Since 1999 Rockin' it old-skool. Medley's 10th anniversary has come and gone!
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A few people have been asking, so I figured I’d write up a little post for those interested in TheLittleGuy’s wishlist and possible holiday gifties for him. First, a few particulars on clothing and toy preferences:
- We are buying him size 2T pants/bottoms and 3T tops. The 3T tops are a little big on him, but he has a long body so many 2T shirts are too short. We try to get 100% cotton stuff as much as possible (with the exception of occasional fleece.)
- We are also endeavoring to avoid media tie-in and character-focused toys as much as possible for now. We figure there’ll be time enough for that later without early and ever-present indoctrination. So far I think only Elmo has managed to infiltrate. And maybe a little bit of Winnie-the-Poo.
- We have created an Amazon wishlist for him and I’ve put a whole bunch of things on it (including things from other stores using the Universal Wishlist feature). But nobody should feel constrained by that. We’ve never had an 18-month-old before (he’ll be 18 months at Christmas) and we’re sure that there are things that would be great for him but that we’ve just never come across or heard of. And, while I know this will come back to bite me later, I still say you can never have too many plush toys or too many balls or too many blocks.
Speaking of TheLittleGuy, here’s a pic from this week:
 TLG in a Dashing Hat
No, I have no shame. Don’t you want to just buy him a whole pile of stuff?!?! 
It has now become the accustomed time at which we all articulate our thanks and gratefulnesses. I’ll start, you go next.
First, I’m grateful for this tasty Scotch I’m sipping right now – my first since pre-pregnancy. Just as tasty as I remember!
And of course I’m grateful for TheGuy and TheLittleGuy who are both much sweeter to me than I deserve. TheGuy has been an indefatigable trooper during TLG’s infancy and now-toddlerhood.
I am thankful to my family, especially my parents for taking care of our kitties the last several months. And to our ~family, especially the Genehacks, with whom, if my math is correct, we are celebrating our NINTH Thanksgiving this year. (Hey you guys, we gotta’ do something extra special for the 10th next year.)
I am grateful to my friends who offer loads of useful insights and advice when I need it, put up with my idiosyncrasies, and humor my random obsessions. I would start naming them all, but then I might become maudlin, and we can’t have that.
Most of all, I am grateful to the universe that we have been so fortunate with TLG. He is such a fun and interesting little person who charms us daily with his cleverness and curiosity and generosity.
Rao’s continuing discussion of institutional pathology and the personality types that are encouraged (discovered?) within institutions is fascinating. [1, 2, 3] INTJs are clearly sociopaths in his model. So, you know, where’s all the power and money I’m supposed to have? I’m clearly a loser/clueless-INTJ. Sheesh. Alas.
The latest piece is a discussion of morality in light of this analysis after some pushback some readers. Interesting and thought-provoking stuff. One small snippet:
Sociopaths can be compassionate because their distrust only extends to groups. They are capable of understanding and empathizing with individual pain and acting with compassion. A sociopath who sets out to be compassionate is strongly limited by two factors: the distrust of groups (and therefore skepticism and distrust of large-scale, organized compassion), and the firm grounding in reality. The second factor allows sociopaths to look unsentimentally at all aspects of reality, including the fact that apparently compassionate actions that make you “feel good” and assuage guilt today may have unintended consequences that actually create more evil in the long term. This is what makes even good sociopaths often seem callous to even those among the clueless and losers who trust the sociopath’s intentions. The apparent callousness is actually evidence that hard moral choices are being made.
Scott Berkun’s The Art of Project Management gets raves all over the place and I’ve had a copy (only partially-read) for awhile now in my ever-growing ToRead stack. I’ve also had a copy of his book The Myths of Innovation (much shorter and written in short snacky bits) floating around, too. And, in my to-read set of tabs has been the writing he’s been doing about public speaking, including this post from the summer, “Lessons from 50+ Books on Public Speaking” in which he distilled the best of a pile of books so that we don’t have to. Handy!
Dale Carnegie got much of it right 50 years ago in Public Speaking for success (one of the best I read – I’m surprised too). And he hits the same points Aristotle and Cicero talked about nearly 2000 years before. You can throw a dart at a stack of these books and get much the same advice. It goes like this: know your audience, be concise and practice. If you can remember that you are well on your way. Problem is this takes work and discipline, which is harder to do than buying books. Knowing and doing are not the same thing. Joining toastmasters, where you practice, is likely one of the best things you can do.
“[] Join Toastmasters” is one of those things that’s been on my list forever. Is there a theme to this post? All these things.. stacks of books, gajillions of tabs, things to do, long lists of places to visit that I never seem to get to. Bah. So frustrating.
I found this take on what Apple’s doing wrong with the iPhone app store quite persuasive.
