July 18, 2010 — 1:43 PM  I’m really proud of this post.  I put a lot of time and effort and troubleshooting into it.  But most of all it’s rewarding and a project that was (on the rare occasion) an actual great use of my time, and congruent with my career, interests, and passions, and definitely aligned with computer science.  Plus, it’s essential to my interest and studies in operating systems.  So, jolly good!

First off, acknowledgements…Invaluable or at least moderately helpful sites for accomplishing the triple boost:

• MacBook TripleBoot Instructions
• Triple Boot Mac OS, XP, and Linux on a Mac – Wired How-To Wiki
• Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx)
• How to install Ubuntu Linux on a Mac
• How to Triple-Boot Your Mac with Windows and Linux, No Boot Camp Required

I encourage you to check those out if you want.  There’s a few triple-boot guides on the net.  This one is more of a journal than a foolproof guide, but usually seeing (there’s lots of photos) and reading about someone’s experience is a better guide than a procedure, at times…

None of these I followed step-by-step.  It wouldn’t work.  There was no “triple boot Canon”.  The step-by-step instructions would lead to dead ends because each directions are for a slightly different bit of hardware or different operating system versions.  So like most programming/dev/coding projects I read most of those and figured out what I had to do for my system.

I probably read over a dozen triple boot tutorials/how-tos but the above popped up in bookmarks and are moderately recognizable.

An enormous crucial note is that Boot camp is NOT used.  Do not partition anything with boot camp.  Apple’s Boot Camp is rubbish.  Like most all apple products it advertises that “it’s turn-key, instantaneously flawless” when in reality it’s locked-down, rubbish, buggy, and a headache.  Anyone who triple boots by nature WANTS to tweak details. They want to learn about and know about file formats, setting mount points, and the differences between EFI and MBR — booting basics.  Not being interested in those, but wanting to triple-boot, is like wanting to make a garden but not wanting to interact with plants.  Or wanting to build a house, but having nothing to do with blueprints.  It’s ridiculous.  Boot camp tries to “build a house without blue prints” or “plant a garden without plants” to perpetuate this now exceedingly peculiar sequence of metaphors.  Don’t use Boot Camp.  It’s like booting into YOUR computer but having some traffic control person installed their shielding you from having total control and ownership of YOUR computer systems.  This is turning into a mini anti-Apple rant, but Boot Camp (Assistant) embodies everything I loathe about Apple.  They advertise “simplicity” (which is usually inaccurate, boot camp is speckled with problems) but said simplicity is riddled with lock-outs so that you don’t have control over your own system!  By triple-booting your inherently interested in a lot of control.  You’re turning one hard drive into at least three partitions so you can run the three major operating systems on One computer!  That’s a lot of control.  Boot camp steals and takes away and negates that control.  Don’t use boot camp.  Use rEFIt.  rEFIt does all it’s supposed to do (basically make the girders of the boot records fit in place).  Jolly good!

Here’s a simple photo journal of the key events.

In my Remember the Milk tasks(for ease of syncing this is what I use for tasks, and it’s much better than getting locked in to a sinking ship overly rubbish unnecessarily complex productivity management system that makes you organize your todos more than doing them. RTM works for me) I had this under the “Triple Boot” Project:

• Boot off hell leopard
• Partition
• Reinstall Mac OS
• Install Refit
• Use Refit to get partitoons a-okay
• Instal IWndows
• Install Linux

And that I did.

Hard Drive Partitioning

• WIN_240_P1 = sda2 (MAIN HD), NTFS Format
• MAC_110_P2 = sda3, HFS+ Format
• LIN_110_p3 = sda4, ext4 Format,  with 5gb swap

I wanted to make and have made Windows my primary OS (web, coding, gaming, most everything) with Linux secondary (experimental, coding, social connectivity) and mac primarily for just file-sorting and garage-band editting and not much else.  Thus I made Windows the largest and the first drive.  EFI is installed on sda1 as the Master boot drive.

As mentioned in the first post, I had encountered most all I needed to know from my Fiesty Fawn Ubuntu 8 tinkering in 2007, but I wanted to review a few boot concepts and jargon to have EFI-savviness:

• MBR – Master Boot Record (replaced by GPT).  The first sector, Sector 0 (a mere 512-byte sector), of the boot hard disk volume.
• GPT –  GUID Partion Table; the layout of the partitioning table on the physical disk.  replaced by EFI.  Microsof’ts definition of GPT
• GPT provides a more flexible mechanism for partitioning disks than the older Master Boot Record (MBR) partitioning scheme that has been common to PCs.
• EFI — Extensible firware interface.
• BIOS – Basic input output system.  The BIOS loads and starts an operating system.
• and just because it sounds piratey (and is a genuinely useful concept in booting jargon)
• Bootstrapping.  Aside from it’s references in the delightful Baron Munchausen, and “as a metaphor, meaning to better oneself by one’s own unaided efforts, was in use in 1922″, bootstrapping refers to in computing basically a very simple program “jump-starting” a much more sophisticated and complex program, like an OS (*cough* thus, when getting a triple-boot to work, boostrapping is significant).

One could easily get by and triple-boot successfully without even knowing what these meant, but I am interested in Operating Systems design and thus found them of value.

I think everyone’s experience installing Linux will be unique.  Riddled with peculiar drivers, components that don’t work, disks that don’t work, but eventually it usually works.

Here’s the amount of disks I had to burn to find one that worked!  The third one (thumb pointing to it) was the winner. Out of this array

I have Linux Mint (worked, but I wanted Ubuntu), Ubuntu 10 32-bit (no go), Ubuntu 10 64-bit DVD (no go) Ubuntu 10 64-bit CD-ROM (worked!).  Bloody hell!  I was grateful to discard all but the working Ubuntu (and the working mint just in case) installation disks after successfully installing Ubuntu 10.

rEFIt

(Note: refit obviously is english person playing a pun with the word refit and how the boot-loader actually refits the Extensible Firmware Interface, but I’m sure you saw that one!)

A successful installation of rEFIt gives you this glorious screen which is the essence of the boot-loader.

PHOTO

I love things that are this compact, and display as much organized information, and that the information is usable.  I guess that information-knowledge-compactness is the essence of computers and most science really.  But you can decipher this yourself, but from this table you can quickly with a mere gander observer that we have:

• 5 total partitions
• 1 of which is rEFIt itself
• 3 are our main target drives for the three OS installations
• 1 is some rubbish boot junk

Rule of thumb: take note of the large drives.  Those are the one you formatted and are working with.  Basically, there’s three drives, but rEFIt has to make things technical hehe.

Now Loading Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard)

And the ultimate test of our installation efforts: do we have a desktop? Yes we do.  Mac OS 10.6

Now Loading Windows 7 (Home Edition)

And the ultimate test of our installation efforts: do we have a desktop? Yes we do.  Windows 7.

Now Loading Linux-Ubuntu 10…

Here’s a mini photo album of this memorable *sniff*!  experience of installing Ubuntu and completing this awesome triple-bootageness!  I included a LOT of precautions such as:

• Installation Disk Integrity Check
• 2 Double-Checkings to ensure correct partition was targetted

to make the installation fairly foolproof and smooth as possible.

For Some Reason my ubuntu  installation was not in GUI format.  No prob.  I worked it out.

Yikes.  Don’t be freaked if you see a blank blue screen.  This I thought would not bode well, but was just loading.

I tried an installation and it bombed somewhere around 60%.  Thus I secured some smoothness by doing a disk integrity check (of the installation DVD/CD-ROM) first.  Good times.

The Non-Gui Linux Partitioning Menu was definitely a bit scary.  Especially knowing that this was the third drive I installed operating system on so a wrong partition could mean accidentally wiping the drive and the other partitions!

Fortunately you just make sure you choose the proper partion and format in linux-style, which is ext4 (as compared to mac’s rubbish HFS+ or Windows’s NTFS).  It’s always nifty to double-check the SIZE of each partition to double-check you’re working with the one you think you are.

I knew the size of my linux destination partition was 120GB and it’s number was the third (4th including EFI partition).   Both those matched up.  Always have a lot of things you can double-check to make sure you’re doing what you think you’re doing.

I had targetted the right partition.  Sweetness.  All three OSes properly installed in the partitions of which I had planned!

And the ultimate test of our installation efforts: do we have a desktop? Yes we do.  Linux Ubuntu 10.04.

Completion & Victory

Okay this is making this post already way too much longer than it needs to be but I put a lot of time and thought into installing these and a heck of a lot of keyboarding-snapping-breaking *cough* troubleshooting, so wanted to take some victory laps.

After Getting the triple-boot EFI menu achievement

I tested all three OSes and successfully booted in all three!

Windows

Mac

Linux

Tweaks

I instaled Compiz for the snazzy Cube-Desktop effects in linux.

Basically completely moved-in to my Win7 HD.

The partitioning sizes were very ideal.  I thought about halving the MAC HD partition, but I like having it the same size as the linux partition for consistency-sake.

For Future Navigation in the Triple-Boot World, here’s a few bookmarks from 2007:

• Tips for Linux Explorers
• Updated Post:  This is an Excellent article on how to build a Linux-running PC for less than $200!  Epically amazing budgetting.  Extremely well-written article.  If you stumbled upon this tutorial, you have an interest in operating systems, and that means linux, and that means you probably know that linux (while free) is still a very good and stable OS.  You might be interested in this.  I will likely document and blog the building of my own PC likely in a way not as thorough as these guys, but it’s a great project to read about and to accomplish.

