Life
Stuff about life in general
9/2/2008
- My Remote Control Toilet Seat
Since I was on a roll with my blog, I thought I’d also talk about the most recent technology that changed my life.
Night light…
Heated Seat…
Heated Water…
Pressure Control…
Heated Air (For after…)
Settings for Him, Settings for Her…It’s Perfect!
We were playing Apples to Apples the other night and the green card “Perfect” came up. My wife, knowing my experience with my new toilet seat, put down the card “My Bathroom” and I instantly declared her the winner.
You can see more here:
Swash Intro
and
This one’s really funny (warning…you’ll see some bum’s)
I bought mine here (It’s significantly cheaper than anywhere else online).Enjoy!
Update: After posting this I got an email from Brondell who said that my story is the reason they started the company. So they could help people like me!
9/1/2008
- The Unthinkable Just Happened - 6 Years Of Digital Pictures…Gone!
Fortunately, I had about 16 different backups of them…so it wasn’t as bad as it sounded.
But, what if that just happened to you?
What if your hard drive failed?
What if Windows just went crazy and won’t boot?
What if your computer just failed and you can’t turn it on?
What if you got a virus that wiped out your data?Would you lose all the digital pictures of your kids? Would you lose years of work? Home movies? Contacts? Excel Docs? Bookmarks? Emails?
My hard drive that just failed was less than 6 months old.
This was probably the 8th hard drive I’ve had fail in the past 8 years.
HARD DRIVES FAIL!!! It’s only a matter of time…PERIOD. Every hard drive WILL fail.
This post is about being prepared for that.
If you’re not making regular backups of your computer, you are literally playing Russian roulette.
So, let me tell you the things I do, the things you can do right now to take care of this so you can sleep better at night:
1. Use Mozy. It costs $5/month for unlimited automatic backups. You set it up initially (which, shouldn’t take you very long because it will automatically backup lots of documents for you) and then it goes to work. Every day it backs up the stuff that has changed on your computer since the last time it made a backup.
You MUST do off-site backups! Mozy accomplishes this for you automatically. You never have to think about it again.2. Buy a 500GB external hard drive like this:
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/857763
or even:
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/856410
(**Note**: Both of those links go to fatwallet.com where people have found a great deal on something.)
Most large external hard drives will make automatic backups of your computer for you. They come with software for it.Now, you have an automatic backup that happens every day that’s attached to your computer. If your computer fails, you can immediately restore your data.
If your house burns down, or floods, or your computer gets Kool-aid spilt on it, you also have a backup online that you can download (mozy).Doing both of these things will take you less than 1 hour, and you will be protected against data loss.
3. Now, how about your website? Do you back that up too?
Oh, your hosting company makes backups for you?
WRONG!!!
Don’t ever trust your hosting company to make backups for you. They don’t do them as often as they say they do, their backups are rarely complete, and I’ve seen them screw up backups multiple times.
I use rsync to make backups of my web hosting accounts.
I use RIBS to manage what rsync does (rsync is an exceptionally complicated program. RIBS is a php script that will run rsync for you and gives you ton’s of options). This is something that would be a perfect task to give to one of the guys you hire in the Philippines to have them implement for you (or maybe someone on elance?).
I set up RIBS on a $6/month hosting account, and it backs up all my other hosting accounts. I set it up to back them up every 8 hours.
4. Do you backup your cell phone? Why not?
Look at this:
http://lifehacker.com/software/cell-phones/backup-your-cell-phone-data-with-bitpim-174785.php
Here’s how I do it on my blackberry. I use Funambol to sync my contacts to ScheduleWorld. I do this because it can happen over the air, so I don’t have to plug in my blackberry in order to back it up.5. I use Flickr.com to do another backup of my digital pictures and videos. It’s $25/year for an unlimited account, it’s a great backup of my pictures and it puts my pictures online for easy sharing, and they have good tools for easy uploading.
There are 3 keys to remember in setting up these backups:
1. It has to be automated. If you have to do it yourself, it won’t get done.
2. It has to be reliable. Make sure you have multiple backups.
3. It has to be regular. Don’t make backups once a month. Imaging losing a whole month’s work.
1/1/2008
- Why I Don’t Do New Years Resolutions
Isn’t it funny that we do these things we call “New Years Resolutions” where we swear to ourselves that we’re going to do something.
Yet…the whole point of these things is that we’re going to put off doing them until the new year comes.
