Archive for October 2011

Good Advice: The Seven Habits of Highly Happy People

10/11/2011, 7:17 pm, General

Charlotte tells me

1. Avoid ruminating/stop dwelling on a topic
2. Do good
3. Don’t sweat decisions (no looking back sorta things)
4. Spend well (people tend to be happier spending money on experiences//things no so very much)
5. Aim high
6. Be a joiner (being around people makes us happier)
7. Be grateful

.

And she relays (via):

The Seven Habits of Highly Happy People
By: Marc and Angel Hack Life
Highly happy people all share happy habits. It’s as simple as that. The happiest people I know share seven very obvious habits. If you’re looking to expand your general happiness, you may consider adopting these in your own life.
1. Be a part of something you believe in.
This could be anything. People may take an active role in their local city council, find refuge in religious faith, join a social club supporting causes they believe in, or find passion in their careers. In each case, the physiological outcome is the same. They engage themselves in something they strongly believe in. This engagement brings happiness and meaning into their lives.
2. Share time with friends and family.
A happy life is a life shared with friends and family. The stronger the personal relationships are and the higher the frequency of interaction, the happier a person will be.
3. Reflect on the good.
Quite often people concentrate too much of their attention on negative outcomes and leave no time to positively reflect on their successes. It’s natural for a person to want to correct undesirable circumstances and focus closely on doing so, but there must be a healthy balance in the allocation of personal awareness. It is important to mindfully reflect on the good while striving diligently to correct the bad. A continuous general awareness of your daily successes can have a noticeably positive affect on your overall emotional happiness.
4. Exploit the resources you DO have access to.
The average person is usually astonished when they see a physically handicapped person show intense signs of emotional happiness. How could someone in such a restricted physical state be so happy? The answer rests in how they use the resources they do have. Stevie Wonder couldn’t see, so he exploited his sense of hearing into a passion for music, and he now has twenty-five Grammy Awards to show for it.
5. Create happy endings whenever possible.
The power of endings is quite remarkable. The end of any experience has a profound impact on a person’s overall perception of the experience as a whole. Think about reading a well written, thought-provoking novel. Now imagine the ending totally sucks. Even if the story was captivating up until the ending, would you still be happy recommending the novel to a friend? People always remember the ending. If the ending is happy, the experience creates happiness. Always tie loose ends, leave things on a good note, and create happy endings in your life whenever possible.

6. Use personal strengths to get things done.
Everyone possesses unique personal strengths. We all have different talents and skill sets. Emotional happiness comes naturally to those who use their strengths to get things done. The state of completion always creates a sense of achievement. If this achievement is based exclusively on your own personal ability to get the job done, the physiological rewards are priceless.
7. Savor the natural joy of simple pleasures.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the best things in life are free. They come in the form of simple pleasures and they appear right in front of you at various locations and arbitrary times. They are governed by Mother Nature and situational circumstance and captured by mindful awareness. It’s all about taking a moment to notice the orange and pink sunset reflecting off the pond water as you hold hands with someone you love. Noticing these moments and taking part in them regularly will bring unpredictable bursts of happiness into your life.

Category: General  |  3 Comments

Fungavir

10/9/2011, 1:54 pm, General, Nail Fungus, Product Reviews

Update 2-15-12: Read my full review of Fungavir.

Text in bold italics below are updates.

I had written a scathing post about Fungavir, calling it a scam. I’ve removed this post. I now think I was a little too aggressive in my wording. I spoke with one of the owners of Fungavir a couple days ago and they  have begun rewording their web site and changing some of their practices to be more realistic. made a couple tiny changes to their site but the vast majority of the weasel words and scammer language remain. The ingredients in Fungavir are somewhat effective at fighting toenail and fingernail fungus, but there is absolutely nothing special about it. They charge 10 times the price for ingredients you can already find at your local pharmacy.

I was introduced to Fungavir by a comment spam that appeared on my site, which is not an auspicious start.

The wording on their site had some is full of scammer language:
* testimonials that seem too good to be true
* lies. For example, “Fungavir has double the amount of Undecylenic Acid than any other nail fungus treatment”. It does not. 25% is the legal limit for non-prescription strength and they have 10%.
* vague promises with meaningless copy like “double action” and “killing the fungus while working to heal the affected area” and… well, most of the words on the site.
* product images such that look like product only exists in Photoshop
* Site icons with no substantiation like “Green Certified Site”, “GMP”, “Made in an FDA Registered Facility”, and “Google Checkout” (they don’t use Google Checkout)

The ingredients appear to be just a collection of all the topical anti-fungals mixed into one bottle. Yeah, that might work, but I’m guessing it’ll work as well as well as any other topical, which is to say, “It might work but don’t hold your breath.”

The guy at Fungavir has said he is going to change their website. I’m going to give him the chance. But if he doesn’t since he didn’t come up with more realistic language on his site in a month or so, I’ll be reposting my original article and then some.

For more info on nail fungus, read the several posts and followup comments on my blog about nail fungus.

