Skip to main content

The Whiteboard

Starting a couple of years ago, I resolved to write a blog post at least once a week (also, holy crap, I can't believe I've been on this schedule for two years now. It really doesn't feel like it's been that long). I remember being slightly concerned that I wouldn't have something to write about every week, so I would have to figure out how to pace my posts. After all, just how amusing could my life be?

As it turns out, I've either got more amusing things going on around me or I'm really good at embellishing the mundane things that happen around me. However, I don't always write about these things in the moment. That means that if I don't write them down somehow, I'm liable to forget about them. This is particularly true if I hold off on writing about the amusing anecdote until the following week to make sure I don't fall behind on my schedule. So, I keep a whiteboard and write down things I can write about on it. When it comes time to write the weekly blog post, I always look at the whiteboard for any pending ideas that I can write about.

It's a pretty simple system, and it works for me. In fact, it's so simple that my brother and sister-in-law have figured it out. They have both peeked at the whiteboard and commented that they were getting a sneak peek about future blog posts at one point or another. It amuses them to see what I'm going to write about, in particular if any of the items involve them for any reason. It's a little bit like Googling yourself, I imagine: it's fun to see your name show up.

Anyhow, it was a humdrum week, same as any other, when my brother and sister-in-law stopped by to visit. They stopped in to say hello, and we were just chatting for a few minutes. Suddenly, my sister-in-law stopped, squealed in amusement, and pointed to the whiteboard. I take the whiteboard for granted at this point, so I don't usually remember what's on it. As it turns out, though, I'd put down something about Wife Watch and a suggestion that my sister-in-law had made (she had wanted to set me up with someone). This was all sorts of amusing to her, and there was quite a bit of laughter/squealing at this turn of events.

In fact, this was so amusing, that she insisted on taking a picture of the whiteboard. I think there was talk of sending the picture to others, too, but I was too busy laughing about the whole thing. It turns out that even planning for blog posts can be funny. I like this whiteboard plan just a little bit more now.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Backlog

I am an information junkie. Always have been. I'm one of those people that cares far more about the storyline in a video game than the actual game play. At work, I will spend time researching things related to solved problems, because I want to know exactly why it failed in the first place. And if someone learns something new, I want to go see what it's about, because I want to know what they know. I know it's not exactly the average outlook on life, but it is what it is. Anyhow, this mentality leads to my habit of tracking various websites, blogs, and other internet web sources to keep my information flow constant. Doing all of this manually is tedious at best, though, so I use Google Reader  to organize all of these feeds. It just makes things simpler to have a single source of RSS feeds, so that I can quickly browse through items related to my interests. Given all of that, it should come as no surprise that I also try to keep up with my feeds on a regular basis. I ...

Moment of Truth

I forget where I first heard it (I think it might have been Descartes), but I have long been a fan of the notion that certain things just have a " ring of truth " to them. If you've never heard the idiom before, the basic idea is that some things are super-true. They are not just true, but they are so obviously true, that as soon as you hear them, you recognize the truthiness inherent in them. I usually get excited when I hear one of these, since it means that I am a tiny bit less ignorant from that moment forward. For the first time in memory, though, I experienced the ring of truth. First, let me paint the scene with a little bit of background. I'd made plans to have dinner with my friend, but we'd agreed to play it by ear. The end result was that we ended up settling on a pretty late dinner in a local spot. That worked out just fine, since we weren't shooting for gourmet, we just wanted to grab some food and catch up in the process. So, we headed out to ...

Units of Measure

I mentioned it recently, but I have a bit of an opinion about valid units of measure. Specifically, I am a fan of the metric system when it comes to temperature . As I mentioned in that post, a system that tells me that the temperature is "negative four degrees" is much better at explaining that it is flippin' cold than one that tells me the temperature is "twenty four degrees." The negative sign matters. Now, as soon as I mentally conceded that the metric system made a ton of sense for temperature, I immediately started thinking that it probably makes sense for other units, as well. I mean, if I'm going to apply the whole "this just makes sense" standard to the ambient temperature, it makes sense to think about mass, volume, and length in the same general way. Why force people to remember that there are sixteen ounces in a pound? Or that, more confusingly, there are eight  fluid  ounces in a cup? The conversion rates just seem arbitrary at that ...