Roger Bikes

Author: Roger

  • Positive feedback loop

    Feeling deep this morning while listening to an early Kinsta podcast with Joe of WP Buffs. It’s a great conversation about business and entrepreneurship. Joe is such a positive guy it’s infectious and I’ve seen it pervade in his organization.

    It made me think about how I need to act more positively. I do my best to think and be positive about life, but am I acting positive? Do I give positive feedback as much as I give critical feedback? Is it possible to live giving only positive feedback? The last one we can ponder forever but the amount of positive feedback that you give doesn’t need to be measured. It just needs to be given.

    If you know me you know I like to be critical. In a lot of cases it is great to be critical. At work I look at problems to find their cause. When biking I am critical of where I ride my bike so that I don’t get run over or ride off a cliff. These are situations where being critical is good and helpful.

    Criticizing anyone’s home cooked meal is maybe good and helpful but only if the meal is rancid or poison. Otherwise it’s known as a situation where if you don’t have anything nice to say: yo keep yo damn mouth shut.

    While I am not proposing that I try to live without being critical of anything, I am proposing that I try to accentuate the positive.

  • Review of: Our remote work future is going to suck

    In reality, remote work makes you vulnerable to outsourcing, reduces your job to a metric, creates frustrating change-averse bureaucracies, and stifles your career growth.

    Our remote work future is going to suck

    I have only worked for about 30 years at this point but each of those points has always been applicable. Since I have gone remote though I have felt more flexibility to work with whom I also want to work with, not just who is within a 30 minute commute. Sure there are crap remote based companies out there, but there have always been crap office based companies.

    I hear the argument about the loss of office culture and the spontaneity of it all. Again based on my limited office based experience this usually means they miss not getting work done, or trying to date a co-worker. To me spontaneity in the work day usually means I have been interrupted from work that I am focused on. I am all for the “Yes, and” philosophy of improv but most of my work day is spent on specific tasks and goals.

    This argument was also made about the Web in the 90’s. That looking for information on the web would lose the spontaneity of going to the library and browsing the shelves. Then search engines showed up and forums and blogs and a deluge of information.

    Remote work is in a similar position. This is still early days and we are figuring it out. Software like Slack has helped a lot. There are tons of tools being used by various departments that enable them to make remote work better. To me the loss of office contact is felt most when there is a lot of nuance to a conversation. Video chat helps a lot with this but its still not quite 100%. We are making progress though.

    So I guess if you want remote work to suck then it is going to suck. I choose to make it awesome and I hope that helps make it happen at least a little bit.

  • ISS docking simulator from SpaceX

    This is pretty cool, and really hard – ISS docking simulator for SpaceX

    You got the right stuff?

    Makes me think of how the video game in The Last Starfighter was a recruiting device.

  • Set your alarm for bedtime

    Set your alarm for bedtime

    We are getting our alarm clocks all wrong. Everyone sets their alarm for when they want to wake up. We don’t take into account when we go to bed. If you set your alarm for 6am but goto bed at 1am, thats only 5 hours of sleep.

    At this point it’s pretty much decided that we all need 7 to 8 hours of sleep everyday. If you need to get up at 6am then you should be going to bed at 10/11pm. If you set your alarm for when you need to goto sleep then you may not even need a wake up alarm. I know that I wake up a few minutes before 6am if I get to bed around 10pm.

    One neat feature of iOS is the Sleep section of the Health app. In this section you can set your sleep schedule for any days you want. I only set it for weekdays so that I can sleep in on the weekends. There is also a wind down setting which I set to 45 minutes. This notifies me at 9:15pm each night that my scheduled sleep time of 10pm is coming soon.

    I am not perfect about getting to bed on time but I am trying. When I do get consistent sleep everything else is better, this I know.

  • Never not felt better

    One truth I have relearned multiple times is that I need to get up and do something first thing in the morning. Usually that is a workout of some kind: cycling, yoga, strength training, This gives me time to wake up before I try to be productive with my day. Waking up is more than just opening my eyes and getting out of bed.

    The body has been at rest for hopefully at least 7 hours. If I am going to be awake, focused, present, and enjoying my day I need to spend time waking up all of my body. This helps me stay comfortable in my seat which means I can think about my work instead of my aching back. After doing a workout I have never not felt better.

    The problem is that before I do the workout I really don’t wanna do it. There are times when I am tired, or sick, and I should either stay in bed, or skip the workout. Most of the time when my mind is telling me to stay in bed it’s because my mind doesn’t wanna. We are all pleasure seekers, and a warm bed is pretty nice.

  • Always open in List view

    I have been using a Mac for over 22 years at this point, and I still have Finder windows open with a view of files in something other than List view. It drives me crazy every time.

    I like list view for the same reason I like ll and ls -la on the command line. If I am looking at files, and directories/folders, I want to see lotsa information. List view, when setup for what you need, gives you exactly what you need.

