Nels Lindahl — Functional Journal

A weblog created by Dr. Nels Lindahl featuring writings and thoughts…

Month: May 2018

  • Day 137 the one with a few reflections and some snacks

    2018: Day 137 the one with a few reflections and some snacks

    Dear Reader,

    Oh the years do seem to blink on by at a pace that is mindblowing. Today was a day of reflection, triumph, abitition, and struggle. It was a mixed bag to say the least. At this very moment I’m listening to a recording of Joe Satriani play the Summer Song. A screenshot of that might very well be the thumbnail associated with this post. You might be surprised to find out that song is one of my favorite immersions into the world of electric guitar virtuosity. Maybe today was one of those days where I was full of advice to give, but short on advice to take to figure out how to go about catching up. Tomorrow may well be Friday and that is something that I am looking forward to this week. More or less to just to let things reset for next week. I try to embrace every day as an opportunity to strive forward. Every day presents an opportunity.

    For some reason here at the end of the day I’m stuck in a very reflective mood. So much so that I have moved to my Joe Satriani Pandora internet radio station tonight. That one is usually reserved for periods of extreme concentration. Instrumental guitar albums are generally awesome background noise to help me concentrate. They occupy just enough of my thoughts to really let me focus in on something. Writing or working on something with extreme focus when it is absolutely silent just never seems to work out very well. It is entire possible that is just a quirk of how I relate to the world and the way i like to go about things. Sure it could work for others. I just turned down the screen brightness on my ASUS C101P to the lowest setting before the screen goes black. Soon enough it will be time to go to sleep and rest up for tomorrow.

    Dr. Nels Lindahl
    Broomfield, Colorado

  • Day 132 the one where I read the book Crushing It! by Gary Vaynerchuk

    2018: Day 132 the one where I read the book Crushing It

    Dear Reader,

    Today I ventured out to an actual Barnes & Noble bookstore. Sure somebody at the store had to help me find a hardcover copy of the new Gary Vaynerchuk book, “Crushing It!: How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence-and How You Can, Too.” We walked to the back left corner of the store and sure enough they had some copies of the book. I grabbed one and paid for it before heading out to watch a soccer game in the rain. Throughout the hour or so the game lasted I read the book. My evaluation system is pretty simple based on looking at the form, function, assumptions, and structure (FFSA) of the arguments being made. In this case, the argument is really disjointed by the inclusion of a series of testimonials. Some of the assides were interesting to read and a few of them were pithy and added some value. Most of them were just echoes of the original content. They were not really derivative or anything, but they were just an echo of the central message.

    A lot of the content creators that entertain me on YouTube seem to really enjoy the words, speeches, and talks of Gary Vaynerchuk. The first time I ran into something from Gary was during an episode of the YouTube series “Hot Ones” hosted by Sean Evans. That was back on October 12, 2017 and it was an interesting episode within the series. I had to pretty much do some research to figure out why Sean Evans was talking to Gary. For those of you who have spent some time around me you know that I really do preach about the powers of staying positive and focusing in on finding that perfect possible future. My take on what I have ready so far from Gary is that we agree on being positive and pushing forward. The difference would be in the toolkit being deployed to push things forward and the degree of effort. I generally recognize that people have cycles of productivity and creativity. To do what Gary does and to really push a social media empire you have to be all in and always devoted to the cause. I’m always go and always pushing forward, but it is not with the same type of single minded purpose that Gary talks about.

    Maybe that is something that I should spend some time pondering. My contributions are mostly written and are devoted to my efforts to help push society forward. Gary does seem to be onto something that resonates with people. Given the nature of the intersection of technology and modernity a certain degree of opportunity does exist right here and right now that has never existed before. Gary is describing how to use a increasingly powerful class of technology to help bring people together in a world where our attention is increasingly fragmented. Today I did not host a live stream on YouTube. That block of my time was spent reading Crushing It! The book overall was not a difficult read. I’m pretty sure that it is not intended to be a challenging read. Really figuring it out might take a few passes for folks that are trying to figure out the methodology and understand the differences in social media platforms and communication frameworks.

