Spend Your Time Wisely

About 4 months ago, I learned that my friend's mom had cancer and that while there was an amount of hope, it didn't look good. 2 days ago, I found out that another friend's mom has cancer, and that we will find out more in a couple of weeks.

Events like these make you step back and assess what is going on, and where your priorities lie. For one reason or another, time became the commodity that I focused on. Everyone's life contains static that we don't need. Some of it is beyond our control and some of it is self-inflicted.

It seems to me that a worthwhile exercise would be to take a look at what you do in a given week, month, or other time increment and ask yourself a few questions:

• How much of my time and mental bandwidth is consumed by each activity?
  
• Am I getting any value out of these activities?
• Am I getting enough value out of these activities?
• If not, what are the alternatives (including bailing all together), and are they achievable.
  

The answers to these questions are highly individualistic. By no means am I suggesting that everyone needs to spend every waking moment trying to be productive with tangible evidence of value. Some of the best things in life yield no tangible benefit, i.e. spending 4 hours in a car to fish for 7 hours and catch no fish - see last post.

As life goes on, it is easy to layer on one more thing to which we all need to dedicate our time. The key idea is to take a periodic inventory and see if the list of things we are spending our time on is yielding a net benefit, whether tangible or intangible. It's kind of like the kitchen cabinet, there are some things in there that you know you haven't touched in years, and if asked honestly, you couldn't come up with a possible use for at least half of those things. Clearing out the cabinet won't yield any great change, but the next time you open that cabinet and every time after that, you won't have to spend any effort or bandwidth working around the dead weight, in order to get what you are looking for.


Fly of the day:
The Hare's Ear Nymph
http://www.flyfisherman.com/Learn2Tie/haresearnymph/
(Link to Video on page)











Tight Lines,

Dave

A good day on the water

I finally got on the water for my first day of 2008. I had a trip to the San Juan River planned for about a month ago, but had to get some stuff done for the job that I quit about 3 days before I was scheduled to go. (Funny how that works, cancelling a fishing trip because you just gave notice. Clearly my logic was flawed in that thought process somehow. )

Anyway, it was a glorious day on the water. One of those rare days where you get 50+ degree weather, intermittent clouds and sun. Didn't catch a single fish. Thought I had a nibble or two, but hard to tell when you are dragging weight along the bottom. My buddy Scott caught a pretty nice fish, so the we didn't get skunked completely.

Regardless of not catching fish, I couldn't think of a better way to spend a saturday. Fly fishing is one of the activities you can do that requires you to focus completely on the task at hand. Work, life and other drama producing entities are completely filtered out. It's a beautiful thing. Now don't get me wrong, catching fish is always better than not catching fish, but getting that first day in of the year has it's own rewards.

Fly of the day:
Larry's Golden Stone (Courtesy of the very nice people at Royal Gorge Anglers)
http://www.royalgorgeanglers.com/fly_pattern_recipes.php

Tight Lines,


Dave

Got to get better at this blogging thing

I've joined a company called Lijit, which provides search functionality for other blogs in a publisher's trusted network of blogs and other content, yielding more relevant searches for the reader. Part of the job is to "eat the meal", or use the product and become immersed in the bloggers' workflow. Makes sense, so that we can build and mold products that provide real utility for our community of users.

The hurdle I'm facing is going from "hey, that's a cool idea, I should post an entry about that" to actually doing it seems to be a chasm that I am finding difficulty crossing. I'll get there, like everything else it is a learned behavior or pattern, but I must admit that there is a frustration level that I will experience that I will endure until I make that leap.

Over the last week, there have been a variety of topics from the NBA, to why nobody should ever allow themselves to being talked into serving a second term running a volunteer organization, to the Daytona 500, to politics, etc. Blogging about 'cold' topics just doesn't seem as interesting as blogging about 'current' topics, and besides, I probably would produce inferior blogs. One of these days, I will get my act together.

Rather than the pattern of the week, check out this site, it is amazing. These are flies that this guy ties. Bang around on the site, and you'll see come of the monster fish that have been coaxed into taking a bite.

http://www.solarexpert.com/fishing/fly-tying.html

I'm going to see if I can get a brown to bite on the Arkansas tomorrow, I'll post report, that is more or less accurate on my return.

Dave

Why did they do that?