But after doing a lot of productivity work, I learned that honoring an accomplishment, victory, and/or achievement is really important, almost as much so as actual completion! So..jolly good.

Analysis of Discarding and Keeping

1. Pain Potentially Consequential of Discarding Clutter
   1. Cost to Repurchase something I discard — Repurchasing something I discard rarely happens.  Additionally, the cost of storing and transporting something is probably equivalent the cost of repurchasing but discarding it doesn’t have any of the psychological baggage effects.  TRUE!
   2. Time to refind the item to repurchase if feel need it after discarding the item.  – This is probably equivalent to finding the item amongst heaps of clutter, but true some items cannot be found but some items that discard, you don’t want to ever find again!
   3. Fear of discarding something unpleasant will cause me to repeat that unpleasant experience.  — This is the “vacuum” idea that if I discard the flyers from Los Angeles rubbish apartments, or psychology meetings, or the like, I will then repeat those to “fill the void” of that negative space.  This idea is that if I keep the unpleasant reminder, it won’t happen again.  To some extent this may be true, but it would be very painful to keep and so many unpleasant reminders that you dont’ get away from the spaces that caused the unpleasantness and make pleasant memories.
   4. Erroneous thought that discarding something may discard a “part of me”.  – This is unlikely because I put so much scrutiny into discarding items and it is illogical because some random book doesn’t define my identity.  True!
2. Pain Consequential of Keeping Clutter
   1. Physically trapped — can’t move as easily
   2. COST — cost of storage of keeping clutter and the cost of moving vans or even cars of moving clutter is abominable and gross.
   3. Overwhelm — massive stress simply from keeping track of all the clutter and sorting it and storing it and transporting it! It’s a massive headache and overwhelming source of pain!
   4. Doubt Self — Yes, keeping so many clutter belongings does cause self-doubt because you start to become uncertain if those past bits of rubbish are “me”, when of course they are not. If I pick up a book that turns out to be absolute rubbish, I am not that book.
   5. Anxiety and stress of keeping all the stuff.
   6. My digital files go neglected — THIS IS THE BIGGEST Incentive for eliminating clutter.  I live in my computer.  I’ve written a ton and I study and take tons of notes and almost everything is digital for me. If I have a ton of material space clutter, my digital files naturally (because of their being a constant amount of time in the universe) go

OTHER TIPS FOR ACHIEVING CLEANLINESS AND SPACE.

• Clutter is a vile enemy; treat it as such.  Do not just dive into clutter.  You will be bombarded and assaulted by myriad items, memoirs, things that you had forgotten about or neglected.  Then what happens is the clutter infects one conscience and causes worry, overwhelm, depression, and anxiety.  This sounds a bit inflated, but the negative consequence to treating clutter “lightly” is accurate.  NEVER EVER Just plan on “burrowing through clutter” without a plan without premeditation, just “hoping to find stuff”.  Always have a plan.  Your plan could be to “move stuff around and examine what is there, get scope and then close it up” or to “deliberately take action and eliminate or sort specific items that you already know are there”.

• In other words: the clutter is not a sandbox; it’s not your friend; it’s not a toy; and it will eat you alive if you attempt to lightly mess with it.

• Wouldn’t you agree that there exist some tasks in which you must have preparations before?  When baking a very decadent meal you wouldn’t just randomly open the fridge and try to work with the items, right? You’ prepare adn read up and envision what you’d need.  Using a better metaphor, when demolishing a building to then build up something much sturdier and better, you wouldn’t just approach it with a pickaxe and dynomite.  Of coure not, you have to take very mathematically calculated measurements to properly demolish a building (eliminate clutter).  Don’t misinterpret that metaphor.  ”Demolishing clutter” does not in any way imply the necesity of “building something new in it’s place”.   When doing a road trip, you “could” simply get in vehicle and step on gas but you would likely run into countless obstacles such as deciding which roads are optimal given conditions time, scenery, where you will stop and rest, etc.  The same is true for eliminating clutter, you “could” just dive into it like an absolute buffoon, but getting the goals of clutter achieved that you want to achieve will take probably 50 times as long as if you premeditated and planned out exactly what you will do.

• The best thing to do, therefore, the best approach one must take is to envision what you want to do with the clutter and ONLY ALWAYS ONLY approach the actual physical clutter (make visual and or kinesthetic contact with it) when you have a premeditated not only what is there, but more importantly, exactly what you will do with the items (the books, the old papers, the clothes, the bags, the individual belongings).  In other words, here’s a perfect example:  I recently tackled an enormous amount of “clothes clutter”.  I realized I had 4 great collared long-sleeve shirts that I had already wanted and worked and were mine, so I knew I had a collected and concise (This is important because it cannot be sprawled and amorphorous) piel of old rubbish, ugly, idiotic shirts.
• I knew that I could quickly go through those and feel delightful after having eliminated much of them afterwards because:
  • 1) I knew exactly how much I was working with (it was roughly 8-9 pieces of clothing wrapped in cleaning wrapper all hanging up).  Work with a predefined subset of clutter or else get buried in the avalanche of clutter hell.
  • 2) I knew exactly where it was located.  Often you find things you want to discard or sort, scattered, then in the search process your unravel more cans of worms which discombulates your nice clean crisp sorting and eliminating process.
  • 3) I knew where each item would go.  Shirts that I discarded would go in a huge garbage bag to be sent to charity and shirts I was uncertain about would go in a certain pile and shirts I wanted to keep would go in this pile and those piles would be stored accordingly.  This one is essential.  This is the most crucial component of eliminating clutter because you have to have “an outlet” for every belonging you encounter.  If, for example, you sort out and discard a stack of 20 old seemingly useless books that you 1)know how many are there and what kind of book they are and 2)know exactly where they all are located and 3)know where each will go based on a criteria you predefine, things will operate swimmingly when you process and eliminate the clutter. Here’s an example of defining categories for a sort (say, of books):
    • Discard pile (garbage bag)
    • Already Read & Keeping Pile
    • Already Read (boring or useless) & Keeping Pile (these will obviously be more easily discarded)
    • Unread & Keeping Pile
  • Or another (and simpler ) set of categories is simple
    • Discard!
    • Keep!

Conclusively, whenever you attack and resolve and dismantle clutter, at the VERY minimum, know :

• • exactly how much (with which you’ll be dissolving) AKA Work with a Pre-defined Subset of Clutter.
  • the exact location (of the clutter you’ll annihilate)  AKA Be able to quickly acquire that subset of clutter.
  • the exact spots or zones (for the clutter to be fully eliminated) AKA Define areas of clutter.
  • It doesn’t hurt to have a shovel and/or a blunt heavy object and maybe some pepper spray to attack anything that emerges out of the steaming amorphous blob of clutter that you will dissolve.

DEFINITELY DO NOT. Start “reading through” the clutter items you’re trying to eliminate.  Perusing old memorabilia and enjoying it as a seperate and distinct time from eliminating clutter.  Also, don’t put on clothes you’re trying to eliminate because what happens?  With the books you’ll find reasons to keep them “Oh they mention this author!  I hate xyz book but I like xyz author they mention.   or Hhmm this paragraph is interesting but the books sucks, etc.”  Or you’ll envision some fantastical far-off ridiculous nonexistent utilization of clothing that will never be worn.  Do NOT indulge in your clutter! Process it and then enjoy perusing the old journals from school.

HUGE KEYS to dealing with clutter

NEVER peruse, never treat teh books you’re going to get rid of as something you’re perusing through in like a bookstore.  Instead, treat the books like toxic objects that have weighed down and burdened your life!

FOCUS on all the awesome BETTER, more aligning things you’ll be able to focus on:

• the uplifting friendships you’ll smoothly not just maintain, but enjoy, cherish and love
• and better yet, the friendships, you’ll completely discard as rubbish just like te material rubbish you will discard
• your energy which will skyrocket!
• your digital life!  you can full go digital and have ALL  (or atleast 90% of which) of you memories of somethings in your computer, perpetually backed up, all stored, properly named and organized that you can access at any time. of old dorm, living residence photos, of old memorabilia, that’s incredible,
• In short, you’ll be able to focus on all the stuff that’s truly valuable to you!
• “De-junking allows you to start over. You don’t want your clutter and memories of the past getting in the way of your future.  It’s very idealistic, but getting rid of your ex’s belongings or your old company files can really help you to start over and make a new beginning.” Shed the skin.  A snake wouldn’t go burrowing back into the old crumpled, brittle broke skin it just shed off would it?  No, certainly not.  Don’t try to go burrowing back into your heaps of junk, rubbish you shed many years ago.  Liberate yourself from what you’ve shed off and removed and enjoy your future and new beginning in the new place.

and truly how awesome is it to have so many digital files crisply organized and clear?  That’s rad!!

I’m not an expert in eliminating clutter but I’ve done a Lot of it and want to keep myself from accumulating rubbish so I don’t have to endure the exhausting, awful, indecisive, wreck, hellish, pain of having clutter to process.  I want ot enjoy the smooth, electric, white, bright, scientific, aligned, crystal clear, energized, organized, only uplifting experiences of simplicity and cleanliness of only what I need.

