Slow Roundup 1

Welcome to the first of a new series of posts: The "Slow Roundup"!

Normally, if I have a decent amount of time or energy in the morning, I can pretty quickly find a few interesting or newsworthy things worth blogging, and I can save time by making them one post rather than having to post and edit each one separately. Thus, although some "Quick Roundups" are just a little bit quicker than others, the idea is that I get a little more blogging in because I save time.

So what's a "Slow Roundup"? A way for me to blog even more quickly, of course! Let me explain...

When I first took up the personal productivity methodology David Allen outlined in Getting Things Done, I suddenly became much better at keeping track of the numerous stray ideas -- and I have some good ones -- that pop into my head from time to time. Naturally, I quickly realized that I could jot down various random thoughts as well and once I'd accumulated enough, turn them into a blog post for any time that I can't blog for some reason or another, like this morning.

So, they're called "slow" because I gradually gather the material, but they're quicker in terms of time spent at the keyboard at posting time. Got that? Here goes:

1. I used to follow Word Spy daily, and once thought during that more leisurely time that "omplete" would be a good, self-descriptive synonym for "incomplete" -- until I realized that if "omplete" ever became a word, it would no longer be self-descriptive. And then, of course, it sounds too much like "complete" anyway.

2. Sometimes, it is only my great respect for property rights that stands between my keys and the paint jobs of losers who honk their car horns in confined areas like parking garages and breezeways.

3. Hmm. My shorthand makes no sense here, but I think I had the following quote in mind when I wrote it:

How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual… as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded over, controlled, supervised, and taken care of. --Texas State Rep. Suzanna Gratia-Hupp

Note to self: Capture your ideas better next time. (HT: Myrhaf)

4. I have a strong antipathy towards certain kinds of marketing tactics. For example, some seem designed to wear you down until you buy something just to shut the salesman/adware up. I suspect that the overall lack of backbone people have in our culture has a lot to do with the viability of such techniques.

5. For April Fool's Day, it might be funny to post the following question on a Linux forum, then duck: Help! "eject cdrom" and "eject zip" work, but I am about to pull my hair out trying to get "eject pen" to work. Just a little command-line humor for you, there....

6. Some drunk once materialized out of nowhere while I was mowing the yard to accuse me of stealing his bicycle, despite the fact that I had two cars parked in plain sight on my driveway. I was tempted to offer him the use of my phone so he could call in the cops to resolve the matter.

7. My wife and I were movie buddies before we dated. In fact, we were watching The Mummy together when we first kissed. We have joked that it is a romantic masterpiece ever since.

8. My wife is a big fan of Lara Croft, and I'm five years older than she is. So I sometimes call her "Tomb Raider".

This was going to be a list of ten random items, but one was a repeat and the other would have required me to do some scanning I haven't the time for. So this list has eight items. Enjoy!

-- CAV