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Ursula is quite happy about the fact that she has depression. We’ll discuss why that is, as well as our general productivity over the past week. After that, we sit down and talk to the amazing and brilliant Marguerite Kenner and Alasdair Stuart about how they stay productive!
Links for this Episode:
- Charity of the Week : RIP Medical Debt
- Alasdair Stuart’s website
- Alasdair Stuart on Twitter
- Marguerite Kenner on Twitter
- Alasdair and Marguerite on Instagram
- Escape Artists on Twitch
- Trello
- Toodledo
- Traveller’s Notebook
- Kinesthetic Learning
- Blue Yeti Microphone
- Blue Blackout Spark SL
- Blue Compass Microphone Arm
- Blue Raspberry Microphone (discontinued)
- Zoom H4N
- Mur Lafferty
- Dry Erase Sticky Paper
- Monty’s Deli in London
I’ve used a light for seasonal depression for years now. I should start for a few minutes every day in August (I’m in Chicago), but usually I end up waiting until I’m crying on the drive home from work because I ‘hate my job and how did I get here, how do I get free’. My job/life is not ideal, but it doesn’t usually end in crying each day. Usually this is by the middle of September.
I use it all the way through the start of April here. Usually just putting it on my night stand in the morning so I don’t have to leave my bed even. It’s much easier to get up when you’ve been in the “sun” for 15-20min.
Whiteboards in the house: Wow. I haven’t thought of this in years: We had a bignormous chalk board in the hallway when I was a kid. Long tray full of of colored chalk. The board generally contained the usual: to-do lists, grocery lists, reminders, “inc tax” (that sat there for what seemed like six months out of the year), and so on. (One year they were surprised to learn that I actualy knew that meant “income tax”, and dude? Really? This is not a stretch considering how much psychic space the topic soaked up?) (I was always of the opinion that it should have been abbreviated “inkum tax,” but nobody ever listens to me. Aaaanyway.)
Once in a while, some boring thing somebody wrote would attract graffiti. And then commentary on the graffiti. And then snark, and commentary on the commentary. And cartoons, and then it would start to fill up, and you had to get increasingly creative about choosing colors and writing sideways to get it to fit in and still stand out for the next passerby to notice.
And when it took off, omg it was glorious. Weirdly, that was my biggest formative influence when I finally encountered the internet. USENET especially was a dynamic that felt very familiar to me, and so I dropped right in without a hitch. And well, the rest, as they say, is history.
So maybe that’s the way to sell the whiteboards to the housemates: household analog Twitter. With the added bonus that pics can be snapped to share the really good stuff with the world. (Lordy, I can only imagine what y’all will come up with!)
WRT the topic of “Perfection on release,” a friend tells the following story: Back in the late ’70s, he worked at the Hewlet Packard plant up in Loveland, Colorado, which I believe at the time was also their manufacturing plant. (I can never not think of that place as HP Loveland, and well.) Corporate culture had it that people would bring in prime clippings from the newspaper, over which silliness was perpetrated.
One time, someone brought in a page from a Sunday edition. Huge picture, half the page above the fold. Vast expanse of fuzzy little yellow chicks. Waaaaay off in the distance, you see one lonely little black one. They held a caption contest, and the caption that won was, “Paint it yellow and ship it.” A catch phrase I hold dear to this day.
WRT Kevin going out to respond to the dog alarm: I really love it when the guests are left unsupervised to play with the Internets. Sooo wonderful! I concur that guests should be encouraged in this, when opportunity and inclination present!
Wonderful podcast, as always. Keep up the good work!
The way I heard the story, was that the paint it yellow ans ship it caption was an anonymous office prank and it didn’t win a prize.
I just bought LIFX strip lights and they are really helping me because it mimics daylight. Alan got lumos from circadian optics. If you haven’t gotten anything yet I highly recommend these.
Kevin, small nitpick. Pastrami King was in Kew Garden Hills.