Some of the biggest obstacles for me were attachment and fear of a void or hole that would be present upon eliminating clutter.  But instead the opposite was true.  If I careful scrutinized the clutter and eliminated what was stupid, useless, unnecessary, burdening, heavy, draining, and/or cumbersome, I felt energized and the stuff that is most valuable to me (science, math, health, staying organized digitally, contact with uplifting friends) became the centerpiece forefront of my life.  Rad!

The Odd Categories

Rubbish A Possible Potential Future Use

Nebulous.  Very Unlikely Future Use. This stuff is purely items that you do not think you will ever need nor want, but feel like

REasons why this is such a problem for me?

Because I’m unemotional.  It’s difficult to make these decisions because some of them require an emotional opinion (e.g. I threw out an old striped tie because I saw a picture of me wearing it and it looked like rubbish.)

PROMINENT NEGATIVE Consequences of Clutter

When you travel, you often travel to get away from your clutter as opposed to traveling toward a place to enjoy it. This, quite understandably, wrecks any concept of vacation travel.

You end up buying more junk because of having pre-existing clutter.  The clutter is a SYMPTOM of some problem in your life.  That clutter is a symptom is unquestionably a veracity of the highest order.  This sounds counter-intuitive.  Someone has piles of rubbish, how could they buy more of it, but think about it.  Picture some kind of businessman or scientist; everything about him (or her) is clean, polished.  Let’s say he wears all the same clothes and actually has 5 sets of the exact same clothing that he rewears; his house is impeccable and bleached; his clutter is nonexistent; and all of his “belonging” are digital.  He has very little furniture and his work invovles extremely precise laboratory work with DNA.  He eats consistently the same diet because he knows it’s nutritious and puts him into the peak state of clarity. This “clutter free” person that one has envisioned now comes across a keychain item in a gift shop that sells for $2.50 and a stuffed animal.  Do you think this person would purchase this clutter? Absolutely NOt!!   People who fester in the squalor of clutter are ALWAYS the culprits of purchasing more clutter and the most of it.  Advertisers who sell clutter, target the idiots already drowning in their own clutter!

Some provocative good questions to ask yourself to throw things out:

• Could I set a number (say 30 things) and throw out that amount?
• What blockage is keeping this rubbish being created?
• How good will that mobility and freedom and piece of mind be having eliminated this clutter?
• How much will my anxiety plummet and relaxation skyrocket when I eliminate this clutter?
• Where will I be in life after having eliminated this clutter?
• “In fact, I not only ask them to throw out 50 things but also ask them to make a list of what they’re throwing out, so they can look at it later and actually feel lighter. Here’s why: When you start throwing out a lot of physical clutter and you get on a roll, a new urge kicks in – the desire to clear out all the clutter in your mind.” – Michelle Goodfellow
• At first before seeing it was “sofeminine.co.uk” (good ol brits!) I was perplexed as to why most all pictures contained only women (surely, males need decluttering as well!).  However, while most of these types of articles I long ago abandonded because of their useless, tacky and superficial nature, this article is a stark contrast.  It presents reasons for keeping and discarding things in a kind of photo library format and is extremely clear.  An excellent reminder and source of encouragement to eliminate clutter and stay clear.  http://www.sofeminine.co.uk/mag/psycho/d885.html
  • For the purposes of this article, one can simple adopt some of the qualities of a throwawayer (in moderation to maintain balance of course) while maintaining a few of the memorabilia and organization qualities of the hoarder for the best balance.  I’ve listed the qualities of each:
  • Throwaway:
    • Anti-materialism
    • Starting Over
    • Need for Freedom and Control
    • Fear of Attachment
    • Extremes
  • Hoarder
    • Guilt
    • Living in the Past
    • Fear of Seperation
    • It’ll come in handy (mabye-someday)
    • Extremes
  • Good Balance
    • Get Organized
    • Recycle
    • Sell
    • Give to Charity
    • Believe in the Memories
    • Memory Boxes

Parallels to Computer Programming

In computer science and programming we have a concept called “starvation”.  Starvation in the processing of code refers to a process of an application that is supposed to be running and executing something but it doesn’t (maybe it’s waiting for an output variable from another process or maybe it’s waiting for the result or the “go-ahead” or a threshold to be reached from another process).  The stalled process is said to be “starved”; it can’t move forward until the process that’s causing the starvation does what it needs to do.  The same is true for clutter.  Almost always, if you can identify something as definitive “clutter”, but can’t get yourself to get rid of it, the clutter-identified-but-can’t-discard item is most likely in a state of “processing starvation”.

The goal is to “collect” pleasant memories in life! YES.

Does staying in xyz place geographically doing xyz things surrounded by xyz amount of clutter create pleasant memories?? If not, bye!

he goal is to “collect” pleasant memories in life! YES.

Does staying in xyz place geographically doing xyz things surrounded by xyz amount of clutter create pleasant memories?? If not, bye!

The great Tony Blair once stated the truism:

“The art of leadership is saying no, not yes.  It is very easy to say yes.”

Indeed, when it’s so easy to become toxically riddled with guilt or shame, or simply having a bad habit of serving others requests at your expense, it can be very easy to say yes, and difficult to say no.  But a “No” is what is needed.

Brilliant article excerpt from earthlingcommunication on the different classifications of saying no, providing you with some options (This site had the same list, so I am not sure of lists origin.  Neither site properly cited.)

Variations of How to Say no

There are many variations of saying no. Each are suited to specific situations. Choose which one you think is best for the situation:

Plain No: Guess what this one involves? All you do is say no and move on. This is the least effective of the various techniques. In simple situations this variation can work.

Mirroring No: This variation involves sympathy where you communicate an understanding of the person’s situation and follow it up with your declining statement. Your child’s sports coach asks you to be the team manager. You could respond with a mirroring no by saying, “I understand your after a team manager. It must be tough trying to organize the team… but I won’t be the team manager this season.”

Reason-why No: Many studies have proven that if a person provides a reason for carrying out an action then the action is more likely to be accepted. If a charity worker asks for a donation you can say, “No I won’t donate because I’ve donated to another organization last week” or “No I won’t donate because I don’t want to.” The second example’s reason for not donating seems stupid but even though no new information was provided the reason adds persuasive power. Trust me on this. It is powerful.

The requester can actually use a similar variation of this technique on you. Research has shown your compliance will increase by 30% if the requester makes the request and provides a reason why. Be aware when the requester uses the reason-why technique. You’ll be more likely to get sucked in and leave the situation with a wondering thought of “Why did I say yes?”

Delayed No: Just say “You’ll get back to them at a later time.” In the mean time, the person may find someone else to do the job or the problem may have been solved. This technique can be used in combination with all these variations. Also, when delaying your response you give yourself time to think of what to say and how to effectively say it.

Conditional No: You state the conditions that you would accept the person’s request and if these conditions aren’t met you will decline their request. Only use this technique if you are willing to accept the request. The person may end up adjusting the initial request for you under your listed conditions which will put the burden on you to follow the adjusted request. Your child’s sports coach again asks you to be the team manager and you respond with, “I will be the team manager if you can guarantee that it requires no more than 2 hours of work a week. If not, I’ll have to say ‘no’.”

Painful No: This variation of saying no involves stating the future pain the person would receive if you declined their request at a later time. Your boss asks you to take on an extra assignment and you reply with, “For both our sake I’m going to say no. The quality of my work declines when I’m not focused on one assignment and I don’t want to give you bad work, hurt my position here at the company, and as a result make you get someone else to redo the assignment at a later date.”

Repetitive No: Remember when I was giving you body language tips above and I encouraged you to maintain the same body language when the person persists with their request? This assertive skill, the broken record technique, can be applied to the words you say. All you do is keep repeating your exact same no-statement over and over again until the person stops. Their request will vary in form but just keep repeating your exact same no-statement. Here is an example scenario for you:

“Can you help me move house this weekend?”
“I have to work so I can’t help you move out.”
“I really need help. Can you help me move house?”
“I have to work so I can’t help you move out.”
“It’ll only be for a few hours. Can you?”
“I have to work so I can’t help you move out.”

Respectful No: Firstly, use one of the above variations. If the person persists with their request then use the respectful no variation. What you say communicates your wishes for the person to respect your decision. An example is “Please don’t make the same request again. I’ve said ‘no’ so can you please accept that?” Do this with “soft” body language so you don’t come across as aggressive.



And Joshua has these wise words of wisdom to say regarding avoiding being controlled by selfish people.

I’ve noticed there are freebie seekers that take whatever they can from others with no respect for who they take from and no desire to return favors. Be wary of saying yes to these people. They can control your life.

The only thing to do with such selfish wankers is to say no, terminate the interaction, and then say “bye”, basically.  I’ve experienced these toxic people.  Some of them have been close family-members, some colleagues.  It doesn’t matter how you know said drainers, but they will drain you and destroy your life.  The people who control and steal your time can make life and work unbearably painful.  I think the amount of pain associated with the consequences of saying yes (not saying no) is pathetically overwhelming to the trivial discomfort associated with choosing to be assertive and actually just declining requests of time-greedy people.

