Taking a minuscule break from my breakneck studying routine, because it's important.
Time is running short, so I'll be brief, and then follow my nose back into the books.
I have from time to time posted about politics. Last year I posted a vlog about truth. Prior to that I posted about the risks of the Trump presidency, here, and here.
I wasn't surprised when some thought I was overreacting, that things would never be that bad. After all, lies and meaningless bluster don't kill, right?
There are elections looming now. There's still time to think carefully, and to consider the importance of truth, no matter what your particular stripe might be. And to vote.
Here are some sobering thoughts to help with that chore.
I remember the year, not that long ago, when I posted over 100 times.
Last year I became convinced that the future was video and I tied a vlog to my blog and the posting frequency plummeted.
It's sad in a way, because you get into the habit of posting, and you have an audience of loyal readers, and in some way you drift away from that mode of expression, the constant give and take, and it hurts.
The irony is that the time commitment to social media ramps up considerably when you shift from blogging to vlogging.
There's a natural equation or algorithm at play here. The busier I get, the less presence I have here. That troubles me, but, what can you do?
You gotta do what you gotta do!
This year dawns with a mountain in plain view that I must climb. Like a friend who leaves to climb Everest, it means that there is going to be absence in your life, as my life gets really, really interesting.
It's all explained in the video, so have a look.
I really do feel that I am letting you down by not posting more blog posts or vlog episodes, so I may decide to shift gears and come back here to let you know that all is well and give you an idea of my progress.
Once thing is certain: I am more committed than ever to my Life on two wheels so, when I return from that mountaintop, I will return here.
As I struggle to wrap my mind around YouTube and my barely nascent career as a YouTube 'creator', there are still mysteries in the blogosphere that are curious puzzles I am likely never to solve.
Among the puzzles are messages that 2017 has floated into my inbox praising this blog as a top-rated go-to moto-blog. As much as I can't help lapping up the praise, I remain skeptical.
There was a Dilbert cartoon I stumbled on that I have alluded to in the past where the punchline was "will work for recognition". Since I don't get any financial reward for the work I do here, in the Dilbert spirit I have posted my 'awards' in the sidebar.
Most recently, I received a very nice email from some kind folks informing me that science and statistics had rewarded me with a fresh accolade:
I apologize for this evil display of pride, justly ranked among the seven deadly sins. Yet, I just can't help myself. In my defense, I feel that the kind people who went to the effort to find and list my blog deserve to have me recognize the recognition. There's that, plus, as the internet evolves as it must, this ephemeral praise will evaporate like the gasoline I often manage to spill when I gas up the Vespa. In that spirit this post is where the recognition belongs, where it will get buried as time passes and future posts pile on, eventually sinking into Google's bottomless basement storage locker until it gets dredged up from time to time in response to some random search.
Oh well, that's all for now.
It's time for me to get back to my 'studio' to grind away at the YouTube challenge cum mystery. I've got to crack 10,000 views on my channel to unlock some prizes in the shape of enhanced permissions and the shadowy possibility of some monetization that may or may not ever materialize. In this respect I'm like a teenager toiling away at a video game in the basement hoping that today is the day that I unlock the Sceptre of Ottokar (no... wait, that was a Tintin story...).
The subject is ultra-dry, and potentially crushingly boring.
It's about document management. More specifically document management for governance professionals.
I am working hard to inject as much wit and humour as possible as I plod along. With a little luck, my students and readers will come to share my passion for organizing the heck out of a potential maelstrom of information.
Governance is a fascinating field because you work at the highest level of the organization you serve. The nature of the beast is that you find yourself responsible for a broad range of activities spanning the gamut from running the Board of Directors, to corporate and securities law compliance, ethics monitoring training and compliance, and a bunch of other stuff, as well as the mundane range of responsibilities that come with management responsibility including staffing, budgeting and the rest.
The result is that in no time you find yourself surrounded by records: minute books, corporate files, insider reporting files, mergers and acquisitions files, stock exchange compliance files, and the list goes on, and on, and on.
The key to taming the beast is to develop strong records management skills.
More or less in that vein, a trivial little skill I taught myself is to make quick-and-dirty custom-printed tabs to label files and books.
