eric135

Moleskine -- My life in little black books...

 I love writing in little notebooks. I'm pretty digital usually, with most of my thoughts, projects and plans saved in some type of electronic device. But I've always loved writing in little notebooks.

My favorite is the Hardcover Pocket Moleskine Square Notebook, and am currently writing in two of them (I thought I lost one so I bought another, and then found it again months later). I also am writing in two Moleskine 5x8 (large) notebooks, a large Moleskine 5x8 Watercolor Notebook, a classic composition notebook (the cheap ones used in grade school, with the black and white marbled cover), and a large ruled "pleather" bound notebook that I bought sometime around 1983.

So what do I write in all this stuff?

Pocket Moleskine Square-ruled Notebook:

• This is my daily workhorse notebook. The first thing I do is number every other page. I don't know why I prefer the square-ruled paper, rather than lined or blank. I carry it in one of the pockets in my scrubs, or the back pocket of my jeans or shorts, or in my bag.
• Thoughts or quotes from books, magazines or blogs I'm reading
• titles and authors of books I want to read (and why I want to read them, if it's not obvious from the title)
• notes from news or "political television" about presidential candidates, during election times
• websites I want to read later (I usually run the URL through TinyURL first, using the Custom Alias feature to make the TinyURL more readable; I especially use this at work because we have a web filter and many sites are blocked
• map coordinates for places I want to save on my GPS (I hate the way my GPS sometimes doesn't put me right in the parking lot of the business I'm going to, so I use GoogleMaps Streetview to find the place and grab the exact latitude/longitude coordinates and send those to my GPS)
• notes during meetings
• miscellaneous contact information
• For topics that may run from one set of pages to another, at the end of an entry, I'll write -->35 indicating that the topic continues on page 35, and at the beginning of an entry I'll write 25<-- indicating a topic that is continued from page 25. 
• I don't keep an index. Instead, I'll type pertinent information I want to save permenantly into a .txt file that goes into a Dropbox folder that I can pull up anywhere and can search through.
• For text/images that I want transfered from one notebook to the next, I've started to save information in "MSK" files on www.moleskine.com, which I can add to, save, and print. The info is formated to fit the notebook -- I print them out, cut them down to size, and tape them into the first few pages of a new notebook. I limit this to hospital phone extensions, door lock codes, and faxes I use daily.

Large Moleskine Ruled Notebooks: I've been keeping a diary for years, although years may lapse between entries. This is the last thing I do before bed, an exercise to clear my mind before going to sleep. Because I am a frequent Ambien/zolpidem user, some of my entries are complete surprises to me when I read them later. I'm also using my diary to work on improving my worsening cursive handwriting. 

Large Moleskine Watercolor Journal: a hobby that comes and goes. If I don't feel like writing in my diary, I'll sometimes paint a bit before going to sleep. 

Classic Composition Notebook: I keep almost daily notes on the stock market, as well as whatever research about interesting companies, usually from the Investors Business Daily website.

 

A World I Never Made, Buy Don't Hold, SLV, a baby crying...

• I just finished A World I Never Made, an ebook by James Lepore. It's gotten an average of 4 stars out of 5 on Amazon. It isn't free any more, but it's still at a good price at about 4 bucks.
•  
  I've been keeping an eye on SLV, one of the ETFs I've been trading. I got the tip reading Buy Don't Hold, by Leslie Masonson. The book has a companion web site. The main point is that they have identified a universe of 74 ETFs, which they rank by relative strength. For the past while, the top-ranked ETF was SLV, which basically is silver. I got in on it at a fairly good price, but now that ETF is totally taking off, and everyone is watching it looking for signs of the inevitable bubble that is no doubt on its way. My only problem is that the other top ETFs have hardly moved in the past several weeks.
• Our next door neighbors have a little kid. I'd say he's about two. Every time he leaves in the morning, or really any time he leaves the apartment with one of his parents, he absolutely screams. We can hear him screaming out the door, down the stairs, as the parents strap him into the car seat. I swear I can hear him screaming as they turn the car around the corner. I don't know how they stand it. I mean, it really doesn't "bother" me at all but damn all that screaming, three or four times a day... gods how do they stand it? I never hear them yelling at him or acting all mad or upset, they just gradually move from the apartment (an inexplicable 10 or so minutes to lock the door), down the stairs (another 4 minutes -- they must take one step every 10 seconds). The process is reversed when they return. That kid is going to be an opera singer. Parents. God bless 'em.

