1. Quit eating. This will be a toughie for some, but don’t forget an IV fluid drip on wheels can be a handy time-saving meal replacement. And did you know that IV fluids now come in all kinds of great flavors, like grape and piña colada? True, your veins don’t have taste buds, but you’ll know the flavor’s in there!
2. Create “compound activities” so you can get more done at once. What’s a compound activity? Drive-bathing, jog-writing and sleep-working are merely a few examples. Get creative and save time!
3. Set your watch 24 hours ahead. That way even when you’re a few minutes late, you’re still almost an entire day early.
4. Scientific tests prove that driving like an asshole maniac can save as much as 15 seconds off a cross-town trip. ‘Nuff said.
5. Wear diapers and only change them when absolutely necessary. Pretty self-explanatory.
6. Minimize personal relationships. Other people = time-sucking vampires. Limit your exposure to them at every opportunity. The previous item on this list should help.
7. Focus on the big picture. Small details, often referred to as “rules,” “regulations,” “mandatory requirements,” or “laws” will eat into your day like nobody’s business. They are for suckers with no time management skills. Are you a sucker with no time management skills? Didn’t think so.
8. Teleport more often.
9. Write macros and applets to automate all of the computing tasks that you do on a daily basis. Sure, you may have to take a 12-week programming course to learn how to do this, but in 15 years or so, you will have saved that time back and then some!
10. Stop reading bullshit lists of time-saving tips. I mean, this one, sure. But those others? Complete wastes of time.
First off, let me be clear what I mean by “review.” By “review,” I mean “overview,” as in here’s what you get, here’s how it works.
I wish I could say that I am capable of offering an impartial critique of these products, but let’s face it: I dropped just north of two grand on this bitch. I’m invested in it. I can’t be impartial.
That said, I love it. Full stop. I’m very happy with the purchase. Absolutely no twinges of buyer’s remorse, or wishing I had bought something else instead.
Some have suggested after the fact that I could have cobbled my own solution together for less dough. Thanks, guys. Yeah, duh, I know that. I know I could’ve spent less money. I know I could’ve cobbled my own solution together. (The great treadmill desk info clearinghouse workwhilewalking.com has an entire section devoted to the DIY approach.)
There are a couple of reasons why I bought new, and as a package.
First off, I live with someone who cares whether or not my home office looks like ass when visitors poke their heads in. And frankly, while I’d accept a less attractive setup if it was only my opinion that mattered, I love the way this desk looks.
Secondly, this is a critical tool for my job, my livelihood. And if there’s one place I have learned to avoid “the cheap man pays the most” syndrome, it is with tools I will be using constantly.
Finally, time matters to me. Merely dismantling my old desktop setup (wires, wires, and more wires), moving the old desk, assembling the new desk and reconnecting my desktop setup (The wires! The wires!) took the better part of three days. And I’m still making organizational tweaks.
It just was not worth it to me to spend a lot of time and legwork going the DIY route. Once I make a decision, I want to act on it ASAP. And today, I’m using my new treadmill desk and getting the benefits from it, instead of chasing down used desks and treadmills, and whatever else I’d need.
With their immense data mining capabilities, the NSA can target ads with great precision, to “surprise and delight” the Facebook users most interested in deeper “engagement.”
Here’s the setup. DISCLAIMER: Desk has been decrappified for photo.
(This post is about my early experiences using my new treadmill desk. Soon I plan to post a separate product review of my ModTable desk from MultiTable and the LifeSpan TR1200 treadmill I bought with it.)
Remember this scene from the Pixar film WALL-E? It’s ironic—I was going to describe the scene as portraying a dystopian future, and then the clip I find of it is titled “Human Dystopia,” uploaded by a YouTube user going by the name Passively Sedentary.
Anyway, when I first saw it, the scene seemed so eerily and hauntingly prescient to me. It’s not hard to see it becoming reality. Somehow I think it was an early touchstone along my path to becoming a treadmill desk convert, and that it played a part in the fact that I am now writing this blog post while walking on a treadmill.
