bad about when you violate it in the first few weeks of the year. This is built in -- if you really meant to do it, it wouldn't be left to reposition as a resolution. About as much fun as the Puritan Fathers. I'm motivated by what I want to attain, not what I am forced to restrict.

Instead of resolutions, I make time for reflections. So much of our learning is half-baked. Snap judgments are often faulty. Impulse decisions get you in trouble. My mantra is "What can I learn from this?"

Letting an idea gestate gives the mind time to find connections. I do some of my best thinking while asleep. I'll plant a seed by specifying what I'd like to come up with the next morning. While I snooze, the boys in the back room toil away. Most of the time I awake with an ah-ha!

Sunday will be the shortest day of the year, the solstice. It's the perfect time to look back to the last solstice, asking "What have I learned?" Reflection is feedback to the self. It's key to change. It can be very pleasing.

Sometimes, one's reflection is distorted -- life as seen through a fun house mirror. When this happens, you need a second opinion. Ask your friends. I find it useful to follow Emerson's commandment: Know Thyself.

Psychologist Marty Seligman has posted a variety of self-assessment instruments on the web. They provide good feedback. They're free. I found the VIA Signature Strengths Survey particularly enlightening. Instead of a meaningless numeric score, the VIA shows how you stand compared to others.

As you can see on my scoresheet, you can compare the strength of your learnings to others on the web, other males, people your age, others with advanced degrees, and even others within your zip code.

I'll admit that when it comes to signature strengths, I'm an extremist. Almost off the chart. Reflecting on this led me to take more ownship of my extreme leanings, and to build on them rather than apologize or go for the central tendency.

Tomorrow I'll go back through my Journal, looking for patterns and for lessons. In previous years, that's meant riffing through a few books full of notes and a Word file. Now there's more of me exposed to the public: blog entries, emails, and articles. This year I've begun providing greater public exposure by expanding the "arena" of my Johari window:

The extended entry has a couple of other views of the johari window.

At last

Thank heavens there's now a solution for the over-endowed. All the spam talks about enlarging one's penis. What about us guys who have too much already? It's not funny when your member terrifies the opposite sex, rips the zippers out of your trousers, and occasionally gets slammed against your knee. The patch is a miracle!

Coquillage paysane

Whenever I'm in Paris, I make sure I eat at least one coquillage, or shellfish platter. These wonderful creations take up so much room that they're served on a stand on your table. Otherwise you wouldn't have room for your bowl for shells, plate, claw crackers and picks, seafood forks, lemons, wine glass, and so forth.

Lunch today chez moi brought back taste memories of coquillages fantastiques. The big Paris platters usually have a variety of oysters, clams, whelks, crab, a lobster claw, and bigorneaux. Bigoneaux (bígaros in Spanish) are the tiniest mollusk on the platter but one of the tastiest. I introduce them in French because "sea snail" doesn't sound very appetizing.

Uta was away this week at a tennis resort in Palm Springs, so I could let my palate be my menu guide. A few miles to the north of here is a wonderful Asian supermarket: the Ranch 99. Their fish department is a work of art. What did I see but bigoneaux!!! For $2.28 a pound. I bought a bag.

Turning to the net for a recipe, I discovered that what are sea snails to Asians are periwinkles, sometimes shortened to just winkles, to us Westerners. Most of the recipes were quite elaborate--but involved picking all the meat out and then putting it in a dish that could overpower the bigoneaux's subtlety.

I use the Occam's Razor method of cooking. Keep it as simple as possible. I plunged the bigoneaux into boiling salt water. Two minutes later I drained them. That's it. C'est tout. They were absolutely delicious, reminiscent of tiny clams. It took me a little over an hour to pry them all from their shells.

Cheap, healthy, non-fattening, less than $3 a serving, prep time of 2 minutes, about as simple a recipe as you'll ever seen.

Vive les bigoneaux!