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Frozen Ponds
When I was a kid, I used to play on frozen ponds. It’s one of those things that I’m now amazed I was allowed to do, which causes me to worry that I’ll be an overbearing parent. The small ponds weren’t really scary, because they’d freeze all the way through quickly. The big ponds were…
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Birth of a Habit
I always write about habits after they’re done, but I thought that it would be interesting to write about one before it starts, to get really specific about the actual process of creating a new habit. For my entire life, I’ve been messy. Battles were waged over my unwillingness to keep my room tidy as…
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The Smallest Interval
It’s scary making large sweeping promises, even if they’re to yourself. There’s something about long time horizons that churn our stomachs a little bit. If I asked you to give up sugar for the rest of your life, could you do it? Just thinking about it might make you uncomfortable. I almost never eat sugar…
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Two Years
They say that we overestimate what we can do in the short term, and underestimate what we can do in the long term. As someone who’s had his share of overstuffed todo lists, I believe that this is true. You might find it to be useful to think two years in advance. There’s some magic…
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The Bernal Heights Piano Incident(s)
Christophe was moving his office and had to get rid of a piano. But one does not simply get rid of a piano. He and Todd concocted a plan to bring it to a public place so that it could be enjoyed by many. Locations were kicked around and Bernal Heights, an amazing park in…
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Switching to Linux
I was eating in Chipotle, browsing Hacker News on my phone when I read some outdated article about how the NSA may or may not have backdoor access to some cryptographic function of Windows. Considering that the NSA’s interest in my computer is probably around zero, and that I don’t even use windows cryptography, this…
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Falling
Being high up in the air isn’t a problem until the wind starts blowing. Then the dance begins — your mind rebels, and you have to do everything you can to not get sucked down into it. The veteran climbers at The Gunks in Upstate New York have adjusted, but it’s my first climb outdoors.…
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Terrible First
When we first started building SETT, I’d sometimes get asked what I was working on. Saying it was a new blogging platform was easy, but when pressed for details on what made it different, I had a tougher time. It’s not that it wasn’t different, or that I didn’t know how it was different. I’d…
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Why and How to Be On Time
For about a year now, I’ve been very punctual. Before making a concerted effort to be on time to everything, I was like any other average person– sometimes on time, often a few minutes late, occasionally very late. When I identify something I’m bad at, especially something with a prescription that requires little more than…
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Gramps
A few days ago I’d heard that my paternal grandfather, Gramps, was diagnosed with Lymphoma and was going to have some tests done to see what treatment was required. Today I woke up and found out via email that he had died. I gather that it wasn’t terribly unexpected to those around him, but it…
