This is from Larry Vaughan, one of my favorite bloggers and someone I like to think of as an internet friend:

I have learned this lesson late in life. When I was young I thought that people who asked for my opinion actually wanted it. I would dig deep into my cerebellum and deliver (sometimes eloquently) my verdict. I’m laughing right now at the folly of it all. This is why most people have never followed my advice; they didn’t want it in the first place.
My new friend has reminded me of the power of attending. The only thing he wants; in fact, the only thing he needs, is to be heard. Not understood. Understanding would be nice, but at this point it’s just the icing on the cake. In telling his story he shares his life. Now two people carry the load.
No advice. No comprehension. Just listening. Not understanding. Not empathy. Just listening. Followed by change.

Side note: As I was preparing this post, I realized I didn’t have a category for this post. Usually when this happens, I just create a new one and make the post the first entry in this category. In this case, however, I couldn’t really think of a good pigeon hole for this post. Interesting.

I am the wind on the sea.
I am the ocean wave.
I am the sound of the billows.
I am the seven-horned stag.
I am the hawk on the cliff.
I am the dewdrop in sunlight.
I am the fairest of flowers.
I am the raging boar.
I am the salmon in the deep pool.
I am the lake on the plain.
I am the meaning of the poem.
I am the point of the spear.
I am the god that makes fire in the head.
Who levels the mountain?
Who speaks the age of the moon?
Who has been where the sun sleeps?
Who, if not I?
– Celtic poem by Amergin, as recited during The Inner Landscape of Beauty

I saw this book yesterday at the grocery store checkout counter:

Oh, and check out this Amazon.com review of the book.

I was wondering… If you post a daily photo of your dog on your blog, and the advertising revenue from said blog is your primary income, can you write off care and feeding of said dog as a business expense?

Don’t use black rice in your home-made turkey and rice soup unless you want it to have a less-than-appetizing purplish-black color. Even the pieces of turkey and the carrots are stained. That’s good eatin’!

My pastor emailed me his sermon so that I could publish it on the church web site, and here are the targeted ads that Gmail displayed along side the email:

I am not going to click on that ad even to satisfy my curiosity.

Via Ugly Food.

In this morning’s team standup meeting, one of the team members reported on her progress with some automated testing. Afterwards, our scrum master asked her, “But the real question here is: ‘Do you consider Watir testing to be a form of torture?'”

Wired News ran a contest for the saddest cubicle. Check out the winners. This reminds me of when I worked for AT&T in New Jersey back in 1996-97. AT&T had a hiring freeze on, so I was hired as a contractor from a non-personnel budget. Furthermore, this was right after the AT&T/Lucent split, and the group I was working with was working in an overcrowded building that had gone to Lucent.
Due to all of these factors, my AT&T manager couldn’t request an office for me. I worked for several months in a data center. Go to the basement, unlock the door to a huge, roaring data center at 65 degrees. Walk through it to one corner that had been walled off. Inside was a small testing lab that was somewhat warmer and somewhat quieter. That was my office. Lovely.

A few years ago, Samuel attended a birthday party at an ‘inflatable party zone’ (like this, but not the same one). One of the inflatable toys was a caterpillar through whose body the kids could crawl. They went in under the head and exited via a vertical slit on the back end. It was one of those occasions when I really regretted not having my camera. But that was nothing compared to this (which I found on the internet):

That’s a child psychologist’s money machine.