Signs, Signs, Everywhere Signs...

I didn't plan it, but I seem to have taken a series of photos of signs, which I now present for your viewing pleasure:

"Wait for green light?" Um, isn't that always the rule?

Saw this one in a little coffee shop - it made me laugh.


Mmmmmm, warm soda! (Did they really think that sign makes sense?) And what's even funnier, the sign is right above jugs of juice!

Found these three signs in a shop, arranged just like this. They sort of sum up my life philosophy.

Moving Is Like War

It struck me the other day that moving is a bit like war.

It's exhausting.
It's destructive and expensive. We've thrown away, left behind and otherwise had to replace a LOT of stuff that was perfectly good (trashcan, pooper-scooper, salad dressings, propane tank, etc)
It should not be done lightly, and should be avoided if at all possible.
It's sometimes absolutely necessary and unavoidable.
It's an adventure.
It involves painful losses and opportunities for heroics.
Even when it's over, there's a lot of cleaning up to do.
You feel so much better when it's over.

Next week: How Moving Is Like Hitting Yourself In the Head With A Hammer

Firsts...

I cooked our first dinner-in-the-house last night (chicken, tortellini and broccoli with pesto - even the kids like it!). This morning I went for my first run (in a long time). Tomorrow is B's first day of school. Wed is my first day of real inprocessing.

We've got chairs, a coffee maker, silverware and (just in time for dinner last night) real plates!

Now if I could only find the toaster...

Progress...

We've got sheets on the beds, chairs around the table, and both kids' rooms are all finished and ready to play!

Next up - find the coffee maker! Get the kitchen put together so I can (finally) start cooking again. Oh, and finish hooking up the !@##$%^& drier vent (spent all day on it yesterday - and it's not finished yet).

Oh, and I've got firefox now too!

So much to do - why am I blogging? 'Cause everyone else is still asleep, and I don't want to make any noise...

Simplicity Cycle & MAKE magazine

In all the craziness with the move, I never got around to mentioning that the Simplicity Cycle was featured in MAKE Magazine's "Tip's N Tools" (TNT) eNewsletter. It starts out like this

Dear Readers,

Ah, the dog days of summer...days where it truly is "dolce far niente," sweet to do nothing. I'm talking about RSS (Really Simple Stuff) here. None of these reviews are particularly dramatic or about complicated things; they're about simple stuff done well. Like a flight tracker that actually works, or a site that lets you skip out on pesky email registrations for online stores. The Simplicity Cycle, by Dan Ward, takes simplicity even more seriously; it's a whole book about elegance in design (as a result of, well, uncomplicatedness). The other reviews are about using the things around you in new ways to make your life easier (heck, you don't even have to go to the store since you probably have a spice rack and some grey tape lying around the house or garage). If cleanliness is next to godliness, then simplicity must be next to sweetness. With heat waves in most of the country, doing "nothing" seems like a pretty good idea right now.

Cheers,
Arwen O'Reilly
Staff Editor, Make Magazine
http://makezine.com

And then goes on to give a little review of the book, written by none other than my good buddy Gabe! You can read his review here.

Mac Blogging

I like my mac, but I've noticed some strange things when I'm online. For example, Blogger doesn't show the text editing options (bold, italic, colors, etc). All I've got is a spell check button and a photo insert button. There's a preview link, but no "edit HTML" link.

Similarly, in Gmail, the "reply" button is only at the bottom of the message - using IE there was a reply button at the top of the message too...

Oh well, I'll have my PC back soon.

Dan is In The House!

I'm officially in my new house, and on "casual status" until 22 Aug. The movers were supposed to be here between 8 and 9, so I got the kiddo's up very early, fed them breakfast and drove here from the hotel... then got a call saying the truck would be here around 10... ugh!

But, it's good practice, because it looks like Beth's bus will pick her up around 7:10 each morning... wow! In NY, she'd still be in bed at that time! Mornings around here will be very different than they used to be. Will be interesting to see how NaNoWriMo goes!

The drive from NY to OH was fine - but don't let me ever do that again, ok? Google said 9.5 hours - which translated into 12 for us, once we added in food and potty breaks. So, we got here at 9pm Monday night, horribly tired and a bit dizzy... The kids were fantastic troopers throughout. We're very, very blessed parents.

Got a tour of AFIT yesterday - I felt like Hermione on her first day at Hogwarts (yes, in Harry Potter, I'd be Hermione). Pardon my geekiness, but I'm SO EXCITED to start classes, even if I probably won't learn the petronus charm. Technical refresher classes begin in Sept, and real class begins 1 Oct. Did I mention that I'm SO EXCITED?

Went to the commissary yesterday - first time in 7+ years we got to do that! Prices were great, but we still managed to spend quite a lot. We're moving some serious coin around these days, between selling and buying a house, eating in restaurants, moving, gas, etc. I'm really looking forward being able to cook again.

