Procrastinators: Beware of magical mops

Some of what makes anti-procrastination tools work, is their novelty. Once that novelty wears off, you are right back where you started, procrastinating again.

A hypothetical example:

Let's say I hate mopping my floor and I always procrastinate about doing it. Then I see an ad on TV for a wonder mop, with a handle that twinkles when you push it. You stop pushing, it stops twinkling. You push it faster, it twinkles more. And even more amazing, is that it also sings! I order this mop, because it seems like it could make mopping fun.

So the mop arrives, and I can't wait to get it out of it's packaging and try it. I fill my bucket with soapy water and begin mopping. The singing & twinkling is pretty cool, and before I know it, the whole floor is clean. Great! Wonderful! Terriffic! It's working. I didn't procrastinate and I got the job done.

I like this mop so much, I am having no problem mopping my floor and keeping it clean. I am not even procrastinating about it any more. This is the best mop ever! It's like magic!

But a few months later, after the novelty of the twinkling & singing mop begins to wear off, I find myself beginning to procrastinate about mopping the floor again. What happened? This was supposed to be the best mop ever. What went wrong?

Nothing went wrong. I just had an unrealistic expectation that some wonder tool was going to make me like doing a task I hate.

The truth is that nothing can make me like mopping floors, not even a magical, singing, twinkling wonder mop.

So if you try an anti-procrastination tool and it works for awhile, but then stops working...the problem isn't the tool. It's you and how you feel about the task...your real feelings.

Instead of looking for a new tool to trick yourself into thinking that you like what you hate, work on the real problem: the task itself, how you feel about it, and why.

If you can be honest with yourself, you can begin to look for a real solution instead of tricks. If you fix the root problem, you won't need a singing, twinkling mop to get things done.

Bloggers With Comment Forms That Suck a Chunk of Your Life Into a Black Hole

Listen up, John Chow, Jack Humphrey, Matthew Henrickson, Andy Beard, and the rest of you lazy and/or inept bloggers out there:

I am tired of wasting my time on broken comment forms, screwball captchas, lazy moderation, and bad site design.

Too many times in the past 2 weeks, I have tried to make comments on blogs that ended up sucked into cyberspace and never making it to its destination, which is the post in which I was commenting on.

On three blogs, after taking the time to formulate an informative, relevant, quality comment (one of them was at least an hour of work), it was just sucked away after clicking the submit button, with no indication that it made it to where it was supposed to go, or it being held for moderation, or anything else. Will I ever grace those blogs with another comment again? No!

On another blog, after almost the same amount of work and hitting the submit button, I was informed that commenting on that post was closed. Why was there a comment form then? And why was there no visible indication that commenting was closed that I could see, before I wasted my time putting together a comment? Will I ever grace that blog with another comment? No!

On another blog, after I took the time to make a comment thanking the blogger for his post and tell him how useful it was to me and why, and how I was going to send him some traffic because it was that damn good, his captcha informs me that I must have flunked math in school because 4+3 does not equal 7. Don't insult me like that. I try to compliment you and thank you, and this is the thanks I get? A screwball captcha that calls me an idiot? Will I ever comment on your blog again? No!

On another two blogs, my comment was being held for moderation. Now I can understand the need to do that in order to keep spammers at bay, but don't you think you should check your queue to see if any comments were made, at least once a week, if not more often? Maybe even check it when you are making a new post, at least. Will I be commenting on those blogs again? No!

I am tired of wasting chunks of my life trying to comment unsucessfully on your blogs.

So to all you bloggers out there, please check to make sure your comment forms and captchas work, when commenting is closed that it is visibly closed to your visitors before they waste their time (remove the form if possible), if comments are being held for moderation that commentors are told this, and process your comment moderation queues on a regular basis!

And if you have no clue what you are doing or how to fix things, ask someone to help you!

Freedom Sandwich

Yesterday, on the anniversary of America's indepencence, I wanted to write a piece on freedom, but kind of got stuck.

At first I wanted to write about the countries that still are not free, like China, where bloggers are now resorting to writing backwards in order to beat censorship and report about what is really going on behind the Great Firewall.

Or perhaps focusing on who is and isn't totally free yet.

Then thinking about the US, the myth of freedom here, and the reality that we aren't totally free as some may believe, maybe focusing on why we are not free, as this report may explain.

Or go more in depth about the freedom of the press, and what responsibilities come along with it in relation to self-censorship and its ethical and moral implications, focusing on the list of censored news stories.

Or perhaps a piece on economic freedom and what organizations like The Green Children Foundation are doing to help people living in third world countries overcome poverty, while still keeping their dignity, in the form of microcredit loans.

Or perhaps how the price of oil can threaten democracy in places where the whole concept of freedom is still fairly new and still on shakey ground. The article is from 2006, when the price of oil was much lower than it is now, so most likely the situation is much worse today than it was at the time the article was written.

Or artistic and educational freedom, and focus on books that have been banned throughout history, for one reason or another.

Or psychological freedom, and how the fear of failure holds so many people back and prevents them from living up to their full potential. (Unfortunately, something I have first-hand experience with)

Or the desire for financial freedom, and the rising number of "get rich on the internet by blogging about how to make money blogging" websites that are popping up every day.

Or freedom of information, and the threat of censorship from ISP's and their desire to do away with net neutrality to boost profits, cut costs, and control what you see and do on the internet, and decide who can and will be able to profit online.

