Category: videos

 

Personal Update 201803 | 31 Mar 2018 | Saturday

Greetings,

I hope you’re doing well. Thanks for taking a moment to read my latest update.

Social Media

In my January update, I wrote about how I’m spending less time on social media. During my time away from social media, I’ve been reflecting the benefits and drawbacks of what services like Facebook and Twitter offer us.

The numerous drawbacks have been in the news lately, mostly relating to a loss of privacy and the addictive nature of social media. The benefits are many. People who would otherwise not have an online presence are able to create a free Facebook hosted personalized web page. Announcements can be share and re-shared to reach many people. Freedom of speech is amplified allowing everyone a way to express their views in a way they’ll be heard.

As I weigh the benefits and drawbacks, and see many people leaving social media platforms, I am thinking about alternatives to social media. I think personal websites are a great substitute for (or addition to) having a Facebook page. I like the free WordPress.com hosted websites that let people ‘follow’ friends online and keep up on news just like Facebook but without many of the drawbacks.

Tech Library

I’ve informally maintained a technology library for many years. It’s a way to loan out systems, tools, and test equipment to people where owning these items just isn’t practical.

For example, wattage meters let people test the electrical usage of various home appliances to determine what devices are using the most electricity. It’s a fun device to use for a day, or a week, but beyond that most people don’t need to own one.

Laser thermometers that let you check the temperature on any surface, even those beyond reach. In the winter, a person can see where external walls or gaps near windows may be letting cold air in. Checking refrigerator temperatures, or surfaces of overheating electronics would be other uses for a laser thermometer.

To learn more, visit ResourcesForLife.com/tech-library

Audio Services

During March, I continued my ‘deep dive’ study of audio systems and wrote some audio resource guides and articles. I finally completed the installation of an audio system that I use for my daily work. To learn more, visit ResourcesForLife.com/audio

Thanks!

Many thanks to all of you who keep in touch and provide support for the work I do.

__________

Want More News? For additional news and updates you can subscribe to the Resources For Life Newsletter by sending an email to resourcesforlifenews-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Origins. For those of you who are new to these monthly personal updates, they began about 17 years ago out of a desire to share from my personal life about topics of lifeways (faith), health, career, finances, relationships, effective living, and activism. This is based on the life map presented on the Resources For Life website.

Personal Update 201802 | 28 Feb 2018 | Wednesday

Greetings,

I hope you’re doing well. Thanks for taking a moment to read my latest update.

Deep Dive

Since last fall, I’ve been doing a ‘deep dive’ into a specific topic each month, gathering data, doing research, and developing solutions, practices and systems that once implemented can continue on auto pilot. Here are some examples. I spent about a month studying KETO diets and intermittent fasting. Based on that research, I’ve further honed my diet and wellness strategy. In November, I began researching cryptocurrency. In addition to buying small amounts of cryptocurrencies, I began working on building my own mining systems, and investing in cloud mining. In the first year, the ROI should be 20%. In the second year, the initial principal investment should have doubled. I’m using a creative combination of existing mining approaches and systems. In January my focus was on saving and investing. In February 2018, I’ve been studying audio systems and have revisited and expanded on the audio services that I began offering back in the 1980s. Audio services have always been an area of interest for me, and something I’ve been offering my existing customers, but now I plan to focus on audio more — which I’ll explain below.

Audio Services

I’ve had an interest in high-end audio systems since I was a young teenager. Over the years, I’ve spent many hours evaluating systems and setting up my own components for audio production and audio listening. In the mid 1980s, my first nice system consisted of a liquid cooled Denon DENON DRA-425R receiver and some Boston Acoustics tower speakers. I used it as a home hi-fi system, but also as an amp for a Yamaha DX5 keyboard. I also used that system for the ‘Oakland Sound Studios’ business that I launched in Iowa City back in 1986. Thirty years later that stereo system is still running. Audio systems have changed much since then. In my deep dive this month, with a LOT of help from my brother Sherman, I created a much improved and revamped Audio Services page on the Resources for Life website. As a musician, and enthusiast of composing my own music, my interest in audio is multifaceted. In 2000, I began the Heart Songs personal selections of music offered in an annual CD that later became monthly selections and continues 18 years later. In 2011, I established the Inspiring Music Videos website as a place online to offer a curated collection of music videos that inspire, energize, and promote the creative process. In the year ahead, I’m looking forward to developing some audio tracks based on nature sounds around Iowa City. On the Audio Services page I refer to music with a purpose. I believe music can offer us something beyond superficial enjoyment.