    Dr. Nels Lindahl
    Broomfield, Colorado

  • Day 131 the one with where I worked on some weekend planning

    2018: Day 131 the one with where I worked on some weekend planning

    Dear Reader,

    Talk about an epic failure on my part. All of the pieces were in place to fully publicize my blog post yesterday. It turns out that I forgot to enable the Path and Tumblr posting options. Today will be the first time that all the publicize options are actually selected. I’m not entirely sure it will make a bit different, but it will be happening today. It was one of those days where a few moments of planning would have trumped an of the false starts or failed plan executions. Sure that might be a little bit overblown. Somehow it just seems about right at the moment. My plans for the weekend are pretty undefined at the moment. Maybe having a rather open schedule for the weekend is what I need to move some things forward. We could also go and buy some mulch for the backyard and do some work outside this weekend. That sounds like a relatively fun thing to do or at least something that would be interesting.

    Yesterday was the first day since buying a Casper pillow that I researched how to fluff the pillow. On the website it seems to indicate that every day is a day that the pillow should receive some degree of fluffing. It may not be the right pillow for me. Maintaining a daily routine that involves messing with a pillow is probably not something that is going to happen. Today is day 131 of this whole big year of writing extravaganza. I did breakdown and pay for one month of the Pandora internet radio streaming service. Overall my goal is to reduce my use of subscription services. This one snuck back into my life and it is probably directly based on my interest in listening to music. That is and probably always will be a part of my day.

    Dr. Nels Lindahl
    Broomfield, Colorado

  • Day 130 the one with some flights that did not have internet

    2018: Day 130 the one with some flights that did not have internet

    Dear Reader,

    A little bit of a gap developed in publishing to the blog. Some of that had to do with the fact that both of my flights this week with Southwest did not have an internet connection during the flight. Oddly enough that was really disruptive to my overall experience during the flight.

    Let’s flash back to Monday and my flight…

    This flight today has no wireless internet. This is the second flight in a row on two different airlines where the wireless internet was not working. Right now I’m writing on my Chromebook and watching the first episode of the Cobra Kai YouTube Red show. I downloaded the entire 10 episode first season of the reboot on my Google Pixel 2 XL. At the moment, that phone is sitting right in front of my Chromebook and I’m watching the series again and writing a little bit. This weekend I checked out a good portion of the Cobra Kai episodes. I mostly just downloaded the series to try out the offline made for YouTube. It works way better than the Google Play Movies offline mode that I tried out last week. The only thing I’m running into at the moment is some glare on the screen. Watching things on an evening flight is totally different. The level of glare present is way lower and that makes it easier to watch a show. Given that this flight has no internet connection getting anything done outside of writing or watching a show is really out of the question.

    Strangely enough the inflight map still works. It says that this flight has 2 hours and 3 minutes remaining. I’m not going to get into any spoilers from the series, but it is pretty decent series. I’m guessing that this will continue on into at least one more season of content. They shared the first 2 episodes for free on YouTube so you can check it out and make a determination on your own. At this point in the flight, the second episode just started. I’m not exactly sure how many episodes that I’ll get through during the flight, but so far it is enjoyable. My seat this flight is right over the wing and this pilot has not flown through very much turbulence so far. The folks at Southwest gave me a bag of toasted veggie crackers. Sure I ate every one of them and watched some Cobra Kai. Maybe that is enough to hold off my need for lunch until this flight lands. At the airport, I had picked up a couple of protein and nut bars to help supplement my lunch.

    About an hour into the flight the turbulence picked up a bunch. At that point, I could not really type anymore and focused on my Pixel 2 XL smartphone. It is charging right now via USB Type-C. My Jackery Titan charging brick works out really well on flights and other places. The only thing that makes me want to upgrade to the newer model is getting away from using a patch cable vs. straight USB Type-C to Type-C cable charging. Right now I’m using a cable that crosses over from the standard USB ports to the new Type-C reversible cable. Strangely enough the Type-C cables work out pretty well and not having to guess which way is up is oddly a pretty great feature. Maybe at some point I’ll go with an upgrade.

