Blogging Intentions vs. Stamina

If you need some cool charts & graphs for your blog or presentations, check out the whole post here.

As some of you already know, I started a “paper-free” journey early last year and went hog wild getting rid of paper. I purchased a Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner (the S510 model) and started scanning all my past bank and investment statements. I also attacked a lot of my past bills - even though I probably don’t need to keep all of them.

For some time now, I’ve been thinking about writing a blog series or an ebook about my system. Oddly enough, I stumbled across this “No More Messy Files” eBook tonight as I was surfing around. It basically explains the EXACT same system I’ve been using all along!

There are some subtle differences like the model of scanner I use, the model of shredder, and the online backup service I use. The results are the same in the end, but I just thought it was funny to find an eBook from someone who is using the exact same system.

Granted, I did get some tips about better organizing my files & folders, and some ideas on how I can get a little more radical with my system (ie. eliminate even MORE paper).

I will write more about this topic in the future, and who knows… maybe I will publish my own eBook on the topic. Keep an eye out for that!

I felt the need to share the incredibly inspirational video. When you think your life is tough because some terrible thing happens to you or you have too much stuff in your inbox, take a 5 minute break to watch this…

In case you get bored from time to time (like I do) and just want/need a good laugh, here are a couple of my favorite sites to cure the problem:

• FAILblog
• LettuceLaugh

Warning: Both sites sometimes contain content that is NSFW!

Finally! Someone (well, a company) is using Twitter for something useful. I first stumbled across this article which talks about how Dell has already made $1 million using Twitter. So then I clicked over to Dell’s page of Twitter “feeds”, and I can see how they are doing it.

Leave it to Dell… I’m sure Microsoft and some other bohemoths are doing this too, but so far I haven’t seen their stuff.

So, after all this time trying to figure out what Twitter is good for, I finally find a practical application. Even though I have a Twitter account, and I post an little update every once in a while, it still seems like a huge waste of time for an individual who is only doing it for personal reasons. I mean, does anyone really care that I just finished shoveling the driveway for the 3rd time today, or that I just watched a really good movie?

Maybe they do… Maybe they don’t…

Stop spending money you don’t have, on things you don’t need, to impress people you don’t even like.

I’m a complete ass and I disgust myself…

Once again, I promised something and didn’t do it. Back in September, I said I was going to blog on a more regular basis, and I haven’t done it.

In fact, I haven’t posted anything new since September 24th.

To make matters worse, my blog received around 1400 hits this month. Some of those hits were me - checking my site as if something was going to magically change. But there are obviously other folks landing here every so often expecting something new.

To you, I apologize for being an ass - and a lazy one at that!

A brand new year is upon us and I really want to reinvent myself in 2009.

So what do I mean by “reinvent”? Well, here’s my list so far:
continue reading "Happy New Year! Please kick me…"

In light of everything currently going on in government, with the election, the economy, etc, I’ve become particularly curious about what is REALLY going on.  Normally I hate politics and try to stay far away from it, but it’s getting very intriguing lately.

Part of that curiosity led me to some interesting discoveries I had no idea about before… Or at least I didn’t realize they were as serious as they actually appear to be.

My journey down the rabbit hole started with this blog post from Ryan Moran where he talks about his perspective on the economy. It’s very insightful and I agree with him completely:  http://ryanmoran.org/?p=49

Ryan’s post leads to a disturbing video on YouTube about the North American Union: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuBo4E77ZXo (about 9 minutes long)

Granted, some of the stuff in that video screams “conspiracy theory”, but the rest really had me sitting on the edge of my chair with a screwed up (worried) look on my face.

So, after listening to that video and what it said about the Real ID Act of 2005, I decided to go researching on my own… How did I not hear about this before??  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REAL_ID_Act

One of my co-workers just received a new passport this week, and it ACTUALLY has an RFID chip embedded in it! The Real ID thing was supposed to take effect in May of THIS YEAR, but was postponed until 2009/2010 because they didn’t have all the infrastructure in place yet to make it happen. I also read some stuff that implies it’s not fully funded.
continue reading "Conspiracy? End Times? I’m starting to REALLY wonder…."

This guest post over at ZenHabits really hit home for me. Admittedly, I have a boat load of “micro addictions”. Nothing too terrible like gambling, smoking, drinking or doing drugs; but a host of other things that suck up my time and cut down on my productivity.

A few of my vices:

• Surfing the ‘net & reading blogs/forums
• Watching TOO much TV
• Checking email a bazillion times per day
• Laying around doing a whole bunch of nothing

So check out the post (blurb below) and see if you can benefit from some of the tips…

What are micro-addictions? They are those annoying little habits that prevent you from living the life you truly want. They are small enough to go unchecked, but bothersome enough to get in the way of you living your fullest potential.

Link:10 Unbeatable Tips for Overcoming Micro-Addictions | Zen Habits.

Tonight I spent some time playing around with the NextGEN Gallery plug-in for my Wordpress blog. It’s pretty sweet, and very simple to use. The result of my playing is a new pictures page for you to check out.

It’s not 100% complete, and I still want to tweak the settings a little bit to get it just the way I want it. I also need to figure out how I want to organize & categorize all my pictures. NextGEN lets you create picture galleries, and then your galleries can be assigned to a particular album. Of course you can have multiple albums, and each album can have one or more galleries.

Sounds like too many decisions! :-)  Anyway, let me worry about all that…

You go check out the pictures and then let me know if you have any feedback.