These time-greedy people are the worst when you aren’t aware of them gobbling up and manipulating your time.  Often one gets caught up in the “well, at least I’m being helpful Doi!” mindframe and that causes you to just dispense your time to time-greedy people like a malfunctioning ATM spewing out cash.  Stop serving others “to be nice”.  To utilize some unpoised prose, that’s just retarded and pathetically detrimental to oneself.  Look at this consequence too; even beyond the lack of time and lack of control, you have the denatured devalued sense of self.  Even after you’ve recovered from having wasted your time and energy on a conversation and/or a task that you never had time for, you then have the negative self-label of being treated like and objectified as a time-dispensing object. That and of course (*cough*) the devastating physiological and endocrinological ramifications of stress on the body and mind.  If one is going to be labeled as something, make behavioral shifts to be labeled as a person overly-protective of their time instead of a person “who’s always free”.  Refuse people from from gluttonously devouring your time.  Hell, starve people from your time.  Jolly good.

Also, without getting into the complexity of Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Theory (from our good friends at changingminds), which basically discusses how survival events we normally overlook (like being able to shower regularly, or getting the monthly paycheck to pay the bills) or almost invisible until they’re inaccessible (i.e. you can’t shower and the paycheck bounces), it’s important to have access to your own bloody time!

I loved this excerpt, “putting your noes on steroids”.  Brilliant.

The third important tip, which will put your noes on steroids, is to maintain nonverbal smoothness. Keep your demeanor consistent with your demeanor prior to the request. Maintain a consistent voice, for example, by speaking at the same volume, tone, and speed you did prior to saying no. Any sign of unease hints at a lie or compels the person to persist in the request. Switching the topic and using sarcasm are two indicators of unease.

Indeed.  In fact I was considering renaming my article because “saying no” is a bit of a misnomer.  When you effectively say “no” in person, it’s very non-vocal.  It’s not really your words that communicate the declined request or the impossibility of yoru involvement.  A lot of it is tone, maybe a bit of sentence structure, but mainly body language.

If All Else Fails…Go Scrooge-Mode

Basically, mate, here’s the epic, most effective frame for saying no: Be Ebeneezer Scrooge.  If you forgot this timeless classic, no fear, for your loyal, reliable, tipworthy blogger (*wink” has recording The Christms Carol by Charles Dickens with foley sound effects in 2008 and again in 2006 (which wasn’t as good).  It gets better every year.  But be like scrooge.  If you want to know how to say “No” without guilt, take notes on Ebeneezer, my dear Watson!

Soo…conclusively, I might ask you to Leave a Tip, but after reading this, hopefully (unless you really want to of course, not out of guilt) you’ll be able to respond appropriately:

.

Top Reasons Why People Find it Difficult to Let go of Hurtful People

• Fear of Rejection
• Strange, but true. Fearing to cross someone off your list means you somewhat fear rejection from others. Don’t ever fear rejection; you must interpret everything merely as feedback!
• Fear of People Attacking Back
• You may fear people retaliating. For me I feared the people cutting off financial support, supplies, and “material things”.
• Fear of New Behavioral
• Old habits die hard. Period.
• Top Most inefficient ways that People Exclude what They Don’t Want
• A lot of this works subconsciously….
• Do things to make them unattractive.
• Outrageously insane, but, yes, true. Some people gain weight, tarnish their image, purposely (subconsciously) look disheveled to “repel” people and things they don’t like, but don’t know how to exclude.
• Punish themselves

Yep the old, “it’s my fault” line creates a lot problems.
Get out of their mind and into yours. Your mind is a colorful, alive, limitless place – trust me, you want to go there!
Every people-decision in life opens a door and closes another. YOUR spirit and existence would benefit greatly to manufacture precise actions that open the door of Welcoming of exhilaration, romance, joy, jubilation, honesty, clarity, and quality, precision, freedom, strength, and grace, while closing the door of Misery of repulsive vilifications, confusion, frustration, angst, and pain. So many of us close the Welcoming door and open the Misery door. Don’t do that! You either welcome the right, good, quality people and events into your life that make you feel sincere, calm, and energized and feel warmth from the world, or you let in the infectious people, situations, things, and habits that taint your worldly perspective obfuscating your weltanschauung with bleak misery. Your interpretation of the zeitgeist reflects whom you welcome or do not welcome into your life. Do not even give yourself the choice to not close Misery doors and open Welcoming doors of genuineness. Just develop an instinctively intrinsic validation system to always slam shut the Misery door and fling open the Welcoming door.
This sounds simple, but, often the simplest things need the most alignment.
Let me know if you think this sounds too harsh, haughty, or haranguing, or if you have related ideas.

(Modified-Reconstructed 2007 Post).

Important words here. Excluding dangerous, abusive and destructive people, habits, and things from you life does not classify as “holding grudges”. Protecting yourself, your mind, your life, from people that hurt you, make you feel neglected, make you feel shitty, lost, confused, and foul does yourself a favor. Whenever you put time into “thinking” about people – even if it’s thinking about how to avoid them – you give them fallacious power. Power does not exist, but I used to spend a lot of time getting enraged when people I didn’t like contacted me. Does that process have a desirable purpose? No, because you can’t make anyone feel blame. Don’t give undesirable relationships the privilege of hearing your words (even if you deliver vilifying insults – that response could still be rewarding for them than ignoring a person).

So, conclusively, one thing I have done to prevent emotionally abusive people, debilitating habits, or miserable places from entering my life is remove them from my contacts list. Then It’s simple. If you get a call or message from someone who is not on your list of people who “support your beliefs, call you back, and are “active” in your life” you just ignore them! Or if you get an urge, a compulsion to execute a destructive habit, you just ignore that impulse!

One common reaction to excluding people and saying “no” to people (implicitly, just cutting them off) is the sensation of guilt. The involuntary reaction of guilt originates from illusion; it doesn’t exist, but it gets you to do things that bring you more pain and turmoil. Here’s an example: I would frequently get calls and emails from people that brought me pain, blatantly insulted me, and hurt me in the past. I’d exclude them (delete emails, delete messages, etc.) but then would feel my unconscious reaction of guilt speaking up saying: “Don’t hold grudges. Maybe those people are different now. Call them back.” I’d listen to my idiotic “guilt-based ego voice” and, once again, I’d go flying into a tormenting, painful, confusing, and denigrating interaction with those people then. Therefore, indirectly, it was “Guilt” that operated as my greatest enemy. It was guilt that tricked me into diving back into destructive experiences.

(Modified 2007 Post).

(Modified 2007 Post)

(Modified 2007 Post)

Feynman QUOTES!!

He said, “You see, I’m a stenotypist, and I type everything that

is said here. Now, when the other fellas talk, I type what they say, but I don’t

understand what they’re saying. But every time

you get up to ask a question or to say something, I understand exactly what you mean–what the

question is, and what you’re sayi

ng–so I thought you can’t be a professor!”

Notice how everyone else, every understandable person at the conference was incomprehensible to the stenotypist and that they are not well-known.  It’s because what the speak is convoluted rubbish aimed to impress people of their vast intelligence instead of communicating clear, simple, direct, and honest points like good ol’ the best, one of the most ultimate scientists ever, Richard Feynman communicated.

Then I went over the next sentence, and I realized that I could translate that one also. Then it became a kind

of empty business: “Sometimes

people read; sometimes people listen to the radio,” and so on, but written in such a fancy way that I couldn’t understand it at first, and when I finally

deciphered it, there was nothing to it.

“It isn’t the

stuff, but the power to make the

stuff, that is important. But I realize now that these people were not in scienc

e; they didn’t understand it. They didn’t understand technology; they

didn’t understand their time.

“

THREE STRATA!!

So basically I look at all learning in three strata:

1st

On the ground (or basement) floor there’s the muck quagmire, disgusting muddy soup crap of humanities, New Age, religion, a lot of psychology, and the like.  Basically stuff that’s untrue, explains nothing, and is the antithesis of pure.

Here at a symposium conference discussing ethics in education, Feynman thought of some brilliant questions such as

For instance, in education, you increase differences. If someone’s good at something, you try to develop his ability, which results in differences, or inequalities. So if education increases inequality, is this ethical?…The next day I brought my paper into the meeting, and the guy said, “Yes, Mr. Feynman has brought up some very interesting questions we ought to discuss, and we’ll put them aside for some possible future discussion.” They completely missed the point. I was trying to define the problem, and then show how “the fragmentation of knowledge” didn’t have anything to do with it. And the reason that nobody got anywhere in that conference was that they hadn’t clearly defined the subject of “the ethics of equality in education,” and therefore no one knew exactly what they were supposed to talk about.

Feynman slaughters Humanities Social science RUBBISH and reveals for what it is with this awesome quote:

So I stopped–at random–and read the next sentence very carefully. I can’t remember it precisely, but it was very close to this: “The individual member of the social community often receives his information via visual, symbolic channels.” I went back and forth over it, and translated. You know what it means? “People read.”

Then I went over the next sentence, and I realized that I could translate that one also. Then it became a kind of empty business: “Sometimes people read; sometimes people listen to the radio,” and so on, but written in such a fancy way that I couldn’t understand it at first, and when I finally deciphered it, there was nothing to it.

Explaining nothing except the most obvious and trivial with convoluted useless language, social science is for the weak and stupid and feeble minded!

This was a huge epiphany for me in getting out of the mountain of shit humanities-social-studies inferno.  Before I had always thought that social studies and humanities rubbish was a mind-infection that if I focused on it would disturb my thought and thinking clarity.  However I soon realized far from the contrary, as soon as one focuses on critically interrogatively reading, cognitive scrutiny, truly scrutinizing, rereading, and understanding a sentence or two of the social humanities bullshit, we realize that it is saying the most puerile, stupid useless utterances that have been masked in eloquent, superfluous literary garb gibberish.  True!