First off, I want to acknowledge how incredibly fortunate I am to be in a position to buy and use a treadmill desk. I’m a freelancer working from home, so I have the freedom to design my own work space. And while spending any amount of money over $5 gives me great pause, that reluctance to part with a buck has helped me save a bit here and there. It’s not easy or insignificant for me to spend $2,000 on new furniture, but I nevertheless recognize that I’m lucky I have $2,000 to part with. There’s a whole socio-economic inequality component to this subject that I won’t be getting into today, but may explore later. But for now, again I’ll say I’m very fortunate.
If the scene in WALL-E depicts a possible future that seems freaky and in some sense inevitable, the treadmill desk represents a remedy that in its own way is just as freaky. I mean, I have to admit I sometimes step back and think, Whoa, it’s come to this?
Because, essentially, the treadmill desk is a fairly extreme attempt to mitigate the ills of modern life on a human organism that hasn’t had enough evolutionary time to adapt to it.
And that is freaky.
In less than two centuries—not even a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms—we humans in the developed world have seen a big chunk of our day-to-day lives go from active to sedentary. Where we once might walk a few miles to a neighboring village to buy food, we now drive two blocks to the convenience store.
While that’s been happening, our food supply has become reliably abundant and extremely calorie-dense.
And these combined realities are killing us.
So I see the treadmill desk both as an extreme adaptation, but also a really logical one. Some might see the damn thing as an Orwellian human hamster wheel. And I get that.
But on the other hand, it’s a pretty simple and effective proposition: replace sedentary work time with active work time—even though the physical activity involved is irrelevant to the work output. And for me, it’s working flawlessly. So far.
I’m guessing it’d be good to be in the treadmill biz these days. Or have equity in treadmills. (I have equity in one treadmill, but that equity depreciates with each step I take.)
OK, enough with the philosophy. What’s it like? Here’s a short video I shot this morning.
In a nutshell, I took to it instantly. I was making a lot more typos at first, but after a few days I’m back to typing more or less as well as I did before. I’ve mixed music while using the treadmill and put together the video above, all pretty much as easily as I did while sitting.
Aside from converting sedentary minutes to active minutes—boom, done—I have no expectations for this experiment. I am, however, curious about a few things:
Will I lose weight? Will I shed the surplus baggage I can never quite seem to lose through careful eating alone? We’ll see.
Will it help me sleep? I’m a night owl, and I frequently stay up later than I’d like. That usually means I don’t get enough sleep, because I have to wake up at a reasonable hour to be available to my clients. Will being active for more hours in the day help me get to sleep earlier on those nights that I want to? Will it enhance the sleep that I do get? We’ll see.
Will walking enhance my creative work? What do we writers do when we feel stuck for ideas? We take a walk. Well, now I’m taking a walk all the time. Is it going to make me overflow with ideas all the time? We’ll see.
Is there something about the rhythmic pulsations of walking that touches me in a deep, primal way? I wonder. When I was a little kid, I sometimes spent minutes at a time rhythmically bumping my head against the wall, because I found it oddly comforting. And I’m a drummer and one of those guys who is always tapping, or whistling, or humming or singing (in other words, I am often profoundly annoying). So I really wonder if walking somehow meshes with those urges and behaviors.
OK, practical stuff. As you can see from the video, one doesn’t walk very fast on these things. You aren’t supposed get aerobic. I’ve heard 2 mph is the recommended top speed. So far, I’m usually around 1.3-1.5 mph.
Still, it makes me sweat a bit. But I’m the first to admit that I am a sweaty guy. And during the day I keep the thermostat at home warmer than many people would find comfortable. So, a little more schvitzing than normal.
The noise is minimal. People I’m talking to on the phone can’t hear the treadmill, or tell from my voice that I’m walking. Every once in a while I notice the noise my feet make on the treadmill belt, but then I’m quickly distracted by something else and no longer notice it.
What about opting to sit part of the time? One of the mistakes I made in my buying research was failing to check the minimum height of my adjustable MultiTable desk. I was more concerned in getting a desk that would be high enough to use with a treadmill. I assumed I’d be able to crank my ModTable desk down low enough to sit in my regular office chair to work when I tired of walking. Not so. I could get a stool and use that, but I’m going to wait and see.
