Grab bag of links

No videos today, unlike the last several. Sorry!

1. The things he carried -- reading this article reminds me how useless most airport security measures are. If you're a "smart terrorist," there are zillions of ways to get around them. This articles shows how some people (not terrorists) did it.

2. When networking doesn't work: there's no value in just "touching base" -- the crux of the issue: interactions need to contain value.

3. Are you living a significant life? -- I like the checklist towards the bottom of the post.

4. Masters of food art (pictures) -- I lied. There's a 3-minute video embedded. But go for the pictures. This stuff is awesome. Really cool pictures using food as the primary ingredient.

5. Why "Stayin' Alive" could literally save your life: Disco song has perfect rhythm to jump-start a heart, says doctor -- I only post this because Marc told me the same thing last week. Apparently "Stayin' Alive" has the perfect rhythm to do CPR.

6. 9 tricks for getting a table and being a VIP at hot restaurants -- some of these require guts, but none of them are hard. No word on whether they worked for me, since I don't tend to go to restaurants that have long lines.

7. Unlearned skills -- by Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame). While I'm sure people could poke holes into his arguments, I really l like his proposed curriculum based around building a house.

Random thought

It's amazing what an advil, green tea, crackers with honey-butter, and a half-hour of downtime will do for the mental state.

Still not sure if I'll make it through to the end of the day without falling asleep on my desk, but at least I'll be okay long enough to finish my file.

On a related note: it's really, really, REALLY nice to receive a file that's clean and well-done, where all I have to do is tweak it. I don't remember the last time I worked at this stage (second proof) of a file, but it's really nice.

24-hours MENTAL flu?

I'm convinced that from yesterday afternoon to this afternoon, I had some sort of a 24-hour mental flu. It was bad, real bad. There were stretches in there when I couldn't stop crying, when the smallest thing would push me over the edge to crying, and things just generally weren't going well in my head. There was no one thing that was the trigger, but a sort of perfect storm of small things that seems to have pushed me over the edge.

Around 3 this afternoon was horrid. I was falling asleep at my desk, torn between wanting to cry and wanting to crash out.

And then it passed. Tea, and advil, and 30 minutes in the break room later, I felt like a different person. It was like a fever breaking. It was incredible. I had energy (and still do), and no longer felt like crying. Still don't.

So... 24-hour mental flu. Must be. Only explanation. *grin*