Joel’s Scattered Thoughts

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I just finished reading Paul Graham’s The Age of the Essay. I found it very interesting. I would like to to more essay writing - I found writing essays very interesting when I was in college and university. The trouble is that without a deadline, I find it hard to get started.

Mind you with three kids running around, I find it hard to get much of anything done. If you want to get philosophical about it, my life consists less and less of beginnings and endings and more and more of becoming. House-cleaning is a prime example of this. My house is rarely clean - it’s usually getting cleaner or getting messier or sometimes both at the same time.

I write a lot of mini-essays. Every night I pick a topic more or less at random and write a page about it to Jaimie. I do this as way of keeping in touch with her, of letting her know what’s on my mind. Exceeding Sturgeon’s law, I’m sure that at least 99% of what I write is crap, but every once in a while I’ll learn something interesting from what I write or end up in a surprising place.

Ideally, that’s what I’d like to do with this blog - write a pile of essays and see what I learn about the way I see the world and where my worldview breaks down.

What you’ll wish you’d known is full of more advice I’d like to pass on to my kids, assuming I rembmer it when they get to that age.

Evan is really into trains, so he’s been playing Railroad Tycoon 2 lately. That’s a prime example of a game that’s almost fun to play. When Evan plays it, I set it up in Sandbox mode, which means he has unlimited money. Basically, he builds tracks for the fun of watching the trains run on them.

The big problem with me playing Railroad Tycoon is that there’s no “undo” button. It’s very easy to make a mistake, and there’s no going back. Hours of careful play can be screwed up with one bad mouse click. I quit playing the game soon after I bought it for that reason. It’s a pity, because it is almost fun.

Overcoming Procrastination by Steve Pavlina. I already put a lot of the tips in this article to use, but it never hurts to be reminded. I find the best procrastination beaters for me are to have a to do list (so I know what I need to do), and to set a goal of finishing one small part of a task. Often this motivates me enough to move to the next part, and so on, but even if it doesn’t at least I got something done.

On a related note, 50 Strategies For Making Yourself Work via 43 Folders.

Organizing Your Hipster PDA gives tips for organizing your hipster PDA (basically a bunch of index cards clipped together).

I was trying to think what information I’d want with me all the time. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far.

• Grocery List - I’m forever forgetting it in the van or forgetting to print a copy
• Phone numbers - I already keep a business card with key phone numbers written on the back in my wallet
• Author/Book list - never know when I’m going to want to find a good book
• Philosophical Questions - something to get my brain turning (e.g. If God exists, justify evil. If God doesn’t exist and nobody will ever know, why be good?)

That’s it so far.

My wallet is just about dead, so when I look for a new one, I’m going to try to find one that can hold index cards. We’ll see how it works out.

The People Who Owned the Bible is an interesting story about what happens when copy right keeps being extended ad infinitum. I can understand why copyright exists. I can see the argument for a reasonable length of copyright (maybe 20 years or so), but why should copyright be infinite? I really like Thomas Babington Macaulay’s speech on the subject of the extension of copyright. It seems to me to do a masterful job of highlighting both the importance of copyright and the need for its limitation.

There, you happy now? | Metafilter points to a couple of scholarly articles about happiness. I thought the points about habituation and rivalry were very interesting.

I would say that habituation plays a big part in how happy or unhappy I am. I get used to the stuff I have ver quickly, and I have to make a conscious effort to enjoy it. It happens far too often that I chase the glitter of new stuff rather than simply enjoying what I have.

I don’t think rivalry is much of a factor for me. My brother makes considerably more than I do - he has for most of our working lives. However, that rarely makes me unhappy, because he lives almost a thousand miles away. It’s very rare that we compare incomes or “stuff”. On the other hand, Justin and Faith live close by, so our opportunities for comparing incomes are much more frequent. However, we’ve focused on different things - them on stability and us on gadgets, so again rivalry doesn’t come into play.

Basically, I feel that I’m better off than a lot of people, so I’m not too worried about economic rivalry in my pursuit of happiness.

I have a list of authors that I try to keep somewhere near me. The idea is that if I end up at a library or bookstore and nothing catches my eye, I’ll have somewhere to start looking. It’s been a while since I updated the list.

• Piers Anthony: I enjoyed the beginnings of the Xanth series when I was in high school. Unfortunately, as I got older, his books got duller. He wouldn’t be on the list today.
• Raymond Smullyan: When I took logic classes in university, I ran across a lot of his puzzles. Unfortunately, my current logic exercise are along the lines of “IF the kids stinks, THEN change him.” I’d need to do a lot of refresher work before looking at his stuff again.
• Gordon R. Dickson: He’s one of those writers whose work I either really enjoy or can’t get into at all. I was really enjoying the Dragon Knight series, but as he’s dead, I’ll never find out what happens. I like a lot of his short stories and humorous work.
• David Webber: I started reading David Webber’s books when someone who was headed overseas sold me a bunch of them for a quarter a piece. Talk about a demonstration of how the Right of First Sale helps publishers. I have since bought most of his books (including those I already had) in hardcover and in e-book format.
• Robert A. Heinlein: I read a bunch of his juveniles sometime around grade 7. I think I’ve pretty much read all his published books. Some of his books struck me as more than a bit strange, but they were still a good read.
• Lois McMaster Bujold: I found her books when I was in Ottawa. I am very fond of the Miles Vorkosigan series - they make me laugh and and bring tears to my eyes at least once per book.
• Alan Dean Foster: I enjoy most of his writing, but it doesn’t stick with me in that same way that other series do. Oddly enough, his short stories have more of that “sticky” quality.
• Andrew M. Greely: These were some of the first romance books that I read. I enjoy his writing, though the romances tend to be fairly predictable. There’s always at least one passage in his books that is very inspiring. I also enjoy his mystery stories.

That brings me partway down the first page of my authors list. To be continued in another post.

I had the local library get me a copy of Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson after reading a review on Enworld. Unfortunately, it didn’t appeal to me at all. After a hundred pages or so, I still had no solid idea of who the characters were or what they were doing. I suspect that those who enjoy George R. R. Martin’s books would enjoy this one as I stopped reading those for much the same reasons.