…Â a strategy used by anxious people to help them manage their anxiety so they can work productively. Defensive pessimists lower their expectations to help prepare themselves for the worst. Then, they mentally play through all the bad things that might happen. Though it sounds as if it might be depressing, defensive pessimism actually helps anxious…
I can be pretty scatterbrained. Time has a way of whizzing past when engaged in some activity. Creating and adhering to a schedule makes being where I need to be easier and less stressful. Pre-smartphone, I set Google calendar to send me SMS notifications to give me a heads up about meetings or appointments. If I…
Imaginary Worlds is a twice monthly podcast hosted by Eric Molinsky about science fiction and other fantasy genres. How we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. It happens I so enjoyed this podcast that I started from the beginning. Work replaced my computer and I lost where I was. I ended up re-listening to several over again…
My grandmother loved games. She and I and others would play all the time. If she was bored, then her go to way to break the lull was “How about we play a game?” I inherited most of her games. My dining room has a shelf full of them. They include the inheritance, a few…
Doing a software inventory of what tools I use in order to migrate to a new work computer. I make a private blog post of what software, extensions, and customizations to facilitate the move. Work provides software, but I prefer different web browsers, text editors, SSH clients, etc. I have posts from 2009, 2011, and now 2016.…
Working in a cube farm, my ears perked up to an NPR story about how other people are distracting. “In general, if a sound is coming from another person, it’s much more disturbing than when it’s coming from a machine,” Alan Hedge at Cornell says, because, as social beings, humans are attuned to man-made sounds. He…
In the eyes of the law, your race is considered immutable because it cannot be changed from its natural state. This made me laugh. Being mixed the perception of my race is very mutable. People often have no idea what to make of my skin color, hair, or facial features.The day-to-day decisions I make influence…
Sadly information technology conferences give our email addresses and phone numbers to the vendors who attended. That results in me getting an uptick of spam especially in the weeks after it. It is easy to tell the spam from the conference because the vendors mention the name of the conference. All the conferences do it. It…