My Bike Commute For the past five years, I’ve commuted to work primarily by bike. I find it to posses the positive attributes of being healthy, flexible, and consistent – while also avoiding the negative attributes of being stressful, costly and polluting. In many ways it is the perfect opposite to the dreaded car commute. Biking was a constant for me the entire time I lived in San Francisco. Many parts of my life changed, but my 20 minutes to unplug as I pedaled through the streets of the city was something I could depend on. It was how ramped up my energy to prepare for the day and it also served as a buffer to help me unwind at the end of the day. That all began to change when I moved north to Seattle last August. The distance between my house and office was over twice as far as it had
Todays post is a product review. I provide unbiased product reviews in exchange for discounted products with the goal of helping people find good products and manufacturers improve what they create. — My bike commute lately has taken a turn for the wetter. I moved to Seattle last fall and attempted to bike through what has been the rainiest winter on record. A typical day would look something like this. Lots of water on the ground, some big puddles and a steady trickle of Seattle’s famous light rain. During my commute, my backpack is usually stuffed with a laptop, smart phone, battery backup, cables and my change of dry clothes. Nothing I want to get wet. Even with a water resistant backpack and rain cover, I was always a bit worried and would quickly check when I got home. This is where the COR backpack comes in. It is essentially a hybrid between a really sturdy
Since I moved to Seattle six months ago, I’ve frequently been asked one question. “How are you liking Seattle?” Responses Sometimes it is just meant as a polite question. Perhaps I’m catching up with someone from work or an old friend. Asking about something recent in my life is a nice gesture. There are even time where the question reflects real curiosity. With the cost of living in the Bay Area continuing to rise, many people are fleeing for the north & looking to gather some data before they make the move. Often the question is honest. There are people that truly care about my state of being and how I enjoy the place I live. Regardless of the reason behind the question, my answer is usually something along the lines of, “It’s been a rough transition.” For those I’m really close with, or if you catch me with my guard down,
I just finished reading some great points in this Salon article about sexism and how it has changed/improved but not disappeared and how that relates to the Clinton campaign. It bothers me that this is the key conversation about Hillary though. Her campaign is doing a great job owning the discussion, knowing that most people don’t want to be sexist & using it as a sort of shame tactic – ‘if I don’t vote for her they say it means I’m sexist, so I guess I’ll vote for her.’ The fact is, millennials don’t support her because they don’t trust her – that is what they keep telling everyone. She is viewed as the least trustworthy of all of the candidates – including Trump. It isn’t surprising. She is involved in (as of my last count) four federal investigations and won’t answer important questions about connections to large institutions that
Earlier this year I made Benjamin Franklin my exemplar for 2016. That meant that I’d spend part of this year learning about his habits & practices and then implementing some. The idea is to learn from the wisdom of a great person and try to benefit from some of that myself. Two months into the year I’ve narrowed into a few things that stand out to me about Ben. 1. Pursuit of Excellence in His Craft Benjamin Franklins business & political success often draws back to a single asset he had available to him – his writing. He is cited by some scholars as being the best writer in colonial America. He used that talent to create a newspaper & almanac that drove both profited him and helped keep his print shop busy. He also used it to convince others of topics that were important to him such as the
The standard of living we enjoy on a macro level is always tied to hard work. That is the way we’re able to fight against the forces of nature in order to be able to control our environment, food supply, safety, etc. Historically, as far as I can tell, our standard of livings has always increased based on one of three things happening: Creating economic disparity Borrowing from another time Increasing productivity As I look at the standard of living I see around me, I see signs of all three. We could not afford much of what we use if it weren’t being created thanks to laborers making cents per day. We live in an economic system that enjoys the benefits of credit transactions that do not yet have a defined future end. We through ingenuity and hard work have created tools that let us do more with less effort.
Earlier this year I picked running a marathon in under 2:37 as my challenge for 2016. Because this challenge is very specific, I wanted to spend some time discussing my thought process behind it. I think it will help add context to this particularly goal and how I approach goal setting in general. Deciding On A Level of Difficulty The first thing I do when setting a goal is decide on how difficult I want it to be to achieve. I am an extremely competitive and motivated person so I like to pick challenges that will stretch me. I like to be scared that I won’t be able to achieve it so that I have to be resourceful in order to succeed. I like the process. Standing at the peak isn’t the end that justifies the means for me, it is the means for me justifying the end that is the
When optimizing, the goal is always to maximize the output for a specific investment of inputs. Those inputs are typically things like money, time, effort, materials, space, etc. We want to get more bang for our buck, results for time put in, etc. No optimization problem operates in a vacuum though. There are always constraints – limits that keep the equation from scaling linearly forever. These might be hard constraints that stop you in your tracks. Perhaps the constraint is the number of available outputs. If you’ve already trained enough to win a race, you can’t double-win it. Or perhaps they are soft constraints. that create strange non-linear scale, either in a positive or negative manner. Perhaps the first 100 units of output can be achieved at a ratio of 1:1 input to output, but the next 100 require 3:2 input to output. This means that over time you have diminishing
The past few years I’ve been trying something with my wife. We have family 360 feedback sessions, very similar to those you might have done at work. What Is a 360 Review The idea came from work in fact. I really liked the format of 360 feedback sessions. For those not familiar, with 360 reviews, when a review cycle comes around, HR helps facilitate collecting feedback on an individual employee from their manager, reports, peers, and the employee themselves. The feedback is then synthesized to help the manager and HR get a good perspective into how the employee is doing – where they excel and where they can improve. The idea is that more data points leads to a better evaluation. How It Started When we had been married for about a year, I thought it would be great to do something like this. Feedback is something that should be continuous, but having a
With the start of a new year, I take the time to set my focus for the coming year. I’ve enjoyed this activity as it has slowly evolved over the past four years. It helps me strive to complete things that I think are important or interesting but more importantly it give me focus by allowing me to say ‘no’ to other things. Categories Here are definitions for the four categories of efforts I undertake. Goal – Something I want to accomplish that is measurable and relatively continual. e.g. exercise X times per week or decrease sugar consumption by X percent. These are often habits I want to build into my life an my hope is that by doing it for a year, it will stick. Theme – A central topic for the year – something I can spend time thinking about and take a few concrete efforts towards. e.g. living in community or freedom. These