    Sure that was a fun flash back to earlier this week…

    My prose has moved back to the current moment. Things are pretty much being written in real time. This blog post will go online here in a just a few minutes. Normally, I do not write things and forget to publish them after the fact. Seriously, that does not happen very often. My publishing errors are usually on the side of being early vs. being late. Speaking of publishing things online. Right now this blog post will be automatically shared with Google Plus and Twitter. Earlier tonight I was considering updating the publishing notices to include LinkedIn. It also has push features setup for Facebook, Tumblr, and something called Path. Given that it has been some time since I gave up on Facebook that does not seem like a viable option. It is not really an option that interests me either. Apparently, I do have a Tumblr account. During the process of trying to setup an account the website prompted me to reset my password and log back into my account. Oh the suspense… I’ll kind of curious to see what type of account was setup.

    It looks like some time ago I setup an account to connect to my blog posts and sent over maybe 25 posts. From what I can tell Tumblr is exactly the same thing that it used to be. Ok —- I have set up a new link from my blog back to Tumblr. Today here in a few minute I’ll make my triumphant return to Tumblr. That seems exciting. It kind of seems exciting. Maybe it might be somewhat exciting. I’ll probably forget about Tumblr after this blog post. I’m still trying to figure out exactly what the Path social network really is all about. I’m now all signed up for Path. At the top it is indicating that the website is still in beta that seems a little bit weird. This very blog post will be my first update on the Path social network. We will see how that goes I guess. Based on how things are setup over at Path I’m not exactly sure that anybody will ever see the post on Path, but the connect is setup and that is kind of interesting.

    Now that all my sharing settings are updated the blog should be firing on all cylinders. Most of that linking was just for my own personal entertainment. For the most part the entire effort of writing and blogging is a very personal one. None of this writing product is really intended for a wide audience. Over the years the process of writing and publishing has really just been for my own personal entertainment. Sure this is online, but it still feels like my own little corner of the internet. It is not a corner where I yell get off my lawn or anything like that. It is more or less a pristine bastion of unexplored thought that just more or less remains the same. Maybe my writing has improved a little bit over the years, but who knows.

    Dr. Nels Lindahl
    Broomfield, Colorado

  • Day 126 the one where I ordered more stationary

    2018: Day 126 the one where I ordered more stationary

    Dear Reader,

    Part of giving up on using Amazon has been learning how to order directly from companies that make the products that I have enjoyed over the years. One of those such companies is Crane and Company who make the stationary I use. Recently my focus has turned to using and writing on Crane and Company note cards. Let’s be really clear on this one I generally only have enough to say to fill up a standard note card. Writing out longer notes on their half pages or full pages is certainly one way to go about things. I’m sure after getting more used to writing long form letters that will be a more viable option. Right now I’m using one Parker fountain pen for almost all of my writing. Based on all of my traveling writing with my fountain pen has not really been on the menu. You may have noticed that my writing productivity for the blog has dropped off recently. That has to do with one certain thing that has drawn my attention.

    My primary focuses has shifted from writing every day regardless of the format to a very focused allocation of time to writing academic focused papers. The only real problem with that is that producing high quality academic prose takes a good deal of my focus. It pretty much has to be the only thing that I do during that window. Well I should clarify that listening to music and writing papers is something that happens. Academic writing and listening to some type of music are pretty the only things I do when working on papers. Getting back into the swing of writing papers has been a little bit harder than I had anticipated. Seriously, it has been somewhat taxing to get back into the rhythm of academic writing.

