A juggling technophile shares personal stories, challenges, humor and perhaps some political commentary.
My oldest son is doing a class project in ecology. He is writing two posts a week and soliciting comments which he will compile or aggregate into his report. He cannot complete his project without comments. Please take a moment and read his posts. If you are so compelled, please comment on as many as you can. Thank you!
His posts to date:
Please make the comments on Tommy’s blog.
As a reminder, the Knoxville Juggler’s Club meets the first Sunday and third Tuesday of every month. All skill levels welcome. Come and learn! Everyone can juggle. Juggling is good for the body, mind, and spirit. It also is a great social tool.
Naturally, my attendance is dependent upon my work progress. I do hope to get a short break as I could use the exercise!
I feel like for the past month I have given you more time on paperwork than I have given my family and clients. I have dotted Ts and crossed Is, typo’d and corrected, photocopied and triplicated, unearthed ancient hidden documents and proven and proven and proven. Taxes are done and filed. Eldest child’s grants and financial aid applications submitted. Other more personal documents having to do with a long gone past that refuses to fade into obscurity and history have been notarized, witnessed, and mailed. Please. My ink well is dry, my wrists hurt, and my finger tips are numb. I know there is more to come. But please. Allow me to rest. Let Lowry handle it for a bit!
Wow! I feel beat up. This Monday felt worse than a Wednesday and we all know that Wednesdays are the new Mondays!
Forgive me Uncle, for I have filled out your forms. Lead me not into audit but deliver a fat check directly into my bank account. Let us pray.
Yeah!
Based on the information you provided, your expected stimulus payment is $xxxx. [Source, Internal Revenue Service (IRS),Economic Stimulus Payment Calculator]
Boo!
The estimated payment amount could be reduced, however, if you have an unpaid tax liability. [Source, Internal Revenue Service (IRS),Economic Stimulus Payment Calculator]
My nearing 4 year old German Shepherd is laying on the porch. The outdoor cat is rubbing on her and laying in her lap. The nearing 6 month old German Shepherd is in the yard with her head quirked and a perplexed look on her face as if to say, "Now’s your chance! Why aren’t eating it?!"
Student: I should have stayed up all night.
Master: You should stay focused.
Last night, Lissa Kay asks if I know how Jott works. I used to work at The Learning Company in its foreign language division which was bleeding edge when it came to speech recognition (which is different than voice recognition btw). I knew all about Lernout & Hauspie and how to trick Dragon Speech. Jott’s accuracy (not demonstrated last night) has always amazed me because there is no training involved. You sign up for an account and instantly start using it. Most speech-to-text software requires some training which usually involves reading several paragraphs of text to the software so it can learn the nuances of your speech patterns.
As it turns out, Jott combines machine translation and humans to convert the speech to text.
If we were dealing with a very limited set of words, in a known context, spoken very clearly by a accentless person in a noise-free environment, then pure machine-driven Speech Recognition might have been the way to go. Instead, we wanted to be immediately useful and simple to adopt, letting any English speaker jott using an ordinary cell-phone, their natural voice, in a realistic setting (their car, running between meetings, etc.). So we use a mixed Human/Machine method for transcription, and that blend will change over time. [Source, Entrepreneur27, Interview with John Pollard of Jott]
Since Jott uses humans, you can spell difficult words to assure they get turned to text correctly. I have inquired to see if Jott plans to support IM, SMS, and emails sent to the inbox.
See a screenshot, the numerous services to which Jott can post, and my thoughts on Jott at the bottom of Rough Week Behind Redux to Follow.
Rich pulled together another great gathering of great minds. Hopefully Lissa will have the official round up. You know..my beer damaged brain keeps wanting to introduce her as Leesuh but her name is Lihsuh. I’m so sorry!
In attendance were Cathy (minus business cards…sorry), Rich, Lissa, Tommy, Victor Agrenda (Knoxvillians probably want to read him here), Joseph Agreda, Frank Murphy (and son), Jon Katsiros, and a friend of Jon’s (sorry..I missed their sites). Michael Silence had planned to attend but something must have come up. Apologies if I left anyone out.
