odds are you are not going to like this.

a lot of science has come out in the last few years about the power of posture, namely on our mood. the classic example being smiling helps your mood in a number of ways, in fact it is impossible for smiling to not improve your mood (TED the hidden power of smiling). then there was this reasonably popular treatise about how you can change your complete emotional state by simply altering your posture (TED: your body language shapes who you are). i'm mildly embarrassed to admit to trying this before a few important encounters i had a few years back and can report there are definitely some merits to the claims which i will also report surprised me more than a little.

a friend recently turned me onto the newish tim ferriss podcast. he is the 4-hour workweek/body guy. his shows are long and he talks more than he maybe should (i assume his interviewing and editing skills will improve as he does it longer) but there have been a couple of affirming and revelatory bits of info pass through thus far, which for those who are familiar with ferris is surely what one would expect to happen given his dense and intense way of approaching things.

i won't bore you with the affirming parts as no one cares about that except me. but one of the revelatory snippets talked about people and their cellphones. it turns out that any person engaged with their phone screen is in a classic "losers" position. think of someone who just lost a tennis match. head down. shoulders slumped. disengaged from what is around them. and if you give any credit to the body position and framing studies above, this is doing you no kinda favors. and now when we see older folks grousing about all of these losers and their smartphones, it turns out they are a little more on point than we may have first given them credit for.

and lots of science has also verified that people's connection to social media is a fraught and losing psychological endeavor--put differently you will never win the psychological health award by playing a game that never ends and hosts an endless stream of players. now, not only are people losing emotionally, they are also losing physically.

this will give me a new game to play as i wait on people sitting through green lights, blocking sidewalks, and holding up checkout lines because i know, based on the above ted talk, smirking is better than scowling.

a few years back on a ski trip i took a headlong spill and separated my shoulder. this is a very different injury than 'dislocating' your shoulder which seems to me to be the nastier of the two main shoulder injuries. a shoulder separtion i'm told is rather trivial and commonplace. that said, it still hurts. separated AC joints, the technical name, typically happen when blunt force trauma is appli...

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. front yard

marty's kryptonite in life is fatigue. if she get's too tired it is game over and it is game over fast. and i'm not talking about a kind of tired that makes you bloopy and in need of a nap. i'm talking about full on sleep deprivation that started days and weeks earlier and the only right answer is to go to bed at 5:30pm and wake at seven the next day—and doing that for 30 days in a row. i kn ...

from seneca's On the Shortness of Life - life is long if you know how to use it

highlighted passages represent my notes

bella has been fighting for a coed sleepover.

a coed sleepover between a group of sophomore aged kids!!! i almost guffawed the first time she asked about it, and not to be a jerk but because i thought she was totally joking. thankfully i held it in long enough to see she was not. in the days following the request i asked several of my same-aged friends if they could imagine asking their ...

are you ready for some football??? !!! if not, the folks at amazon and netflix have the elixir you require in two top-flight documentaries.



first is ALL OR NOTHING. this one was for-sure made possible by the decades of great ground work done by NFL films and the hard knocks folks because it is like a grown-up, evolved version of hard knocks AND has lots of the heart-wrenching moments offered by the classic NFL films offerings.

my favorite quote from this series was:



the second show is LAST CHANCE U, another documentary about the highest performing junior college football program in the nation. i avoided that initially thinking it was tv series but the second i heard it was a documentary i popped in to try it out. i did not regret that decision. holy smokes was it well done.

my favorite quote from that series was:
and if you're not ready or into football, then watch netflix's STRANGER THINGS. anthony and i got watching that and were quickly joined by others in the family given how stellar it was.



as a rule i try to not watch tv. like any. but dang are these show makers making it hard. while there is an astonishing amount of dreck being churned out daily for our DVR equipped masses, the top flight stuff that finds its way to press is truly top flight. crazy impressive how good some folks are at this business. granted, it is equally curious how poor some of the other stuff is.