When I feel like I’ll just be at the computer a minute or two and don’t want to bother turning on the treadmill, I’ll just stand on the treadmill rails while I work. And it feels natural. Other times, I’ve found that I wind up being at the computer for longer than I expected, so I go ahead and turn the treadmill on. And pretty soon I’ll have added another 9, 12 or 18 minutes of active movement to my day. What’s not to like about that?
So right now I’m leaning against getting a stool. If I really want to work sitting down for a few hours, I can just untether my laptop from my desk and use it at the dining room table.
I’ve noticed a bit of back soreness after several hours on the treadmill. I’m not sure if this is directly related, or due to the fact that I slightly strained my back while tearing my office down and putting it back together to accomodate the new setup, or some combination of the two. Anyway, it’s minor and after I do my McKenzie exercises, it’s fine.
The last thing I’ll mention is the indescribable weird feeling I have in my legs when I stop walking after a long session on the treadmill. The closest thing I can compare it to is the feeling I’d get as a kid when I stopped ice skating and took my skates off—it still felt like I had skates on and was skating as we walked out of the rink. Similar sensation.
In summary, so far this experiment has been an unalloyed hit. And thank God, because it would suck to blow $2,000 on a workplace setup that I didn’t like.
As I post this, I note that I have been walking for two hours and 49 minutes today so far.
Are you looking for the next pre-teen Motley Crüe?
Do you want to get your mitts on the next Iron Maiden before some other rapacious, scruple-free svengali exploits them first?
Wouldn’t it be great to discover Pantera as a diamond in the rough so that you could present them to the world as a diamond in the slightly less rough, for fun, and most importantly, profit?
Then pal, do I have the tool for you.
The Model MC1 Youth Metal Detector is unlike any youth metal detector before it. Its twin sensitivity coils can pick up the slightest bent string feedback from up to 500 yards away!
With its powerful anguished shriek detection circuitry, it can penetrate deep into even the most heavily egg-crated cinderblock rehearsal garages to sniff out those aspiring Bon Scotts and Axl Roses.
No, wait, I’m lying. This is just a metal detector for kids with funny syntax on the package.
Why, er, no, we aren’t headed to the cottage this weekend. No, indeed.
And if this weekend you should happen to wend your way down Wealthersham Lane past the club and find yourself in front of our cottage (assuming you make it past the guards), and it appears that we are in residence—perhaps because the Bentley’s in the drive, say—well, we most decidedly will not be in residence.
So there would be absolutely no point approaching the security hut and asking Lt. Woresham to phone our butler Davis requesting admittance.
Because you see, Davis is well aware of our regular comings and goings. He knows when we’re at the cottage, of course, but more than that, he knows when we are at our beach shack/villa in the Turks and Caicos, he knows when we are at our modest palazzo in Tuscany, and he knows when we are on an extended sail on the Plus Ultra III.
So Davis could assure you that even though the couple drinking gin and tonics with close friends while enjoying a spirited game of croquet on the Great Lawn might LOOK like us, it isn’t us. Because we are NOT headed to the cottage this weekend.
So, as you can plainly see, there is most certainly no justification to make any effort whatsoever to drop by. And I have expressed this view to Lt. Woresham, who assures me that he will be vigilant in watching for your non-arrival.
Yours in the cause of crystal clear understanding,
HElo NEIGBORS! Jimy habs been dignosed WITH A REAR DISEASE! It doESnt’ cause any problems acCept when he gets older he cant’ have babies. Butt theirs’ NO CURE unless we find a STEMCELL DONNOR. This is a WILD CHANCE, but does ANYONE IN THE HOOD have the CY9 MUTATION?!! COme on by if you do.—BERTHA ON HOLMES AVE.
Hello. We are new to the neighborhood and would like to know the best place to get a cup of artisanally steeped hypoallergenic organic tea. While Cozy’s, the neighborhood place down the street from us, is lovely, they refuse to give us anything in writing asserting that their artisanally steeped organic tea is hypoallergenic. So I’m afraid we shan’t be going there again. Any recommendations would be most appreciated.—Hildreth on Luana Ct.
LOST DOG: Neighbors, our dog Shorty, a shepherd/Dachshund mix, is missing since yesterday. We are heartbroken. Any help in locating him would be much appreciated.—Don on Vireo St.
