Charlotte and I were discussing this a little while back…
When you are telling a child that they are good at something, you shouldn’t generalize, you should be specific. You shouldn’t say, “Oh you are very good at math.” Instead, say, “You did very well on that test.” If you say that they are very good at math, the first thing they will think of is how terribly they did on their last test…. they got one or two wrong. Along those lines, when you are speaking to an adult it works much the same way. If you say, “Oh Lee, you are really good at writing.” The first thing I think about is how difficult it is to write well and how much effort it takes (regardless that my final product may come out well). Instead, you can stress things like interest level and specific tasks… how well someone performed on a specific task and how they might do something more interesting and more different the next time. Don’t suggest they do something “harder” next time. Though an adult frequently associates “harder” with getting a pay raise, which would be a good thing. But that’s entirely another subject.
The San Francisco Bike Coalition keeps talking about how great it would be if Market Street in San Francisco were car-free. In this post on the San Francisco Streetsblog, they made their standard jab in that direction. (see image).
I wrote this comment on the post:
>How great would a car-free Market Street be?
Not so great. Go ahead and click the link above
“New York City has embraced livable streets principles” and watch the video that points to New York City’s revitalization program. There is talk about temporarily making a car-free corridor for the but no talk at all about any permanent car-free spaces.
Maybe 1-4% of SF rides a bike on a daily basis. In the recent French bike experiments, bike ridership has roughly doubled. So that’s 2-8% biking in SF. What about the 92-98% that would not be helped by making a car-free Market Street?
The best way to kill the vitality of a street is to remove the traffic.
I ordered 2 Burning Man tickets. They recently arrived and it had an Atomic Fireball in the envelope. I love the sentiment, thank you!
It would be much appreciated if I had received one Fireball per ticket. That way, both my partner and I could have our Fireballs. Last year I ordered two tickets and received just one Fireball as well.. :-(
You spent the effort (and used that big envelope) to include a Fireball, having one per ticket is only right. :-)
Here was the response from Frog at Burning Man
Hi Lee. The secure mailing option as required by the post office says we need to have our envelopes 3/4 inch thick so your package can be signed for. We thought it would be fun to send something useful that keeps the envelope 3/4 inch thick for the post office requirements, but we found that if we sent more than one fireball the flap on the envelope has a tendency to come open and tickets have been stolen in the mail. So, as much as we want to make people happy by sending a piece of candy to each and every one of you, we would rather you have your tickets safe and sound.
I did a little digging and.. yup, the least expensive way to send a letter that requires signature confirmation at the receiving end is to make sure the letter is at least 3/4″ thick. That way you can call it “First Class Package” and get Signature Confirmation service for $2.20. Total price for a 3 oz letter is under $4. Otherwise, you’d have to use Priority Mail with Signature Confirmation for $7.15.
So it looks as though if you give USPS a letter that can’t be machine sorted, it’s less expensive than if it’s machine sortable. Hmm.
worked for Rich H all day. We figured out the majority of running an LDAP server for user authentication (it’s amazing how something so straightforward can be so convoluted!)
This evening
had a good conversation with Charlotte
and with SWARM..
picked up a shelving unit that Erik S donated to SWARM (and had an adventure “stealing” it back from its former basement home
chatted up about robots with my SWARMie friends
helped install lighting Michael donated to SWARM for the container. It looks great!
installed the shelf in the container. It’s amazing how much stuff fits on a shelf :-)))
made some hooks with Jon to hang stuff on the walls of the container.
Last night I picked up my phone and pushed the Menu button. The phone flickered on for a split second and then fell dead black. The phone was completely unresponsive. I googled a bit and found a reset command: Hold down the power button and Menu button for 6 full seconds.
The phone came back to life. But hmm… every phone call I made today had poor cell phone reception :-(((. I uninstalled all the apps I had installed over the last couple days just in case those contributed to the problem. Those programs include: Falling Balls, UStream Viewer, PAC-MAN Lite, and iEphemeris Lite.
I tried pushing that reset sequence again today and the iPhone crashed or something such that it said that it would only make emergency calls. I left the phone off for 1/2 an hour while I went shopping (rather miffed and paniced that my expensive toy might be broken), turned it on again and it gave me a message like “iPhone activated [Ok]”. And now it seems to work fine.
