A New Message In Self Help Books: WTFU!
Entertaining read.
New Popular Self-Help Books Share One Message: You’re an Idiot
I think the headline of this article is a bit cold and inappropriately titled, given the connotation of idiot. I’d probably retitle it to the title of this blog post, a subtle but appropriate difference while being no less intense.
The article reminded me of being single a few years ago, and before my wonderful wife came into my life. I got interested in anything that I thought would improve my conquistadorian dating arsenal. Besides doing things like watching Sex and the City, reading dating books, and watching how to pick up women in a way that they don’t think you just want to get in their pants DVDs, I saw a friend reading a copy of He’s Just Not That Into You. I thought I should definitely read this book. Like counter-intelligence, it was important to learn what the enemy was thinking (heh… no wonder it took so long to get married).
The book, written buy a guy (Greg Behrendt), turned out to be a very fascinating read. If you are woman, married or not, I highly recommend the taking of a day out of an upcoming weekend to read this book. Why? Because Greg tells it like it is. I think there were only a handful of assertions he made throughout the book that I disagreed with, but really, we’re talking like five out of loads. As a guy, I have to say that women are silly if they don’t listen to the message of his book, which equates to, “Stand up for yourself! Mr. Shining White Knight might be coming for you, but 99% probably not, so come up with a new game plan. If men are metaphorically walking all over you, kick them to the curb. Believe me, there will be more.”
It took the article above to remind me about this book, but my point: helping the self requires being responsible for the self, and being responsible requires telling the truth, not being coddled.
I hope self-help books all go the way of Greg’s.
Open Source Life: Subversion, a revision control system (part 1 of 3)
Free, Open-Source Revision Control System
Current Homepage: http://subversion.tigris.org/
Developed by: CollabNet
I’m presenting this article in a slightly different structure than my previous Open Source Life articles. This is part 1 of 3. Part 3 will be my opinion of Subversion. Part 2 will be a step by step walk through of using Subversion, with lots of pictures and probably a video. Part 1 should really carry the heading of:
A Regular Guy’s Introduction to Subversion
I’m a freak, like OCD, about keeping my computer in order. Clean of viruses and spyware, deleting of unnecessary files, absent of those stupid processes installed in the background by Apple, Microsoft, Adobe and others. I believe my desktop should be like a zen pool of calmness, lacking any icons.
But the stories I used to have sitting on my computer… ugh. Lots of zip files holding previous versions, documents I had saved only because I was taught never to delete things. Pictures and
sketches of characters, and my ideas and notes for video games I wish to make in the future all seemed to end up in the same folders for my stories. Some people would say it’s just fine, and think my desire to clean my computer is over the edge. They’re completely right, but those happy little tolerant thoughts won’t actually make my computer any cleaner.
Last December, I decided to solve my problem of “What can I do to consolidate the creative, not so creative, and the utterly stupid documents that are littering my computer that I refuse to delete?“
Without much experimenting, I decided to give a program called Subversion a try. Subversion is a class of software called a revision control system. Most people have used some form of revision control. If you want a long article about revision control systems, I’d suggest you read the Wikipedia article linked in this paragraph. But you don’t really need to. The concept is simple: good revision control systems allow you to centralize every version and draft of a document, record historical notes and reasons for the drafts and updates, and ease sharing and concurrent use of documents within a community.
Using Subversion is quite simple in concept. The first thing one must do is create a repository. The repository is the central location where the files, historical notes, and revision changes are stored. With Subversion, the repository is just a bunch of data located within a folder. Once the repository is created, for the most part it just sits there and acts as a holding tank.
Subversion repositories are accessed with some sort of client software. Since I use Windows, I use a program called TortoiseSVN to access the repository. Here’s a glimpse into the repository. You can see the different revision numbers, which act as unique IDs to each different version. Every time I check in new changes the revision number goes up.
Besides just the changes I have the option of attaching meta-information, called logs, with
each revision that I check in to the repository. Historical logs can be invaluable when trying to decipher, after a long time has passed, why a draft of a document exists.
As I write this, I realize I have more and more to say (this article has gone from one part, to two parts, up to the now planned for three parts). For now I’m going to stop here and follow up in the near future with A Regular Guy’s How To Use Subversion Tutorial.
Debt free!
I’m totally debt free for the first time in over 12 years!
The feeling is indescribable. It’s something that I never thought would ever happen, like bending over superman and turning him into the man-of-squeal (and getting it on camera).
6 Word Memoir
Got an email from my friend Alex through the writing club that I’m a member of, and thought the idea was a lot of fun.
The article that Alex found: If You Could Write a Memoir in Six Words, What Would It Say?
And the site it originated from: www.sixwordmemoir.com
Mine came to me in a moment:
Wish I told the truth sooner
Welcome 2008
It always takes me like a month and a bit to get used to a new year. Okay, I’m finally used to it. It’s 2008, I’ll be turning 32 this year and… damn, I feel like I’m behind on almost everything.
I was hoping to post for like a week and a half the announcement that my wife and I are out of debt, as in all of it, gone, kaput, no more. But the checks just keep floating around in limbo as they transfer from one place to another. So, I’ll do a more anti-climactic announcement when it’s truly official. Hopefully before 2009.
Hope all of you have been having a great 2008 so far. My bitching above aside, it’s been the start of the best year yet for me.