Buster's Live Journal entries

From http://www.livejournal.com/users/bustermcleod

What is a bad mood? And what kinds of things have you found to be useful in getting out of one?

Name something that is bigger and better than you but that could also benefit from your support.

Note: This post is broken, but I'm leaving it up so I can show it to someone who works at Vox... trying to get the cross-posting of embedded stuff like flash and videos working.

Originally posted on bustr.vox.com

I love this quote, which is a refreshing alternative to the more common (in both Eastern and Western thought) strategy of managing or even eliminating emotions.

“Our emotions must be in the right amount, proportional to the event that called them forth; they must be expressed at the right time, in a way that is appropriate to the emotional trigger and the circumstances in which it occurred; and they must be expressed in the right way, in a way that does no harm.”

- Aristotle

I like it because it is about expression rather than repression.  The more I learn about emotion, the more I think that it has been dealt with in the same way that we've dealt with other physical quirks... with a blunt hammer.  When expressing one of the "destructive emotions" as the Dalai Lama calls them, we are advised to chop it off at the stalk, never let it flower again.

I think this strategy is blunt-edged because it adds emotion on top of emotion.  It creates an emotion-manager in our selves, one that gets triggered immediately after an initial emotional trigger.  The first emotion might be fear, or vulnerability.  The emotional manager steps in, tells us to step back, and grafts in a secondary emotion: maybe calmness, or compassion.  I think the body then reacts to this mixed bag and creates a few seeds of stress, or nervousness, as it handles the mixed emotions and waits for one of them to overtake the other.

Slow weights, and a few other things in my life, have all been conspiring to unite ideas, especially the idea of going towards the first emotion, the natural one.  Go towards it, experience it fully, and express them in the amount that they deserve.  Don't magnify, don't reduce, don't mix with another synthetic or forced emotion.  And then, rather than coming out of the situation with a victor (because there had to be a battle) there's just a silent exhale of emotion without restraint.  Like the end of an argument when someone says "well why didn't you just say that in the beginning", this is how you just say it in the beginning.

We're not competing, but moonraye  is running a lot!  Today was a perfect day for a run, and I couldn't be bothered to go very fast.  But Lance Armstrong thanked me for going on my longest run yet at the end of it.  I love the Nike+.

Hmmm... it's not displaying properly. I'll leave it here for a while and see if the numbers show up. Otherwise, here's a link:

http://nikeplus.nike.com/nikeplus/?l=all_challenges,82817898

Is there a new breed of fantastic web hosts out there that use EC2, S3, Ruby on Rails, and reasonably cheap starter prices?  Scalable, flexible, packed with the latest versions of amazing free web development frameworks?  Please tell me there is.

I have a lot of small web site ideas that require programming, but I'm tired of adding new vhosts and updating old websites to be compatible with the latest RoR, etc.  I just want point and shoot awesome simple small websites.  And I'm willing to pay a bit of money for it.

Thank you to everyone who was able to make it!

Links to the full sets on Flickr:

• Asa
• Samantha
• Ed
• Rick
• Jana

The theme of my 30th birthday, and the following year, was "Higher highs and lower lows".

The theme of my 31st birthday, and the following year, was "Double down". Double down on love, on friends, and on my projects.

This year, I feel like I should shift the focus a bit. Not so much about building building building, and more about enjoying what has been built and what happens to exist. This is a big deal for me cause I almost always feel like I'm not doing enough. That I have to keep being more ambitious, thinking bigger, not getting too lax lest I fall into a rut, etc.

