I first heard of persistence hunting towards the end of Born to Run, Christopher McDougall’s manifesto on running. McDougall seeks an explanation for the human being’s incredible ability at distance running and offers persistence hunting as an explanation.
I am one third of the way into Randy Olson’s Don’t Be Such a Scientist, which offers communication assistance to the scientifically inclined. This book is growing on me and has helped me identify and describe a lot of the problems I have in communication and see in my engineering coworkers. On page 69 Olson relates a quote that provides the fundamental guide for communications: “arouse and fulfull”.
I posted pictures from my backpacking trip with Ruth to Emigrant Wilderness in Stanislaus National forest. I’m starting to wonder when I should use this site as opposed to Facebook.
Six or seven years ago I became intrigued with becoming the Internet’s “Scott Drummonds”. My Dad had called me up to brag that his home page ranked number one on Google, Yahoo, and HotBot, or some other engine BGE (before the Google era.) I wasn’t sure how he had done it, but I knew that I wanted to do the same. And why stop at number one? Why not go for total domination of the top 10? I’ve always been curious as to how this can be done.
This past week Ruth and I finally acquired and installed the final pieces to the remodeled bathroom. The hard work being behind us, its a relative joy to attach the final accouterments. Well, they’re not entirely aesthetic, obviously, as a bathroom ain’t quite complete until it has light and a mirror.
The bathroom renovation is nearly behind us now and only a few more changes are needed to polish the room off. There was an unanticipated complexity in many of the tasks but things progressed on schedule and we weren’t ever derailed for long. Before offering the last piece showing the completed room with newly-installed light and mirror, I want to show a few pictures of a funny phenomenon that occurred during construction.
After installing our beautiful new tile throughout the downstairs entryway and bathroom we finally came to the most anticipated part of the project: installation and painting. Deconstruction is a thankless task that only begets more work. But the process of adding new things always improves the environment and each addition rewarded us with a sense of accomplishment that carried us through the rest of the project.
Several years back I developed an interest in applying for Irish citizenship through ancestry. Ireland provides the children and grandchildren of Irish citizens the ability to apply for Irish citizenship and I’d very much like to have dual citizenship. I spent a little time on this a few years back but became totally discouraged with the amount of documentation needed, my estimate of how much work it would take for me to get it, and the processing time of the Irish government. My mother has graciously agreed to help me in getting this document, so I’m going to lay out the activities here during our collaboration.
On furious stretch of demolition brought us to the conclusion of the last article I wrote on my home bathroom renovation project. At this point in the story the tile, carpet, and vinyl had been removed (mainly) and vanity and toilet were destroyed. I was suffering from a bit of 9/11 lung but was otherwise prepared for the constructive part of this exercise.
I’ve been waxing wishful for years on plans to renovate some key areas of my home. The upstairs vanity needs a replacement, the kitchen is vintage 80’s faux-Oak and vinyl, and the downstairs bathroom is a wreck. The downstairs bathroom was the worst of these for me; an area I considered fixable and a terrible eyesore. About four weeks ago Ruth and I were driving past a Lowe’s and decided to pop in and check out the prices of tile. 24 hours later we were tearing the bathroom apart.