2ND

The next floor (a drastic increase, because while that first strata has zero and actually detracting, negative, deplorable value) the second strata is immense value.  This second strata in this “mount paradisio” is a far advancement from teh inferno of the 1st strata.  This second strata is more fulfilling than purgatorio; it represents physics, biochemistry, anatomy, and neuroscience.  This second strata of immense value explains how things work, how we percieve things in the real world; all the clicks, clanks, flashes, utterances, even thoughts to some extent are explained and can be measured in this awesome second strata.

Biochemistry and physics will explain how everythign works.  As I was writing this I heard the sound of Carbon Dioxide particles clinking against the can of Hansen’s carbonated soda to the right of me.  Physics plus anatomy explains to me how the ossicles in our human ears can pick up frequencies between 20 and 20,000 hz and that then chemistry chimes in to explain the rising air bubbles of CO2 in carbonated beverages.  That’s fascinating and awesome, and crisp, and must importantly true.

Where are all my friends, the scientists and mathematicians?

3RD

The third strata is truly paradisio.  In the third strata of paradisio is mathematics.  Math is freedom from the world.  It’s the antithesis of all the “wrong”, obfuscating muck of the 1st strata.  Like the 2nd strata it’s true and stable and accurate, but it joyful tinkers with things with 100% accuracy.  Math on the upscale, is like the next floor up.  Equally as true, but in it’s own private connected perfect reality . Math is perfecton; it’s 100% precision, accuracy, and stability.

Math hones the mind and makes it sharper. I don’t care much about natural history but I do like the witticism of dawkins and how he pwn ridicules the ininite neverendign stupidity of religion.  Math is what the mind needs to stay sharp.  Biochem of human anatomy is useful too, to know what is necesary to stay sharp.  lol.  But natural history is okay because of 1)it’s actually true, rare in teh huamnties rubbish adn 2)dawkins is amusing and decent and good.

math is true precison of mind thouh

Math is the only true subject where you mind has to DO something.  All other things you do what you’re told and in biochem you do truly memorize valuable information and the regurgitate it out and biochemistry IS valuable info, but you cognitively don’t do anything with it. With Math and chess, you actually do things cognitively with your; your mind does actual work and envisioning and calculation.

Like for example, 53042 in base 6 equals 7154 in base 10.  That’s very rudimentary math (base systems), but it’s still unquestionably so crips, clear, true, and exciting, and awesome!  It’s just so convenient, awesome, nifty, precise, meaningful, rad nad almost magical– math truly is a different world — because of the transformation and everything matches up!  There can be no coefficients written in a digit higher than BaseNumber-1, so not higher than 9 and 5 for respectively base 10 and base 6.

This is old stuff and very rudimentary but math and numbers are unquestionably the ultimate toy with which to tinker.  It never breaks down, needs updates, is scientific advanced, and aligned!  It’s so fascinating and impressive and astounding and stable and fun to see how you set the coefficients net to each other in descending order and you get the base-based number!

2 • 6^0 + 4 • 6 ^1 + 0 • 6^2 + 3•6^3 +   5•6^4 ( base6)= 7154 (base10).

Its’ so fun and safe to tinker and use one’s mind to calculate and juggle and examine the always 100% correct, precision, alignment of math because of its 100% accuracy, universlaity (all languages understand numbers from all eras), and freedom and everything about math rocks!

Applying these:

If you want to feel discombobulated, doubtful, infected, lost, dubious, and quite wretched and vile, waste your time and pollute your mind with the 1st strata.  Basically, don’t go to the inferno of that waste.

If you want to understand the world and feel practical and not necessarily wise, but just complete in understanding, definitely check out the 2nd strata.

If you want meaning, joy, clarity, succes, happiness, fulfillment (funny enough all the fallacious and unfulfilled “promises” of the 1st mire strata), go to math.

yeah!

Regarding other academic fields:

I think philosophers share the same “freedom” bubble of mathematicians, but they’re paralyzed in it and can do nothing. Basically, if this “freedom” bubble of mathematicians is the sea, mathematicians are hte fish and sharks that can do things in it, and philosophers are just inanimate, dead rocks; they’re in the same “freedom” bubble of math, but are useless in it.

Math is the only authentic cognitive rigor.  In other words, do math; it’s good for your mind.

Most importantly, doing math puts you in a state of “flow” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)#Components_of_flow

I know this stuff, I am like a doctor.

“Stress is a normal physical response to events that make you feel threatened or upset your balance in some way. When you sense danger – whether it’s real or imagined – the body’s defenses kick into high gear in a rapid, automatic process known as the “fight-or-flight” reaction, or the stress response.”

That flight fight response thing I experience (that I said I had tons of times outside) to an overwhelming degree IS STRESS..

If I don’t stop doing thigns that cause me stress, I will have a heart attack, digestive problems, and poor respiratory system work.

I have had all the symptoms of chronic stress

scalp eczema

Gastro intestinal problems

heart palpitations

frequent stress flight-fight response

I know exactly what causes this, it’s being in cities and in america.  I know this country is unsafe emotionally, why else would I be so focused on living in other countries? Therefore, me currently being in the usa has become a problematic health issure for me that I need to address.

It’s useful for me to frame things in temporal to London.  Chicago is always LondonTime -6 (because during this DST period, London is UTC+1)  In Spring to Fall, Chicago is London Time (BST) -6, only  because all clocks are moved forward.  And in Fall to Spring, London is GMT/UTC/Zulu And Chicago is that- 6 (because the London time goes “back” to normal), but of course so does every other timezone (Chicago goes back to GMT-6, Sydney to GMT+9, and so on.  During DST it’s a headache a +1 gets added to all those London GMT+1, Chicagy GMT-5, Sydney GMT+10).   Fall to Spring (non-daylight savings time) LondonTime (Chicago time being, now (BST) -6), and now London Time coincides with GMT.  I reckon it’s a good clarification and also headache that GMT timezone DST fluctuations never occur; zulu is always UTC.  In other words, right now, it’s BST 11:02am, CST 5:02am, and GMT 10:02am.  So it’s annoying that half the year all time zones deviate in their relationship to GMT.  London is GMT+1 or GMT, New York is GMT-4 or GMT-5, Chicago is GMT-5 or GMT-6 (in respective DaylightSavings and Non-DayLightSavings Months, respectively).

It’s interesting to note that time and time zones are mere derivatives of man-made sentience placed (or sort of dumped, rather) on longitudes.  And then again, longitudes are geographical trigonometric man-made units of measurement as well.

“Benjamin Franklin first suggested Daylight Saving Time in 1784, but it was not until World War I, in 1916, when it was adopted by several counties in Europe that initially rejected the idea.” — Timeanddate.com

I agree with Europe; DST should have bloody been initially rejected (and remained rejected haha).  The additional fact that some countries don’t even practice DST and that the exact date that countries shift their clocks deviates from country to country is indicative of an incredibly outdated and messy time-telling system that adds to this gear-grinding headache.  Take a look at this page to see what I mean about this lunacy.  (Also, is that really the situation?  It takes all countries literally 3 months to make the clock changes?  Am I misinterpreting this?? Jeepers! Dang.  That’s realy messed up, if that’s the case!)  From August 5, 2010 at 2100 in Egypt to November 7, 2010 at 1100 in the United States clocks jump forward or jump back an hour depending on their location in the hemisphere and on the globe.  The fact that of the DST activation of deactivations occurs over the span of OVER three months (EVERY YEAR!) is preposterous!  It’s amazing anything gets done on time!  It’s a massively confusing headahce really.  I understand the hemisphere thing.  Northern clocks jump back and Sothern hemisphere clocks jump forward in the Fall/Autumn.  Great and understandable because of the 23.5 degree tilt of the earth, but why in all bloody hell would their be non-synchronized clock changes, so that every country just “in their own time” over the span of 3 months (!) all the changes finally get made?  Why not just on a set day, say October 15, and March 15, make the corresponding hemisphere-based DST changes?  That would be so much simpler!  And maybe the reason for not doing that could be some country-based geosdesic trigonemetric reason, but frankly, that should be corrected for and people shouldn’t have to be literally astronomical rocket scientists and physicists (unless they want to be and I certainly dont’ have a problem with those fields at all!) to accurately no one DST commences and terminates.

In many ways, I would almost prefer to tell time by distance, like “it’s 10.2km before the sun’s horizon passes because that’s what ultimately time is, just a measurement based on the earth’s revolution. The fact there’s man-made “zones” based on longitudinal man-made geographical equally-spaced measurement, based on the sphere of the earth, isn’t helped by an additional hour adjustment annually each spring.  Anything that articulates the fact that we’re on a gigantic spinning sphere I am all for.  Anything that seems to detract from that fact, (and indeed I think the multi-layered usage of meridians and timezones does detract from the fact that we’re on an orbitting (and revolving) sphere) is detrimental to understanding proper scientific sentiency.  Good TIMES!!  (hahaha pun unquestionably intended, and something I would’ve said anyways).

I just wanted to share this bit of tech uploading/syncing bit of utter craziness partly for my own records, so I remember how I set this up, given that it’s so complex, and for anyone else attempted such a technological, mult-operating system juggling act.