    Anyway if you use a Mac this can help make sure you have Finder always open in list view. I am most putting this here because I want to be able to find it again:

    Open finder

    Select your hard disk

    Command + J

    Check the top two check boxes (Always open in list view, browse in list view)

    Click use as defaults

    Open Applications->Utilities->Terminal

    sudo find / -name ".DS_Store" -exec rm {} \;

    Enter your root password, press enter

    How to set Finder to always use list view

    The second to last command there should give you pause: sudo and rm . The first one gives the command root privilege to everything on your harddrive. The second one removes/deletes files. Used in combination means you can delete some really important stuff. The good news is that the find command is searching for .DS_Store files, which contain information about how you want Finder windows to open. While we should be aware of what we are doing when using sudo and rm in any instance, in this case we are good to go.

    Before doing the terminal command take a moment to review the rest of the Finder settings. Here is what I prefer to see as default when I open a new Finder window in List view:

    Once you have it set as you want go ahead and run the terminal command and sing a little prayer.

  • Snow Managment

    Snow Managment

    When it starts snowing in our area of Colorado you need to be ready with some type of plan. If you want to be able to use your driveway or porch you need to figure out when and where you are going to start moving snow. This isn’t like mowing the lawn where if you forget to mow you can still drive your car. If you let snow stay in place it eventually turns to ice and then you are in big trouble.

    Snow management requires planning and then action. If its snowing hard you should plan on getting out at least 2 times a day to cover the same ground. For example we got about 8 inches of snow in 24 hours a few weeks ago. While my snow blower can handle up to 12 inches of snow it is best to clear things out before that much accumulates.

    This makes it easier on the machinery and also means you are keeping your driveway clear more often. If you want to use your driveway it is best to have it clear or at least mostly clear of snow. Once there is more than 1 or 2 inches of snow on the road or deck you should start clearing it off. At that depth is can start to give you traction problems and its going to start packing down.

    Packed snow is slightly better than unpacked snow in terms of traction, but it is more difficult to remove and melts slower than if you had removed it. If the snow is falling and you are at 1 to 2 inches get out there and clean things up.

    Then plan on getting back out there in 6 to 10 hours to clean up the stuff that kept coming down. Yes its a lot of work but once the storm is gone and your driveway and deck are already clear you will be happier. Once the snow gets time to melt and re-freeze it creates a crust and is much more difficult to remove.

  • Double the outlets

    As Kate and I inhabit our new home we have been 99% satisfied with how everything came out. The only complaint is that we should have doubled the electrical outlets. Especially in the garage, mudroom, and bedrooms. Its really hard to run wires once the insulation and drywall are installed.

  • Stopping Doom Scrolling

    Doom scrolling
    “If it’s not helping you take action to make things better, what’s it for?”

    I would say that I started Doom Scrolling when Headline News came out with the 15 minute news cycle. Today we have Facebooks and Twitters and Reddits with endless scrolling of all the horrible news going on, and on, and on. While I do think it is important to be informed there is a limit at which the information is useful.

    My personal vice is Reddit’s Popular page. I can scroll on that page anytime of the day. While not all of it is Doom and Gloom enough of it is to keep me going for more. The problem is that apart from some funny gifs that I share with friends it is mostly a waste of time. I could spend that same time reading industry news or learning something technical.

    The solution is that I am updating my NetNewsWire to only have feeds that fit some sense of utility:

    • Industry related: WordPress, hosting, cloud computing, etc
    • Business related: Seth Godin’s site is a great example here
    • Focused posts: For the most part the sites should be talking about a specific topic(s). There can be some posts about personal life but unless I know them personally I am not as interested

    The internet and web are amazing. We can all easily publish anything anytime and anyone with access to the web can read it. This is also a problem as there is way more information than we can review in our lifetimes. Finding a balance of information versus entertainment is a challenge. Realizing when we are sucked into someone’s algorithim based on fury and rage is a skill we must learn and practice.

  • 100,000 meters so far

    I bought an indoor rowing machine a few weeks ago to keep my aerobic fitness going through winter. We took delivery on Dec 24th and I did a short 10 minute workout to test it out. Since then I have used it 10 more days and so far have rowed over 100,000 meters or 100km, also known as over 62 miles.

    I am still trying to take it easy and the longest single distance rowed was today at 15km. I broke it up into four 3750meter segments with a 3 minute easy break between each one. Breaking it up like that is something I learned from a 12 week training program I am going to start after my vacation.

    One might think that rowing in a room would be really boring and it could be. To keep things more interesting I have been listening to audiobooks during the workouts. So far I have listening to Sid Meier’s Memoir, which if you have played any Sid Meier games is a fun listen. Now I am listening to Range by David Epstein, which is a really fascinating review of how humans have changed due to the modern world.

    This is a change from my initial use of Apple Fitness+ workouts, but I found that those workouts were not as helpful as more traditional rowing workouts. In the Apple workouts you watch the video to match the instructors strokes per minute. That works fine but from reading about rowing workouts the stroke rate they are using around 26 to 30 strokes per minute is pretty high.

    The training program I am using now has my long easy workouts at 18 to 20 strokes per minute. This is a lot slower stroke rate which allows me to focus on my form much more. It also keeps my heart rate in a zone 2 area which is best for improving aerobic fitness. There are also more difficult interval workouts that use higher stroke rates to work on my strength and speed.