I share one of my favorites by Robert Frost.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

rain through my window

crystal drops pitter-patter

on the windowsill

So here I sit on a cold and rainy October evening (the first October evening of the year, in fact) pondering the future of this little personal blog I began, oh so long ago. I’ve been noticeably silent on these pages, with the exception of the automated Twitter Digests that are generated once a week. I had so many plans for this blog, yet many of the ideas I had never came to fruition. Be it laziness, be it struggling with how to continue, I don’t know. Possibly a combination of both, with a dash of a hundred other things tossed in for flavor. Any way you look at it, they would all be excuses for my being inattentive, because I certainly haven’t been incapable.

This blog was meant to be an expression of my life: the journey, and what I’m learning along the way, as well as a record of where I’ve been and knowledge I’ve gained. I’ve struggled with the second part of that statement, as the novel I’m writing tends to focus heavily on that aspect of my life and I didn’t want to duplicate my work there, or toss everything out into blog posts instead of sharing it via the novel, which I feel is a better vehicle for discussing those aspects of my life. As for what I’m currently learning, many of those things don’t become clear immediately. It takes time for our experiences to teach us the lessons we’ll gain from them, so it grew difficult to write about ‘the now’ in the way I initially intended.

So here I sit, on that cold, rainy October evening, debating how to continue. But while debating may seem like progress, it is not. It is stalling. I must simply forge forward and let it become what it becomes on its own.

Much like Life.

So as this new month begins, so does my renewed dedication to this blog. And to my life. I can’t try to plan out where it will go, exactly, and I certainly can’t guess where it will go, but you, dear reader, will be along with me, again, in the passenger seat.

“Nothing like a chair shortage to spark a nationwide squatting trend. That is exactly what happened in 1959 when a bunch of University of Arkansas fraternity brothers decided to make their chair-lacking displeasure known by “hunkerin‘” all over campus. The funny looking practice spread throughout Southern colleges and then eventually throughout the entire country.”

Source: A Continuous Lean

]]> http://www.10klakes.com/?feed=rss2&p=611 0 http://www.10klakes.com/?p=606 http://www.10klakes.com/?p=606#comments Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:23:53 +0000 John http://www.10klakes.com/?p=606

My friend Gina and I were finally able to get our new podcast, “Life, with a side of Zen“, up and running.  We had a lot of fun coming up with the concept and preparing everything from the smallest details on the website and coming up with the name (it took forever to find one that felt right), to recording the actual show on Monday evening.

Well, we released our first show last evening.

The podcast is, “John & Gina musing about life as they try to incorporate a Zen way of thinking in their lives.  Sometimes funny, sometimes deep and meaningful; always real.  With a side of Zen.”

If you’re interested in taking a look, you can visit the new site at SideofZen.com.  Information on subscribing through iTunes (or other podcatchers) is available on the site.  You can also just listen by directly downloading, or through the Flash player within each post.

We’re really looking forward to getting together and doing this on a weekly basis.  Hopefully some of you will come along for the ride.

Susan Boyle, auditioning for Britain’s Got Talent, proves why we shouldn’t jump to judge people so quickly.  What an absolute inspiration, she is.

Embedding the video has been disabled by the user who uploaded it, so to watch the seven minute video, click here.  You won’t regret it.

Happy Easter!

May all your baskets be full, and your Peeps fully clothed.

*Ever wonder how Peeps are made?

I started looking around for ways to backup my Twitter account.  I found services like Twistory, which exports your tweets to your iCal (for Mac users) or Google calendars, but that didn’t really appeal to me.  If I’m going to backup my tweets, I want to keep them in diary form, and not have to click through a calendar, day by day, to see what I had tweeted on any particular day.  I want everything right in front of me, in a nice clean, organized fashion.  Something I can browse easily.

Then, in bed one night, it occurred to me that I had installed WordPress plugin for my blog called TwitterTools, but never really cared for the way it integrated Twitter into my blog, so I ended up not using it.  I just forgot to deactivate it.  TwitterTools is a plugin that will create a daily or weekly digest of your tweets, as well as show a sidebar on your blog with your most recent posts.  I began to wonder how it pulled that information, so I dug into how it operated. And that is where I found this incredible database back up of all of my tweets, going all the way back to my first post.

TwitterTools wasn’t being used on my blog in any visible sense, but it was creating this wonderful backup of my Twitter account behind the scenes.  It stored dates, times, who I was replying to, if my tweet was in response to someone, the tweet ID’s, and the actual tweet text.  With everything stored in a database, it is simple enough to export the information any way I see fit.

I was thrilled.  Especially when, just yesterday, my entire Twitter history disappeared from Twitter without warning.  Twitter Support is not being especially helpful in resolving the situation for me, or any of the hundreds of other people having the same problem.  It is apparently a problem that is sporadic and has been ongoing since early March, but there have been no warnings sent out to the Twitter community that their tweets could just disappear.

Between installing TwitterTools on my blog, and having an automatic database backup e-mailed to me every day, using the WP-DB-Backup plugin, I’m happy knowing that my tweets (and blog posts) will never truly be lost.  I’m not sure if they’ll ever appear on the Twitter site again, but at least I have a personal backup of “this small record of my life I would like to keep”.

