As fall slowly falls upon the region, the smell of wood smoke is in the air. Much as it evokes great times around countless camp and bonfires, the smell has been strong enough recently to really set off my sinuses. Two nights in a row (wait: sniff, sniff… make that three), it was less the fragrance of wood smoke and more the acrid nostril-irritating stench of wood smoke.

An age-old metaphor for life, perhaps. Too much of a good thing isn’t a good thing.

[zip]

Why does Adobe Reader insist on putting a shortcut on my Desktop when installing yet another update?

Does anyone on the planet actually open the Reader first and then go browsing for PDF files? I’ve never done that in all my years of using it. I always have just opened the PDF document I wanted to read. Every install, I delete that thing.

But then, unlike some computer users, I only have a handful of (constant) icons on my Desktop. Short-term ones come and go, but I don’t litter my Desktop with them (I’ve seen people with almost no free space for more… how can you work like that?)

I miss Adobe Reader 3.0… don’t need all the new features, and I don’t appreciate the ongoing parade of bug fixes necessary to patch those new features. Look at the preferences sheet here; waaaaaaay too many options to look at a PDF file!

We need another public document format with no bells and whistles (none of that “active” crap; images and diagrams is it).  In general it bugs me how every app grows new features until it becomes a bloated, impossible monster.

I have a hammer. But it also makes coffee and has a camera. And receives AM/FM radio. And it has a pencil/pen set (with erasers), several hex wrenches and four kinds of screwdriver. Plus it has a GPS, a cell phone and it can receive Twits and post pictures to Facebore. Sometimes it’s able to pound nails.

[zing]

Every time I see that sign:

I wonder why I’m being asked to date motorcycles. (No jokes about an exciting ride; too obvious.)  Funny thing: I’ve jumped out of an airplane 50 times, but I’m not sure I’m brave enough for motorcycles. It’s the other drivers that scare me (well, and concrete zipping by at 55 MPH only inches away)!

[zoop]

All those success stories… the authors suggest that all you have to do is really, really try (and follow their directions). If you failed, well, that’s proof you didn’t try hard enough. Or buy enough of their books.

I suggest that luck plays a huge role in success, and for every successful person, there are dozens who did the same thing, tried just as hard, and yet failed. It’s only looking back on success that you think it was due to your personal magic.

(more accurate version)

Success does not come from just striving for it (although that is certainly a requirement). Success comes to those… for whom success comes.

Speaking of which, there is a certain cargo cult nature to a lot of this. People at work are forever posting articles, like “The 10 Habits of Creative People.” As if emulating their habits could possibly work. Creativity comes from the soul, not from dressing up like a creative person. All you’re doing is building cargo planes from sticks, vines and leaves. And you look just as stupid.

[zap]

That gal in the QuiBids commercial: Perkiest Person on the Planet!

[zzzzzzzzzz]