Cockroaches and the role of thoughts in the metaverse

As I cleaned out my the underside of my desk today, I heard a rustling inside a a paper bag.  "It's nothing," I said to myself, though I distinctly heard the scrabble of little legs against the paper. "Nothing."  Then, turning back to the bag, I started screaming like a little baby, lunged toward the bag, threw it out the door and slammed all 267 pounds of me onto a cockroach which I could now see quite clearly. I will spare you the picture of its little black and yellow guts all over the bricks outside my office.

Now, did I bring that cockroach into the universe by thinking about it?  Ridiculous, right? I mean, I learned as a stock-boy (holla Newmark & Lewis!) that cockroaches love paper bags and corrugated cardboard for laying their eggs.  It's one of the reasons you don't want to leave any bags or boxes from the supermarket in your house.

But here's the thing.  Earlier this morning I thought I saw a cockroach in our living room.  One of the cats was batting at something small, black and creepy in the wooden window blind. I thought it might be a cockroach but, as I got closer, I saw it was a GIANT fly. I closed the blinds, and made a run for it, since calling the exterminator is already on the Honey Do list.

That is when I went back to my office, and picked up that fateful bag. Yuck. Hate cockroaches. Remind me to tell you the cockroach story from when I lived at 97th between Park and Madison. Not now though; I can't risk bringing another through the space-time continuum into my office.

Multiverse FTW!

BoingBoing Meetup #1 Notes and thoughts and pictures

The first BoingBoing Meetup on June 7 was a blast!  Thanks to Mark for facilitating, and all for coming. Xeni, great to meet you.  But I have to say, the highlight for me, the thing that made me run up to my wife as I was running late to get out the door was meeting Bruce Sterling. Gosh. Oke, let's move on.

Anyhow, I posted my iPhone snaps of the Meetup for your viewing pleasure.

My trip to the Meetup turned into a bit of a saga, and I promised myself I would allow some self indulgence and blog about it later, rather than cluttering up my trip with frantic tweets about how I eventually ended up arriving about T+50 mins. This blogpost is the start of that account. Only I haven't written any yet.

The Cognitive Costs to Doing Things | SebastianMarshall.com: Strategy, Philosophy, Self-Discipline, Science. Victory.

I just had to connect to this piece. Terrific summary by Sebasian Marshall, now in Mogolia.

The Cognitive Costs to Doing Things | SebastianMarshall.com: Strategy, Philosophy, Self-Discipline, Science. Victory.

Thanks boingboing for pointing me to it.

Life is complicated; wherein slugs abound

Turns out there are slugs in this neighborhood too. Proof is in the squishing. I thought it was another worm until I stepped outside in the light just now. Poor thing. Maybe I need to start wearing shoes out to my office in the mornings.

(Tetris) Heaven: Greatest Uncommon Denominator Magazine

Tetris fans must check out this XKCD-inspired version:

Heaven: Greatest Uncommon Denominator Magazine

I really like this word cloud I made on Wordle of my Delicious feed. Here's my feed if you care to look

Slime in the city

I could take a photo to go with this post but I won't. Today when I walked into my office, a fate I had in my mind for a while came true. In a way, it felt both like I created what happened and also like I came into alignment with the universe (at the same time...but both). [edit: I'll tag this as #multiverse. See twitter.]

Anyhow, for the last three or so years, we have lived in a beautiful place up on a (paved over) hill in a tucked-away corner of Los Angeles called Cheviot Hills. And it is moist here. Our backyard is bricked over (nicer than it sounds) and I didn't understand why the owner would have decided to do this until I visited our neighbor, whose backyard abuts ours. His backyard is a ball of slime. It's just like what my front yard's hill would be if it wasn't in the son. Slimeball. Back to the story.

In the backyard, hard up against the fence dividing me from that neighbor, I have an office. I'm typing at my desk now. It's lovely. But even though it has walls, doors, screened windows, etc., it's a little like indoor/outdoor living. So I wasn't too surprised to see slime trails on the floor. We have similar slime trails in our front entryway some days. But I thought the trails were from snails. Or slugs. I've never seen a slug around here, but we all wondered how a snail could get through a small crack and get onto the rug of my office or the entry way of the house.

In any case, I always wondered what these slime trails were. Then, when cleaning out the front of the garage, I unearthed a HUGE earthworm in a pile of leaves. HUGE. I mean, bigger than the ones I used to pull up with a pitchfork at Grandma Thompson's farm. I literally jumped back and screamed when I saw this BeWormoth (as is the bewheemoth in the Steven Wright bit in Reservoir Dogs).

So now I KNEW what was making those squiggly, lines in my office. The individual lines meeting up in a jumble under the desk. It was worms having sex. Sigh.

Once I realized that I was doomed to the fate I mentioned. This all is coinciding with me starting to get up very early every morning and work in the office. I'd open the door, and have to step in before I could turn on the lights. All I could imagine every time I stepped into that office was how it was going to feel when I stepped on one of those worms. Today I found out. Yuck. Seriously. There is now a brown stain the size of a crayola on my floor. And the remains of a gian nightcrawler in my garbage. RIP big guy.

Oak vs. Willow in scheduling one's day

I distinctly remember the time my dad told me the story of the willow tree and the oak tree. The willow, being flexible, can withstand a strong storm.

The mighty oak, on the other hand, while firm, is also brittle. A strong wind can snap and oak tree, but not the flexible willow. (I guess the subtext is that I tend to be stubborn, convinced that I am right, and unwilling to listen to other arguments. But maybe that describes everyone.)

So, not to belabor the point, I'll get on with today's post. This morning, I woke up knowing I had one mid-morning meeting, with a potential for another one before it. Last night I double-booked myself a little this morning, knowing I might have an early meeting.

Sure enough, I woke up to a rush request for help on client-facing work with a mid-morning timeline. So, I rushed to get out the door to get to help with that project and still get to my next meeting.

Then, just as I was about to walk out the door, I get the email saying I don't need to help on that first task. Sigh. Swing and a miss. Anyhow, that left me with some time to get paperwork done and do some quiet time. Opportunity! Now enough with this and back to work.
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Live link of Images from Wikimedia.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Napa_Valley_oak_tree.jpg#file