DOG FOUND: Sorry for the false alarm. We accidentally left him in the Land Rover when we parked in our garage yesterday afternoon, and we didn’t notice him when we went out to dinner later because our other Land Rovers were in the way. He’s fine, just a little dehydrated and pissed off. And while I’ve got you, I may as well ask for recommendations for a good auto upholstery and carpet cleaning service.—Don on Vireo St.
NeiGBROS! PLEASE DO NOT BE OFFENDED if you aRe walking down HOLMES AVE and some laydy asKs to SWAB YOUR CHEEKS! That LAYDY IS ME! Im’ just lookign for A STEMCELL DONNOR FOR JIMY! I DONT’ BIT E I PROMISE!—BERTHA ON HOLMES AVE.
This is to publicly state that I will submit to the City’s new residential all-electric lawn equipment regulations and turn in my gas-powered Toro WHEN THOSE JERKS AT THE CITY PRY IT FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS.
Hey, it’s June, and that means it’s time to feed, Kobe, my boa constrictor. I was wondering if any of you folks with backyard coops would be willing to spare a live chick or two. Thanks.—Randy on Opal St.
NO, I DONT’ THINK ITS’ UNRESONAABLE TO ASK PASSERBYS TO HELP DEFLAY THE COST OF DNA TESTING! ITS’ THIER DANG DNA!—BERTHA ON HOLMES AVE.
Neighbors, don’t forget that next Wednesday my shop will host a special meeting of the Intra-neighborhood Steering Committee Member Selection Process Steering Committee. If you would like to be considered for the ISCMSPSC. Artisanally steeped organic tea will be served, but I will not—repeat, will not—certify it as hypoallergenic.—Jane, owner of Cozy’s on Third St.
NEVER MIND NEGIBROS! wE foUNd out JimY JUST HAS RINGWORM.—BERTHA ON HOLMES AVE.
Baltazar Ushca, of Ecuador, is the last man making a living from trekking up Mt. Chimorazo, chipping ice from the mountain’s face, and then loading the straw-wrapped ice chunks on donkeys for the long trip down to nearby village markets. With the wider availability of cheap manufactured ice, he has fewer and fewer customers. Still, even though he’s in his late 60s, he works on.
Dirtector Sandy Patch’s short film beautifully tells Ushca’s story.
This goes a long way toward explaining why, from my perspective at least, other agencies in town tend to view GSD&M more as a benevolent big brother, rather than an uncaring Goliath.
Just another reminder that success in our business is not a zero-sum game.
Last month, 10 of Rafael Leonardo Black’s pencil drawings sold at a gallery showing, at prices ranging $16,000 to $28,000.
They were apparently the first drawings he’d sold after 30 years of cranking them out in a cramped Brooklyn studio apartment.
Black, as quoted in this brief NYT profile, says, “I just never made the effort to sell it. I never expected to be able to make a living at it, but I’ve always done it since — well, I guess, since I’ve known my self.”
Never expect. Always do. Thank you for the reminder, Rafael Leonardo Black.
I ordered this ModTable model, which comes with a Lifespan treadmill base. The desktop raises and lowers by a hand crank. Click pic to see the product page.
I have no problem understanding why some people might think it’s absurd. Even I think it’s a little absurd: I’m spending a not inconsiderable amount of money for a rig that will enable me to walk while I work.
Why can’t I just exercise, go to the gym, run, or even walk?
Well, it’s complicated. But basically it’s like this: personal history has shown that I will not sustain an extra-curricular exercise program over the long term.
It’s not that I don’t like rigorous exercise. I do. I’ve been a swimmer, a runner, a racquetball player, a runner again, a spin-classser, even an aqua-jogger. But eventually, something happens. Usually that something is some kind of nagging stress injury. And then I give up the activity and tend not to go back to it.
I love walking, but never feel like there’s enough time in the day to walk long enough to make much of a difference.
When standing desks started becoming the rage, I briefly considered one, until I remembered that I hate standing. It makes my legs sore and my back hurt. I thought, “I can walk for hours pain free, but running and standing suck. Why can’t they just put a walking treadmill under a desk?”