When a file becomes thick with documents, and grows into one volume after another, being able to find the four or five key documents in a hurry is a real blessing. The same goes for the key sections of the numerous weighty books sitting on the shelf. Thick heavy books like "everything you need to know about UK corporations law but were afraid to ask" (a thousand-plus page tome, and not its real name). You get the picture.
In the context of working on the book, studying for Bar exams to come in March (yes, life is like a huge game of snakes and ladders after all), and organizing my home office, I remembered my little Post-it notes hack.
It occurred to me that some of you might benefit from this little trick as well.
Hopefully I managed to convey the gist of this trick in the video.
The music for this episode is Santorini 2 by Vibe Mountain made available courtesy of the YouTube Audio Library.
Well, not really. I mean, don't get me wrong, I aspire to viraldom, but I'm not into kidding myself, I'm nowhere even remotely close to that. Seriously.
In this episode come along as a fetch a Christmas tree as a favour to my daughter Lauren.
This is where you learn that when you ride a Vespa, no errand is beyond reach.
The music for this episode of the vlog is Swipesy Cakewalk by E's Jammy Jams made available courtesy of the YouTube Audio Library.
If you've been living under a rock, and you've never heard of Steve Williams and Scooter in the Sticks, by all means go have a peak at what Steve's up to.
If you were hoping that this episode was going to be Five-0 in the 6ixI I'm afraid it's still in the studio waiting for more bits and pieces to come together. Hopefully when it finally sees the light of day you won't be disappointed. Also in the works are Vespa maintenance videos including an oil change, hub oil change, and yes, a cooling system flush and thermostat replacement. Exciting stuff indeed.
I've posted before about my Ray Ban Outdoorsman aviators. My optometrist had told me, way back in 2011, that the Ray Ban Outdoorsman had been discontinued.
In the years I have owned them, they have been out of style, in style, out of style, back in favour, outcast, and now, really back in style. I don't care, truly I don't. I love my Ray Bans.
They broke (actually only the left temple broke) because I subjected them to poor treatment. I admit this freely now, just as I admitted it in the past. First off, they are intended for use they way they come from the store, i.e. not with prescription lenses. I forced the frames to accept prescription lenses (which in fairness, is not really a problem).
The real abuse happened as my eyesight deteriorated over time. As my eyes got funkier, the lenses got way curvier, and well, there's the rub. Literally.
Watch the video. I think that I succeeded in describing the failure in exquisite detail that even the most casual viewer will immediately understand.
Now for the good news.
If you have had similar issues, if you have given up wearing Ray Ban aviators because your prescription is interfering with the actual operation of the frames, then especially watch the video, because all these years later, I finally found the cure. Watch the video.
I am content, chuffed, happy, ecstatic really, that I now have a pair of Ray Ban Outdoorsman aviators that will outlive me, no matter how pathetic my eyesight becomes.
Yay!
Detailed show notes:
My Ray Ban sunglasses are the Outdoorsman model (model number RB3030) purchased in 1977 and worn pretty much daily ever since. The left temple snapped three weeks ago. The lenses are my existing prescription lenses. Here’s a link to the glasses.
Why would anyone in their right mind choose to write a blog?
Well... if that is a question that occasionally pops up as you browse among the more than 650 million web sites currently cluttering the interwebs, while you keep bumping into some of the estimated 200 million sites that are blogs, and you scratch your head wondering what on earth could possibly drive a person to blog, here, on a silver platter, is a golden opportunity to learn why two of us are driven to post aspects of their daily lives for all to see. Watch the video.
In fact, for all you social or behavioral scientists and psychiatrists out there, this is particularly exciting, because as Steve Williams and I, both of us seasoned well-followed, and (hopefully) well-respected bloggers candidly expose our respective motives, it will no doubt thrill you to know that I started blogging in some measure because I felt compelled to follow Steve's example. Somewhere in that overly long, tangled sentence, there is the tip of an epidemiological study in psychiatry begging to begin. Watch the video.
Anyway... I'm afraid you'll be compelled to watch the video if you really want to learn what makes us tick. Good luck with that. Watch the video.
If any of those social scientists and psychiatrists I alluded to watch the video and have insights into our character flaws they'd care to share in the fleeting hope that both, or either of us, might use those insights to mitigate our failings, please leave a comment below. You just never know. Please watch the video.