They treat iPhone apps the way they treat the music they sell through iTunes. Apple is the channel; they own the user; if you want to reach users, you do it on their terms. The record labels agreed, reluctantly. But this model doesn’t work for software. It doesn’t work for an intermediary to own the user. The software business learned that in the early 1980s, when companies like VisiCorp showed that although the words “software” and “publisher” fit together, the underlying concepts don’t. Software isn’t like music or books. It’s too complicated for a third party to act as an intermediary between developer and user. And yet that’s what Apple is trying to be with the App Store: a software publisher. And a particularly overreaching one at that, with fussy tastes and a rigidly enforced house style.
Rafe also thinks Apple’s going about things the wrong and proposes a different governance model:
What I do think Apple should move toward is a constitutional monarchy. Apple’s executives remain the heads of state, and are ultimately the final authority on iPhone-related matters, but for everyday purposes the rule of law exists. Apple would write a constitution of sorts for iPhone developers and users, and get rid of the hidden, arbitrary rules. They’d create an open process for developers seeking approval for their applications, communicate reasons for denial, and give the developers a chance to appeal such rulings.
Unfortunately, I don’t think Apple is going to change any time soon.
A few links before the weekend follies commence:
I am in desperate need of more hours in my day. Specifically more hours when I am not dragging and foggy due to lack of sleep. Coffee helps, but I can only drink so much of it before my stomach totally rebels, so I need to be careful there. Via some chain of links that I’ve now lost track of, I came across this set of seven tips on how to create more time in one’s day. It doesn’t really address the foggy brain problem, but it’s a start. Tip #4 – Block Out Chunks of Time:
The best way to tackle big projects like this is to force them into your schedule. Spare time doesn’t just appear from nowhere – you need to make a conscious effort to create it. Block out a weekend afternoon, for instance: tell family and friends you have another engagement that day. Then storm on ahead with that project. Trust me, you’ll feel great for having made a start.
The Gender Bias Learning Project is well put-together. But I can’t spend too much time there; it becomes physically painful, as it’s all much, much too familiar.
The Center for WorkLife Law, with support from a NSF ADVANCE leadership grant, has developed this on-line gender bias training that teaches you to identify the four basic patterns of gender bias:
* Prove it Again!
* The Double Bind
* The Maternal Wall
* Gender Wars
This training also provides survival strategies for handling each type of bias [...]
Rafe pointed to this incredibly disturbing and depressing analysis of the television show The Office.
So why is promoting over-performing losers logical? The simple reason is that if you over-perform at the loser level, it is clear that you are an idiot. You’ve already made a bad bargain, and now you’re delivering more value than you need to, making your bargain even worse. Unless you very quickly demonstrate that you know your own value by successfully negotiating more money and/or power, you are marked out as an exploitable clueless loser.
I have only seen a minutes of the show itself, but could basically get the gist of what the guy is talking about even without knowing any of the characters. Coincidentally, I read this on the same day that I saw the Youtube that everyone is linking to with the 100 best quotes from The Wire — “the game’s out there and it’s either play or get played.” Self-awareness about one’s role in the game will keep you out of the ‘clueless’ masses described in the Office analysis article. But feeling like a chump ain’t all that much fun either.
It’s always a question for me how well such analyses apply to organizations like universities or certain kinds of not-for-profit organizations or government agencies–some pathologies become even more extreme, of course, but some things just don’t seem to apply at all. There are certain embedded assumptions regarding capitalism in analyses like this. And in my view many of our embedded assumptions about capitalism are just plain wrong. In any event, it’s possible to get played in any organization and it’s hard not to become cynical about what groups of people organized into firms, organizations, and institutions do if you pay attention even a little bit.
Le sigh.
I’m still on my now nearly decade-long decluttering effort. At long last I think I am starting to see some clear space! Having the floors on two levels replaced this summer helped. Everything moved out of each room on those levels that was anywhere near the floor. Now, a bunch of that stuff is still down in the basement waiting to be sorted through again, but a bunch of it just plain went away. This weekend TheGuy took three more big bags of stuff off to Goodwill. I’m getting ready to do a first big cull of TLG’s toys, many of which were given to us as the result of someone else’s decluttering. We’ll pass them right along.
I thought this slacker’s guide to decluttering your house before a sale or move was pretty good. We’re not planning to sell or move anytime soon, but I’m always looking for decluttering inspiration. I don’t find anything slacker-ish about this guide, though. It’s pretty comprehensive. It’s only for ’slackers’ in the sense that it creates some checklists for you. And always in the back of my head when I’m looking at something is the question: “If we did move, would I be willing to pay movers to transport this item to the new place?” If the answer is no, then why keep it around taking up space?
Next on my list:
- Finally discarding a few old electronics (computers, cameras, printers) that have been sitting around forever.
- Culling the cookbooks.
- Culling and archiving (as needed) the paper files and converting from hanging folders to just manila folders to save space.
There. I wrote it down. Now I have to do those things!
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