Irritated always due to diet ~

One of the things I have learned over the past few years is that what I eat contributes to my behavior.

For many years I ate what is now considered a poor diet. Greasy chicken, mashed potatoes, low-nutrient canned vegetables, sugar and junky desserts. It's what I grew up on and felt a need to continue to eat that way.

I was irritated and angry almost all of the time. The only time I wasn't irritated and angry was when I was getting my way and eating.

I've changed a lot if variables in my life. Fresh vegetables, cruciferous when I can, almost no carbonated soda, added coffee, turmeric and green teas, so different now. I feel less inflamed and more calm.


Hopefully it's helping. We'll see...

Mask reactions ~

Where I work they have issued a mask "mandate". This means that while I am in the building I am "required" to wear a mask. The mandate was issued to help reduce the possibility of spread of the COVID-19 corona virus during a national emergency.

Most of the people that I work with are great puzzle solvers. So they've taken this new requirement and done what most people are doing, adapting and adjusting their lives. There is grumbling, there is rebellion, but for the most part people comply with the new rule.

Sadly some that think this actually helps reduce the spread of the COVID-19 corona virus see others not being as strict about it as they are get upset and start to complain about the rebels. (Can we still call people "rebels"?) What I think when I hear this complaint about someone else not wearing a mask correctly or at all is that the complainer should take care of themselves and not worry about what others are doing. And if the risk is too high for them they should not be at work.

Fear is such a powerful motivator. A negative one, but a powerful one. It saddens me to see so many people fall under the spell of people using fear to manipulate and control others.

How email works ~

In our always connected world email continues to be in important tool of communication and in accomplishing things. But I don't know that people really understand how email works.

The way I think about email is it's like a postcard being sent through the mail. Also there is carriers can look at your postcard and read it and the even stop it from progressing but they normally don't. Everywhere that postcard goes the person touching it can flip it over and see what you sent. They can even add to that if they wanted to. Can't really take away from it unless they tear it apart. But it's an open bit of communication. This is how I think of an email.

When you type up an email and hit send your email goes from your computer or the webpage where you do email to an email server and then that email server forwards it on to another email server until it gets to the server that has been addressed. If you address@gmail.com the email will go a couple hops maybe even just one hop to the Google servers and then be made available to Gmail account. If it goes to a business account or business site then that email gets handed from server to server intelligence to that server that businesses server and then it's made available to the person that loves and with that email address account. If you run a small personal server like I do I could be several hops to get to it. But that's what the Internet is made of-servers all interconnected and sharing the burden of moving data around.

So an email that you send with your bank account number and your password on how to login can basically be read by anybody that has access to the servers that that email passes through. Most people managing servers don't sit there and read the emails passing through their fingers by some do. Some save copies and then review them later for keywords like password or ID or account number. As I have to be careful sending an email with the personal information. It might be better to break that up at the two or multiple emails or better yet don't send the account information at all. Texting is a little bit better but not much. Better to do voice although since were all using cell phones that can be plucked out of the air but most people are monitoring cell phone frequencies and can't really track them as they switch from tower to tower.

I guess what I'm trying to get out his email is a wonder of communication but is open for people to read. Another word for that is to have.

So be careful out there! Email is awesome and can create a personal touch with people but it's also open can be used grab information is imposed by.

I love modern technology!

Great book - How to be like Walt ~

I really enjoyed the book how to be like a ball: capturing the Disney magic every day of your life. The book was written almost like a biography and told the story of Walt Disney. I talked about 20 lived in the Midwest as a boy. I talked about how he got started animating and then how is that talent and curiosity grew in that field. It talked about his life becoming a movie mogul and pushing the edges of what animation could do when hiring animators and growing the company and all that. It was a very fascinating read!

Biggest things that I got from it is Walt was always curious and he was always thinking about the future and how things that he was learning and running across now could be used in future endeavors. How about tomorrow? Was one of the most memorable quotes that they talked about in the book.

I love how he built the team around him to where he could come up with some wacky idea like building the Matterhorn in Disneyland and just sending a postcard from my Europe and say build this and then he gets back in their puzzling through how to build it. I love how they talk about later on in life how he learned about anima Tronics and the young people into the company that could do those sorts of things so that he could bring Abraham Lincoln to life at the world's fair and then bring it back to Disneyland in the Hall of Presidents.

The whole book was interesting, though for the end when he knew that it was talking about his upcoming passing away and the company going on without him I got kind of sad but it didn't drag too much. Needn't it ended on high notes and talk about all the occult accomplishments that the people had as they carried on without him. Epcot turned into the themepark instead of the city of tomorrow that he wanted to build but that's okay.