l have been seeing more and more articles on how fitness trackers are not living up to their expectations. based on my conversations with people most of these trackers need a boxing about the ears. my five second evidence-light sense is, apple watch aside, the better a tracker looks, the less functional a tracker is. i exclude the apple watch mostly because i think it is far more than just a "step-counter" which is essentially where all these trackers initially took hold.

here's one sample case, i bumped into a guy wearing a fitbit. i always thought those were very sleek and sharp looking. but after a ninety second conversation with him the thing seems like little more than an expensive wrist bangle. first he said he got it wet and it stopped working. how the hell can an activity watch not handle moisture. then he went to show me one of the readouts but it was too sunny and we couldn't read the screen. he cupped his hand over the truly miniscule display and pulled it close to his face before reporting that he just couldn't see it. really? unreadable in the sun. but, to be fair i could see how handling water and being readable in daylight could get missed during the design requirements session. i mean those are pretty unusual asks for something fitness related.

while the man was blocking light and moving his hand around looking for an angle that would let him see the readout, i glanced down at my wrist and noted the large, readable print. print that you could still read even if someone aimed a bright flashlight right on the readout, in the daylight. like with the kindle paperwhite folks, the makers of my band have this screen-in-the-sun business fully figured out.

if you are one of the reported masses struggling with the form or function of your band, before giving up on the market i would suggest looking at garmin's vivofit 2. it is surely not the sharpest looking band on the market and looks downright utilitarian, but that is because it is. by my account, it is the functional and smartly designed workhorse of the activity watch lineup, but for reasons i don't understand it is not part of these tracker roundtables, the ones i'm reading at least. i think it may be yesterday's news even at garmin as i see they just released the vivofit 3.

i initially had the first generation vivofit. i got it to let me know when i was sitting too long. it was ok but i had three gripes about it:

1. i wanted an audible chirp when the alert to move took place.
2. i wanted a backlight so i could read it at night.
3. i wanted a stop-watch feature.

when they announced the vivofit 2, it possessed all of these features. i upgraded mine the day it came out and have worn it every day since. so if you're finding your activity tracker wanting, i would highly recommend looking at a vivofit 2.

and for what it's worth i'm leary of garmin's vivosmart which is a "connected" version of the vivofit 2. i predict too many distractions. i know i'm in the minority here but like to keep my gear as simple as able. i'm confident i wouldn't benefit from the connected features because the reason i have it is to tell me to move (and record my vitals and activity) and twitter or messaging is not part of that equation. not only is it not necessary, i deem it counter-productive. this is part of the reason i don't like the apple watch as a fitness band. i've seen way too many exercisers standing on the side of the road/track punching out messages on their mini-computer. not helping.

as noted above, i just saw that there is now a vivofit3 but they changed the screen pretty dramatically, seeming to model it after some of the more stylish/connected trackers. my spidey-sense tells me there is trouble ahead. the amazon reviews are also middling so i'm not seeing anything to run me off from my 2, especially since the 2 is fully meeting my needs at present (i have nary a suggestion for improvement). one possible good thing to come from the release of the vivofit 3 may be the vivofit 2's are now only $60 now -- cheap enough to try it out or get a backup.

i don't know what is harder with good design: coming up with the initial idea or protecting a proven one. why are we so averse to letting something that works do what it does, work, and leave it alone or at least better protect the refinements.

that above sentiment reminds me of something i heard someone recently obvserve about self-help books. there are loads of them that teach/tell/help you become successful, but there really aren't any that teach/tell/help you STAY successful. thinking on it for a few moments, success is a different animal that carries some new and often confusing challenges. it is a most astute point and worthy of some attention.

the playground at anthony's elementary has two kinds of parents strewn about before morning bell: all the parents of the new kindergartener-crop and me, the parent of a now fourth grader. the kindergarten parents huddle expectantly. in these two and three person clusters you can see them pensively exchanging trials (and tips) about the rigors of turning your baby over to the education-machine. i'm...

