General Thoughts

On Public Speaking

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In 1993, I went off to college. One of the required classes for freshmen is “Speech.” It seems fairly simple, every freshman must take speech class.

I dropped the class.

Then in 1994, when I was entering my second year at Michigan Tech, the adviser kindly reminded me I had to take speech class. I signed up, and went to the first few classes. Then, my first speech (something like a 3 minute thing) was coming up. I didn’t sleep. I got sick. I considered walking out into traffic just to avoid speaking in front of my peers.

I dropped the class.

I find it extremely ironic that much of my current livelihood involves public speaking. I think it’s even more bizarre that I love to speak in front of people now. It’s not that I don’t get nervous, I do, but really I enjoy speaking to a crowd. Whether it’s teaching youth group at church to 20 teenagers, presenting a technology proposal to a school board, or yammering on about Linux to a room full of fellow geeks — I really enjoy the thing that used to terrify me.

I have to constantly remind myself that most people dislike speaking in front of a crowd. Many people are terrified of it. Some people even get as worked up as I did in college, and would rather get struck by lightning than to simply announce “it’s time to eat” to a crowd of people. It’s easy to forget how real the fear is for others.

Oh, and for the record? That’s how I feel about dancing. 🙂

Washing Out Your Brain

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No, this actually looks more normal than actually using the device I bought.Have you ever heard of “Neti Pots” ? Apparently Oprah told the world how awesome they are, and now doctors are recommending them. Last week when I went to urgent care about a headache, sure enough the guy suggested I use a “Neti Pot” type thing. Actually, he suggested the Binford 2000 variety that uses a squeeze bottle, but the concept is the same.

Squirt salt water up one nostril, let it circulate in your cranium, and then drain out the other side.

It’s one of the strangest pseudo-medical things I’ve ever done. It feels about as exciting as it sounds. I don’t think it does anything useful, but there are a few interesting side effects:

  1. You can feel your sinuses fill with water. It’s a little like getting a snoot full of pool water on accident, but without the chlorine
  2. If your nose is slightly stuffy, the pressure induced by the squeeze bottle will do many interesting things to your eyes and ears. Namely, make them uncomfortable.
  3. You look and feel like a complete idiot, and the logic of sinus squirting rivals that of snipe hunting. Apparently it’s a real thing though. I guess.
  4. The most interesting side effect however, is that minutes, hours, or even days later, a gush of trapped water will work its way out and and effectively spew soggy nose goblins all over the table/computer/dinnerplate/date you are sitting near. You will have no warning, and no chance of stopping the flow.

Thanks a ton, Oprah.

A Month of Schedules?

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Look at THIS guy, he LIVES in a calendar. You'd think he'd be a bit more organized.I’ve spoken of this before, but the truth of the matter is that I’m a terribly disorganized person. I have an aversion to schedules, and I am a world class procrastinator. (Ask poor Jill, the editor at Linux Journal, about my deadline pushing. It’s disgusting. I have 2 more articles due today — and it’s already tomorrow AM.)

Once upon a time, I did a 30 day experiment in which I woke up at 5:00 AM every day. It was horrifying, but I figured if at the end I liked being a morning person, it would be worthwhile. As it turns out I don’t like being a morning person, so that plan sorta fizzled. I still consider it a success though, because now I know sleeping later isn’t just a bad habit.

I’m considering doing the same thing with scheduling. See, I’m convinced that I’m all artsy-fartsy, and I work better without a schedule. There is a distinct possibility, however, that I’m just fooling myself. Maybe if I learned to be better organized, I’d be even MORE creative. Sounds cool, eh?

I’m going to spend the rest of this week figuring out just how to schedule things. I think I’ll need to use Google Calendar, since I already have lots of stuff in there, including shared calendars with my co-workers. If I can get my iPhone to reliably give me notifications, it might work. But I’ll hate it, I know I will.

So I have a few questions for you uber-organized folks out there:

  1. Do you schedule “free” time?
  2. If you get behind, how do you fix it?
  3. Are todo lists helpful, or should everything just be scheduled into timeslots?
  4. Should I print out my daily schedule, or does digital-only seem practical?

Thanks for any feedback. Again, this is an experiment, so at the end of 30 days I’m allowed to quit if I so desire. 🙂 (And no, I don’t know what the official start date will be yet.)

Forts, Ads, and Really Awesome Cow Orkers

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Have I mentioned how awesome the folks at Linux Journal are to work with? Well, they are. Last Friday that created an ad, and put it live on the www.linuxjournal.com website. This is not to be confused with the ad I created, oh no, this is much better. Much.

I don’t want to post a screenshot, because the ad is still running through this Thursday. It’s so much better to see it in its native environment. If you go to www.linuxjournal.com, and hit refresh a few times, you should see it. You absolutely can’t miss it.

If you can’t seem to get it to appear, after Thursday I’ll post a screenshot — but really it’s hilarious. I hope you get to see it. 🙂