A World I Never Made... Tweaking the Budget... Veronica Mars...

•  I've been reading many freebies from Amazon.com for my Kindle. Most of them I'll read the first few chapters and, if it hasn't captured my interest by then, I delete them. But this one (presently free as I write this) is a well-written mystery. It reminds me of the Stiegg Larsson books. Looking back at my download history, I'm batting about 1 book out of 7 that I actually read all the way through. Interestingly, it doesn't seem to matter whether I got the book for free, got it at a steep discount, or paid full price. Most of them suffer the delete button.
• The past few months, I've been unrelentingly focused on fine-tuning our household budget. It all started when I changed my role at work for a bit of a cut in pay, and then pretty much cut out all of the overtime I usually work. If I had to guess, the combination of the two has made about at 12% cut in my gross pay, and it got me to wonder how much of that is being burned up for absolutely nothing. We're actually not doing too bad, but I've gotten us accustomed to a more disciplined saving plan, and we've found a lot of crap items we've been paying for and not getting much use of, and cutting those out.
           One thing I've started to do is to itemize as much as I can on a per-paycheck basis. I get paid every other Thursday, and I plotted these out on a spreadsheet, one column for each paycheck, for the rest of the year. And then I looked at the activity on our checking account and plotted out when every bill is paid (just about everything is either an automatic draft or a bill pay from the same account) and entered that item for each paycheck. I tried to capture just about everything that we pay/purchase on a regular basis (right down to the cat food we buy every two weeks). The spreadsheet figures out how much cash is left after everything is paid for. It's been very eye-opening, but has helped get us back on track for saving a higher amount now than we did prior to my cut in pay. We've even started thinking about taking more out-of-town vacations, which we never do (not because we couldn't afford them but because we are such stay-at-home folks).
•  We've been watching Veronica Mars on Netflix. I just love her.
  
  
  

Taxes, Greatest Knight by Elizabeth Chadwick, Origins by Randolph Lalonde, Borders Books Bankruptcy

One of my New Year's resolutions was that I would blog more frequently...

Well, there goes that...

Some general things (in lieu of a more coherently cogitated post):

• This is the second year in a row that we've done our taxes way ahead of time. What usually happens is we wait until the night of April 15th, fretting over Turbotax or Taxcut software with sweatty palms, and then we just mail our returns late (the IRS has never given us any hell over it, regardless if we owe additional tax or are owed a refund). But then we thought that, if we could get our act together, we could use the refund from the State of Arizona to pay for the tax bill from the IRS (the two usually match within a couple hundred dollars). This year we sent our Arizona return in and got our refund after about a week, and we just mailed off the IRS return. Sweet, for us...
• I continue to be amazed at how much reading I've been doing, thanks to the Kindle I got for Christmas. Looking back at the books I've downloaded since Christmas day, I've read 18 books, the vast majority of which were totally free. About half of them are books about trading stocks and leadership, the other half are fiction. Of the fiction titles, about half of those are science fiction, the rest are mystery/thrillers. I'm currently reading an interesting diversion from my usual fare:
    Greatest Knight, by Elizabeth Chadwick. I know it looks a bit like a Harlequin Romance but it's actually a well written historical novel. I can't remember the last time I read one, and it was getting pretty good reviews. The author reportedly spent years researching the historical record, participating in re-enactments.
  I just finished Origins, by Randolph Lalond. Another free ebook, it is the first of a six-book series. I had never heard of the author but it was actually pretty good.
   And just to prove I really do read non-fiction, another book I'm currently working on is Firms of Endearment, by Sheth Sisodia and Wolfe. I know a few of my co-workers read my blog... let's just say I agree that the place could use a bit of endearment... ahem...
• All these weeks of reading my Kindle has made me feel a bit guilty over the recent announcements that Borders is going through Bankruptcy. It turns out that our local Borders will be one of the stores closed, and it was a favorite hangout for me to read books in big comfy chairs. I hate that the convenience of the Kindle has meant that all of my book business is going to Amazon. Their decision to have Kindle apps on just about every kind of device, and allowing syncing among all of them, has made the Kindle experience an excellent one, and then when you get it free, it makes everyone else look bad.
  
