Author Archives: Kerch McConlogue

New TVs and deciding

Sometimes making a decision depends on doing some research, making lists of pros and cons and most certainly on knowing what the constraints of the decision may be. When you have what you need, making decisions is much easier than when you don’t.

Our old TV is starting to make noises like it might be time to replace it. So we’re just trying to determine SIZE TV will fit in the a nice-piece-of-furniture we bought a couple years ago to house the TV and all those other wires and components.

I know how big the box is. I know a TV should fit in there. We have one in there now.  But if the new TV is to be a different size–and this HD thing makes them ALL different sizes–then what is the largest size I can get?

WHY is this so freakin’ hard?

Nice piece of furniture for my TV

The reviews of the TV’s online tell me all kinds of crap that WOULD matter IF it fit in the box. But it is of NO value if it doesn’t fit in the box.

My husband explains to me that “All TVs are measured on the diagonal of the screen.”

Yea? Great but will that fit in my nice-piece-of-furniture?

Well, you have to do “big math.” You can’t just consider the aspect of 16:9 and figure 32 is to 19 as x is to 9    … blah blah blah. It requires square roots and squares.

I am a math major.  I COULD figure this out if I wanted to … but really, all I want is some TV manufacturer, or more likely another nice person, to make it clear that a 32″ screen comes on a TV that is this basically wide and this high. Therefore, I can judge whether or not it will, or will not,  fit in my nice-piece-of-furniture. (P.S. I know that no matter how wide they say the screen is, it will still not be as wide as the whole TV.  I lived in the 50s and 60s with console TVs that were as wide as trucks and that was a good thing!)

If Google will convert dollars to euros why can’t it as easily tell me how big the screen is in normal person numbers?  Then I can estimate if the case on the screen will fit in my nice-piece-of-furniture!

Oh, Wait! Google knows everything!

SO I searched (finally) on 16:9 calculator and Google returned up this great site where you can put in the diagonal TV size in inches, push a button and it gives you the screen size in width and height and compares it to a similar sized old style 4:3 ratio TV.

You can check it out for your house here: www.nicetaco.com/tv.aspx#calculator (Thank you, thank you nicetaco.com)

Now I have learned I’m gonna need a new TV AND  a new nice-piece-of-furniture.

Yippee?

Deciding on the options

Ihave a real curiosity about deciding and how people do it. Read my back articles on that here.

This morning I stumbled upon this article “How to Fail: 25 Secrets Learned Though Failure”  over at UnstructuredAdventures.com

It’s an interesting list of learning opportunities. But I was particularly attracted to this one:

2. Postpone hard decisions until you have to make hard trade-offs.
Instead: Make decisions earlier to create options and build flexibility.

Make decisions before you think you need to. You’re probably too late if you come to the point where you realize you have to make a choice between hard trade-offs. By waiting to make a decision you’ve created trade-offs instead of options. Postponing decisions in the attempt to optimize your results is probably a waste of your resources in other ways.

The longer you wait to make a decision… well, probably some of your options are gone. So your choices are automatically narrowed down. Sometimes that’s not a bad way to make a decision , especially if it’s not a big one. Show up at the movie theater at 7:30 and watch what ever starts next.  No real decision. Can you think of stuff you decide that way?

But what about when it does matter: either for business or fun?

Can’t decide on seeing Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band in Baltimore or David Bromberg in Reading?  Wait long enough and you’ll miss the first concert. The decision is made.  Wait a little longer and you don’t have to decide at all.  The decision is made for you.

Sure, that’s easy.  But do you get what you want out of it? Or is it just easy?  Was it fun? Or just easy?

And may I just say that I did NOT wait to buy my tickets to either show!

Rev. Peyton was a nonstop rush of music and stage presence. The albums are great but in person, they’re even better.  Breezy could be my new measure of stage presence. On his MySpace page one review says  Rev Peyton sounds like:

Robert Johnson on crack… they get one hell of a sound out of an acoustic guitar, washboard, and snare drum. It’s easy to see why they are big.”  according to Steve Hammer, in Nuvo Newsweekly

However, I probably did not need to buy my tickets two weeks in advance. The concert was, after all, on a Tuesday night and featured a rather obsure group. But I did not miss it!~

Recycling gone wild

Sometimes you see something that you just think you have to pass on… for no particular reason but that it tickled your fancy. This morning that came from Reveries’ Cool News of the Day:

Tressa Prisbrey saw a structure at Knott’s Berry Farm and decided to try the construction method out for herself.   My own family visited KBF when I was in the 6th grade. and I did not see this! Anyway, Tressa used bottles… hundreds of thousands of bottles and concrete.  According to Reveries:

She collected most of her materials from the local dump, although her hard-drinking husband drained enough beer bottles to create an entire structure made of his empties alone. Her intent was to shame him but apparently this didn’t work.

Check out the rest of her story here.

And then, just for fun, check out the rest of THAT site. I found MORE of those bottle houses here.

Why man creates

Photo by puravidapuravida from MorgueFile.com

One of my all time favorite movies is Why Man Creates released in 1968 by Saul and Elaine Bass. Is it animation, comedy, history or all of the above? The segment, The Edifice, is a particular favorite. Checkit out here.

This morning I stumbled on a funny little video chronicling  (less accurately) the development of electronic equipment,  technology and the internet from 1951 up to the present day.  Or sort of.

Anyway I liked it.. and when something  reminds me of my favorite things it’s a good way to start the day.

Check it out over on Geeks Are Sexy here.

Time just slipping away?

photo by Schnuffel from MorgueFile.com
photo by Schnuffel from MorgueFile.com

Time management and prioritizing are two issues that many of my clients share. I’ve got two tips that might help:

Say I’ve got five things ToDo on my list. Yea, I can pick the most important one… but the others sometimes mush together. Here’s a little application that helps you sort through which of the five things on your list really IS the most important. You list the five things and then choose which one is more important a given “other one.” In the end, it spits out your ordered list. Check it out at the Idea-Sandbox.com

The other idea is about looking with a different perspective at managing your work schedule.

Traditionally, people advise blocking out time each day for the big project. “My prime work time is from 10 am til 2 pm. So I’ll work on the Johnson report today until it’s finished. I’ll worry about the Fredericks report next.” Or you block all the computer jobs together. It’s a very linear way of approaching tasks. And perhaps it works well for very linear people, which, of course, I am not.

I stumbled on this alternative method of arranging my days: Time Striping.

In time striping you look at a week at a time. I started to write an explanation, but it’s already so clear at lifehack.org. So what’s the point? Check it out here.