And, since you don’t start something on a Tuesday, this year we’re going to put off starting our new habits until Monday, January 7.
So, a month ago, you decided to procrastinate losing weight because there was something special about January 1 (well, now January 7 because that’s a monday).
And 2 weeks ago you decided that January 1 was a magical day when you would work on making money outside of your current job, or you would be more patient with your kids, or you would be a better person.
January 1 doesn’t have any magic. That’s why new years resolutions almost always fail.
Procrastination is bad. And generally that’s what a resolution is. It’s something we’ve procrastinated, and something we knew we were going to procrastinate until the new year.
What happens if you need to lose weight in July? You’re going to get fatter until January 1? That really stinks.
I don’t do new years resolutions because when I realize I need to change something in my life, I make a big effort to change it today.
If I need to lose weight (which has happened a few times), I stop drinking chocolate shakes at 9:30 at night today. If I need to stop spending so much time on email, I close my email browser today.
Of course, I always write these things down in my todo list and email them to myself.
Make your new years resolution for 2008 to not need to have any 2009 new years resolutions. Resolve to change your life “today”, every day this year. You’ll have a much more productive year if you do.
10/19/2007
- Turning Your SmartPhone Into A $1,000,000/Year Tool
Over the past few months I’ve become semi-obsessed with productivity because of my BlackBerry.
After reading David Allens “Getting Things Done” and having his system change my life I have stumbled upon/created a system for personal productivity that uses technology to make me more productive.
If you’re not paying the $20/month to be able to do email from your smartphone, I think you’re wasting the biggest productivity tool you have. I’ve always said that outside of being a phone, most pda/smartphones are just toys. They look cool and sound great, but in the end, they’re just eye candy. Toys to play games with in your down time and keep people’s contacts in.
Here’s my podcast of How To Turn Your Smartphone Into A Million Dollar Tool instead of just having a phone and a toy.
Or you can play it here:
The website I use and talk about in the audio is http://tracks.tra.in.
I also use Google calendar.Here is the php script I use to email myself the todo’s.
Here’s a video of instructions:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=816501744180957431[tags]gtd, getting things done, gtd online, blackberry, smartphone[/tags]
7/4/2007
- Why the Gmail Archive Button Changes Email
My wife just told me she needs to switch to gmail. A few times recently she has deleted a message from yahoo and then wished she could have it back a couple days later.
The archive button in gmail is great in that you don’t need to delete messages anymore. Instead of deleting, simply archive. 2.XX GB is a lot of space.
However, being able to save messages you don’t know how to categorize isn’t the best thing about the archive button.
The best thing about the archive button is how it changes the mental state of email users.
One of the biggest problems with email is having to decide what to do with each email. It’s so time consuming. It’s also a major brainpower consumer.
Not any more.
The archive button can be used to say:
Get this email out of my face, I don’t want to deal with it.
or
I don’t know what to do with this email, so just get it out of my inbox so I don’t have to think about it.
Mentally, it allows you to get your inbox back again.
It allows you to get rid of emails, without having to figure out if you should delete, respond, categorize, group, filter, …, …, an email.
It allows you to think about more important things than a stupid email that isn’t going to help you in life.
If you haven’t read Getting Things Done yet, you need to. It will change how you think about what you keep in your head.
Email is a major contributor to thought garbage (the dumb thoughts you keep around in your head, trying to remember stuff or thinking about unproductive things, things that aren’t going to help you in any way) and the archive button helps get rid of it.
I’m not sure google really realized how effective the archive button was going to be. For me, it’s so effective, that I’ve turned my inbox over to someone else to filter my mail before I see it. I can let someone else safely archive all the emails that they think I shouldn’t see.
If they get it right, great. I don’t have to see the emails I didn’t want to see.
If they get it wrong, ok, that’s fine. The emails are still there. I just have to look at “all mail”, or search for the important email (if it’s really important, it’l get through to you).If you’re not using an archive button, you should be.
It’l free up your brainpower to think about more important things.
6/15/2007
- Working instead of blogging
I’m in the middle of Timothy Ferris’ book The 4-Hour Work Week and it prompted me to write this blog entry.
He talks about going on an information diet. Not reading the newspaper, watching the news, reading blogs, talking on the phone, going to meetings…
I decided a few months ago that I was going to do this. I wanted to JUST work on my business and on making money.
Not that I don’t think that being part of society and being informed is important, but for me, right now, getting my business running in an automated way is more important.
And I have succeeded at it.
It took a few months.