Since I couldn't make up my mind as to what direction I wanted to go with this freedom piece, I decided to give you a little slice of everything I was thinking about yesterday, just in time for lunch.

Enjoy your "freedom sandwich".

Take it slow, one bite at a time, don't eat too fast...it's ok to save some for later.

Pro-life and Pro-choice Can Be Two Sides of the Same Coin If That Coin Is Education

I am both pro-choice and pro-life and the 2 views are not in conflict with each other because I am also very pro-education.

In a perfect world, every child would be born to 2 responsible parents that loved it, wanted it, had the means and skills required to take care of it, nurture it, properly educate it, and help it to become a productive member of society.

But we don't live in a perfect world, do we?

And people do make mistakes. That is why there are erasers on pencils and backspace keys on keyboards...and abortion.

Unless and until we can find a way to eliminate the mistakes before they are made, then the eraser is still needed, and the backspace key...and abortion, and all of those will continue to exist.

If you want to end abortions, then end the mistakes that lead to them...by educating people to make better choices.

Instead of telling kids that babies come from the stork or by swallowing watermelon seeds, start at an early age and tell them where they really come from.

And don't tie the hands of educators that want to provide children with knowledge by forbidding them from teaching how the human body works, how and why pregnancies occur, how one can prevent pregnancies. This is valuable information they will need, even if they do wait until marriage to have sex.

Arming your kids with the facts doesn't lead to wild orgies of teens having sex. On the contrary... Show a classroom full of 14 year olds a video of a live birth, with a nice close-up of the woman's twat opening wide to pass the head of a baby, and it's likely to scare the crap out of them and give them something to think about and make them not want to have sex for at least a year.

Telling them about birth control choices and making them available prevents them from getting pregnant, in the event that they do decide to be sexually active. And don't forget to educate them on the psycological effects of abortion and the lingering effects it has on the mind of the mother that decides to take that route, so they won't see abortion as a first line birth control choice.

Do whatever it takes to change the attitudes of young women who regard taking care of a baby as being all fun and games, like playing house, or playing with baby dolls, so they don't deliberately get pregnant with a child they are unable and unprepared to care for. And make them understand that caring for a child isn't like caring for a pet dog, cat, or hamster. They need to understand this before they get pregnant with the first one and not find out after the fact, which can lead to aborting a second pregnancy.

Give them enough information and better choices and they won't make so many damn mistakes that lead to abortion. There is so much to consider before getting pregnant. Teach them this and don't wait till after the fact to tell them. End abortion by ending unwanted pregnancies...end unwanted pregnancies with knowledge and understanding.

If my daughter made a mistake, which is highly unlikely because I have educated her myself, I would hope she would seriously consider giving her baby a chance at life, like I did, but I would also hope she would make that choice after careful consideration about what kind of life that baby would have and how it would impact hers, and exactly how she will provide for it and not eventually become a burden to her child at the same time. But in the end, the choice is hers and not mine, and I don't have the right to make that choice for her. If my daughter decides she is not ready to be a mother, than I am not ready to be a grandmother, as well.


Whether you like the definition or not, babies are perfect parasites, by the technical definition of what a parasite is, and not one that can be cured with a little bit of medicated soap.(funny how we don't see "save the pubic lice" protests, huh?)

Parenthood is a permanent condition. When you decide to have a baby, you are stuck with it and it's effects for life, not just till it becomes legally an adult. Even if your child dies before you do, you don't stop being a parent...you just become the parent of a dead child.

I wonder how many old women died from falling out of bed, severe bone fractures caused by the osteoporosis that began with a baby leeching the calcium from their bones when they were young.

Yes, you may have contributed to the cause of death of your mother by your actions before you were born. Kids also need to know and understand things like this before they get pregnant.

And just like you can't end typos by outlawing backspace keys, you can't end unwanted pregnancies or abortions by making it illegal...you only end legal abortions, driving women to seek their abortions illegally, putting them at great risk of death by having an abortion performed by an untrained person in a tattoo parlor or butcher shop, or doing it themselves with a coat hanger at home, rather than a nice safe medical clinic by a trained doctor.

Outlawing abortion can kill both your daughters and grandchildren at the same time, which is much worse than just losing your grandchildren, and I would never forgive the one that takes my precious daughter away from me with their thoughtless laws.

Bill Gates Cleans Out His Desk and Leaves Behind a Priceless Email

The internet has been cluttered lately with tributes and articles devoted to Bill Gates and his contributions to the world of computing, on the eve of his retirement from Microsoft.

Out of all of these, one in particular stands out...

Back in 2003, Bill Gates tried to download and install Windows Movie Maker, unsuccessfully, and then sent a whopper of an email rant to the proper department heads.

I chuckled and felt a great sense of satisfaction as I read this, because this is a whole different side of Bill that we have never seen. This is not the smiling Bill you see in all the publicity photos. This is not the Bill you have seen in interviews and videos.

This is "Bill the XP user"...one of us. And he was pissed as all hell, at all the crap he had to go through to download & install an application from Microsoft.com, which in the end, he still wasn't able to do.

This email rant is a priceless gem.

It is the email we all wish we could have written, a million and one times over.

Each and every time that we have blamed and cursed out Bill over the years because of some stupid-ass Windows crap that has annoyed or confused the hell out of us, Bill Gates has been annoyed and confused right along with us, and bitching at the people responsible for the bullshit.

Thanks, Bill. You changed our lives. And I hope, even though you are retiring, that you plan to keep on bitching.