Multi Sensory Renewal Spaces

The audio systems I’m working with have a clarity and accuracy that result in not just hearing music, or listening to music, but experiencing music in a deeper way that can envelop the listener. In addition to offering an in-home demo services, I plan to do some consulting to help people create their own multi sensory renewal spaces. These would be acoustically insulated room conversions where people can rest, floating in a zero gravity chair, listening to relaxing music or nature sounds, smelling essential oils, surrounded by the natural light of candles, and watching inspiring HD natural scenes from around the world — all configured depending on each person’s preference. Such rooms could be used for relaxation, meditation, or as studios for massage practitioners and energy healers. The idea is to create a space where people can experience renewal and healing.

Wellness

In February, I didn’t get to the gym as much as I would have liked. I ended up getting that cold thats been going around, and as with others who experienced the cold, it kept me out of commission for quite a while. I’m hoping in March to get back to my wellness plan.

Thanks!

Many thanks to all of you who keep in touch and provide support for the work I do.

__________

Want More News? For additional news and updates you can subscribe to the Resources For Life Newsletter by sending an email to resourcesforlifenews-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Origins. For those of you who are new to these monthly personal updates, they began about 17 years ago out of a desire to share from my personal life about topics of lifeways (faith), health, career, finances, relationships, effective living, and activism. This is based on the life map presented on the Resources For Life website.

Personal Update 201801 | 30 January 2018 | Tuesday

Greetings,

I hope you’re doing well. Thanks for taking a moment to read my latest update.

Wellness

This month I lifted about 209,000 pounds at the gym. I’ve done very little bike riding due to the extremely cold weather. I’d planned to ride through the winter, but with ice on the streets and trails, I want to avoid having any accidents.

Career

I mentioned in my December 2017 update that I would be “bringing in the fishing nets” and assessing the various projects I’m working with. For the month of January, I’ve focused on my technology services work. In addition to actual time with customers, I’ve been developing some business management tools for office workflow of invoicing and work notes. This has helped improve my ability to document and bill for my time, even shorter support calls. It’s a scaleable system that can take very little time for some billing or longer if needed for more complex billing.

Social Media

For the month of January, I’ve mostly stayed off social media — checking in briefly on Facebook only a few times per week. This has helped me dedicate more time to my wellness goals and career.

Last month I mentioned I was developing an alternative to Facebook. In January, I worked on creating a system using WordPress.com hosting that would allow individuals to have their own Page (free website) where they could post whatever news and announcements they’d like to share. WordPress members can ‘subscribe’ to any WordPress blog (the equivalent to following on Facebook). Groups of people wanting to create a shared discussion forum experience could post on a shared WordPress website. Anyone subscribing to that site would get an aggregate of all the stories that the authors posted. Such a system needs no further development and can be implemented immediately.

This system can foster more articulate communications and put people into democratic control of the platform. This post you are reading is an example. If you subscribe to this website, as many have already done, you’ll be automatically notified of updates and can select how often you get those notifications.

Here’s an example of what a group of bloggers could do with a multi-authored and collaboratively managed site: Famplace.wordpress.com.

Weekly No-Tech Day

We’ve become so dependent upon technology, that when it isn’t working right, it can be very stressful and disruptive. We typically don’t have alternative systems in place to continue functioning. During the transition from paper to digital sales in retail stores, there was a period of time when stores would train their employees how to conduct sales without any computers. Businesses would have paper-based forms and log books to keep running when computers were down, and then manually enter the data later when systems were working again. Today, we have no such redundancy.

Once a week, typically on the weekend, I try to have a no-tech day. I’m not strict about it. If an important email or phone call comes in, I’ll take care of it, but in general I try to take time away from electronics and work with notebooks and paper based systems on that day. It’s reassuring to have a working model in place for when systems fail.

This month the Netflix website was down for over 5 hours and the company was apparently unable to repair the problem quickly. It’s unknown whether the problem was the result of human error, system failure, natural disaster, or an intentional malicious attack. Regardless, the outcome is the same, and that’s just one example of many where massive systems are becoming unreliable.

Thanks!

Many thanks to all of you who keep in touch and provide support for the work I do.

__________

Want More News? For additional news and updates you can subscribe to the Resources For Life Newsletter by sending an email to resourcesforlifenews-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Origins. For those of you who are new to these monthly personal updates, they began about 17 years ago out of a desire to share from my personal life about topics of lifeways (faith), health, career, finances, relationships, effective living, and activism. This is based on the life map presented on the Resources For Life website.

Personal Update 201712 | 28 December 2017 | Thursday

Greetings,

I hope you’re doing well. Thanks for taking a moment to read my latest update. There’s a lot from this past year to be grateful for. I’m appreciative for the family and friends who inspire, guide, and empower me. This month I’m going to recap 2017, and share some thoughts about 2018.

