A couple of weeks ago, my laptop (Dell Inspiron 8200), which is my primary PC, started mis-behaving. It runs fine for ten to twenty minutes or maybe more then the CPU races to 100% utilization and the twin fans roars and the GUI becomes very sluggish. Trouble shooting the problem is frustrating. On occasion the laptop will run for several hours without any problem. I then feel like I got it fixed. Reboot and come back later and the problem is back. When the problem is occurring, if I reboot without powering off the laptop, the problem persists. I’ve tried many things to rectify this but I’m getting nowhere. I can’t even tell if this is a hardware or software problem. Because my /home is on a separate partition I was able to reinstall Ubuntu but even this did not help. I’ve rebuilt the kernel to be sure SMP was not enabled and to specify support for my Pentium M processor. There must be some desktop/user configuration that is the culprit. Wish me luck.
This picture was taken this last fall.
This is the Lewiston, ID/Clarkston, WA Valley.
Fast forward to now — it is Christmas. The weather is delightful. We’ve started our special dinner preparations. Pineapple Fried Rice. Yahoo. Warm, safe and loved — I wish everyone could be warm, safe and loved. Metta.
Saturday, it snowed on the Palouse.
I notice now that the image above is a little over sharpened but I’ll leave it.
We had a great discussion with the book reading group this morning about wisdom. I can’t remember who said it but recently I heard ‘the wise don’t believe their thoughts’. This is pretty tough for most people to understand. We want to identify with our thoughts because they feel important, relevant and interesting, or at least entertaining. Yet wise people and creative people will tell you that wisdom and creativity increase in intensity the quieter the thoughts become. In fact there seems to be an inverse relationship between wisdom and creativity, and our thinking. We have all experiences this at the so call peak moments when life flowed with out thought rather that was in sports, in nature or in some creative endeavor. I’m sure you’ve experienced how unclear things become when the mind races.
We can’t give up thinking. Minds think like hearts beat. It is too easy to let the thinking carry us away and distract us from what is happening right now. Too easy to attach meaning to our mental creations and then have to defend them. It seem more healthy to see thoughts for what they are – just stories we tell ourselves. I’m enjoying relaxing my mind and giving my thinking a break. You should try it too.
Continuing with my fascination with maps, here is a catalog of NASA images and animations of our home planet. There are a lot of cool images made up of a composite of several images, sometimes hundreds of images.
Buckminster Fuller was one of my childhood heroes. Even though most of his important work was done in the 40′s, 50′s and 60′s, he is still revered and honored today. Above is his map of the world with an unfolded Fuller projection, also known as Dymaxion Air-Ocean World map. 1954 final version for an icosahedron, with folding lines. This map shows the land masses as there true sizes. I remember another projection of this map that showed the oceans in the center and the land masses on the edges.
Maps are on of the coolest things. Here is a link to my favorite map retailer. Raven Maps and Images.
Bucky deplored waste and was an original ecologist. He espoused the values of a principle he called ephemeralization, which means doing more and more with less and less. Quoting from wikipedia:
Wealth can be increased by recycling resources into newer, higher value
products whose more technically sophisticated design requires less
material.
Greeted at the door by a misplaced tree.
Looking back towards the house. How lucky we are!
It landed between the house and garage. Mary’s car was parked right here.
This is actually two trees and they block the driveway.
My chainsaw is not big enough to clear the road.
The view of another part of our homestead.
Two trees uprooted and two more stage left.
I didn’t make it to work. Instead Mary and I worked all day clearing the drive and weather sealing a storage shed that got hit. All told, we have lost 9 trees. These are large and mature trees. These trees are 20″ to 25″ in diameter. I’m thankful for the help of my kind neighbor, Kevin. He has a large tractor and a bigger chainsaw. He came over around eight and we were hard at it all day. He took a break to attend his great aunt’s funural. We headed to town to get coffee and a tarp. It was a pretty scary storm. Locally the wind reached a peak speed of 77 mph. We lost power in the wee hours of the night and it finally came on at 4:30 pm.
The landscape has changed. We are going to have to spend a lot of time this spring cleaning up the mess. Even as I write this the wind is howling outside. The wind is slowing, we are safe, we are warm and really sore. The forecast is now for cold temperatures and snow.
Warning — navel gazing ahead.
I’ve noticed that all my recent posts have included a photo. Today will be different.
