www.andrewmackay.net:

The dog doesn’t know the difference between Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, so I have to walk the dog early those days too.

Donna Shalala

So you should go watch this video. Cause it’s awesome.

It snowed yesterday. It was beautiful. I was trying to explain to my son how heat used to work in houses. The conversation went like this:

“Son, it used to be that when it got cold, people would build a fire to stay warm.”

“Like in their living room?”

“Yes. And the daddy would be up through the night keeping wood on the fire to make sure that the house stayed warm.”

“Daddy, do you have to keep our fire going?”

“No… because we live when we do, our house has a furnace that detects the temperature in the house. When it starts to get cool, the furnace turns itself on, creates a bunch of warm air, and blows it through the house.” I turned and looked at my wife and said, “That sounds like magic. And if we were talking to someone three hundred years ago, can you even imagine?”

God’s been very good to us.

So, I just did what every geek has done in the last couple of months: I read Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

I have been reading about Steve Jobs since I was young. If I recall correctly, I first saw the internet operating on a Mac (a LGIII, for the other mac nerds out there). I was 13. That was 15 years ago. Shortly thereafter, the school where my parents lived and worked got email access. Shortly after that, we were online. Those 56k connections could really rock. It was around that time that I started reading about Bill Gates (evil) and the Steves, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the creators of Apple (and clearly good).

Reading it all rehashed, with detail and clarity and honesty was profound. I really enjoyed it. Yes, Steve Jobs had a nasty side. He got incredible things done. That doesn’t excuse him being a jerk, but it does help to compensate a little bit for it.

What did I learn? I think the most important lesson from Steve Jobs life and work is focus. Whatever he did, he applied an overwhelming sense of focus to it. He cut through extraneous details and to the core. A lot of that came from great instincts, but even those instincts seemed honed by his ability to focus, to say no to almost everything and yes only to the most important things.

I have a tendency to do exactly the opposite. And the reality is that I end up chasing my tail sometimes as a result. I hope that it’s okay, that I’m still young enough to learn. It’s a lesson I want to learn. Through focus, great things can be accomplished.

Should you read Steve Jobs? It does detail the life of one of the smartest executives in recent american history. If you can’t learn something from him, it’d be a surprise.

As an armchair pop-psychologist and all-around-nerd, I absolutely love things like this article about how grocery stores “help” you buy more.

Next time I’m stuck in the aisle unable to move because the traffic is clogged, I’m going to keep my frustration pointed at the actual cause of the issue, the marketers.

Oh, and I’ll probably grab something impulse-related off of the shelf in front of me.

Dang it. They got me again.

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

― Albert Einstein

You’ll be smarter if you watch this.

Because when I think of a noun becoming a verb, I want to parkour off of a building

Last night, my wife read me a sentence. And I said, “Can <noun> be used as a verb?” She said, “Apparently it can be now.”

And I died a little inside.

Not really, but I do think it makes language a little less elegant when we verb things.

See, right there, I used verb as a verb. The sentence would’ve been clearer, better, if I’d said:

I do think it make language a little less elegant when we constantly force nouns into a verb’s role.

But instead, I went for the quick option. I used verb as a verb, and the sentence only lost a little bit of its meaning.

So, in the words of Kevin James,

“I love your verbs! I’m going to couch for a while, the go sandwich in the kitchen.”

Improv Anywhere cracks me up.

(via 22 Words)

The thing about life with a three year old is that you never know which version of the child is going to show up for the day. Waking at 6:15 am may produce vastly different results than, say, waking at 5:54 am. And it’s basically inversely proportionate: the amount you expect things to be better, they will actually be worse.

Even the best days can be tinged with a little bit of lousy attitude. But, some days are just a start-to-finish battle.

And then you remember why you’re doing it. You remember that you’re fighting a battle that parents have been battling for thousands of years, helping their kids to understand the world. You remember that as the adult in the relationship, you’re the one with greater control over their decisions, and that what you’re teaching your child is the ability to control theirs.

And everything is better. Not easy, but better.