The Meaning of Life


What is the meaning of life? It gets asked so many times, and few every really try to answer it. For all intents and purposes, it’s a rhetorical question that we simply brush aside and move on to whatever it was we were doing. And for a good reason, I suppose.

But if we take a step back (as I often like to do), and consider that it’s a rather important question, is it not? For whatever reason, I think often about my imminent death. We’ve all got an expiration date. It’s a thoroughly depressing thought that can weigh on even the cheeriest of souls.

How depressing would it be to tragically be hit by a bus and in the last moments of consciousness regret that you didn’t make more of life?

This year, I said to hell with risking that depressing thought and I started living. Truly living.

No, I’m not traveling the world or doing anything crazy, but (almost) daily - I ask myself - is this really what I should be doing with my time on this earth? In some cases, I think I’m on the right track. In other cases, some course corrections are in order.

I think it’s an important thing to ask oneself. As a final note, I decided that I decide when I have the right answer.

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Image #001. Reflections at Bus Stop


reflections
reflections at a bus stop

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The Main Thing


The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.
Steven Covey

So simple… yet so hard to actually do.

I kept repeating this to myself while at work today. I was doing some critical experiments for a new production process that I’m trying to get to work. I had to say ‘NO’ to so many things that are very important and urgent. But they will be waiting for me in the morning, as usual. If you’re job is like mine, you have sustaining work and you have process improvement. ‘Sustaining’ could easily consume 40hours/week (especially for a 24h operation like where I work). Moreover - it’s a thankless job. ‘Process improvement’ is not urgent but ultimately is the legacy for any engineer. Sometimes you have to choose one or the other (or give up your sanity). Today - I chose ‘Process improvement’.

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End the Starbucks Habit: How to Make the Best Cup of Coffee


Though I’m a coffee nut, I really don’t like Starbucks coffee. I never really got into the habit of going to Starbucks (other than for Experiment #1), but I know a lot of people that do.

To make my coffee, I ususally just use a Melita cone filter. I’ve turned a few people on to this thing, and they’ve all thanked me many, many times over.

melita

What’s really great about the Melita cone filter is that there is essentially no cleanup. The quality of the coffee is actually superb, which is remarkable considering that this device can be purchased for ~$4. If you like coffee, I strongly reccommend getting one (or two or three) of these things.

The technique in using the cone filter is critical to getting the best results. Put simply, the water must be poured somewhat slowly or in stages. I know it sounds like a hassle, but life is too short for bad coffee :)

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The Un-Natural


In case you don’t have time to view the vid below (which I recommend), This American Life host, Ira Glass, keenly observes that many people engage in a creative outlet and they genuinely have very good taste in that genre. At the outset, it’s very frustrating because he wasn’t producing good content, but since he had pretty good taste, he was acutely aware of how bad it was. This is definitely something I can relate to. It’s just comforting to know that Ira, whom I admire, went through the same thing.

I remember as a freshman in college, I was terrible in chemistry lab. I was always the one that ended up with a really low yield because I mixed up the chemicals wrong or I was one of the last ones to leave. Another thing was that I was really clumsy and slow.

Today, I throw chemicals around now like it’s nothing. I manually handle extremely delicate, expensive semiconductor crystals without even thinking about it. Like Ira prescribes, the key is practice.

The only thing I would add to Ira’s advice is: Lose yourself. Don’t worry about failing and concentrate more on getting the job done.

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Help! I’m the outsource-ee


I’ve been silent lately for two big reasons: I’ve been devoting time to my other experiments, but more importantly - work has been insane!

I’m enamored with the idea of ‘The Four Hour Work Week’ and I’ve come to realize that all this talk about ‘outsourcing’ is beyond my reach right now. As a manufacturing engineer, I’m the outsource-ee. One up-side to this, however, is that the company I work for is doing quite well in this ‘down economy’.

I met with a friend of mine last weekend to brainstorm business ideas who is a true “four hour workweek”-er. He owns a couple restaurants. The way his mind works is totally and completely different from the way mine works. I’m a bit too busy to elaborate on that, and I’m not sure I even can. I just know that I’m starting from ground zero (or even lower) on the journey to entrepreneurship.

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I’d Rather Be Lucky than Good



a random picture i took

I’d Rather Be Lucky than Good – Lefty Gomez

This quote came to mind as I was reading through John P Schaefer’s ‘Basic Techniques of Photography’. He writes:

It is easy to slip into the habit of taking a picture of anything that catches your eye for a moment and hoping that a few negatives may be interesting enough to print. A state of mind can develop in which chance displaces creativity. At that point the camera controls the creativity of the photographer, rather than the other way around.

The premise of blogrlab.com is that I’m just going to try a bunch of different things and see ‘what works’. I’m definitely coming to find that there are drawbacks with this approach, the ability to intelligently and thoroughly follow through on anything being the main one.

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More Comments about Comments


I’ve recieved some feedback that has convinced me that turning off comments right now for my blog doesn’t make sense. Here’s a refresher collage image of my last posts in case anyone had a comment about them:

collage.jpg

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Paradox: Good decisions comes from making Bad Decisions.


Good decisions comes from having experience. Getting experience comes from making bad decisions.

I don’t know who originally said this, but I love this quote and I find it to be very true. When I started my career as an engineer, I really floundered for a while. I still flounder all the time because I’m always taking on new problems.

I remember one of the first things I did when I started working in a factory setting was take down a very expensive piece of equipment by putting something very dirty in it. (”take down” means basically to break it) At my new job, I nearly evacuated the factory floor by spilling some nasty chemicals onto something hot. It evaporated and became very very smelly. I took an immense amount of crap for those incidents. Oh well… such is life.

aligner
me pretending to do some work

Some Comments about Comments

You’ll notice that I’ve started turning off comments on posts. It’s just an experiment. If you’d like to send me some correspondence, just send me an e-mail @ blogrdoc AT gmail dot com. Pings are allowed. This is the way Steve Pavlina runs his site and I think it makes a lot of sense.

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Wisdom from a Bodhisattva*: The Difference Between Happiness and Pleasure


dylan

This past weekend, I attended a talk by a guy named Dylan Wilk (that’s a picture of him). He had everything the world could offer. Forget luxury cars, he went to work in a helicopter. We wasn’t even 30 years old. As he was relating his life journey, he said something that really struck me:

He said, “I came to understand the difference between happiness and pleasure. Pleasure always comes with a price tag.”

I just thought this was too good to not pass along.

*Bodhisattva: Enlightened Being

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