during last years trip to michigan, bella was heard to proclaim, loudly and exuberantly: I LOVE THIS PLACE. WHEN I"M HERE, I'M THE BEST VERSION OF MYSELF! during this year's travels, bella made similar proclamations, even anticipating them beforehand.

if you sat down and spent thirty focused minutes of your life on seriously contemplating what you want more than anything, wouldn't it be t ...

when alex was young, like before he could crawl-young, if something caught his eye he wanted, he would reach for it. if it was slightly out of his reach, he might stretch for it, a little bit, and by little bit i mean almost imperceptibly. if his fingers did not easily and cleanly grasp the bauble he would straighten back up, return his thumb to his mouth, assuming he ever took it out in the first ...

in both of the summer trips we just took we were invited to join families on their standing summer vacations. we've spent time with both of these families before so knew them well. for me, the truly special thing was getting to benefit from their experience and knowledge of the areas we would be visiting as that, in my opinion, tends to be the hardest part to figure out regarding new places. when ...

the above picture shows anthony sitting on the front of a slow moving house boat. the lapping waves occassionally slapping the tops of his feet. he's been sitting there almost twenty minutes and seems rather transfixed by it all. it is worth nothing that alex is the one driving the boat so both of our boys are making the most of this new experience. at some point during anthony's reverie a woman o ...

the short story is this:

• in mid-june i resigned my position of ten years at my most-recent employer, washington university in st. louis.
• i spent the next three weeks feverishly working to make my exit a clean and competent one. fwiw i spent the five weeks prior as well, starting my work after making the decision to leave. this effort was largely in the name of my staff who i didn't w ...
  View in Family Scrapbook >>>

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. advice

for the third year in a row, on her first week of summer, marty took my, well, our children to georgia to visit my dad ... and i didn't go. i stayed back because of work or lack of vacation or both. i don't get how remarkable this is until i say it out loud to someone. most guys scrunch their face and say, "wait a minute. let me get this straight. your wife takes your kids to see your dad and leaves you home alone for the week?!?". then i scrunch my face all up and pretty much say the same thing to myself in shared disbelief.

but that is marty. the girl is double special.

this year they were scheduled to get home on tuesday. on monday afternoon, around five i got a call from alex saying they were like three hours away and were just going to push through. an hour later i got another call, this time from bella, that said mom got crabby, the kids term for when marty gets tired, and they were going to stop for the night. i lamented at how sucky it was to have to stop just a few hours from home but certainly appreciated marty not jeopardizing my world by driving when she shouldn't.

i had just finished cleaning the house for their return and now that they weren't going to return tonight so i went upstairs and started doing some work in my office. a couple hours later i was sitting at my desk filing some papers when something caught my eye. i looked up. anthony was standing like two feet away from me. i sprang back in my chair and shrieked,

TROY
oh my god anthony! you scared the hell out of me! what, what, what are you doing here?

ANTHONY (exasperated)
dad, we're all sitting down on the couch waiting to watch a bob's burgers. are you coming down or not?

with that he turned and left the room. i fell back in my chair touching my chest to feel my racing heart. once i thought i was not going to go into cardiac arrest, i went downstairs and found my full family, just as anthony had described, all on the couch and looking at me expectantly. i said to them, "you're lucky i'm a pretty fit guy because if i wasn't you'd all be hoping right about now that the ambulance would get here in time."

marty tells me that the plan they hatched was just to have anthony call from the steps that they were waiting for me. i guess he was confused when they parked the van around the corner and super quietly unlocked the door and crept into the house. he mis-read that and thought that he should continue the sneaking until he was standing just ten inches off my shoulder in what i thought was a completly vacant house when he made his sharp proclamation. i'm serious when i tell you i could visibly see my heart pounding in my chest.

yesterday i talked about my old job. today let me introduce you to my new job.

in 2010 i was asked by my employer to modernize a dated scheduling system they used to set their school's semester course schedule. for many years this had been a fully manual process and was buckling under present-day demands. they were hoping for something that c...