Here is the Fungavir homepage on 10-9-11:

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There are many discussions about nail fungus going on on my blog. Search my blog for the word “fungus” for more.

Category: General, Nail Fungus, Product Reviews  |  20 Comments

Recent Good Things

10/9/2011, 11:33 am, General

I got a nice note from Ali Davis, author of True Porn Clerk Stories. Ali wanted me to remove my archive because it’s now a book. Like I wrote to Ali:

all too often, good material like what you’ve written just fades away to nothing. I archived it so it wouldn’t die. I’m glad you put it in a book. I removed the archive from my site and put a little note up saying, “hey, buy Ali’s book”

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Sometimes the Kinetics department gets donations that we can’t use. We’ve had this box of powertools in a corner of the room for a while. Ben Carpenter picked up a nice old Craftsman circular saw. Man, they don’t make em like they used to, this thing is a beautiful beast! He plugged it in and it works! Trouble is, we just don’t need one in the department. So I walked downstairs with it and saw someone sorting scrap metal outside. I said, “Hey, you look like the kind of guy that needs a circular saw.” He looked quizzically at me for a moment and said, “No way, really? I mean, I was going to go shopping for one, like, today.” We spoke for a few minutes. He’s an intern at the Crucible… he might do part of his internship with Kinetics now. But even if he doesn’t, karma is served.

Category: General  |  Comment

Road to Radiation Therapy Technology

10/8/2011, 5:44 pm, Becoming an Occupational Therapist

Someone asked me recently “How’d you come to decide that radiation therapy technology is for you?”. Here’s a brief answer.

For the last couple years I’ve been having a harder and harder time finding good work. I started out of college way back doing software QA (Quality Assurance) work. As proofreaders are for books, QA is for computer software. It went well enough but after many years I got tired of always being a critic and never actually MAKING anything. When I moved to San Francisco about 6 years ago, I saw a couple things happening. For one, my tech skills were not staying current and I didn’t feel the passion I once had to keep them updated. I found that I really loved working on some large art projects in the Bay Area. I realized that, yeah, building stuff is cathartic. I’ve found a few jobs building things, I’m a Department Head at the Crucible, I helped and install some fancy cameras last year. But one thing I realized was that I needed to do something quite active in order to keep this up. I considered becoming a full time mechanical artist, or getting a mechanical engineering degree, or just finding a career that would be good and afford me the time and money to pursue my desires.

So this past June my dad called me up and told me about a newspaper article he read about Radiation Therapy. He relayed from the article that the career required someone that is very good with people and comfortable with technology, had limited hours (9-5-ish), paid well, the field had excellent growth and low unemployment projections for the next 20 years, a reasonable path into the career (a 2 year degree) and… well, he thought I should look into it. So I did! I’m a bit concerned how I’ll handle the patients of mine that don’t survive treatment (if you pick that up, this is radiation treatments mostly for people with cancer) but I’ve been speaking with people and I’m getting ready to volunteer in a hospital to get more of a feel for it so… it’ll all work out.

Category: Becoming an Occupational Therapist  |  Comment

East Bay Mini Maker Faire

10/5/2011, 3:09 pm, Bread

I’ll be presenting bread at East Bay Mini Maker Faire  Oct 16th 10a-5p.  As a presenter, I’ve got a 15% discount on tickets for friends. Register online and use the discount code 10MINBREAD :-)

Wanna travel over there together? Buzz me.

Here’s the full blurb about EBMMF:

Independently-organized but inspired by  Maker  Faire  (and MAKE magazine,  makezine.com  and  craftzine.com),  East Bay Mini  Maker  Faire  is a full-blown community fair that brings together science, art, craft, homesteading and engineering plus music, food, workshops, and performance.   This family-friendly event showcases the amazing work of all kinds of makers across the East Bay and beyond–anyone who is embracing the DIY or DIT (do-it-together!) spirit.

This year, East Bay Mini  Maker  Faire is featuring the work of over 120 local makers; for the complete list check ourMakers  page. For more information, news, and updates, check  ebmakerfaire.com.

 

Wow, here’s the giant Roster of Makers, Performers, Presenters, Crafters and Vendors

Category: Bread  |  Comment

Pizza Sign

10/3/2011, 6:01 pm, General

Nearly there!

Thanks to Michael Kearney who has helped tremendously with technical and inspirational matters. And Lou and Heather who have helped out earlier in the summer!

Category: General  |  1 Comment

Happy Birthday Noni!

10/2/2011, 10:42 pm, General

Through the magic of the internets, I was able to hire a veritable Squeezebox Hero to perform a happy birthday greeting for my mom!

Check it out!

local version:

Have him perform for you!
And than you Jen for pointing out Fiverr.com to me!

Category: General  |  1 Comment

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-10-02

10/2/2011, 6:00 am, Twitter
  • Chicken John wrote a book. The Book of the Is — http://t.co/S9xeAdbW
Category: Twitter  |  Comment
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