Wellness

This past year, I’ve lifted over 3 million pounds at the gym and ridden more than 1,367 miles on my bicycle. Yet, the biggest breakthrough came in the past four months with the development of a eating program I’ve created that has allowed me to improve numerous clinical and lab wellness metrics — effectively reversing aging by 7 years in 4 months. In other words, I’m getting outcomes and results that I’ve not seen in 7 years. I’ll elaborate more on this in the months to come.

Career

In my consulting work, my ‘customers’ become like friends, and I greatly appreciate their support. Some have been calling on me for technical services for 20+ years. Others I’ve been working with more recently. I’m still refining my business model to serve others better, and for greater efficiency of my time, energy, and resources. One of the challenges in 2017 has been cutting back on my billable time so I can spend time on my wellness goals — and just to be living amore balanced life.

Because I’m the bookkeeper, receptionist, head of marketing, and CEO, there’s a lot that needs to get done to operate a business. On a typical day, it may take several hours to take care of the administrative overhead and basic communications of the day.  So, my actual billable time on a given day could be just a few hours. With the Bike Work Life initiative, I’m able to spend several active hours a day while catching up on emails and phone calls — but that’s typically not billable time. So, I’m looking for ways to reduce my operational costs since I’m no longer working 60+ hours a week.

Bringing in the Fishing Nets

I’ve had a lot of business initiatives and public interest outreach efforts over the years. Like a farmer planting his fields with different seeds to see which variation produces the greatest yield, I’ve tried expanding the billable and volunteer work I do, examining the fruitfulness and impact of my efforts.

In 2018, I plan to begin ‘brining in the fish nets’ and shutting down some projects where interest has dwindled. Some of the websites I’ve launched over the years will, over time, be shut down and the content or purpose brought back under the Resources For Life umbrella.

In the year ahead I’ll be focusing my efforts on those areas of greatest fruitfulness in areas of public interest and in producing the personal income I need to pay the bills and have an impact.

Tech support continues to be a focus of mine. That’s what I’ve done my entire life, and will continue to work with. Other areas I’ll probably be cutting back on. This little bit of downsizing will have minimal impact since my work in those other areas was so broad.

This is part of an overall effort to downsize and reduce the ‘stuff’ I need to do my daily work.

Knowledge Sharing

In 2018, I plan to offer some public courses on various topics that people have requested including web design, marketing, effective activism, photography, video production, using mobile devices, purchasing technology devices, how to run a successful small business, and best practices for computer use — as well as other topics.

Up until this point, I’ve been mentoring and supporting individuals who are just getting started with their own business. With these public courses, I hope to offer knowledge sharing to a broader audience. I’ve done some of this in the past, and want to return to it in the year ahead.

These courses will be a way to offer all my paid services for free to the public. Those wanting one-on-one personalized services, on-site support, and services on-demand will still pay, but those unable to pay will be able to get free help with these public courses.

Reducing Social Media

Over the past two months I’ve been significantly reducing my time spent on social media. In the past I would checking throughout the day to post updates and keep up with news of others. Lately I’ve been checking in once or twice a week, with infrequent posts and updates. Moving forward, I’m planning to communicate more through email and my website. I’m also working on an alternative to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram that I’ll announce soon. The alternative will be free of ads, trolls, fake news, and hackers — while at the same time offering ease of use and privacy.

High-Tech, Low-Tech, No-Tech

Over the years I’ve had an interest in maintaining involvement in various ‘platforms’ or brands of devices. For example, I regularly work with Apple, Linux, and Windows computers. I also try to maintain fluency in various technology ecosystems such as Apple, Microsoft, and Google cloud services. I use a fancy iPhone, but also maintain an inexpensive Android phone that I work with daily. It’s regularly updated and fully operational. I like to be familiar with scalable technology solutions so I can advise and support those on a limited budget, as well as those on an unlimited budget.

In the low-tech department, I’m working on creating simple computers for people that will have a very low cost of ownership — perhaps $50 per year or less. These would be $150 computers that people could use for 3 to 5 years or longer before upgrading.

In addition to high-tech and low-tech solutions, starting this month, I’m going to begin regularly working with ‘no-tech’ solutions. These are organizational and operational systems I developed decades ago that are based on the use of pen and paper. It’s become popular lately for people to go ‘off the grid’ (or at least off the social media grid) for a week or a month. I plan to spend one day a week focused on using and refining ‘no-tech’ solutions for my daily needs. My calendar, notes, to do list, reference items, and other things I normally would use the computer for, I’ll instead use a notebook and pen to do.