Just as a reminder to myself, I'm gonna re-post my "unified theory of enjoyable living" which I started putting together in January of 2007 and have been adding to and editing since then:

I. IN A NUTSHELL

1. It's not what you do, but how you do it

2. It's not what happens to you, but which qualities it brings out in you

3. Do unto yourself and others always with your best judgment

4. Pursue shared enjoyment

II. PREPARATION

5. Don't dilly dally

6. Don't feel sorry for yourself

7. Exercise, eat healthy, and manage stress

8. Dress and appear as your best self

9. Strive to know yourself

10. Tell people about yourself

11. Appreciate your different energy levels and moods

12. Notice body language

13. Keep your word

14. Be the change you want to see in the world

15. Harness the ability to focus your attention

16. Be a beacon of strength

III. EXECUTION

17. Try to have good intentions

18. Be the maker of your own meaning

19. Participate in extraordinary problems

20. Explore all options and hedge bets while exploring

21. Be confidently all-in once a decision has been made

22. Strive for a lifestyle vision

23. Stake your reputation on your vision

24. Invite others to help you

25. Take responsibility and credit for your own failure and success

26. Be comfortable with big failure and big success

IV. CALIBRATION

27. Retry things you don't like or agree with every once in a while

28. Consider criticism from people who know you

29. Listen closely for things you can't easily hear

30. Relax and always give yourself and others a break

I've started twittering what I'm doing at 8:36pm every day.  And I think it might be fun to post a picture to Flickr right then too.  I don't know how long it'll continue, but I do know that if more people join in and do it with me that I'll probably do it longer.  Wanna start up with me?

Got this list from silverfae9 :

http://www.esquire.com/features/essential-skills-0508

It's a mixed list of things from various gender stereotypes (not nearly as bad as it could have been), erring on the side of exhibiting a strong, confident, and stylish personality.  A quick skim and I think I can confidently claim about 50 of those things, give or take 5.  I can see his general direction, and how I could improve upon some of my indecision and wishy-washiness on a bad day.  I also feel like my personality is pulled in a slightly different direction, less about having the perfect social graces, and more about empathy, adaptability, and inclusiveness.

It's fun to think about gender every once in a while.

If I have any disagreements with this list, I should be able to offer amendments and corrections, right?  What would they be?

I'm gonna write somewhere else for a while and see if that changes anything.  If you use Tumblr, can you send me a link?

One interesting thing about Tumblr is that there are no comments.  That gets rid of both the reason the write (in order to start a conversation) and the reason not to write (because you don't want to have a conversation).  I've been writing with my eyes closed because I'm tired of experiencing everything I say twice.  Hence, the quality is debatable.  But so is it here.

I think I've lost my writing voice.  How do I get that back?

Nerd question: I installed a new Airport Extreme at McLeod and now the photobooth can't find the wireless network anymore. Does anyone know what might be wrong with it? Do I need a new wireless card for the PC? Shouldn't the Airport Extreme be backwards compatible? Is there a special setting I need to set?

If you could be rich in money, health, or emotions, which would you choose?

Our mini-roadtrip vacation last week was so fun. We had good family time, got some wedding planning done, saw Kellianne's old friends and their new baby (Pete, Molly, and Henry), met another good old friend (Tom), another good old friend (Katie), our mutual friend (Jess), another old friend (Kathy), got to see a bunch of the New York friends (Alice, Harry, dB, Misha, Camille, Chris), and we got to see The Verve. Some pictures here. 

I love "one night only" visits, especially 4 in a row in 4 different cities.

I'm leaving tonight to go to the east coast for 4 or 5 days. Wilmington, Baltimore, DC, and New York, then back, in roughly that order. Looking forward to seeing Rick and Jess and the future inlaws and anyone else I can run into in that short period of time!

Oops, I need to rent a car for. Wow, that's sorta expensive. At least I got a free flight from JetBlue.

This is the first airplane Kellianne and I will have gone on together. At least, the trip there. I come back earlier than she does. My bi-coastiality is a bit tamer than hers.

I want to give you all an update on love, life, and 1001 balls of stress, but I'm already halfway done with this bottle of wine and probably only have 10 minutes before I should start packing or something. Putting the sheets on the bed. Petting Sopor.

I just had a funny idea. Call everyone in your phone, in alphabetical order, and ask them a question. If I were to call, what would I ask? Can someone else do it and let me know how it goes? You could write a book about it perhaps. Or at least twitter it.

Who's gonna get famous for their facebook statuses first?