    Topic 1: Revisiting some words I wrote on a flight from May 3, 2018

    Well I started working on writing out my narrative resume the other day. It was a seriously interesting thing to work on for a few minutes. The last time I sat down and wrote a serious bio for myself was maybe 10 years ago. That brief biography mostly focuses on my academic journey and the various paths that has taken. Right now it is raining in Hartford, Connecticut. My last 5 hours were spent at the airport. Two trips to the donut store in the terminal later this delayed flight is finally taking off. We are beginning to taxi out to fly to Chicago. That is just the first leg of my journey. Right now i’m typing without the safety net of spell check. I have no internet connection and Google Docs does not engage in the checking of spelling without an active internet connection. Sometimes I think that helps me writing and be a little more fluid with my prose. Stopping every few minutes to fix words can really break your stride. Sure I could just wait until the end of my writing sessions and sweep back through the entire document, but that is really not my style.

    Nobody is sitting next to me on this flight which is really good. Back here in row 29 space is at a premium and that little bit of extra room to write is very welcome. My goal here is to sit down and writing for the next 2 hours. I’m probably going to need to take a nap on my next flight from Chicago back to Denver. Oddly enough my drive back will happen tomorrow. It will not happen in the morning, but it will happen after midnight and before sunrise. That is a really good reason to take a little nap. We will see how it goes. The last flight I was on was so turbulent that both writing and napping were out of the question. I mostly just sat and wondered why the pilot could not find a smoother path. I’m really not a fan of turbulence during flights. Seriously, a few bumps here and there are acceptable, but those 30 or more second jostlings are just not on my list of things to do or experience. Over the last few months I think they have been increasing in frequency. That is entirely anecdotal evidence based on my observations and talking to folks.

    My only real blog post this week was really a giant typo. I had started to write on my flight out and was setting up a blog post. In the midst of dealing with the wildness of the flight I forgot that the blog post had been setup to post automatically. It did post. I went back and read the couple sentence that had been cobbled together and frowned at myself. Oddly enough on this trip I even forgot to chart my Chromebook. Right now my ASUS C101P is charging very slowly via a USB Type-C cable and my external battery pack. That will keep it running, but it is not the way things should have worked out for the flight. I did download a couple movies last night to my phone from Google Play. Apparently, I own a couple movies on that service and randomly season 3 of Video Game High School (VGHS). Naturally, I downloaded the entire season and just might watch it during my next flight instead of taking that nap previously mentioned.

    I’m super consfused at the moment about why my Google Play movie downloads will not play. The application has a download only mode, but nothing has an option to hit play. I can see the two movies and season 3 of VGHS. They are taking up space on my phone. None of them will play during this flight. That pretty much means that I have access to my Warren Zevon Radio Pandora station and a couple other random stations. Ok —- my really random fix for the problem was pretty simple. I went to take a screenshot of the condition so I could submit a bug report to Google. Strangely enough when I hit the buttons to activate the screenshot the option to play showed up within the application. I’m going to call that a major win for this flight. I watched several episodes of VGHS during the flight. That was pretty fun and it was kind of a blast from the past. It made me wonder why nothing else from Rocket Jump ends up in my playlist. Maybe that will change at some point, but at the moment VGHS is the only thing from those folks that jumps out to me and held my attention.

    Topic 2: Writing gaps and other forms of procrastination

    Sure I have gotten back on track in terms of hosting live streams on YouTube a couple times a week. That has been easy enough to get setup on my new computer. Sure the Corsair 740 is a pretty decent case and the setup works out pretty well. Maybe at some point I’ll drop another RAM kit into the box, but for the most part that custom built computer is ready to rock and roll. My level of writing procrastination this month so far has been epic. Sure that is something that I know better about and should be able to guard against, but none that has seemed to matter very much. The procrastination has been real. It has to stop and things have to start moving forward at amore prodigious pace.

    Dr. Nels Lindahl
    Broomfield, Colorado

  • Day 120 The one with a really long flight

    2018: Day 120 The one with a really long flight

    Dear Reader,

    This flight is going to be pretty long. Going from Denver to New England is always challenging. It is a really long way and the time change makes things harder. I’m pretty sure the level of turbulence on my flights has been getting worse. Things finally calmed down enough that I can manage to type for awhile.

    Dr. Nels Lindahl
    Hartford, Connecticut