First off, I’m working with Linux Mint, Winows 7 64-bit, and Mac OS 10.6.3.  I’m migrating away from the Mac OS (because it’s a waste of time, did very little constructive, and might be okay for self-therapy file/photo reviewing, but othe rthan that it’s pretty much rubbish imho).

I tinkered wtih refit, and an enormous amount How-To articles.  Lifehacker was tremendous help as were ones written by various other authors.  Eventually despite all of the “don’t install boot camp to triple boot!” messages I eventually did install boot camp via boot  camp assistant.  All of this was on imac8,1.

The hard drive partitioning was incredible complex and I forget some details but I definitely partitioned the 500gb internal hard drive into a:

• 189 Mac OS Partition
• 130 Linux Mint Partition
• 130 Windows 7 Partition

I may include the details of the file format used but jsut now that I did a partition before any refit, anyinstallations, an boot-camp stuff.

Then I did install Windows 7 successful (Hurray! Great OS. Fantastic OS in my opinion!) via boot camp.

Then I successfully installed Linux Mint, a very clean, minimalist, smooth operating system.  Nothing fantastic but, not much bad about it either.

My current boot sequence involves first Alt(Option)-Booting which provides the selection of Mac or Windows and then I get the linux boot screen and can again choose which of the 3 Operating Systems to boot from.  Obviously choosing the Windows/Mac from the boot-camp loader is unnecassry because whichever selection is made, it will point to the linux boot-loader.

So, jolly good.  I have triple boot (and I can refine that on another machine, and really eventually I am moving towards bulding my own screaming fast PC from scratch which would be obviously a great Windows7/LinuxMint dual-boot.

Calendar and Email Syncing

The next feat (and there is much less documentation on this) was to resolve this problem:

I had local ical calendars, a local archive of 2003-2005 Mail.App (clumsy format not easily uploaded to mail servers like gmail), various (about 6) email accounts, and I wanted All of that (all calendars past and present, all email past and present, ALL in the same convenient program).

To be perfectly honest I’m refining which program and tinkered with gcal/gmail webbrowser, Chandler (excellent open source), Windows Live, and I may check out Windows Outlook Express.  Ical was rubbish because in it I became obsessive-compulsive in 2008-2009, recording everything I did (from sleep, to eat, to activities I did).  I will post a few photos of those here.  It’s great for self-therapeutic reasons to have access to everything you did 24 hours a day for the past two years, but to say the least, it was too obsessive and time-consuming.  I had read David Allen’s GTD book, fell into the mindlessly lost pit of that productivity cult and before I knew it I was spending 3-5 hours a day making lists and organizing thigns.  Said GTD lists (and the GTD_Ultimate_Calendar concept I created with Physiology, Galvanizing, Sleep, and other categories where I stored everything I did) created the illusion of productivity, but I wasn’t get much done and worse, I was operating from the false belief that I was.  So I’m not too big of a fan of GTD anymore.  Some concepts of it are great (like don’t put things back in “inbox”, i.e. when you process something continue processing it, don’t revert it back into the “to-be-processed” file or else that file becomes wrought with psychological negative baggage.  Concepts like “amorphorous mass of stuff” and “psychological baggage with stuff that’s not organized” and “a computer-like workflow ” to a small degree at least are decent concepts, but too much GTD was very destructive and, ironically, unproductive!  So I’m glad that phases is over with in my life.  Needless to say, I had enormous amounts of calendar data to import!

ICAL GTD Ultimate calendar PHOTO

I instantly loved how “old school” Chandler looked.  And the fact that everything happened in panes and your workspace wouldn’t become populated with a clutter of stacked windows is unquestionably appealing.  I ran into some difficulties with IMAPing Chandler and it seems to revolve around POP without that much support.  I made an account on Chandler Hub as well.

Combining my five local ical calendars was a headache, but in a nutshell. I exported those 5 ical calendars in .ics format, and then imported/uploaded all of those 5 to one gmail calendar “galvanizing_gcal”.  I made certain to always denote with a _calendarsource indicator where the calendar originaed from or more importantly where it could be edited (you can’t edit subscribed gcal calendars in calendar apps as far as I know) to keep that clear and straight.  So I piped 5 ical .ics files into one gcal calendar. Great!  Then I created one Chandler calendar and Published that on Chandler hub. So far I’ve got a Chandler calendar on Chandler hub and a historical ical 5-icss-piped into one gcal calendar.

Sharing iCAl.  In the transition away from mac I may add something via iCAl occasionally and that will taper off so that I’ll eventually just add calendar events from a single Windows/Ubuntu-based application.  I needed a way to temporarily publish any new ical-added events I added to iCal.  This was a headache.  I had to publish them to Mobileme (which was simple, but undesirable and would have much rathe preferred dev publishing with a “private server” option).  icalExchange is a free publishing of webdav that got the ics data from ical (I could view my synced calendar on iCalExchange) but then it snafued getting the html-based icalExchange data (originating in iCal) to my calendar program of choice, so iCalExchange was useless.  The mobileme publishing of any ical events added (and then subscribing to that mobileme calendar suffices at least temporarily).  I may end up putting a lot of my photos in iPhoto—>MobileMe, but that’s sort of undesirable.  I’d like to be done with the headache of mobileme now that I use more efficient online backup systems (*cough* Dropbox).  But the outcome of the massive digitally archiving material possessions, people photos, and papers will be some highly organized bunch of albums and ideally online sharing via some yet-undecided method (MobileME, Picassa, Facebook, flickr, etc).

Right…I’ll cut to the chase of a very clever trick.  I couldn’t find ANY information on getting an old Mail.app archive of mail onto a gmail account!  I had 2-3 years of emails from during college seperated into about 10 folders (Work, Book, ColoradoCollege (the rubbish college I unfortunaetly attended, but I did graduate…quickly), Work, Recepits & Business, Family, Friends).  I wanted to 1)Get all those 2000-3000 messages on a gmail account and 2)maintain their folder archiving organization.

I had to use a lot of tricks:

• I created a seperate gmail account “myfullname.archive@gmail.com”.  This way it will be an empty fresh account so that I know it’s the online container for all those mail.app roughly 2.5k messages.
• Getting the Messages on Gmail: Now I could simply drag the “Local” Messages in Mail.app (archived from 6 years ago) in the message-list-view to the IMAPed myfullname.archive@gmail.com and the messages now pop up in the gmail archive inbox! Fantastic!  Finally, I can get out of Mail.app to view those old messages!
• Folder Maintenance: This was very tricky.  Chandler gets it’s email by installing “INBOX/Chandler Mail” and a few othes on gmail (this is hte part of using Chandler that’s headache-ish and a deterrant to using it for email.  Only the said chandler folders are synced with the Chandler application apparently…bollocks…still working on that, but the main goal was get everything (calendars, and email) “up in the cloud” so to speak (and in this case the cloud of gmail) and from it all online it would be easy and simple and intuitive to then just subscribe, import, dial all of that in to a single time-management application that does calendars, email, and possibly tasks.)  So…in noticing that INBOX/ scheme of Chandlers.  I noticed tha only the three INBOX/ folders of Chandler popped up in Mail.app (in a different email account, the main one).  So I custom-tailored the myfullname.archive@gmail.com account by deleting all the current pre-made labels and making the respective INBOX/Work, INBOX/Friends, INBOX/Book…etc folders tha I had on the local folders of the archived Mail.app mail!  Then those folders popped up in the IMAPed version of myfullname.archive@gmail.com and I could jsut drag all the messages (ranging from 50 to 924 in some folders) from the archived mail application to the IMAPed gmail myfullname.archive@gmail.com backup archive account!! Phew! Double Phew!  (Okay, the double phew was cheesy, but I had been trying to find a way to get those 2002-2004 year messages backedup online so now I can view EVERYTHING for the past 8 years or so in email from one email application.  Fantastic.
• Then obviously, I could forward (and leave a copy of the archive now-on-gmail emails to my main email account, validatelife@gmail.com).  Good.

I may include photos of the polished application (likely with me throwing a drunken party of jubilation and victory xD) with everything synced up and all archives included so all messages and all my massive amount of calendar data is accessible (it already is on gmail, but I greatly dislike using that for productive because it’s so sluggish, but I do use gmail in browser alot, albeit reluctantly to ensure some things send/recieve at times, so the email-calendar app I use must have that assurance (that I’m syncing and getting all the email accounts and calendar accounts).  Great.

The main goal (and a huge whopping achievement it will succeed) will be jsut getting all calendars and All old emails (even the archived local peculiar copies) up on a gmail account, up in cloud so easily accessible to pull/subscribe/push, etc to a cal-email app.