If you have a WordPress blog and use Twitter, I definitely recommend using TwitterTools to keep your tweets safe.

*I’ve also recently started using TwitterTools to create a weekly digest of my tweets every Sunday evening.

Six more images after the Jump.

Those not familiar with it, haiku is a form of poetry that consists of three lines, or metrical phrases, with 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively.  Every morning, or throughout the day, I write them just to invigorate my mind when it starts getting groggy, or to spark some creativity.  Forcing you to stay within the 5-7-5 metrical phrases forces you to creatively communicate and gets you using areas of your mind that may normally sit dormant.

These are some of the favorite’s I’ve shared recently.

Winter’s snow shoveled

makes sidewalks look like mazes

trenches to walk in

Supermarkets late

people walk like living dead

shopping cart wheels squeak

Used to hate mornings

blankets pulled over my head

now I greet the sun

Time to start the week

coffee and Sunday sunshine

favorite morning

Breezy treetops sway

gentle rain on window sills

sun has yet to wake

If you’re interested in following me on Twitter, you can find me by clicking here, or you can follow my Tweets in sidebar (to the right) here on the blog.

cool spring rain
……….nourishing sleeping buds

cleaning winter’s party
from the sidewalks
……….and streets

preparing for the green

……….Life

]]> http://www.10klakes.com/?feed=rss2&p=492 0 http://www.10klakes.com/?p=488 http://www.10klakes.com/?p=488#comments Mon, 16 Mar 2009 07:37:08 +0000 John http://www.10klakes.com/?p=488 After a weekend of beautiful 40+ degree weather here in Saint Paul, we’re finally getting rid of the snow in the yards and the ice on the streets.  Spring is coming.

The downside is that it reveals the crap that has been hidden under it all Winter.  Thankfully it won’t be long before those street cleaners come through and get the city spiffed up again.

Here’s hoping that Ice Butt Street will be 4th Street again in the near future.

I’m sure this wasn’t done by Bill Watterson, but I’d love to know who did it.  If anyone knows who to give proper credit for this, please let me know.  I wish I could get this as a poster.

As a big fan of Calvin and Hobbes, it really touched me.

Sources: (image, Digg)

Quickly snapped this as I was walking to my car downtown.  It’s lightly snowing, but the iPhone camera didn’t pick that up.  I liked the blue hue outside.

A couple weeks back he mentioned a little New Zealand horror/comedy flick he thought I’d enjoy.  We had talked about the Evil Dead movies before, so he knew it was something that would be right up my alley.  Its title?  Black Sheep (2007).

The premise is simple enough:  Genetically mutated sheep suddenly have a taste for human blood.  Lots of it.  And it isn’t pretty.

If you have reservations about seeing loads (and loads) of blood and gore, I would pass on this one, but if you can sit back and laugh at how absurd it is, you’re gonna have a great time. It is unbelievably wonderful, and a really, really funny movie.

Six years ago (February 27, 2003), the World lost Mister Rogers.  A man who had, and continues to have, a profound positive influence on generations of children.  Myself included.

I remember watching his show as a child in the early 70′s.  I remember how good he made me feel about myself.  And how special.  He told me.  He told all of us we were, “just your being you”.

If you look up any information about Mr. Rogers online, you’ll find that it was not a persona he presented on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.  He really was as kind, gentle, and genuinely interested in the people that he met everyday, as he portrayed on his show.

CNN published an article on their website last July: “15 Reasons Why Mister Rogers is the Best Neighbor Ever“.  I urge you to take a peek at all of them, but I am reprinting #16 here.

Mister Rogers was known as one of the toughest interviews because he’d often befriend reporters, asking them tons of questions, taking pictures of them, compiling an album for them at the end of their time together, and calling them after to check in on them and hear about their families. He wasn’t concerned with himself, and genuinely loved hearing the life stories of others.

And it wasn’t just with reporters. Once, on a fancy trip up to a PBS exec’s house, he heard the limo driver was going to wait outside for 2 hours, so he insisted the driver come in and join them (which flustered the host).

On the way back, Rogers sat up front, and when he learned that they were passing the driver’s home on the way, he asked if they could stop in to meet his family. According to the driver, it was one of the best nights of his life the house supposedly lit up when Rogers arrived, and he played jazz piano and bantered with them late into the night. Further, like with the reporters, Rogers sent him notes and kept in touch with the driver for the rest of his life.

Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood originally aired for 33 years, and now continues to air in syndication.  It’s good to know that today’s children, and the children yet to come, will benefit from his kindness and acceptance of all people.

Mr. Rogers would have been 81 years old this coming March 20th.

The following is a video of his acceptance speech from the Daytime Emmy Awards in 1997.  He was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award.  He gave a speech only Mister Rogers could give.

Edit: I’m also adding this video. Someone e-mailed it to me and suggested I include it. Thank you for sending it. It’s a really great message.

Paul: Neither of us is tryping well today
Paul: oops, I mean 'typing'

John: Tryping -  Trying to type.

Paul: LOL