A story about showing off In the 80s we rode Jet Skis. That was before everyone got lazy and decided they’d rather ride sitting down and bought Wave Runners instead. But before then, we stood up. It took practice just to be able to ride without falling down. I actually got pretty good on the thing. I could ride it standing backwards, straddling the hood, and even standing on my head.

A story about memory A few years ago I was telling my mom about a vivid dream I had had some years before. The dream started with me lying on a hospital gurney. I was wheeled down a well-lit hallway and into a small room. Once in the room I was joined by several other people. These people proceeded to wrap me in a bed sheet. My arms were pinned tightly to my sides and I was completely unable to move.

A story about sex I met the most beautiful girl I had ever seen while on a date with her best friend. This was in 1985. My friend Wayne met a girl named Debbie at Magoo’s, a local bar. Debbie and Wayne invited me to join them, along with Debbie’s best friend, on a sort of double date. I’m embarrassed to admit that I don’t remember the friend’s name. It was a perfectly decent date, but it was Debbie that had captured my attention.

A story about imagination When I was 13 years old there was a wonderful snowstorm. (At 13, blizzards are still considered good things.) It was one of those storms that everyone refers to by the year. “Back during the blizzard of ‘78” is what they would say. School was canceled for days. That almost never happened in the Grandville district, so this was quite an event. On one particular day of the aftermath there was snow everywhere, but it had finally stopped falling.

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Tinderbox. I’m always finding some new trick or useful feature. Today, I discovered “$NameStrike.” Crossing out words on paper is not only satisfying, it serves a purpose. For me, it means “I’m done with this” or sometimes “This is no longer valid.” Not long ago, Eastgate added a Strikethrough format to note text. That may seem trivial, but I use it all the time.

Tractor. Kodachrome I just don’t get on well with color film photography. Getting color right is hard. There are so many pieces to getting a good color image that I’m considering giving up on it altogether. Availability The first and most enjoyable color film over the past 70 years has been Kodachrome. Transparency film in general is fun and vivid and interesting, but only Kodachrome looks like Kodachrome. And now it’s gone.

Speaking of This and That, I use both Atlassian’s JIRA and more recently Pivotal Tracker for issue/story management. Both are great, and I don’t want to give up either of them, but it’s always been sort of an either/or proposition. The good news is that this weekend Tracker released some new features, one of which is integration with JIRA. Issues created in JIRA can be viewed within Tracker and optionally added to an iteration or the “icebox.

It occurred to me today that when there are two choices in any particular product category, I have a hard time choosing just one. In fact, I seldom end up completely in one camp or the other. If the choice is this or that, I choose both! Here are a few examples… ## Scrivener and Ulysses ## I rarely write more than a few paragraphs at a time, so I don’t even *need* a significant writing tool.

Every 6 months or so I tend to throw out whatever “systems” I’m using and start fresh. It happened again this past weekend after I stood behind someone and watched him open up TextEdit and make a note in it. TextEdit! Can you believe it? What year is this? I kept watching and he just wrote what he needed to write and saved the file to a folder on his drive with an easy-to-remember name.

Here’s a quick list of my favorite movies from the past year. The Hangover Saw the poster for The Hangover while seeing another movie. Made a mental note to avoid it. I was wrong. Funny from start to finish. The Class Should have been cliché, but wasn’t. It was quiet, real and moving. The Hurt Locker Devastating, tense, thrilling. A character study rather than a “war movie.” Up! The first 15 minutes of Up!

Jessica came home excited to show me that one of her photos was published in a nearby local newspaper. She’d shown me the photo earlier and explained how she’d fought her way right up front near door of the Armory to make sure she had a good chance at capturing her boyfriend’s brother’s face when he walked in the room after returning from Afghanistan. Atta girl.

The above screen capture is what my Mail.app inbox looks like this morning. Letterbox is used for the wide view, 2-line subject/from combination, and hairline divider between panes. Mail Act-On lets me use keystrokes for everything message-related. I then hide the toolbar and mailboxes. Makes for a nice, pretty, and minimal email experience.