I've been using command lines and flat text files for years (and still do for some things), but using this method for a ToDo list would drive me nuts :-pI've been using command lines and flat text files for years (and still do for some things), but using this method for a ToDo list would drive me nuts :-p

The song starts with the line, "Businessmen drink my blood, like the kids in art school said they would." That doesn't really put me in the mood to work. If anything it makes me feel more bitter about it ;-)

I think it helps, but I lived in DC for 10 years and knew people who used the bus or subway and would still be confused about where things were in the city. Once the subway goes underground you can lose all sense of where you are. On the bus you can at least see where you are going, but you still have to pay…

I would also add: Walk or bike to get places as much as possible and you will learn your way around very quickly. I can remember the path I took to get somewhere much more easily and accurately when I walk or bike. Both modes of transportation are slow enough that you are much more aware of your surroundings, and you…

If you want to avoid holiday travel, may I suggest booking the worst possible flight itinerary you can think of and then sabotaging it by purposefully missing a connection. If you can boast an epic fail of a trip then your family will rarely dare to suggest you fly again ;-) I know this because my wife and I had a…

As a rule I just never buy more whole bean coffee than we can consume in about a week to ten days. That avoids the whole need to freeze question. The only time we freeze coffee is if we leave town and have some beans left that we want to preserve. Sometimes we freeze decaf as well (not something we drink very often...…

Leftover wine? I can barely stand to cook with wine that I would rather be drinking. I'm sure not going to wash the produce in it!

I like French Press every now and then, but agree that you don't want to let it sit for too long and it will usually have sediment. I am actually quite happy with our Cuisinart drip maker (and most other Cuisinart products we have are cra*p). Aside from water temp the other big problem with most drip makers is the…

Kalanchoe is another hardy indoor plant, and it comes in a variety of leaf shapes and flower colors. My apartment when I was in my 20s had kalanchoe, mother-in-law-tongue (snake plant), and jade. They all survived roughly ten years of neglect and were given to neighbors when I moved across the country.

Heh - I never thought of the photo requirement as a deterrent itself! Maybe I won't eat that granola bar if taking a photo of it adds too much effort ;-)

In recent decades the work day has actually increased by an hour. Remember the Dolly Parton song and movie "9 to 5"? It was called "9 to 5" because back then that was the standard office work day. You arrived for work at 9am and you left a 5pm. It was known as a 40 hour work week, because you went to work eight hours…

Doesn't it take much longer to snap a photo of everything you eat than it takes to simply select it from a list? Apps like Lose-It will keep things you regularly eat on a shortlist so selecting meals and snacks is very fast. And of course you can also enter exercise to keep track of calories you're burning as well.

I have long kept a journal, written essays, character sketches, short stories, poems, etc. All has been electronic since the early 90s, and these days my favorite writing tool is Penzu.com. It definitely helps me organize what I write a bit better. Some of the writing is therapeutic and not something I care to look at…

It has never made much sense to have healthcare provided by an employer. Maybe it made more sense back when it was more common to get hired by a large employer and then stay in that job for the rest of your life. But now we have a situation where most people will have many jobs throughout their lives. People always…

We bought Halloween candy last weekend. Hopefully we will have some left when the trick-or-treater's start knocking on our door. No fear of expiring chocolate or candy in our household. If anything is left it will be taken to the office. We normally don't keep sugary stuff in the house...for a good reason.

I have been chased by dogs on my bike before. I can usually out-sprint them, but I have used the water bottle spray to the face. What is scarier is when I'm walking my own dog and we get charged by an off-leash dog that is aggressive. My dog is fairly big (70 pounds), but not aggressive at all and I have had to step…

Thanks...I've read about Gary Taubes "Why we get Fat" book as I know a number of people who swear by it (including a doctor in our family) and I'm not denying that cutting carbs will help someone lose weight. I'm just saying it's not always necessary to cut carbs to lose weight. A lot of us lose weight and keep it off…

I've been a cyclist for more than 25 years and raced for several of those years. I learned how to pedal a high cadence in my racing days and never stopped. The conventional wisdom when I raced in the 1980s was that a low cadence could lead to knee problems (though not as much as a bad position on the bike), and that a…

My dad used to say, "There are no debts between friends." His philosophy was: If you can afford it then you should give a loan to a friend or buy them a meal as a friendly gesture every now and then, but once you expect something in return you are no longer making a friendly gesture... it's a power play. And if you…

I have experienced it a number of times and on a couple of occasions the feeling lasted for many seconds and I could swear I knew what was going to happen next before it happened... but that was probably due to some kind of delay between the input and the processing of my brain.