And I saw a little girl across the street yesterday, looked to be around the same age as my two... so hopefully we'll be able to swing over and say hello later.

So here I am, with the kids in an empty house - but fortunately we've got an internet connection. Oh, and we went with Vonage for the phone service. I like it so far. Ask me again in a month or so.

And what do I miss the most? Chairs. Definitely chairs. Or really, anything to sit on...

Whew...

Here I am in the Red Roof Inn, after a crazy, exhausting week, finally making my first post with the new mac laptop... so many stories to be told, so many funny photos to take... but it's late and I haven't had internet connectivity for a while, so I'll just post a quick photo and go to bed.

The Packers are coming! The packers are coming!

As the title of this post suggests, the packers are coming to Chez Ward tomorrow morning. They're going to put an enormous quantity of my prized possessions into countless cardboard boxes. The computer will go too.

So, I'm guessing I won't be blogging much for the next week or so...

I'll write again when I get to Ohio.

Frenchtoast Fun!

And lest this blog turns into all serious economic discussions and stuff, let me say what a fantastic post French Toast Girl had on her blog today. Yeah, it's about living well, but with a very fun, artsy, lively bent.

Forget distributism. Go read French Toast Girl, then walk around outside in your PJ's!

The Enough Movement

"I have enough. I will keep striving, because to strive is an essential part of being human, but I am not going to strive for more."

I've been thinking and blogging (not necessarily in that order) about economics, distributism and related topics for a while now. In the back of my mind a crazy little idea has been taking shape, influenced by guys like E.F. Schumacher and G.K. Chesterton. I'm calling it "The Enough Movement," and in the relatively near future I'm hoping to put it together in some sort of coherent, comprehensive-ish form. Maybe a manifesto on ChangeThis. For now, I'll just post a few bits and pieces here and there.

This Enough idea is fundamentally about three things: contentment, gratitude and generosity. It's about doing what you can, producing a manageable amount - enough for me/my family and some to share, either by selling at a fair price or giving it away, so that others can have enough too. It's about having good priorities.

As I previously mentioned, I don't want to be rich - I want to be happy, and from what I've seen, riches tend to decrease happiness, not increase it.

The funny thing is, I'm not sure I'd really want to be part of this "Enough Movement." On some level, I still associate more with better, more with happier. Previous posts notwithstanding, I sort of do want to be rich. Also, I've got a family to provide for, and I still think they'll be happier if I can give them more (and I'll be happier too). So I'm still working this out, in my own head and my own life. I think I'd like to take some sort of vow of poverty, if I could do so without subjecting my family to it... but maybe that's just a convenient excuse for not doing it. Who knows?

Schumacher wrote "The aim should be to obtain the maximum well being with the minimum consumption." I suspect the link between well being and consumption is indeed inversely proportional (after a point).

He also wrote "the essence of civilization [is] not in a multiplication of wants but in the purification of character," and he bemoans the way "our fathers luxuries become our necessities."

So, I'm wondering - what am I going to do about it. We'll see.

I'm a Mac...

I just got my very first Mac. It's a MacBook, and I'm in love.

All I've done so far is turn it on and poked around for about 10 minutes. I took some silly pictures of myself (yes, you'll probably see them later). I opened Garage Band and ComicLife, but haven't even connected it to the internet yet.

It's a beautiful machine. Even plugging it in was fun.

I'm so excited!

Freeways Aren't Free

I've never really thought much about roads (have you?). Even though I drive on them all the time, I never spent much mental energy thinking about how much it costs to build and maintain them, who pays for it, etc. I sort of assumed freeways were some kind of divine right, without giving it much thought. If I thought of them at all, I guess I thought of them as some sort of community commons, benefiting everyone equally. It turns out I was probably wrong.

The Distributist Review has a fascinating entry today about free markets and freeways. It begins by asking for a definition of "free market," then explores one example of a government subsidy: freeways.

"Of course the government should build the roads; that's what governments do." Yet, gentle reader, would you not be surprized if we shifted the focus just slightly, and spoke of "free railways" or free airlines"? Any yet, why should one form of transportation be so privileged over these others? The point here is not that the government shouldn't be involved in the road-building business; that may be the most convenient way to do it. Rather the point is to determine who should pay for them, and how. Three-fourths of all "social justice" issues are simply a matter of accurate cost-accounting; that is, of allocating costs back to those who cause the costs.

He concludes with the following thought:

As it turns out, nothing is quite as expensive as a freeway. But on the other hand, nothing is more conducive to self-respect than paying your own way. One measure of a free market is that each person pays for what he or she consumes.

It's a provocative position, this assertion that people should pay for what they consume, or that the poor should not be taxed in order to support the rich, or that economists should think about thinks like morality, self-respect or social justice.

He's blowing my mind. I hope you'll surf over to The Distributist Review and read that posting.

