Last year, during one of my trips taking my grandfather to one of his appointments, the topic of music came up. (I know – I ended a sentence with a preposition, sue me…). He always appreciated classical music, while I like it, but only in spurts, depending on my general auditory-mood. I mostly just like Mozart, Chopin, and a few others, while his favorite was Chopin.
He mentioned that he clearly remembered the first album he ever bought, when he was 10 or 12 (This must have been mid-1930′s then I suppose). It was a performance of Poet and Peasant. His brother let him play it on his record player. He remembered playing it over and over, but having been so long since he listened to it, he couldn’t remember much of the score.
Later that evening I found a copy on iTunes and made him a CD that included Poet and Peasant, as well as several of his favorite Chopin pieces. I listened to it several times and really enjoyed it – I even put it on my phone and nano for when I worked out.
So, a couple days later, on my next trip over, I suprised him with the CD and said it had Poet and Peasant on it. I put it in his CD player and pressed play. We both sat and listened to it. I was quite proud of myself for bringing him this reminder of his early days, as well as enjoying it myself. After a few minutes he said “AH! I remember this song clearly now! But, I don’t remember why I liked it so much…”
He enjoyed the Chopin more than the Poet and Peasant. There’s a very nice version of P&P on YouTube here.
Over the past year, I’ve spent a LOT of time in waiting rooms. Doctor offices, dentists, dermatologists, eye-doctors, and even a couple hours every week at the hair-dresser’s. Of course, none of these appointments were for me – they were/are for my grandparents (and now just “Grandma”). Since my grandfather first started getting sick last summer, my mother and I have acted as chauffeurs. Not surprisingly, old people have a lot of appointments.
In fact, I’m writing this entry from the waiting room at my grandmother’s hair dresser’s building. My grandmother has been seeing the same stylist for 24 years – Every friday, rain or shine. She claims that she MUST go, not only to keep up appearances, but also for “morale” and sanity. So I spend each Friday morning sitting in a waiting room for about 2.5 hours.
I really like my work and I’ll often subconsciously feel “guilty” and/or “anxious” when I could be working, but I’m not. It’s not a concious thought of “oh man, I need to be working”, it’s that behind-the-scenes, not-quite-right feeling that I should be doing something productive.
I used to bring a pen and notebook and try to update todo lists, organize projects, and jot down thoughts. (Maybe that’s where my fascination with notebooks took it’s foothold… but I digress…) After a while, that got to be “old” and I still had the “unproductive” feeling. I usually had to copy the todo lists and notes to my online storage places (rememberthemilk.com, wiki, etc.), so I felt like I was duplicating my efforts.
Then, at the beginning of the year I borrowed a friends Dell 8″ netbook for some international travel. I knew I wasn’t going to be working much, but still wanted to check email. And I KNEW I didn’t want to lug around a 10 pound 17″ laptop around Scotland just to check email. The 8″ netbook was okay for reading email, but the keyboard was just too tiny for my hands – I had to hunt-n-peck because the keys were too small. Not to mention when I tried to do a little programming on the flight home, a lot of the programming characters ({,[,],},|,etc.) were all “function” keys or otherwise oddly placed.
After that, I figured I wouldn’t bother getting a netbook, since I couldn’t use it to program, and that’s one of the things I like to do on planes and hotel-room-down-time. But a few weeks later I was at Costco and saw the new Acer Aspire One 10″ model. I tried the keyborad and it was small, but big enough for touch typing. Plus, a quick search for linux “support” showed that it worked great with ubuntu, right out of the box.
I was originally going to dual-boot the netbook with XP and ubuntu, but after I messed up the disk partitioning during ubuntu install, I hosed XP. Now it’s a linux/ubuntu laptop only – and I’m glad. It’s great. I don’t miss XP at all, and ubuntu’s netbook remix has been rock solid. The singular complaint/nuisance is that the volume just isn’t there like it was with XP. I’ve installed all kinds of tweaks for adjusting volume, but it just won’t go loud. O-well.
So now, while sitting in waiting rooms, I can work on my netbook. It’s small enough that I don’t have any issues carrying it. And with 3G, the internet is fast enough to be not annoying. If you travel a lot, or even a little, and don’t want/need to carry a huge laptop around, I highly recommend getting one.
In your old kit-bag… and smile smile smile.
or listen here
(this is the song at the beginning of the season 1 finale of Castle).
Could someone explain to me why I’m obsessed with paper notebooks and pens?
I’ve moved just about everything I work on and play on to an online equivalent. For my personal todo list I use rememberthemilk.com and for my work related tasks I use such things as mantis, various wikis, Outlook folders/Calendar, and my iPhone notepad and voice recorder, just to name a few..
I used paper notebooks for years. Starting with the cool brown Physics laboratory/Engineering computation notebooks, and then on to smaller hardcover blueline notebooks and weatherproof mini-notebooks (which I still use at the gym by taping my ID card to the front cover so I don’t forget it). I also bought a variety of 3×5 cards for notes, with monogram from Levenger. But I go for weeks and months without ever using any of them. I’ve had the same notebook for all my CheatCodes work since we opened in 2001 – and It’s not even close to half filled. I put reference items in my wikis, since they’re availble from “anywhere.” RememberTheMilk keeps my todos organized and available at all times (with a great iphone app).
So, why on Earth do I keep buying various paper methods? I can’t go through a store without checking the “notebook” aisle.
My latest is buying Moleskine notebooks of various sizes. I have several right here in front of me, and I rarely write in them – and the reason – they’re too nice and I don’t want to “spoil” them. Seriously. The paper is such great quality I really don’t want to mess them up! Plus, I keep all my notes online ANYWAY.
What kind of idiot pays $19.95 for 192 pages of ruled 7.5×10″ paper and then refuses to write in it? Me, that’s who…