  
  
  

Free Kindle Book: Serial, by Jack Kilborn and Blake Crouch

 Serial, by Jack Kilborn and Blake Crouch: This short (three chapters) ebook is still currently free on Amazon. From the Amazon page:

Remember the twin golden rules of hitchhiking?
# 1: Don't go hitchhiking, because the driver who picks you up could be certifiably crazy.
# 2: Don't pick up hitchhikers, because the traveler you pick up could be raving nutcase.
So what if, on some dark, isolated road, Crazy #1 offered a ride to Nutcase #2?

When two of the most twisted minds in the world of horror fiction face off, the result is SERIAL, a terrifying tale of hitchhiking gone terribly wrong. Like a deeply twisted version of an "After School Special," SERIAL is the single most persuasive public service announcement on the hazards of free car rides. Beyond a thrilling piece of horrifying suspense, SERIAL is also a groundbreaking experiment in literary collaboration. Kilborn wrote the first part. Crouch wrote the second. And they wrote the third together over email in 100-word exchanges, not aware of each other's opening section. All bets were off, and may the best psycho win.

I love murder novels (and I have no idea what that says about me). This one is the story of two serial killers, one that picks up hitchhikers, the other a hitchhiker that preys on the dopes that pick them up. It is a bit gorey, but the good ones usuallly are. Some of the book had me giggling deliciously at the characters' sheer mean-spiritedness. From what I've read, the two authors basically collaborated via email, fleshing out the story over three chapters. Very entertaining. 

Free Kindle Books: The Three Secrets to Trading Momentum Indicators, by David Penn

This is another ebook that I downloaded from Amazon for my Kindle. The current price is up to 9.99 but it was 0.00 when I downloaded it shortly after Christmas.

 The Three Secrets to Trading Momentum Indicators, by David Penn: from the book's Amazon site:

You can't predict the future, but if you see a car going 100 miles an hour toward a picket fence, you have a pretty good idea. In trading, this concept is called momentum and it is one of the most widely used factors in creating effective, profitable technical indicators. Penn shows you three secrets that allow you to capitalize on the power of momentum indicators. Momentum indicators are excellent for getting on the right side of the trend and spotting the reversal before it happens. With a mastery of momentum, traders can put this predictability to work making them money.

The thing that totally got my attention when I first started reading the book was when the author spelled out the Three Secrets in the very first chapter. That's refreshingly innovative, since most authors don't want to "blow their wad" until you've sorted through a lot of chapters. You still have to read the following chapters to get an idea of the specifics, but I guess if the first chapter seemed totally ludicrous, you could put it down right there (but I wouldn't suggest it). I personally use the MACD indicator to time my buying of an individual stock, but the book gave a couple of other interesting indicators to use as a backup, and covered an interesting idiosyncracy of the MACD that is particularly profitable (although I have yet to see it happen in real life).

Free Kindle Books: Bright of the Sky, by Kay Kenyon

I've had my Kindle 3 for almost a month now, and I can't remember reading so much. I've also been listening to podcasts on it. I never realized until now how much time I was spending doing stuff for work. Now that I'm no longer a charge nurse, I'm not having to finish employee schedules, or write/reply to email, work on new projects, and all of the myriad of... well to be honest, bullshit... that I used to work on. It has led to an improved sense of balance in my life, now that my days off are truly my own (and not used to schedule meetings during dayshift). I've been able to spend a lot of quality time not only reading a wide variety of fiction, but I've also been reading more non-fiction. I've also been able to listen to podcasts on my Kindle, so I don't have to pack my iPod.

It was a complete eye-opener for me how many books are being offered by Amazon that are free of charge. There are discussion boards on Amazon, as well as a variety of blogs and websites, that track free books. Many of these books are for free for a short time (sometimes just hours). I've been "purchasing" an average of 2-4 free books per week. Sometimes, you get what you pay for, and I end up giving up on a free book after a few chapters, but this is something I do for full-priced novels.