While it is easy, to the point of being commonplace, to bash Microsoft, I generally tend to shy away from it. Mostly because it is too easy, and for the most part it is not deserved. Folks like to talk about how the best way to fix Windows is to turn it off and then back on again, complain about the old "blue screen of death" or talk about how they are the evil empire. While some of it is true, being one more voice in that chorus is really not the interesting or worthwhile.

While any corporation can be picked apart for what they have done, with the possible exception of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, MSFT has by it's shear size driven standardization. The exchange of documents and other information among businesses, or within a business, has been greatly facilitated by Microsoft, and for that, they could not be nearly compensated enough.

Today, however, I find myself in somewhat of an outrage at the company from Redmond. What the F* did they do to the Office suite of applications. I just started a new job, where my new computer is equipped with Vista and Office 2007. What a flippin disaster 2007 has turned out to be. There is an entirely new paradigm for all commands. There is some ridiculous picture bar at the top, with functionality that is "logically grouped" according to the MSFT site. Logically for whom? Having used Office for over 12 years now, I have become quite comfortable, if not proficient with the old paradigm, now I am spending a crazy amount of time trying to figure out where the simplest of commands are. In time, I may learn the new methodology, but why should I have to? What was the driver that made MSFT say, gee, people are getting to good at using our products, we need to add value by taking away, or at least hiding, functionality.

Clearly there is some Mac OS X influence here. Not that Office copied it, but it looks like they have been scared into trying something new, even if it does suck. I find it difficult to believe that adequate usability testing was performed on this suite of applications. The general rule is that the first action should be the correct action, when evaluating UI's, that criteria has not been met. Clearly Bill, Balmer, and the boys missed out on this one. Maybe this is MSFT's "New Coke" moment. Perhaps they will re-release 2003 and call it the "Office Classic"


Today's fly of the day is a mainstay in Boulder Creek: The Pheasant Tail Nymph:
http://www.westfly.com/fly-pattern-recipe/wet/pheasanttail.shtml

Tight Lines,

Dave

Whattttt?

Had an interesting conversation with my mother this morning. While she has some liberal leanings, you can count on her to be a pretty strong republican supporter. She often talks about how she would have voted for John Goldwater, had she been old enough. So my mother asks me, if I had a candidate that I support. My initial response was, anyone that is not HeLarry will be fine, with the possible exception of Huckabee. However, keeping the conversation to candidacies that have a perceptible pulse, that basically left me with the possibility of having to choose between McCain and Obama.

At this moment in time, my mom states: I really like Obama. I have to admit, I was floored. I asked her a few times if it was really her on the other end of the phone. I think it is pretty safe to say that she will vote for McCain, but the fact that she has some level of support for a Dem candidate was somewhat surprising. Has my mom mellowed? Perhaps. Is Obama that strong of a candidate that he has pull across party lines? Perhaps. Are people tired of being governed by candidates who "run to the base"? Perhaps.

By having this conversation this morning, I'm actually more interested in seeing how the paths of the Dem nomination and general election plays out. If a tried and true republican who voted for Nixon twice can see the redeeming qualities of Obama, perhaps the conversation is more open than it has been in a long time. From the societal-historical perspective, this should be an interesting election. The only problem is that it is not a lab experiment from which we can take our data and make better decisions on a larger scale later.

Todays fly pattern is, The Olive Wooly Bugger:

http://ifly4trout.com/flypatterns/olive_wooly_bugger.htm

Dave

Initial Post...

... technically that's not exactly true. I was a guest author on a buddy's site back in 2004. Not exactly sure what got into me, I think it had something to do with providing 24 hour coverage for a PeopleSoft install/migration at a then major wireless carrier. As the days turned into nights, and the nights turned into longer nights, something pushed a button and I hit the proverbial wall. To get a glimpse of the psyche at that point in time, you can click here:

http://www.nickg.com/ng/Babbles/Entries/2004/1/22_Knowledge_is_Failure.html

WARNING: If you are a fan of Britney, J-Lo, Aflack (sp.) or any of the other pop stars in the headlines around January of 2004, you will likely be offended. Looking at it in retrospect, I guess pop culture has a place in the world, it's just not for me.

Going forward, I imagine covering a diverse set of topics from fly fishing, to rugby, to music, to career, to the 4 mutts, to whatever makes it to the front of mind at the time.

Welcome aboard and in the immortal words of John Belushi, "Grab a brew, it don't cost nothin"

Dave