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Month: December 2012

Seven strategies for highly effective New Years resolutions

From Margie Warrell at Forbes: 1. Know Your Why. For a resolution to stick, it has to be aligned with your core values. We all want to look better or get richer, but your resolutions have to go beyond superficial desires and connect with what truly matters most to you. … 2. Be Specific. Resolutions to ‘eat better, get fitter, be happier, relax more or have better life balance’ are doomed for failure because they lack specificity. The more specific you are, the more likely you will be able to succeed. Describe your goals and resolutions in ways that allow…

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Monday links and musings

Thanks for continuing to put up with the “lite” posting. Posting will probably be on-and-off all this week but should be back to normal by next Monday. —– Mark/Greylocke, the guy who brought us the Knoppix Thumb Drive preparedness document project, is now putting together a YouTube channel for survival/preparedness info. He’s inviting your contributions. If you have a knowledge or skill you want to share but don’t have the ability to edit your own video, he’ll even do that for you from your raw footage. —– I received my own KTD the other day via Scott’s ready-made drive business.…

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Five things to accomplish in the new year

Sorry about the “lite” posting. I’m deadlining this week and next, so “lite” may continue for a while. Tomorrow I’ll be going on an expedition with a friend as part of the research for the BHM hide-a-gun article. Packing up the rubber boots, shovels, and camera now. So I thought I’d leave you with something worth pondering for a few days: What are the five major things you’d like to accomplish in 2013? Realistic things, I mean. (“I’d like to personally restore the Bill of Rights” doesn’t count.) I’m a bit stumped on this myself. I’ve come up with three,…

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A final (?) round of Christmas thank yous

One more round of thank yous for the wonderful holiday gifts that have arrived in the last couple of weeks. To H&K for the beautiful, big pressure canner. I’ve never had one before and this will greatly expand my canning range. To JM for The Solid Gold Cadillac; I watched that great old Judy Holliday film the other day and it’s as delightful as ever. To JB for the “chutney-colored” alpaca yarn, which quickly became a pair of chutney-colored fingerless gloves. To K for wine with an afterglow of … apricots! To SR for seeing that all the dogs got…

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Animism, atavism, and the paradox of self-sufficiency

Today, I’ll step aside and let Joel speak: The first rule of living on the edge is this: You’re in charge. You’re responsible. If something goes wrong, nobody’s going to come and fix it for you. There’s no point grumbling and waiting for the guy with the wrench, because the guy with the wrench is you. That brings things to a very basic and vital level. I used to be consumed with worry over things like who was undermining me at the office, or how badly a customer was going to screw me on draft revisions, or how to deal…

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Merry Christmas

From tiny superdog Uggie, who became famous for starring in The Artist after making this humble greeting card: Unfortunately, most of our dogs are more like this: But we love ’em anyhow. And sometimes even some pretty unlucky dogs become lucky ones. Merry Christmas — to all the two-legs and all the four-legs in your life (even the C-A-T-S).

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Holiday weekend good news roundup, part II, with dogs

Just for trivia fun: 12 letters that didn’t make it into the alphabet. (From yet another Friend O’ Blog with the initial J; there seems to be a conspiracy of them this weekend.) Rescuers deliver an early Christmas to a homeless man and his dog. Pit bull saves his human from an attacker. And although this isn’t strictly good news, it was surprising to me that S.W.A.T. put my latest article online and the Infamous — and in my experience, very nice — TJIC found it. Although it’s credited to me on the site, this was actually co-authored with Joel…

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