TimK’s post on the The Thought-Work Uncertainty Principle is just about the best thing I’ve read on the workplace and creativity.
Laura Ricci’s post on The Ways We Sabotage Proposals discusses the mental impairment of doing the same thing for long periods of time.
Together, these two articles make a strong case for trusting professionals in the business of using their minds to be, well, professional. When a company’s greatest asset turns into a bowlful of Jell-o, it’s a serious issue. The professional knows when it happens, and knows the best thing to do is something else.
I really need to read Peopleware 
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved mazes – not so much solving these puzzles but making them. My sister, in fact, still has a maze I made for her two decades ago. I remember making it for her, too. I sat in her bedroom drawing out a simple curved line maze as she watched. What I liked best about making my mazes was the uncertainty. While I drew them to be solvable, the method I used did not give me the solution as I worked. Even today I’ll make mini-mazes while doodling.
The other day, one of my coworkers stopped by my desk with a really cool gift. Galen wrote The Ultimate Maze Book. These mazes are simply amazing and put my simple bubble mazes to shame. Each puzzle is ranked for the amount of brain power needed to solve it. The book includes everything from a basic over-and-under puzzle, to those mapped across three dimensional surfaces. Some of the full brain power mazes even intimidate me a bit. ;-)
It’s a very cool book and would make a great gift to any smart kids (or adults).
Last weekend Mom was out of town at a Women’s Retreat. That left three boys at home alone with nothing to do.
Now it would have been a relatively benign weekend of movies and popcorn. That is, until Todd Wilson from Family Man sent out his weekly email newsletter. In it he wrote about being the dad that goes the extra mile:
…THE EXTRA MILE.
That’s the kind of dad I want to be. I want to celebrate birthday’s in a big way, drive miles out of the way to experience America, stop the ice cream truck on a busy summer night, take a bike ride TWO nights in a row, and take the time to dump some Mentos in a 2-liter of Diet Coke.
I want to be an EXTRA MILE kind of dad.
And I want to encourage you to be that kind of dad, too.
It was the Mentos and Coke that caught my attention.
Welcome CSS Reboot visitors. For those who know me and have followed my blog over the years, the new design should look very familiar. In 2000, when I registered the uhri.com domain name and put up the original site, I used a scheme very familiar to this. As I thought about the reboot, I happened upon an archived version of my site. Looking at it again, I realized I still liked it.
So here we are with the new scheme. Rememeber, taste is in the tongue of the beholder.