Bright of the Sky (Book 1 of The Entire and the Rose) by Kay Kenyon:    Science Fiction/Fantasy. From the book's Amazon site:

Starred Review. At the start of this riveting launch of a new far-future SF series from Kenyon (Tropic of Creation), a disastrous mishap during interstellar space travel catapults pilot Titus Quinn with his wife, Johanna Arlis, and nine-year-old daughter, Sydney, into a parallel universe called the Entire. Titus makes it back to this dimension, his hair turned white, his memory gone, his family presumed dead and his reputation ruined with the corporation that employed him. The corporation (in search of radical space travel methods) sends Titus (in search of Johanna and Sydney) back through the space-time warp. There, he gradually, painfully regains knowledge of its rulers, the cruel, alien Tarig; its subordinate, Chinese-inspired humanoid population, the Chalin; and his daughter's enslavement. Titus's transformative odyssey to reclaim Sydney reveals a Tarig plan whose ramifications will be felt far beyond his immediate family. Kenyon's deft prose, high-stakes suspense and skilled, thorough world building will have readers anxious for the next installment.

It's definitely not my usual reading fare, but it was a good page-turner for me. The first installment is still free as of this writing, but I guess I'll have to plunk down for the next two books.

Going through old floppy disks... 2012: The War for Souls

// blogging since November 2002

Roomie and I found a whole stack of 3.5 floppies, and for whatever reason, I got the crazy idea in my head that I wanted to recover whatever was on those disks. The hard part was that none of our computers had a floppy drive. So I dug out the computer I had before the laptop, hooked it up to the monitor, keyboard and mouse, and started looking at really old files. And I found some original files for my first blog (back at easyjournal dot com). I'm amazed I've been blogging for more than six years. I also found some archived html files from my second blog (now defunct eric135 dot net). That was the blog that I totally coded by hand in Notepad. I'm pretty impressed with myself, that I had the ability to write all that in html, uploading all those files via FTP.

I couldn't do that now.

// I've been reading Whitley Strieber's book 2012: The War for Souls.

 I needed something a bit lighter than the book I was reading for work (more on that later). Pretty good read so far, if you are into SF/Thriller type novels.

// Gotta werk for the next three nights :-(

Re-living the 80's while reading nurses' notes; William Shatner's book

I've been sitting down actually reading nurses' notes. To be honest, I've hardly ever read another nurse's notes. Most are too vague and not well constructed, and the penmanship (mine included) can be horrific.

But our facility had gotten ding'ed (is that a word?) for nurses writing notes that didn't match the Plan of Care (if you're a nurse, you know what I mean). Folks would write absolutely nothing about why the patient had come to the hospital in the first place. Or the Plan of Care wouldn't mention anything more than Alteration of Comfort/Pain, Discharge Planning, and Anxiety (the ones that happen to be pre-printed on the form).

So now I have to read at least some of my nurses nurses' notes.

It felt like I had time-warped to the late 80's when I graded papers as a high school teacher. I had the whole bit going, with the red pen, corrections written in margins, and a summary opinion on the bottom. All I was missing was the grade at the top.

As I read over each one, I'd fold the papers (a copy of the note along with a copy of the Plan of Care) in half "the long way" and wrote their names on the "cover." Then I walked around and, in mocking teacher fashion, called out their names from the middle of the station and handed them their papers.

All of them know I used to teach, and got the joke pretty quickly.

Hmmm... Ithink I'll pass by the teacher store my next day off and pick up a little plastic box filled with those gold stars and start putting them on the superior samples.

Sometimes (not often), I miss those days. Particularly the part about having every weekend and holiday off. (Although I usually spent most of them grading papers and coming up with lesson plans).

I've been reading William Shatner's Star Trek Academy: Collision Course. I'm only a few chapters in but it's actually pretty good. The introduction says that the book is "from the imagination of the author." I guess that's a disclaimer that it has nothing to do with the plot of the upcoming movie.

Dead people

I haven't written in a while.

I've been ridiculously busy at work, but the evaluation season is now over, everyone has gotten their evaluations, the hate mail and dirty looks have stopped (not too bad this year, I only had 2 employees that were really upset over their evaluations), and I'm back to my usual baseline level of popularity (which usually is pretty good).

My next dip in the pubic opinion polls will happen when I publish the schedule for the next holiday season. So I'm good to go until around October.

I've been reading a bunch of books about dead people lately. It's a weird fascination that I've had for the past couple of years, which is really interesting because my most common recurring nightmare is that I'm running around being chased by fast-moving zombies (like those in 28 days later), which I overpower by bashing their brains in with a ball-peen hammer.

Never the other kind, with the nail-removal tool on the other end. It's always a ball-peen. No idea why.

To be honest, I don't know why it's called "ball-peen" anyway.

[later]

Oh, I looked it up on wikipedia. Who would have known?