Recent Update

This article was originally called “Bleh….About 4 hours finally succeeding in getting cross-OS/application platform syncing cal/mail data Chanlder is mehand maybe winlive.” And indeed, the ambiguity of the title reflected my uncertainty in knowing which programs to use, which ones were best!  Well, Now I have MUCH more clarity on that having downloaded, installed, and tested out over half a dozen email/calendar apps and/or configurations.  I tried:

• Eudora — Old School, but clunky.  No Go.
• Netscape — The Quintessential, Epitome of Old School Email.  Fit like a glove, great.  May keep this for simplistic reviewing of emails or if I want a change from main email viewer.  Netscape email was the email program I used back in the 90s when email was actually fun, back when I got emails from girlfriends or friends, instead of mass viral insanity.  So in addition to being free no cost, Netscape is clean, minimalist and spot on with the old-school-ness
• iCal — Rubbish.
• Gcalendar — Great for syncing but Cannot stand the adverts and cluttered in-browser calendar mode.
• Thunderbird — Likely the best email and cal (with Lightning Extension) situation.
• Chandler — I loved the ability to review all events, but it had some clunky python (programming) .exe that goggled up CPU work and it froze occasionally.  It’s a great program, but ultimately a sloppily-designed open source buggy app. No Go.
• Windows Live — I liked the simplicity of this at first, but then after falling in love (again) with netscape, I realized it’s too hypey and slightly bloated.
• Opera Mail — I read about this, tried the opera browser adn couldn’t find the mail app.  No problem, I don’t really care.  Netscape and Thunderbird work perfectly fine.
• iScribe — Some open source old junky app. No Go.
• Pegasus — Old, lame.  No Go.

That’s about it.  What I’ve got now is FeedDemon for all my news. Sick!  Thunderbird is set up with this Massively Awesome rad, sick, incredible, pretty much exactly what I’ve wanted — simplicity for adding new events, complexity for reviewing all my past events in list form, it’s free, it’s open source, it constantly has cutting edge add-ons and extensions thanks to thousands of programmers working around the clock (and I may add some kind of add-on if I branch into that kind of programming) easily installed from the add-on manager.  It’s stream-lined, not-bloated.  And Most AMAZINGly of all.  The add-on Provider for Google Calendar AMAZINGLY conveniently as All heck, enables me to Modify Google Calendars FROM (get this….drum roll….from….) Thunderbird!!  And I can modify google calendars from any browser and because I subscribed to that calendar in Thunderbird, it will update thunderbird (And thunderbird will update gcal!)  Finally, the any-where-accessible calendars are playing nicely together, live syncing and updating.  Best of all, thunderbird has a “View All Events” option so I can constnatly review my thousands of calendar historical events for self-therapy if I want (see Ultimate GTD Calendar lunacy and headache described below).  Furthermore, I have one calendar really and it syncs with gcal’s servers, thunderbird and everything, so it’s perpetually backed up and perpetually accessible from anywhere in the world!  This sounds like a no brainer (oh..gcal big deal), but really, look into trying to setup a way to modify calendars that you’ve subscribed to (like gcal) it practically does not exist and the two-way modification (changing calendar A on Thunderbird or changing Calendar A on gcal, where Calendar A is a gcalendar that Thunderbird subscribed to, is UNHEARD of in the calendar syncing world and would not be possible without the small, dinky, simple no-name, Provider for Google Calendar Addon!  Big Kudos and Grats and Gratitude, for that matter, to that add-on!

Plus, there’s some nifty as heck addons like FoxClocks.  I’m a Philleas Fogg time zone freak! so I love updates of world time and in a neat, tidy, compact display at the bottom of Thunderbird, I’ve got local, UK, sydney time updates (of course I have international times on my desktop gadgets, gcalendar, and taskbar…but hey, time is one’s most valuable commodity!  Hey that’s true!  What happens when people die?  They have run out of their time commodity!  What exists in the universe?  Space & Time!)

(I still have one that syncs with gcal and thunderbird if I add an event from ical,but I am pretty sure I will delete that within less than a week because I can add events from gcal web browser (bleh, but a convenience) or thunderbird (yipee!!) and it syncs with gcal’s server, thunderbird, anything I have subscribed to me gcal_galv or gcal_tent(ative) (I may abandon the tentative calendar for just one calendar simplicity, but hey, 1 or 2 calendars is much less of a headache than the 5+ I had been juggling!).

That said, I still like the old school simplicity of Netscape.  I ordered netscape mail to download the whole 1427 messages from the myname.archive@gmail.com account I created (see below).  So I can review that era of my life in the highly minimalist stream-lined netscape email program whenever I wish (or alternatively from thunderbird as well).  I like the idea of using Netscape (an old school and comfortable fit email app) for doing self-therapy and reviewing old emails (from like 6+ years ago) and thunderbird for new emails.  But they’re all IMAPed and linked up for offline viewing (key folders are) so there’s no headache if I ever reinstall system software.

Wow, what a mountain of installs and tweakings, from partitioning the hard drives, to install the three OSes, to figuring out the best app for cal/email/tasks to ensuring it’s all synced and automatically backed up and so that I have only 1 or 2 calendars/emails! (I still have over a dozen emails so am whittling that down.)  And tasks I’m currently using Remeber the Milk and/or Thunderbird Lightning’s Task.  If I could sync up Thundie’s tasks with a server (not unlike the gcal-Thunderbird calendar syncing two-way modification is so sweet and refined) I’d use just Thundie for tasks, but hey I had used a smorgasbord of GTD hellish apps (I won’t even get into the dozens of those) and text files.  I like just doing things and collecting the small handful of things that I don’t do at the moment.  Good times!

I just looked at some email settings and tthere’s this continual bandwith limit error.  Other people on forums seem to have had similar problem.  Seems to be the result of gmail restrictions.  It seems like the (now in my opinion, seedy) gmail only limits something like 100 email something (sends, but I haven’t sent 100 emails and am still getting this bandwith error?) possibly per day.  Bollocks.  The quest for good email app and simple email accounts goes on!  I may just use gmail for archive.  It’s caused me tons of headaches and I have wanted to move away from it for a long time.  Indeed, my 40-folder sub-folder nested hierarchy is indicative of not liking the account and festering it with overly-complex sub-structures.  So maybe I’ll just have my co.uk account in thunderbird and load all historical accounts in Netscape, or pop3 the old accounts and only keep one current account IMAP.  Will, see have to resolve bandwith limit error (by new/non-gmail account or adjusting settings, likely the former). This may solidify me switching fully to my live.co.uk account, one that I like much more anyways!  Jolly good.  The emails send, they just get all sixes and sevens in the client and you get bombarded with alert boxes upon sending.  I do like the synced alarms (with snooze in Thunderbird.  I think thunderbird is most likely to be calendar app of choice.  The email app am still tinkering with.

The Goal Achievement Checklist for this OS Project

• √Triple Boot OS — I can boot in Windows 7, Linux Mint 9, or Mac OS 10.6 (which I haven’t and likely will not boot in Mac much anymore).  Notes: May repartition drives, providing different distribution so that Windows has 250GB, Linux 150GB, Mac OS 100GB.
  • √Installed awesome apps.
  • √UK Theme on Windows 7 is sick.
  • √Selective and simplified Install set of applications.  I loathe anything bloated from OSes, to individual apps. So I made a folder “windows7_installers_worked” to keep all the installers for applications that I know I use, and they work (Thunderbird, Firefox, Download Manager, Synergy, Feeddemon, etc).  And the addons that work and I use in any of those respective apps.  After that’s polished and tested (I still use the apps) I can pop all those installers on a flash-drive or burn them onto a DVD and I’ve got my “instant full install DVD/Flash-Drive” after I reinstall the OS software.  I basically test, tinker, try out apps and things that I may/may not like, find what I do like, keep that installer, so if/when I reinstall OS fresh I don’t have to experiment and can jump straight to installing only what I need and use, efficiency and simplicity defined!
• √Calendars
  • √Two-Way Modification – Done.  Thanks to gcal, thunderbird, and the clincher Provider for Google Calendar add-on.
  • √Syncing/BU on Server — Done. The calendars are from gcal, modified in thunderbird.
  • √All old calendars uploaded and removed from local drives.  The Historical GTD 5-calendar “recording every event” craziness is backed up and I can subscribe to it instead of freakishly in a state of panic and worry about it being on a local drive (plus those 5-old-calendars I don’t touch anymore and utilize solely for self-therapy and historical review).  All I need to do is ensure those are individually on gcal, and then delete the local versions.  Sweet!  I much greatly prefer having the main version of something online and then I can setup backups to local areas, but that way, the “local backup” is itself already a backup of a backup (good for security and minizing anxiety of data!).
  • √Good, simple, clutter-free calendar app.  Done. Thunderbird Lightning suffices.
  • √View All events (historical events from past two years) in list form.  Done.  Only other place I saw this was buggy Chandler, so Thunderbird accomplishes this.
• Email
  • Simplicity of only 1 or 2 accounts.  Getting there.  Not quite yet whittled this down.
  • √All email on servers, IMAPed.  All email from all the funky local POP3 formats I have uploaded on various gmail accounts.  This was a headache and a massive relief and “missing piece of the puzzle” to have those 2003-2006 emails all on server.
  • Only thing left is to maybe designate a work-email, everything else email, and archive email.  But it’s all backed-up and off local hard drives, so that’s excellent success.
  • √+Simple, intuivie, non-bulky email app for online and offline viewing.  Thunderbird and Netscape accomplish this.
• √Tasks — Handled with Remeber the Milk at the moment, and/or Thunderbird.  After GTD hell, I’m not as interested in an imprisoning multitude of task-lists, so the fact that this isn’t so solidified isn’t as much of a problem and reflects my disinterest in many task management files.