My most effective present day organizational and operational systems are digital forms of practices that began on paper many years ago. I want to revive that. This effort encompasses goals of minimalism, cost savings, reducing my carbon footprint, simplicity, and having off the grid practical systems in place for when the resources we normally rely on aren’t there.

For myself and others, I see increased stress and frustration when computers fail or the Internet isn’t working, or there are power outages. Everything grinds to a halt. Last month, some parts I needed for a project were sold-out nationally. An online system I rely on was out for two weeks after a cyber attack resulted in over $50 million being stolen. Last month a Yahoo service I rely on was down for a week, impacting millions of people. No explanation was given. If I had to guess, I’d say it was probably a cyber attack. We’ll probably never know the actual cause. Numerous companies are being impacted by cyber attacks or internal negligence, and then a lack of transparency makes things worse. The Equifax breach is an example of this. This is all very disruptive, and when specific systems aren’t working, getting solutions from customer service can take days or weeks.

Working in technology support, I see daily reminders of the increasingly fragile nature of the systems we rely on. There’s a reassurance in having paper-based systems in place for basic day-to-day operations.

This month, I created a spreadsheet to evaluate the ongoing cost of fully embracing all the products that Apple would like us to use: the Apple Watch, iPad, iPhone, MacBook laptop computer, and iMac desktop computer, along with the cloud services. For someone buying moderate performance equipment and replacing items every 2-5 years as needed, the cost is about $1,500 per year. For a little bump in performance and features, it’s $3,000 per year. If you’re buying their high-end equipment, even if you’re waiting 5 years between upgrades for some of the equipment, the annual cost could be over $5,500 per year, for life. None of this takes into account the cellular phone bills and internet services that can easily cost hundreds of dollars.

In other words, the devices we buy are never a one-time purchase. They might as well be on a subscription or rental plan. Indeed, this is what Apple and other companies offer. You pay, let’s say, $50 a month for life, and you’ll always have the latest iPhone. Well, that’s just the phone. All the devices we use, and replace when broken or slow, that all can cost hundreds of dollars even when someone is frugal and stretches out the replacement cycle. I’m regularly helping people who have computers, smart phones, and tablets that are excruciatingly slow, or that grind to a halt because of limited space or slow processors. People either pay with money to stay current, or pay with their time. The market forces people to upgrade on a regular basis, or suffer the consequences.

So, for all the above reasons, I want to diversify my portfolio of resources that I depend on for my daily operations in case there are unexpected disruptions and outages. I’ll share more about this in the months ahead.

Thanks!

Many thanks to all of you who keep in touch and provide support for the work I do.

__________

Want More News? For additional news and updates you can subscribe to the Resources For Life Newsletter by sending an email to resourcesforlifenews-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Origins. For those of you who are new to these monthly personal updates, they began about 17 years ago out of a desire to share from my personal life about topics of lifeways (faith), health, career, finances, relationships, effective living, and activism. This is based on the life map presented on the Resources For Life website.

Personal Update 201711 | 30 November 2017 | Thursday

Greetings,

I hope you’re doing well. Thanks for taking a moment to read my latest update.

Health & Wellness

 

This past month I lifted over 241,000 pounds and was on my bike for 13.4 hours riding about 95 miles. I’ve been eating mostly salads for each meal with lime juice in sparkling water as a beverage. For protein I have been eating veggie patties. The food is very satisfying and the absence of carbs and sugar reduces cravings throughout the day. In addition to this food program, I’m doing intermittent fasting (periodically skipping a meal) to help keep the body in a state of ketosis. I’m also trying to maintain a 1,500 calorie diet. The results have been great!

Heat Your Home for Free

Each month I try to do a ‘deep dive’ into a certain topic or skill. Learning enough to create long-term beneficial habits and establish skills I can use. This past month, I developed a heating system that costs nothing to operate. Here’s a video explaining the system. Even if you think you may not be interested in the topic, believe me, I think you’ll like what I have to share in this video. It gets better toward the end.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSXjVIZohoA?rel=0&w=1280&h=720]

Thanks!

Many thanks to all of you who keep in touch and provide support for the work I do.

~ Greg

__________

Want More News? For additional news and updates you can subscribe to the Resources For Life Newsletter by sending an email to resourcesforlifenews-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Origins. For those of you who are new to these monthly personal updates, they began about 17 years ago out of a desire to share from my personal life about topics of lifeways (faith), health, career, finances, relationships, effective living, and activism. This is based on the life map presented on the Resources For Life website.