today, july 12th, 2016, is my last day with my current employer.

you may still remember my first day. i surely do. for the last ten years whenever anyone would ask how long i worked there i would always respond "since april 10th, 2006" with an aspergers-like zeal. many would comment on the precision of my answer to which i would sim...

i imagine i've announced this before but an odd life claim i can make is i've never, in almost five decades of life, lived in a house with more than one bathroom, even today. growing up, being an only child, only three people had to juggle bathroom time. now we have five people who have to dance in and out of the space. with three of those people being young children, or women who have given birth ...

i was headed out the door to play tennis. marty came down the stairs wrapped only in, wonkily so, one of the kids winter coats. she said she wanted to tell me something. the something was sweet and loving and made me feel 17 instead of 47. she had to get the coat because she wasn't dressed and saw i had the front door open and my bike was sitting outside so she knew i wouldn't want to close the door. as she ran back up the stairs she pulled the coat aside and flashed me her nakedness, her playful laugh ringing through the foyer before snapping it closed and rounding out of site. more 17 year old tingles.

our doorbell has been busted since we bought our house. fixing it is on the list. that said, if it was in the top 1,000 things to be addressed, i'd be surprised.

the two wires that are connected to the home's doorbell system are there, sticking out of the wall and if you rub them together you can make the doorbell go off. since day one the kids have preferred sounding the doorbell this way than if there was a proper button in place. recently that has stopped working though and the doorbell seems dead as a, well, doorbell.

on a no-screens saturday and in a bout of complete and utter boredome (lucky him), anthony took it upon himself to craft a new, working doorbell which he proudly displayed for me when i returned from a morning of tennis. i tried it out and complimented him on how well it worked. this was a genuine compliment as i was pretty impressed with how stable and functional it was.

a little bit later anthony came into the bathroom while i was showering and told me he was happy with his new doorbell.

ANTHONY
yeah. i think it turned out pretty well.

TROY
i agree. super good for a V1.

ANTHONY
what's a V1?

TROY
version 1. it means it is your first attempt.

ANTHONY
what do you mean first attempt? it is done.

TROY
yes. you have a working doorbell but when you make something yourself, you will sometimes think of ways to make it better. if you think of something and then do it, then you will have V2, or version 2, which should theoretically be better than version 1.

ANTHONY
but how would i improve it? it works.

TROY
uhhhm. what would happen if it rained? is your note protected.

ANTHONY
oh. no. it isn't.

TROY
what do you think would happen to it if it rained?

ANTHONY
i think the words would blur out and it wouldn't be readable.

TROY
so, since that is outside, your design should account for that. you should think about things you could do to make it so i can last through the rain.

version 2 proved to be a marked improvement both to the doorbell and anthony as an inventor.

version 1 is shown below

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. you're welcome

below are a few more pictures from aleo's first four rolls of film.

his first shot was discussed here yesterday.


dad's famous breakfast scrumble


anthony and dad's morning chess game


arcadia!!!


impressive, tight focus on the scope, the real story of the picture, which is throwing a curious reflection.


pretty brave to try a jump-shot on your first outing--i thought it turned out quite well for a first cut at the technique.


now that is just dang cool for a timer-shot.


old country men at the old country store


spooky anthony, and according to anthony, visual evidence that i am a black man.


if you study this one, you can spot the photog in the window.

aleo recently asked me about getting a camera, like a real one. i think something at school spawned this conversation. i told him if he was serious he should learn how to shoot for real. by this i meant manually, where he controlled all of the settings himself (eg. shot speed, aperture, focus). the closest thing to an electronic aid would be the light meter which is nothing more than a bar the mov ...

my favorite public/motivational speaker recently passed through town. afterwards, i checked for what happened during his stay and ran across this video which immediately took a top five slot in my favorite ET talks.



and to save a few of you from having to send an email asking about the top five, here she blows:

1. when you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe - part 1
2. when you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe - part 2
3. eric thomas day
4. nothing funny
5. you owe you