I am a visual person and because my writing is a little lacking (OK a lot!), the inclusion of photo is my crutch. During my usual dish-washing brainstorming session last night, I got to thinking about why this is. The short answer is that I don’t understand who my audience is or what they want. More importantly, I often confused about what I want to give them. Starting without an end in mind?
I sort of ramble in my writing, one minute composing it as if it were a journal and the next moment I write as if I was addressing you the reader. So I’ve come up with three tips (more like challenges) for myself to improve my writing here.
- Write with an audience in mind. If you don’t have a audience in mind when you start writing, make one up. Think of specific people, use friends, co-workers, relatives or plain strangers and make them specific. The tone and cadence of your writing will change depending on if you are addressing your friend’s five year old or the boss. Each topic has the appropriate audience. Look for them and keep on track.
- Describe the scene to give the reader a sense of place. When I write I usually sit at a Stickley deck. It is new but modeled after those big old desks you used to see in banks. It has a knee-hole between two sets of drawers and Boykan, my Chocolate Lab, likes to curl up there to keep us warm. To my right is a computer mouse, my coffee cup and a ceramic vase full of pens, pencils, a staple puller, and scissors. To the left there is a reading lamp, a stack of books I’m reading, my iPod and a hipsterPDA card bleacher with cards for future blog posts and notes on a yoga asana. I use an old laptop for my main computer and the short monitor allows me to look over the top of the laptop and see the shop and woods beyond to the west. We feed the local pheasant and quail so sometimes they gather in the edge of the field jockeying for position and scratching up the ground looking for the last of the birdseed.
- Remain focused within a blog post. New idea equals new post. So often I will start with one idea and add one or two more so I can get volume. This isn’t necessary. If an idea can be expressed quickly there is no need to fatten it up. Here is were we can get into trouble though. If the idea is no fully expressed or is foggy in some way, fattening it with unrelated ideas only serves to confused the reader. It also doesn’t fell satisfying to the writer. This skill only comes with practice.
Well they you go, dear reader. There tips, seeds of which sprouted in last night’s dish-washing water. This is the work I need to do. Practice.
How did I do? Comments >>
B&W image taken this morning
in the field the moose sometimes loiter in but not today.
Common Teasel: Dipsacus fullonum
Where we are the weather has been cold but is now warming. I sure have a privileged life. I have my health, a rewarding job, a strong spiritual practice and a happy love relationship. What more could I ask for? I appreciate life so much but I’m afraid I haven’t demonstrated that enough. This little quote from Steve Jobs reminds me of “The Five Remembrances”. Is Steve a Buddhist?
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
…
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
The Five Remembrances
I am of the nature to grow old.
There is no way to escape growing old.
I am of the nature to have ill health.
There is no way to escape ill health.
I am of the nature to die.
There is no way to escape death.
All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change.
There is no way to escape being separated from them.
I cannot escape the consequences of my actions.
My actions are the ground upon which I stand.
Gratuitous cat picture (Zia).
The Online Educational Database has a new article titled “77 Ways to Learn Faster, Deeper, and Better“. Some great tips there. Here is a brief sample.
8. Change your focus. Sometimes there simply isn’t enough time to take a long break. If so, change subject focus. Alternate between technical and non-technical subjects.
11. Do walking meditation. If you’re taking a hike (#25), go one step further and learn walking meditation as a way to tap into your inner resources and your strengthen your ability to focus. Just make sure you’re not walking inadvertently into traffic.
19. Brainmap it. Need to plan something? Brain maps, or mind maps, offer a compact way to get both an overview of a project as well as easily add details. With mind maps, you can see the relationships between disparate ideas and they can also act as a receptacle for a brainstorming session.
44. Cross-pollinate your interests. Neurons that connect to existing neurons give you new perspectives and abilities to use additional knowledge in new ways.
The Wenatchee Ferry
It is a quiet morning. The wind has blown in different air. Sitting this morning, the brass wind chime on the porch struck a particularly inviting note. Several moments after the bell I noticed my mind was trying to assign meaning to it. The sound was gone, back to where it came from yet there I was, feebly grasping to it. This time I noticed that there was a small glimpse of silliness. Silly to struggle to make real what is gone. Thinking about the sound sort of denigrated it, made it less than it was. All this is not earth shattering but in a small way points to the mind works. See how the mind works in this microcosm helps to see it try to orchestrate life’s experiences in the larger realm.
“… Sounds are a true picture of the nature of things, We cannot hold onto them. And memory is pale in comparison. Yet there they are in our experience. Direct, they lift us up, yet leave us just instantly.”