Jolly Good!  This was very successful.

s2010_17_06._08:10:56 I’m using Netscape for email.  Calendars in Thunderbird (likely), but definitely netscape.  I have cutting edge most of everything else (the latest firefox addons, triple-booting etc).  One thing I’ve learned in life is somethings you keep, even though they’re old, because they work.  I’ve dried 5 different wallets and still have the exact same one (not the same style, but the exact same wallet) I had when  Iwas 10!  Netscape works, there’s few bandwith errors (even if that’s a gmail problem), it’s simply and emails can get complex so I can’t have a complex email program (yin/yang right? right.) .  It’s free, it’s simple, and it was the first email app I really used back in the 90s haha! Good times.

Reviewing Booting Terminology

After being marooned and imprisoned in Mac-Land (where Apple locks it’s cult-worshipping users out of interacting with a lot of the hardware, which really bites, because that’s the best part of computer!) I had to reacquaint myself with some jargon used in Windows and Linux booting for multiple-OS savviness.  Obviously I could’ve gone much more in-depth.   There’s full books written on just EFI let alone the transition from from the different partition

MBR – Master Boot Record (replaced by GPT).  The first sector, Sector 0 (a mere 512-byte sector), of the boot hard disk volume.
GPT –  GUID Partion Table; the layout of the partitioning table on the physical disk.  replaced by EFI.  Microsof’ts definition of GPT

GPT provides a more flexible mechanism for partitioning disks than the older Master Boot Record (MBR) partitioning scheme that has been common to PCs.

EFI — Extensible firware interface.
BIOS – Basic input output system.  The BIOS loads and starts an operating system.
and just because it sounds piratey (and is a genuinely useful concept in booting jargon)
Bootstrapping.  Aside from it’s references in the delightful Baron Munchausen, and “as a metaphor, meaning to better oneself by one’s own unaided efforts, was in use in 1922″, bootstrapping refers to in computing basically a very simple program “jump-starting” a much more sophisticated and complex program, like an OS (*cough* thus, when getting a triple-boot to work, boostrapping is significant).

Reflecting on Multi-Operating Systems

Regarding Mac OS and Windows, I’m interested in operating systems in general so delaying eliminating Mac OS from my work may be a slight incentive to tinker with mac, but that’s not really an interest at all.  I felt I wasted a lot of time on mac and compared to the fully-amped aviation-like Windows 7, Mac OS seems like tinker toy with few features, relatively few collaboraters, and just the result of cult product.  But that’s a little too opinionated.  Features alone, Windows 7 is soo sooo sooo much more professional and smooth and efficient and quality from the right-clicking features to the efficiently-designed Windows 7 .  I’m impressed with how Win7 hasloads of features but still maintaining an incredibly streamlined and non-bloated effect.  I’m a huge fan of Win7 and given my massive interest and experience with computers over 20+ years it’s preposterous how long I’ve delayed fully trying out ANY distro of Windows (and Linux for that matter)!  I’ve been trapped in Mac; I’ve craved Windows (and a bit of Linux!).  Regarding actions on each operating system, I’ll just say this:

• On Windows 7 I’m writing this blog entry (highly technical, professional, about a 40-20,000 foot planning perspective)
• On Linux I wrote a very impassioned facebook not that may become a blog entry on my love atheism (unquestionably a 50,000 foot planning/discussion perspective)
• On Macs…I basically eat food and don’t do much, but I was scanning in a few photos from elementary school (the tail end of an enormous 1000s upon 1000s of photo archiving almsot all papers and material things from past memories onto the computer, which I then can access from any OS).

So maybe because Linux is “open source” I think of things that are “free and non-business” like atheism.  Maybe I feel very productive and professional with windows so that’s why these very techie blogs emerge in that OS, and Mac is just the OS I’ve used for over 95% of my computing experience in the past (*cough and tha twill be merely past because all efficiency has increased using Windows 7) maybe I just dink around. lol.  I am finishing up some old archiving projects on Mac OS but that’s only because of drivers for the scanner and digital camera.  Jolly good.  Will be massively relieved when the last few scans and digital photographs have been taken and all hard-copies are practically gone (many burned! xD) is over and everything is digital and I’ll have the rewards of my efforts!

I’ve evolved my past 5 studies to more uplifting, validating, clarifying studies.  The transduction are as follows:

• Psychology —> Video Games!  Simply the opposite of psychology. Instead of imprisoning one self with self-dialogue “snares” , actually just doing things in a game or real world.  Escaping prison of mind.  This one’s complex and I fully don’t understand it honestly, but it’s something along the lines of gamers are a community, they’re a niche (or “we” are a niche really).  We help each other out.  Friends are the best shrinks, psychologists, coaches in teh world and better. So gamers are friends, thus gaming (via the community of gamers) eclipses psychology completely, replacing it with something progressive, fun, cooperative, exciting as, and full of tons of free expression within the uplifting confines of a great game.  There’s room for passion and interacting but always the forward-moving, measurable progression in game.  Both those (the progress and passion) create massive clarity and peace.  This sounds a bit “zen huey-looey” but hey, I reckon I take gaming seriously.  I’m serious enough about it and the gaming community to recognize that hte best “therapy” one could ever provide or receive occured with mates!  Heck, I even consoled a mate about his dad’s cancer on vent once!  Bloody hell! I don’t expect gaming community to be that intense, but video games are moving in the right direction: involved, not paralyzed behind a 4th wall, and not to mention fun and structured.  Most of all, I LIKE video games!  I get charged with a group of gamers cooperatively working together in a player verse player basis to meet a goal that can only be ascertained with such cooperation!  Rockin’ good time!
• Computers —>  Neuroscience and Mnemonics and NLP and a few “conditionals” to conduct social interactions.  Utilizing the mind with it’s far-more-advanced technology than a computer as if it were a computer that’s always with you! Mnemonics has been a massively reoccurring interest in my life.  I studied it extensively after returning from my trip in the Mexico Yucatan in 2002.  I had the lobes of the brain on my desktop throughout college (this is also because my computer(s) basically are my brain(s) haha!), and NLP can create some aligning visualizations and NLP is great for anti-persuasion, so I only make choices that are keyed in with what I want and need not because someone else is effective at sales or persuading me off center.  NLP has some interesting hypnosis trance stuff which I may be trying to avoid but at least learning about it is effective.  The computer science moving towards social behavior deserves some explanation.  In fact all of these transmutations, uncertainly deserve more explanation, but hey, one step at a time.  Using computer science for social conditionals would mean setting up, for example, and if statement so that:
  • if (xyz_conditional) {
  • do_abc_expression;
  • }
  • which would conduct and organize my social interactions producing more flow, greater ease, heightened simplicity, and less anxiety because it’s all “programmed”!  This could be imprisoning in once sense, but when you’re constantly worried about what to say or do, this creates a very stabilizing ease.  Excellent!
• Drama        —> Music, namely classical, and Math.  ufoMathematical, auditory, some music has “performance” but is so much more precise, it makes drama look like sludge.  A comparison I think would be a commercial is to drama as a great feature film i to music.  That aside, some talented performers are very musical in their performance even if labeled “drama”.  Drama, especially with Eric Berne’s “drama triangles” with social “transactions” is the exact rubbish that I am moving away from.  Perpetually hold the adult title and discard the time-consuming and confusing states of stagnation and stuckness that produce quagmires of social confusion.  Math and classical music are the respective left and right brains of crispness and clarity. Quality times.
• English       —-> Voice work.  Not stuck trapped communicating through keyboard-pecking and expressing self though voice but WITH the structured composition learned from writing is marvelous and unquestionably an advancement.  I just spent about an hour photographing for digital archive, my book…that I wrote…that was basically notes on self-help book rubbish…and (it was called Validate Your Life) and get this utter blithering insanity…I actually took notes and highlights and bloody MARGIN comments on my own book!  So I photo-scanned all that in and put all the crumpled paper in a bag to burn, discard or just rummage through for remembering of how pathetically stuck my life was in the past withe self-help rubbish and religion infecting my thoughts! Math, anatomy, games, all of these new transmutations have revealed to me that illusion spell I was under in writing that self-help rubbish which was just regurgitated self-help rubbish I had previously read.
• Politics        —> Honesty and Journal-writing and Sharing!  Additionally possibly aquatic, swimming workouts, health.   The antithesis of politics.  My goal is not to be invulnerable, but vulnerability makes you incredibly solid and strong and connected.  To quote an unsophisticated source, Ferguson says “if you’re honest, you’re bullet-proof”.  I’m interested imperfection.  Conveying my faults, my problems, my confusions, my anxieties.  That’s being real for me and that leaves politics in a pathetic useless mangled dusty pile of rubbish.  Journaling and sharing that is clarity.  Also I know a lot of aquatic fun is tied in with these transmutations.  Maybe swimming and aquatic snorkeling and whatnot would be the antithesis of politics because there’s absolutely no red-tape (assuming you’re allowed to swim where you can) and there’s no political sticky rubbish.

I don’t know which category this belongs to but I’m at the tail end of migrating all of my belongings to computerized format.  So that I review material possessions namely in thousands of photographs I have of places visited, pottery made, old board games, and the like.  Massively convenient and congruent with simplicity and mobility.  Jolly good to that!

Nature and Wilderness has always been an ongoing interest.  The intelligence of Nature is stuff that poets ramble on about yada-yada…I like Nature because there’s so much math in it.  Fibonacci in leaf formations and petals, the incredibly intricate electrical “wiring” and indeed “voltages” of an organisms nervous system.  Fantastic stuff.