According to wikipedia there is a system for classifying human feces called “The Bristol Stoll Scale“. I think this need to be integrated with my latest tech software gadget, Bullfighter than anti-bull, anto jargon fighter.

Masquerading as an indie-hipster I saw the band “Last Days of April” last night.

I think it’s time for me to switch back to tea — I’ve been drinking far too much coffee in the last six months.

When I was in Darjeeling last month I ended up in a tea shop called Nathmulls. The staff at Nathmulls did a really fantastic job at helping me pick some teas that were really superb.

I usually have trouble when I buy tea because there are simply too many choices. My favorite local tea shop in Minnesota is great about letting you smell tea, but it’s very hard to correlate a smell and the taste of a tea. Nathmulls helpful staff helped me narrow down my choices to a few basic varieties and then let me try a range of teas for each variety. For instance, I knew wanted a white tea. They made four or five cups of white tea and let me sample them. The samples were expertly made, hot and steeped for exactly the right amount of time. I still had difficulty picking my favorite, since each batch had at least two great teas in it. In the end I bought a lot more tea than I expected. It doesn’t matter how you measure it — dollars, rupees, grams or ounces — it was more than I expected. When I got back to my room I actually wondered if it was going to fit in my backpack for the journey home.

Since I’ve gotten home, I have still been drinking mostly coffee even though I bought all this amazing tea. It’s not because I love coffee more or because I need the heavier stimulant dose of coffee. I’ve been drinking coffee for the immediate gratification that I can get by walking down the hallway and pressing a button. With tea, I walk down the hallway, press a button and then wait for the tea to steep.

The waiting is the real problem.

Lately I imagine I’m too busy to wait for tea. I’m too busy to watch the clock and make sure I steep the tea the correct amount of time. I’m too busy to sit and smell the tea as it develops that sweet scent.

This is why I need to switch back to tea. Waiting is an important discipline. Taking a minute or two to engage in a brief ritual, like brewing tea, is the kind of mental practice that actually makes you capable of accomplishing more. It’s tempting to think that staying busy is the best way to accomplish more, but real accomplishment may require avoiding the urgent in favor of the important. Making time for your ideas to brew and ferment can only lead to more clarity and purpose.

So is it coffee, tea or me? I think the answer is switching to tea means a better me.

The U.S. Congress would never consider a proposal to add a “[7 day love vacation](http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Finnish+Parliament+debates+proposal+for+love+vacations+/1135234799696)” where everyone is encouraged to “devote themselves to each other “both at an erotic and emotional level”". A member of the Finnish parliament, Tommy Tabermann, proposed this recently to the Eduskunta. The proposal was debated and sent to committee for study.
Being married to a Finn I can say I find this worthy of study as well.

This looks like a pretty neat idea. Not only can I create a comic strip sans talent, I can share it, let people comment, let them edit it – this seems like fun to me. This seems like a lot more fun than “super-poking” someone or sending them a virtual banana for a real dollar.

If you don’t recognize this man you probably have not been watching enough TV lately. This is Nick Arrojo, who is famous due to his role as supporting cast on Jeannie’s favorite TV show "What Not to Wear". If you aren’t familiar with this show it is a one of those reality make over shows. Basically a victim participates in the show has all their clothes thrown out and they get to spend $5,000 on a new wardrobe. The show features everything you might expect including the stars, Stacy & Clinton, who mock the victim’s previous clothing choices and provide guidance for spending the $5,000.

Nick visited the Mall of America recently as part of a store opening event. Jeannie stood in line for an autograph as well as a mini hair consultation.

I finally got around to switching my timbu.org email to be managed by google apps. It’s a much nicer interface than the cPanel front end I use now. Having google manage my email server doesn’t really give me anything new, rather it means that I stop worrying about the size of email on my web server – which has been a problem in the past. At the moment, they don’t really advertise themselves like an ISP, but you could easily cobble together something exactly like a hosting account by putting all their services together.

I still love my ISP and wouldn’t be willing to switch … yet.

Ethen Zuckerman posted some great notes on his talk, "The Cute Cat Theory Talk" at Etech. On the days when I let my cynicism subscription lapse I like the idea that unfettered access to publications and publishing tools will really turn this world around for the better.

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I never played D&D growing up, but probably should have. One of the inventors, Gary Gygax passed away recently. This cartoon from xkcd.com seemed a fitting memorial.

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I’ve been looking through the papers posted by James Hamilton at Microsoft Research. Lot’s of really good data especially as it relates to the systems they have to to support, like Microsoft Live.

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Speaking of Live, I’ve been using Live Writer quite a bit lately. It’s really quite good, although for reasons I can’t quite figure out the backspace is really slow. While I’m super happy about google doc’s and the simplicity of use, Live Writer is a pretty good blogging client.

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Speaking of google … Google Calendar sync is now available. It sort of worked for me, although recurring meetings didn’t get synced. Now if my wife’s appointment book automatically appeared in my calendar I would know what is going on from day-to-day.