Starting a Gratitude Journal

With this post, I am blowing dust off of my personal blog. Perhaps this is getting a head start on New Year's resolutions? This post also heeds the advice of several of my favorite blogs. Penelope Trunk, Bryan Caplan, and Gretchen Rubin cite research that a gratitude journal can help you be happier. I can certainly use reminders of the blessings and good things in my life, so I'm going to give it a try.

Gratitude Journal - what I'm grateful for today:

• Getting out ahead of the storm.
• Snow.
• Staying in the same hotel as my conference. I can enjoy the power and beauty of a winter storm from the comfort of my hotel room.
• The generosity of colleagues. John and I have good company for a long drive.
• How easy it is to read good, interesting ideas. It's inspired me to write this post.

 I'll post my journal here when possible (and appropriate). I encourage you to do the same in the comments. You can also start one and share links in the comments. Let's do this together.

FAT WASH MANURING (Fun with Anagrams)

The excellent CBJ blog Dark Blue Jackets has posted anagrams of current Blue Jackets players. Using the anagram generator, Here's a few more:

The anagram for Columbus Blue Jackets? JUMBLE SUCKABLE SCOUT, which could be a metaphor for the first decade of the franchise. And the anagram for their mascot, Stinger? Resting.

I went ahead and did anagrams for some of the contributors to Puck Daddy, one of the great hockey blogs on the internets.

Puck Daddy: DUCK PADDY
Greg Wyshinski: SKY WHY SNIGGER
Dmitry Chesnokov: SHOCK DIRTY VENOM
Sean Leahy: ANALYSE HE
Ross McKeon: MOCKER SONS
Matt Romig: GOT TRIM AM
And the best one belongs to Ryan Lambert: BALMY RANTER (a much more appropriate nickname than “Two-Line Pass”)

RSS - what I'm reading...and what I have stopped reading.

I have not written a post here recently because I am blogging about parenthood, working on a website, sharing what I read, and Twittering. Over the next few months, I will use this blog to share details about what I am reading and not reading.

The excellent blog Signal vs. Noise inspired me to do this, and Jim Collins inspired them. The idea? A stop doing list. I have written thousands of to-do lists and most of them had things left undone. As SvN puts it, "You need the discipline to discard what does not fit."

These upcoming posts will be an exercise for you and me in discipline. I will begin with my Google Reader. It has replaced most of my newspaper reading and web browsing because I can direct RSS feeds directly into it. (One blog I read, Jewel of the Prairie, recently discovered RSS and gives a great explanation of how to use it. This blog also has a feed.) Recently, I have found that I have subscribed to more things than I have time or energy to read. My first exercise in "stop doing" is unsubscribing from RSS feeds of blogs that don't fit me.

Unsubscribe: Urlesque. This blog bills itself as "Exposing bits of the web." It finds great images and videos but feels like the blog equivalent of that person who forwards everything - scams, funny, pics, jokes, and the warning that Congress is going to take away Sesame Street. It has some great posts - Its collection of the 11 awesomest pictures on the internet was...awesome - but it's more meh than meme to me. I actually dropped this feed a few weeks ago.

Subscribe: My current go-to funny site is Autocomplete Me. Google's suggestions are sometime not what you would expect. Did you know this?

 

Exactly. Now go and see what Google will suggest for you.

How to sync Facebook with Twitter

It's amazing what a Facebook status update can do to stir conversation. I update that I have synced my Facebook to my Twitter (@danmcq13) and I get comments right away asking how. Gwen writes, "BTdoubleyou, how did you do that?" Maggie adds, "I guess that's why I never did all the twitter-speak stuff and I was never ambitious enough to figure it all out." Norm notes, "If you do a @ reply, it does not show up on your Facebook."

So, you can read either of these blogs (AJ or Ryan) but both are out of date because Facebook has simplified the process for adding applications. Here's the quick and dirty version

1. Type "Twitter" into the search field, found in the upper right corner of the Facebook page.
2. Choose the application "Twitter."
3. Click the blue button "Add to page" and follow the instructions.
4. Tweet away!

The Snugsey

The red-hot Blue Jackets aren't just scoring on ice. Yes, they're lighting the lamp when it comes to parodying the Snuggie. Dear readers, I present...the Snugsey:



You may know the Snugsey by its more familiar name...a hockey sweater.

Read your newspaper on the internet!

Big h/t to @agencyspy for finding this gem on the electronic newspaper, produced by KRON in 1981:



Key facts:

1. In 1981, 2,000-3,000 people in the bay area had home computers.
2. To subscribe to the electronic version of San Francisco Examiner, you had to send a coupon.
3. It took 2 hours to receive the entire newspaper over the phone.
4. This story did not mention Al Gore.

The Columbus Blue Jackets. They're in the NHL.

The excellent hockey blog Puck Daddy has a write-up about the Columbus Blue Jackets. Naturally, the team responded with a brain cramp, losing 7-3 to the Dallas Stars last night.

A Columbus native, I've followed the team and make it back for a game every year. I waited to get a CBJ sweater...until Rick Nash was drafted. To me, he was the first franchise player. (Bethany's Hockey Rants has a great post about this. Here's a sense of his talent.) Former general manager/dictator-for-life Doug McLean stayed too long, but now there's real leadership in the front office with the shrewd GM Scott Howson and on the bench with benevolent drill sergeant/coach Ken Hitchcock.

Some say this season is a retread of last year. I say the team needed time to gel. Now they're playing for each other. Last year, the team exceeded expectations and played over their heads. This year, they are playing for each other (and the fans), venturing into the unknown. It's a crowded, competitive west and the Blue Jackets may find themselves on the outside. I believe this team will summon the will to win and play for the Stanley Cup.

You can follow the Blue Jackets playoff chase here.

(Photo credits: Barry Melrose Rocks, via Lost Lion, top; Bluejacketsxtra, above.)