But, after a few months of hard work and separating myself from stuff that just distracts from what is really important, I have things running to the point that I can now concentrate on the stuff I want to concentrate on.
For the past 4 months I haven’t blogged. I haven’t read other people’s blogs. I haven’t worked on stuff that doesn’t make me money. I haven’t really gone to meetings. I stopped going to the UVEF luncheons that were fun, but a waste of 4 hours of a day.
I have participated in a weekly mastermind group with some brilliant internet minds and it has been worth every minute of it.
My point in writing this is that I think that sometimes we get too caught up in the popular things people do. The problem with this is that the reason they’re popular is because they’re easy. Easy things don’t often lead to the successes we want.
It’s also much easier to do good in this world when you have money and time to spend.
I hope to write some of the insights I’ve gained over the past months at some point. No guarantees. I’ve seen a lot of good…I’ve seen a lot of bad.
I’ve seen that if you really concentrate on the most important things to get done, you can make a lot of progress towards the things you want to get done.
Stop answering email as an excuse to why you aren’t successful!
Read Tim’s book.
2/23/2007
- The Secret
A few weeks ago I saw “The Secret” dvd, a movie put together by Rhonda Byrne with a bunch of successful people in it including Jack Canfield, Bob Proctor, and Joe Vitale.
When I saw it, I immediatly identified with it because I have seen the “law of attraction” in my life over and over again. If you seek out good people, good people will seek you. If you look for certain things in life, they’ll find you.
Since I haven’t blogged for a while, I thought this would be a reasonable way to get back into the swing of things. The secret dvd is worth watching. You can rent it at blockbuster.
While it alone won’t change your life, the principles they’re teaching are good. (There’s also a really good lesson to be learned from the whole movie)
[tags]the secret, the secret dvd[/tags]
9/18/2006
- Snow at Fathers and Sons Outing in September!
Here’s the picture:
6 inches!
IT’S SEPTEMBER 16!!!
Help me out a little!
8/21/2006
- New verb in our house - To Miox
This morning I was feeling a stomach ache and I thought it might have been because of some bad water I drank over the weekend.
After a little bit of moaning my wife asked me:
“Did you miox yet?”
Mioxing to us means mixing up a batch of extra strong water using my miox water filter and then drinking it immediatly. I love the miox filter because it will kill anything, supposedly including a lot of viruses.
Normally you’re supposed to mix the solution according to how much water you’re purifying and then you’re supposed to wait 15 minutes before drinking it. When I “miox” I mix the solution twice as strong as I’m supposed to and I drink it right away. The thought is that it will kill whatever is in my stomach that’s making me sick.
Sure, it probably also kills all the good bacteria in my stomach, but they’ll come back, and it’s worth it to me to try to kill whatever else is there.
So far it has worked two of the three times I’ve done it.
Today wasn’t one of them!
If you’re into emergency preparedness or anything of the sort, the miox water filter is a must have.
8/8/2006
- GTD Best Implementation Online
After my last blog entry about GTD I did some more research and came across tracks.tra.in, a hosted tracks service.
It turns out that tracks is a web based application that was specifically developed with GTD in mind. From what I can tell, and from the research I’ve done, tracks is the perfect online implementation of David Allens book Getting Things Done.
Tracks has lists that are context based (@home, @work, @phone, @car, @whatever you want) and it has projects so that each task is assigned to a context and a project. When you do your weekly planning, you can easily look at each project and decide what the next actions to do are and assign them to their appropriate context.
What’s even better is that it has a sweet ajaxy interface which is very uncommon of most open source projects, and even more uncommon of a project that was done for something so specific as this. I mean, this project wasn’t meant to be the end all todo list online, it was meant to be the perfect implementation for GTD online.
I think they’ve accomplished it.
And, it gets even better.
The owner of tracks.tra.in is very open to suggestions. So, in the past week he added a feature to his hosting service that allows you to post todo’s to your lists via email. And, even better than any other “post todo’s via email” implementation I’ve seen, this one allows you to easily assign a task to a context and project from your email subject. It’s so sweet!
So, for my specific implementation right now I have about 30 projects and 8 contexts:
@computer
today
@home
@phone
@car
@waiting
@someday
@emailDaily I go through the tasks in all the @ context lists and add them to my ‘today’ list. That day I try to get those things done. This saves me the mind power of having to review my other lists all day long and keeps me focused on what I should be doing, instead of wandering through the rest of my todo’s.
I’m a happy camper.
