Have you ever heard someone say “In love…” followed by some critical remark.  Example, “In love, you really need to start brushing your teeth.”  I find that 99.9% the remark… has no love in it.  It sounds nice but it usually is completely disingenuous.  How about starting “To be frank…” or “Let me cut to the chase…” or even Barack’s favorite, “Let me be clear…” These phrases say the same thing without the kindness that’s manufactured in an attempt to sugar coat the truth.

I know this is a odd thing to post. I might sound angry, trust me I’m not.  Just another trip into the scariness that are my thoughts.  To conclude I just want to say, in love, please find a new new way to be clear about your direct thoughts.

Is the Google / Twitter / IM age making us less able to commit to deep contemplative thought?  Watch this video for more info (don’t worry it’s only 2 mins long

Personally I believe this to be true because I see it within myself. As I read magazines I find myself thinking, “Interesting article… but too long…”. I usually fight it and read it anyways, but my inclination is not to.  You also see this in the number of people who stopped blogging and instead started twittering.  Blogging requires some level of thought… Tweeting does not.

I do think the skills of skimming and scanning are helpful, but I also believe that we need more slow contemplative thought.  Being able to do so could be what sets apart future leaders from the rest of the Facebook obsessed population.

BTW… Thanks Fora for the 2 min highlight of Carr’s one hour speech

My wife and I have been working hard on creating a home office for me. I’ve been putting in more and more hours at home, so having a nice place to work is becoming more and more important.

One of the final touches I needed was a good office chair. I have to admit I covet Herman Miller Aerons… but I can’t bring myself to pay $600 for a chair. I tried a cheaper Herman Miller Equa 2 chair that Costco is selling but it KILLED my back.

Then… my good friend Bob called me and told me there was a engineering company going under and selling Aerons for $50. I stopped in that day! Turns out they were not Aerons but instead Haworth x99 Task chairs (see photo below). While not the ‘name’ I wanted I couldn’t turn down a great chair at this price (the list price for the chair is $1200 with a retail around $600).

I’m relieved that I was able to get a good chair that I could afford and also works well with the design. The final piece I want to add is a piece of large wall art. I want to do it myself but doubt I’ll have time in the foreseeable future.

I’ve been spending a lot more time in our home office, the one Heidi and I have shared since we moved in.  A few weeks ago I through out the idea to Heidi about taking over the whole office for myself.  Being the loving and sacrificial wife that she is she agreed as long as we could find a place for her computer and room to do the bills.  The only place we could come up with was the playroom closet.  After a few weeks of pondering and designing we demoed the closet and created a new boardroom just for her.

It came out really well.  Since it was the closet we had to make it feel nice.  I spent a lot of time on the details especially cord management.  Hanging the monitor on the wall and running the cords inside wall made for a clean look, especially with the LED under cabinet lights. 

Just need to installed the shelves on the other half of the closet.  The shelves that came with the house were pretty lame so we might end up with more usable storage than when we started.  That’s the hope anyway…

Next project… re-organize my office.  Any suggestions on furniture?  Would like something fairly inexpensive and creative.