My Love/Hate Affair With Bloglines

I love Bloglines.

I don’t have to surf from one blog to another, because they are all gathered in the same place.  I can save posts so that I don’t have to go back through archives searching for one of two hundred that I want to reference.  I can quickly see a new post.  It’s just makes my life easier.

I hate Bloglines.

Sometimes there’s so many new posts that I don’t have time to read them all, so I’ll mark them as ‘keep new.’  Eventually I get so far behind I know I’ll never catch up.  Then I either delete the blog and re-subscribe, or just ignore that climbing unread number.  To print them takes a large number of pages and if I copy to Word, it’s even worse.  But copying as text leaves out hyperlinks and images.

Sigh.  Bloglines, I love you.  I hate you.

Scott

Ironically, I’m an Engineer

I normally don’t do these quizzes, but this one was on careers.  Lately I’ve been exploring to see what kind of second career I could do.  This was a short quiz, but it’s in line with what some more involved stuff like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the Strong Interest Inventory told me….

Scott

Your Career Type: Artistic

You are expressive, original, and independent.

Your talents lie in your artistic abilities: creative writing, drama, crafts, music, or art.You would make an excellent:

Actor – Art Teacher – Book Editor

Clothes Designer – Comedian – Composer

Dancer – DJ – Graphic Designer

Illustrator – Musician – Sculptor

The worst career options for your are conventional careers, like bank teller or secretary.

What’s Your Ideal Career?

Finished Toastmasters Speech #2!

At long last I finished my second Toastmasters speech!  I am now 20% of the way there.  I set a goal for myself of finishing all ten of my speeches (to qualify for Competent Communicator, what used to be CTM) by the end of this year, so I have to get working on them.

My speech was about a three pronged approach to health – Body, Mind/Heart, Spirit.  A lot of it was from research I’ve done, and Stephen Covey‘s The 8th Habit gave me the backbone.   I’ll post the speech in the future.

Overall, it went well, but some of the things I need to improve on are:

1.)    I need to slow down when speaking

2.)    Watch nervous body language – command the stage

I’ve gotten a little better at both, but still work to do!

Scott

Cheese with your Wine?

Sometime, I want to go tour some Wineries here in Pennsylvania. I found a good resource site:

http://www.pennsylvaniawine.com/

I’ve learned quite a bit about wines since marrying into an Italian family. Merlots, Shiraz, Cabs, and so on. Australian and Chilean. I’ve tried them all. I’m no James Bond – I can’t distinguish them by taste – but it’s been fun checking them out.

What would be really cool is if my wife and I could visit and stay at one for a weekend. Anybody know of one like that here in Pennsylvania, Ohio, or West Virginia?

Thanks!

Scott

BTW, the pic is from a Star Trek episode, and the winery belongs to the Picard family…

Μολὼν Λαβέ – THE movie to see this weekend

How NOT to do a Pick-Up Routine

A couple weeks ago, my wife and I went to a Maniac Magazine Launch Party at Elixir Ultra Lounge. While we were there, we met another nice couple and hung out with them.

Later in the evening, we were downstairs, and an interesting thing happened. I was talking with my wife and the other guy’s wife (Girl in Red Chinese Dress, or GRCD), and this guy stepped into our circle and said hi to the two women. A moment later, a second guy stepped in and cut me off from them.

I knew immediately what was happening; knowing and trusting my wife as I do I stood back and enjoyed the show, conversing with the second guy – we’ll call him wingman.

It turns out they were from London; Guy #1 (Soldier Boy) was home from Afghanistan where he’d served with the British Army, and Wingman was his friend. They were traveling the States on vacation.

Soldier Boy was doing his best to get the girls interested, including massive kino (touching) but he wasn’t getting very far. My wife got bored and walked away to GRCD’s husband. I joined them there, and both Soldier Boy and Wingman double-teamed GRCD. I went back over, and Soldier Boy kept stepping in front of me. I laughed it off and continued to engage him in conversation (AMOGing), and finally he turned and started talking to me while my wife rescued GRCD.

I’m sure if the girls had been single it may have worked better – maybe, but hitting on married women in front of their husbands is low-class and pathetic. And they did it so badly it was all I could do to keep from laughing. Props for them trying though. They slunk away, tried two other girls, and after striking out, they left the place.

Better luck next time, chaps!

Scott

Shame and Blog Topics

I have shamefully neglected this blog.

The reason is that I find there’s so much pressure.  I want to put out interesting stuff but at the same time, taking the time to do so is hard.  I look at other blogs – Steve Pavlina for example, and it’s insane how much he is able to put out, and quality stuff too.  Even if I don’t always agree with him (i.e., the new agey stuff), he definitely puts a lot of thought into it.

So on days I can’t think of anything really deep, I don’t write…and those days turn into a week, then more, and more….

Meanwhile, one of my goals is to keep up my blog!

I’ll try to update more often!

Scott