I highly recommend how to be like Walt exclamation point it was a good book and I gleaned a lot from it.

Come a long way ~

Arrogant. Brash. Condescending.

These are all accusations and feedback that I've gotten in the past year or two.

I find this very interesting after being the shy teenager that was scared to do anything social in high school, after being the wallflower and the quiet guy for so long. I read all those books and articles on how confidence is king and putting yourself out there is the only way to actually advance and make progress. I was taught as an air traffic controller that I needed to sound like I knew what I was doing whether I did or not. And that when I walked into a room I should think I am the best one here controller wise.

I've come a long way!

Skimmers ~

Chris Brogan said in a recent webinar that we have become a nation of skimmers. He was talking about email marketing and how your email subject line has to capture the attention of the receiver enough so that they open the email and then the first couple of lines have to capture their attention on love so that they actually read the rest of the email.

I agree but I wonder what that is doing to us.

If you don't dig a little bit deeper or look past somebody's poor attempt to communicate you could miss working with somebody that is awesome but is not refined. You could easily get duped into going with the strong, the fast, the beautiful, the one that is most in tune with you and the way you think. And while those are all things that we should look for in capturing all that the thing that I keep hearing preached at us by society as diversity and our differences are what make us stronger.

I also wonder about how that does with our relationship with God. God uses the we, the broken, the ones that are just a little off, people that are not quite perfect in the eyes of those around them but are made perfect when he touches them. And so if we rush by and go with that thing that is just right or skim and miss the slower person do we miss out on someone that God is using to accomplish really great things?

I guess I long for the depth. My wife and I are in this phase where we are reading devotionals in the Bible. There quick and tiny bites of thought and then a couple of verses to think through something over the course of 5 to 10 days. I can't say that I remember any of them distinctly. I remember the vibe and the feeling in the small sense of accomplishment and who I'm a practicing Christian now rather than just a person that says I'm a Christian. But this skimming, especially of God's word, doesn't really seem to get me into the place where I need to be.

I've made it a priority to listen to a chapter of the book of Proverbs every day. That's worked out well for about four months. I listened to the chapter for whatever day of the month it is. The other day I was listening to it out loud and my wife wanted to know why was listening to information about wars. When I told her it was the Bible she didn't believe me.

But it is actually helping me because I continue to think about Proverbs as I go through my day-to-day life. And I am applying what I'm learning is this stuff passes through my head and through my ears and through my eyes. And it does seem to be helping.

So I guess the skimming and constant ingestion of Proverbs is helping me in the long run.

I want to be known as a skimmer. I don't want to be known as someone who stays on the surface. So many people that I know. But how are you as their cursory greeting and they don't really mean it nor do they care how I am they just say it out of habit. I'm trying to change from doing that myself to asking something different when I greet people or just greet them. But it's funny the reaction that I get because they look at me as if something is missing. It's almost as if skimming shows that you care and in some ways and to some people.

Yeah, I saw your email but I didn't read the whole thing is a common answer I get. And so I don't send long emails and I tend to pair them down to make them more appetizing and appealing to whoever I'm sending information to.

I just think that all this skimming, while beneficial in the short run, could turn us into a bunch of people that really don't care. Or are perceived to not care.

Sharing germs ~

It's funny the last year I wrote about the question that I had about church. My question was: does the offering plate or bucket help us become more bonded together by sharing germs and bacteria?

In this time of the coronavirus and all the fear surrounding it is question the is even more important to ponder now. One of the things that we do is as we do life together we share resources and touch the same things. Our bodies battled the same germs. Every school year parents go through the first 2 to 3 weeks of school being sick weeks where everybody's dealing with new germs and new bugs and all that stuff. And as you get older and you're more removed from kids when you do get around a group of kids you tend to catch a cold or feel kinda sick afterwords because of the germs that your body is dealing with that it's not used to.

Now we have all these people that are so scared of catching this novel or new if you want to use normal English coronavirus. And so they are covering up and wearing masks and not touching or breathing together and getting to a place where nobody will build their immunity just by going out.

I knew guys that would joke about how they would go for walks in public places and then not wash their hands or anything after touching handrails and stuff because they wanted to build immunity. Now with everybody so for scared that they're not going to expose themselves to germs for fear of catching something that kills 75-year-old people for the most part organist start losing more and more immunity because were not sharing germs the way we did before.

It's just sad! It's sad watching everyone get so scared over something on I'm very concerned that death rates will go up because we are not in this together truly. What was that saying that has been true all along? Divide and conquer.