One more thing…Right now his hosting is free!
[tags]GTD, Getting Things Done, tracks, Best GTD Implementation[/tags]
8/2/2006
- Getting Things Done Plea
Update: I found what I believe to be the best GTD implementation online.
This post was supposed to be detailing my implementation of Getting Things Done (GTD) by David Allen.
Instead, it’s going to be a plea for help with it.
See, I’ve been using Backpackit for my implementation for the past few months. Then, over the last few weeks I got away from it a little. A few days ago I picked up Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life, Allens second book. It inspired me to get back into the system.
However, when I went to get back in I realized some weaknesses in the backpackit model for implemting GTD. It doesn’t have an easy way to move things between lists on different pages. It doesn’t have an easy way to have things on multiple lists (like, I want to create an action list for a certain project, and I want those actions to show up on my @actions list. I also want to be able to seperate them onto my @home, @car, @phone lists.).
I’ve read the blogs about GTD with Gmail (which I find very compelling), backpackit, rememberthemilk, voo2do, and tiddlywiki.
They all seem to have advantages and disadvantages.
So, before I go spend days figuring out how to use them all, I figured I’d ask others how they implemented it.
I have a few requirements:
1. It must be online. I don’t want to lose my lists because of a computer failure.
2. I must be able to send emails to the list from my blackberry. I love being able to send todo’s to my backpackit page, but I don’t like that it’s not easy to categorize it after that.
3. Must have an ajaxy interface.Any person implementation thoughts/experiences?
[tags]GTD,Getting Things Done[/tags]
6/8/2006
- Hiking in Zion with small children (podcast)
This is going to be my first podcast.
I’m not sure I’ll do this all the time, but I thought I’d try it and see how people like it.
To tell you the truth I wasn’t totally comfortable with recording it, but sometimes we have to get out of our comfort zone.
This is about hiking in Zion National Park with my kids.
Hiking in Zion National Park with small children (mp3)
4/18/2006
- Using our Food Storage
Neal and his wife came over 2 weeks ago and showed us how to grow wheat grass.
Since he posted about it, I thought I’d share how ours turned out.
Kim is using it as a centerpiece on our table now.
Yesterday she cut off a bunch of it and mixed it with some pineapple-coconut juice.
Sure, it smells like the lawnmower, but it actually tastes quite good.
12/31/2005
- Barf-o-rama
We have these friends, The Johnsons, who have 4 kids. They’re great kids, but tonight I saw stuff I don’t remember seeing in a long time.
We had them over for dinner for New Years Eve, and had like a snack dinner. We had corn dogs, little barfies (ok, fine, little smokies. I don’t like them, so I’m entitled to call them whatever I want), oven bake pizza, chips, dip, and soda.
It was a pretty good dinner, one I had been looking forward to since I couldn’t eat our Christmas Eve dinner (which was very similar) because of all the canker sores I had on my tounge.
Anyway…back to the story…
Their 20 month old (who weighs 17 pounds…ridiculous) was sitting on our couch and all of a sudden barfed all over the place. No warning. He wasn’t sick or anything. Luckily he got it all over himself, his mom, our couch (BOY am I glad we have leather couches), and miraculously managed to completely avoid getting it on our new carpet. Some of it even fell from in between his legs onto the ground, but his blanky was there to take the blow.
So, while I’m holding towels under his legs to make sure none gets onto the ground, we carry him into our bathroom so it can get cleaned op.
Whew, all done.
So we’re sitting watching Dumb and Dumber, and we hear yelling from upstairs:
“AAAAHHHHHH, Sage just barfed!!!!!”
So I go running upstairs and their 7 year old daughter did a humongous barf, all over herself and all over the mattress she was sitting on.
This was no normal barf. This was the stinkiest barf I’ve ever smelled. So stinky in fact, that everyone who came upstairs almost barfed from the smell. Their 20 month old DID barf again because of the smell. Luckily this time, his dad was holding him and managed to get him over a sink before he did it.
It was so stinky that I had to tie a towel around my face so that I wouldn’t smell it while I was cleaning it up.
Luckily, again, her barf got all over herself and the mattress, completely avoiding our new carpet.
Unfortunately, the entire upstairs smells now like barf. I’m braving the smell right now so I can write this.
Needless to say, they went home without staying to see the new year come.