We secured a large space of the absolutely packed (and valet parked) Wild Wing’s Cafe. Now we probably overstayed our welcome. Little note to management, simply asking if we could free the table would be better than slowly turning up the radio. When the radio didn’t run us off, they turned the televisions to a ball game at LOUD volume. As we left, the TVs suddenly quieted. That was funny! The venue was nice but I think we are still looking for the ideal spot which combines fun, food, adult beverages but child friendly (I suppose that’s optional), wifi, and the ability to socialize.
What happens at a Blogfest? We get to see the faces behind the words we read in feed. Of course as video and audio become more prominent by citizen journalist publishings that statement loses some of its oompfth. Still, nothing compares to the energy and dynamics of real life conversation which is what I believe Loic Le Meur (Whoa! He’s my younger brother’s age!) is attempting to duplicate with Seesmic. New ideas are generated, laughs, laughs and more laughs, food is consumed and beverages, economic and social boundaries are breached bringing people in different walks of life and opposing political views together on common ground, introductions are made and new readers created in this pioneering land of blog. Overall, good times are had. Of course, I miss seeing Randy Neal, Dr. Helen, and the blogfather himself, Glenn Reynolds at the table. Lookout Glenn! You’ve just been RealityMeAlanched! And yes, to all those I didn’t name, I missed you too!
Oh, one, is that Sylar?! (Sylar’s IMDB) And, two, my wife thought one of the guys in attendance had "really sexy eyes."
Other Blogfests:
Update: Lissa posts about A Wild Blogfest and Rich has his wrap up. Frank has posted blogic: the gathering and Tommy put down a few sentences. Cathy talks about the restrooms at Wild Wings Cafe.
Will you be attending tonight’s Blogfest at Wild Wing’s Cafe in West Knoxville? Starts at 6pm. See you there!
Last week was a frustrating week. I really got a lot of work done but have little to show for it. Two of the secrets to being a successful consultant are to show results frequently and to communicate, communicate, communicate. I feel that I failed in both regards heavily this past week. I plan to use today to get a couple of boat anchors off my desk and start fresh tomorrow. Next week I am going to knock some socks off!
Whenever I have a rough week, I like to turn back to Stephen R Covey’s timemangement tools and get a little reflective. From a card I keep in my wallet:
The Pitfalls of Poor Planning
- Allowing "to-dos" to rule your day instead of prioritizing.
- Setting an unrealistic number of things to do each day.
- Failing to have your planning system within reach at all times.
- Forgetting to allow time between scheduled appointments.
- Failing to allow at least 1 ½ hours per day for the unexpected.
- Not having an effective system for capturing and retrieving information.
- Failing to have a single personal management system.
- Retaining unnecessary information.
- Failing to plan for the "big rocks" weekly and for the small bits daily.
- Failing to allow time for advanced planning.
©2000 Franklin Covey Co.
Some wondeful tools have evolved on the Internet for productivity. David Allen has revolutionized some people’s lives with Getting Things Done (GTD)
My favorite productivity site is Jott! Click the image below to see a sample of how I use Jott to organize myself. To make a Jott, I simply call their phone number (from speed dial), state who I want to receive the Jott. For example, I could say myself or Twitter or Cathy. Jott records my words. When I am done it asks if I want to set a reminder. If I say yes I can then give it a date (today, tomorrow, July 4, Wednesday, …) and a time. The reminder will come to my phone as a text message (sms) and go to my email. The words I spoke will be translated from speech to text with amazing accuracy! Incase something gets mangled, an mp3 recording of my voice will be attached to the email. Naturally I can also view and listen to my reminders through the Jott.com interface.
I can also preface the message with a keyword. For instance, if I start with "grocery," Jott will automatically file my reminder under my grocery list which I can then access while at the market. If I preface my Jott with "work," it automatically gets filed under my work list and so forth.