A Few Comments on Comments

Like most bloggers, I love getting comments. It lets me know that someone is out there and gives me an opportunity for this to be a discussion, rather than just a series of short monologues. Comments are very good.

If you leave a comment, I usually post a reply, so be sure to check back. I definitely hope John from Australia read my response to his comment about my Crazy Horse post, for example.

It's also OK to not leave comments. You're welcome to just stop by occasionally, check out the posts, and then move on. Don't feel bad if you don't have the time, etc to leave a note. It's ok - really!

Total Annihilation: Kingdoms

This morning, rather than blogging or writing (as I should be), I've decided to play Total Annihilation: Kingdoms, a crazy little epic medieval warfare video game...

One last chance before the kiddo's come home and the move starts in earnest.

See ya later.

One more Schumacher quote

In Small Is Beautiful, Schumacher writes about giving "a new direction to technology development, a direction that shall lead it back to the real needs of man, and that also means: to the actual size of man. Man is small, and therefore, small is beautiful. To go for giantism is to go for self-destruction."

Small Is Beautiful

I'm about 1/2 way through E.F. Schumacher's wonderful book Small Is Beautiful. I'm really, really, really enjoying it. It's not so much that he's a genius or an amazing writer as much as that he is a genuine human, and he writes with real warmth, insight and relevance.

The book is about macroeconomics, and it's downright engaging. He talks about things like courage, romance, faith and hope... but not in an irritating, wishy-washy, touchy-feely way. In a regular human way. Without using the word "distributist," he lays out a very strong case for distributism.

And, imagine my satisfaction when I read the following line:

"Any third rate engineer or researcher can increase complexity; but it takes a certain flair of real insight to make things simple again."

Hmmm... where have I read that concept before? In my own Simplicity Cycle book, perhaps?

BJ's Dream

An excerpt from The Boomer Sisters In The City, the third volume in the Boomer Sisters series. It's almost ready to be sent to the illustrator... and the finished book should be ready by Christmas (if not sooner).

In this scene, the older sister (BJ) has a dream. Jekka is her younger sister. The imagery probably makes more sense if you've read the first 1/2 of the book, but I think you'll get the general sense...

That night, BJ dreamed she was riding a silver unicorn through the streets of New York City. Jekka was with her, dressed like Tonto and singing Silver Bells over and over again. They came around a corner and found a tall, skinny, bald man in a gray suit. He had huge paint brushes instead of hands, and they were dripping with white paint. He moved his arms up and down, laying wide strips of white paint on every building he could reach. The paint made the buildings disappear, and BJ somehow knew that if he painted the whole city, Jekka wouldn’t be able to sing.

A tiny man in a brown robe appeared. He was carrying a bell, and he winked at BJ, then began running towards the paint brush-handed man, waving his bell over his head and ringing it loudly. The little man rang his bell louder and louder, but BJ’s alarm clock woke her up before she found out what he was going to do.

Thoughts on "The Simplicity Cycle "

All my books are basically experiments. They are attempts to understand something, to make something, and to communicate at least some of that something to the world outside my own head. I write them for my own amazement and my own amusement, and am always thrilled to hear that other people find them worthwhile.

Chet Richards' recent review of The Simplicity Cycle got me thinking about that book in particular. His review really captured what the book was about and what I was trying to do with it. A positive review is nice to have, but a positive review that praises the book for all the right reasons - that's priceless.

The Simplicity Cycle, as Dr. Richards pointed out, is not a cookbook. I wasn't trying to instruct and inform so much as to guide and stimulate. The "examples" are really provocations intended to plant seeds of ideas which can flourish if given time and thought. I was aiming to remind more than to instruct, and, in the original sense of the word educate, to draw-out ideas and concepts from within people's minds. I was aiming to lead people forward, to the next step of design wisdom.

The book is theory, not practice, but it's practical theory. It is, in a sense, metaphysical, or at the very least philosophical. It is about subjective judgments, opinions, and shoulds, rather than objective analyses of mechanical optimization.

And it was a ton of fun to write!

Money

I was discussing future plans with a friend the other day, and she asked if I was going to get an engineering job with a big company eventually and "make a lot of money."

I answered that I'm really not very interested in working for a large company, nor in making a lot of money...

See, I don't want to be rich. I just want to be happy, and I haven't seen much evidence that wealth beyond a certain point (which I passed years ago) has anything to do with happiness or contentment. Plus, I'm already happy (how many rich people can say that?). And if I was ever to become rich, I wonder what that would do to my kids. Not that I'm afraid they'd turn into Paris Hilton or anything, but it's not clear to me that big bucks would be good for them.

As someone wise once said, "I don't want everything I want."

Also, as far as I'm concerned, I'm already rich - I've got everything I need, most of what I want, and plenty to share with those who have less.

Here's a Wall Street Journal article which discusses the (non) link between wealth and happiness.