I can’t believe the sickness that’s going around here in Utah right now. I believe Utah is #1 in the country right now for cases of the flu. I had it, so did my son. So does/did EVERYONE I know. Kim’s mom is sick, and she hasn’t been sick in like 22 years. All the Johnson kids have been sick (although, they’re “over” it now), and everyone else I can think of that I know is sick. If you’re from Utah, you know what I’m talking about. I’ve never seen anything like it.
12/24/2005
- New House
On monday this week we moved into a new house:
It has a great view from my office in an upstairs bedroom:
We’re pretty excited about it.
Of course…with moving comes all kinds of fun stuff…
- internet being down for a week
- sick kids
- sick me (yeah, we’ve all been sick for 5 days now)
- no working (at least it’s christmas time so I have an excuse for not answering the emails)
- spending lots of money on garbage you don’t want to spend money on
- dealing with a builder who didn’t finish the job
- blah blah blah
Life will get back to normal again sometime.
12/15/2005
- Find IT on eBay!
Ebay ALWAYS has good deals on stuff
http://cgi.ebay.com/Apple-iTunes-15-Gift-Card_W0QQitemZ5644161666QQcategoryZ31411QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
12/11/2005
- Some old pictures
I found these old pictures in my desk while cleaning it out. I was maybe 10? 12?
Thoughts:
We must have thought Gretzky was pretty cool to take a picture of his mullet.
I continued to play hockey with that stick after all the kings signed it. Doh!
See if you can find something in my teeth in one of the pictures.
Steve (my brother) and I thought we were pretty cool with the tallest card house ever made (or so we thought)
- Keys to Success - Jim Richie
About 3 years ago I took an “Entrepreneurial Lecture Series” class at BYU. The class met once per week and had a different entrepreneurial speaker come each week and speak to us.
After 3 years I only remember a few of the speakers, and remember less of what they spoke about. However, there was one speaker I distinctly remember because he
1. Was a good speaker
2. Gave useful adviceI’ve never been able to remember who he was or exactly what his keys to success were, other than he said to get up early. Well, I just found my notebook from that semester and have been going through the notes I took from the speakers. Here are my notes from Jim Richie.
Jim Richie
Two formulas for success- J. Paul Getty
- Get Up Early - Successful people get up early in the morning. They work while others are sleeping.
- Work Hard
- Find Oil - Real Estate, banking, internet - Anything can be oil.
- David B. Haight (his mission president, who gave this advice on his last day before going home)
- Get your education
- Make your mark - make a difference in the world
- Get prepared to be used / be of service
The more credibility you have, the more opportunity you’ll have. That’s why you get an education.
Putting all of those things together, Jim’s list was:
- Get up early - 6:30 am at the latest
- Work Hard
- Get your education - Respect/trust is easier to gain if you have a degree
- Find oil - Find something you can be the best at
- Make your mark
- Get prepared to be of service
The sixth one is the only one that matters. That’s why you do the previous five, so that you can serve others.
Make a lot of money and become financially independant so you can be of more service. You’re more useful to others if you don’t have to work.
- J. Paul Getty
12/10/2005
- The Dreaded Shopping Cart
When you live in south Provo, certain things become humourous that wouldn’t be in other places.
We thought we might actually get away with living in this house for 3 years without having a shopping cart show up in front of our house.
But alas…in what is likely our last week in this house here is a picture from my front porch this morning.
The dreaded shopping cart showed up.
How many of you have a shopping cart in your front yard!?
Yeah…I didn’t think so.
11/15/2005
- Family
It’s been a while since I’ve written anything about my family. In the beginning, when I started this blog, the point was to keep a journal. I’ve done that…somewhat.
I don’t necessarily want to write about MY family right now, although Austin is growing like crazy, as is Addie, who started to crawl last week. That’s super fun. Kim is also wonderful as ever.
I want to talk about the importance of family, with respect to someone I met this past week. He’s 42 years old, and just got married a year ago. He’s a good guy, who has already made a lot of money and had a lot of “success” in life.
We were talking the other day and he told me that he and his wife are now trying to make babies, because that’s what’s important in life. Money is nice. Friends are cool. Family is important.
Why is it important? I’m not sure I know. I just know that my family means the world to me. I can’t imagine going through life without a family. I’m sure part of the importance of the family is the joy you get from seeing your posterity grow and succeed at things. It’s awesome.
I respect this guy a tremendous amount. Right now he’s still growing his business, but he’s focusing more on his family right now, because he knows that’s what really matters in life.
Sometimes I need to focus less on my computer and my blackberry, and more on the people around me who actually care about me.
My computer doesn’t care.
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