Jott has changed dramatically since I first began using it in September of last year. At one point, the interface was so painful to use that I stayed away from the website. I am thrilled with the changes Jott has made. The most recent feature is the addition of tying into services like Twitter. You could always send a Jott to another Jotter but now you have the ability to use Jott’s power speech to text engine to post messages from your voice directly to Twitter, Yahoo Groups, Jaiku, Zillow, Thirty Boxes, Blogger, Live Journal, TypePad, WordPress (and Tumblr, Remember the Milk, Sandy, Xpenser, Gumiyo, Trapster, Mosio, Vitalist, Google Calendar, Recommendr, Toodledo, Nozbe, Mentat, Keep Up, Smartsheet, Heap, Fortythree Actions, kwiry, and even make custom connections.
You need Jott!
Update: Jott works by a combination of human and machine translation.
Say Uncle gave me a taste of what his traffic must be like! Wow. He made me acutely aware that I need to do some fine tuning to prepare my sites for Instalanches, Diggs, and Uncles. Thanks Uncle!
Last Saturday I was invited to Gentlemen’s Top Cuts for a blogger haircut and manicure. GTC is a salon for men. Of course, if you told most non-metrosexuals, "there’s a salon in town where you can get a manicure" you’d probably be laughed at, punched, and called derogatory nicknames. Now, tell a man, "the bastard child of Hooter’s and a day spa is open at 7425 Middlebrook Pike" and they’ll come in hordes! Yes, Gentlemen’s Top Cuts combines sexy women, sports, hot wax, trimmers, scissors, shampoo, massage, beer and general pampering in classy environment for men.
GTC drew a lot of criticism and in at least one instance was implied to be a house of ill repute in disguise. Ladies, you have nothing to fear! I can assure you that men at GTC are just as safe as women are at a woman’s salon. I personally was trying to understand the nature of a more personal service one of the other bloggers was scheduled to sample. It baffled me. Then it was suggested that I try it. Well now, what’s better than a free haircut and manicure? Why, a free haircut, manicure, and waxing! All done by beautiful women to boot! Now before anyone jumps on the morals bandwagon, there is nothing different between what I did and what ladies do in day spas every day of the week. Trust me! I wish I could have derived some pleasure out of the procedure as that might have taken some of the embarrassment away (the room was quite cold!). By the way, it is a "procedure," requiring the ladies doing the work to be licensed for waxing. To imply that it was anything more, would be to imply that the "Hello!" my doctor gave me on my 35th birthday was something more than it was. (that was standard procedure at 35 wasn’t it? I mean, you guys had that too right?)
As seen in the Andy Griffin show, the barber shop has always been a sanctuary for men. I grew up using barber shops (and getting lousy haircuts) but I use a stylist now.
As a child, I always thought it funny to walk into a barber shop and see a man pickup a magazine and sit down in the chair. Then from behind the chair the first thing the barber would do is hand the gentleman the current issue of Playboy which was then concealed by Popular Mechanics or whatever magazine he had picked up. Of course, not all men were as discreet. And this was not unique to small town Cary, North Carolina. I witnessed similar behaviors in New Orleans as well. I always wondered why we didn’t just have topless women cutting the hair. Now that would be a haircut!
[Source, Reality Me, I don’t need a haircut but I’d sure enjoy my visit!]
Gentlemen’s Top Cuts is not topless but it is 18 and older. If you are 21 or older, you can have a free beer with your appointment. Men deserve a haven where we can relax and be pampered. Now we have one! Read more at Gentlemen’s Top Cuts’ blog or visit their website. GTC is classy and a welcome addition to Knoxville!
Others who attended the blogger preview were Say Uncle, Frank Murphy (and son), and Modern Redneck. We shared many laughs!
Evan, 2.5 years:"Dada, take upstairs me dada."
My son speaks in American sign language! I wonder if ASL sentence structure is simply a more natural way to speak. Perhaps all hearing people should talking American sign language.