And then, of course, I discovered that “they” had.
Still, it just seems so ridiculous. But the notion that a huge percentage of our society has become extremely sedentary much faster than our species can adapt to it does seem credible. 200 years ago, life required most people to be a lot more active. Whether it was walking behind a plow, or foraging for food, or even churning butter, we moved a lot more.
Even worse, this rapid change towards sedentariness has overlapped with a rapid change in our food supply. Food is now more abundant and fattening than ever.
Even so, I hadn’t acted on the treadmill desk idea until the New Yorker ran this recent article by Susan Orlean describing her path to and experience with a treadmill desk. Orlean’s article lit the fire under me to act.
So, we’ll see how it goes. I should be getting the desk and the treadmill this week. It’ll probably take me a good chunk of the weekend to assemble it and integrate it into my office. I’ll let you know how it’s going.
Oh, and if you are interested in the topic, I found a site that I think is a fantastic resource. I learned a lot of buying info really quickly on Workwhilewalking.com. Start there.
Toronto mayor/clown Rob Ford (second from left) not-hanging-out with not-drug-dealers.
As you may have heard, Rob Ford, who pulls double duty as both Toronto’s official clown mascot and its mayor, is in a situation where he’s had a lot of splainin’ to do.
‘Cept he hasn’t been doing a lot of splainin’. He just did a little splainin’, and even then his splainin’ wasn’t too good. Like, for instance, he said, “I do not use crack cocaine,” which is not the same thing as saying, “I have never used crack cocaine, and I will not start using crack cocaine as soon as this press conference is over and I can find a bathroom with a locking door.” It’s not so much a denial as a set-up to a punchline.
It’s time for clown mascot/mayor Rob Ford to give honest answers to the tough questions, like these:
Mr. Mayor, or Happo, if you prefer to go by your clown name, how do the effects of not-smoking-crack compare to, say, the effects of not-tooting-some-fine-Bolivian-flake?
Why did you allow yourself to be photographed not-smoking-crack with those not-drug-dealers?
Was it because you were not-high at the time?
If someone wanted to buy some really good not-crack so that they could not-smoke it, where in Toronto should they not-go?
And have you ever thought of just clowning full time?
The cover of the Daft Punks’ first LP, when they were a quartet. They are now a threetet.
The Daft Punks were pioneers of the musical genre.
The Daft Punks are from France but always sing in American.
The Daft Punks were named after a founding member who was the original creative genius behind the band, but who went mental from too taking much acid and wound up dropping out to start a hedge fund: his name was Little Steven Daft Punk.
The Daft Punks only want to blend into the woodwork, which is why they just wish people would stop staring at them in their shiny custom-made robot costumes already.
If the Daft Punks fall in a forest, no one will hear it, but only because it hasn’t been leaked to one of the trendy music blogs yet.
They have a new album out, but you’d never know it, because the Daft Punks live by the axiom, “It’s best to hide your light under a bushel.”
The Daft Punks employ a man whose only job is to lubricate their organs.
In addition to the genre, the Daft Punks invented sliced bread.
When they are not being totally awesome, the Daft Punks lay around being merely fantastic.
The Daft Punks do a killer version of “John Henry,” but will only play it as the fourth encore for an especially cool and deserving audience, which so far has never happened.
What could be better than a twin bill that starts with an adorable kitten making biscuits on a grunting pug? Especially when it’s followed by what must surely be its animated inspiration, “Feed the Kitty,” from Looney Tunes genius Chuck Jones.
First the so-cute-it-might-be-fake kitten and pug:
In our second feature, gruff bulldog Marc Anthony unexpectedly falls in love with a little kitten. But he’s afraid his bitchy mom won’t let him keep it!
Floridly expressive character eyes were a Chuck Jones trademark, and nowhere are they more in evidence than in “Feed the Kitty.”
Check it out:
Guilty eyes: 3:41
Single eye of despair: 5:06
Tear-swollen eyes: 5:28
With extra grief: 5:39
Surprised relief: 6:28
Cat’s finally finished makin’ biscuits: 7:05
NOTE: The Warner Bros. cartoon above is in Flash. If you’re on an iOS device and don’t see it, that’s why.
What is it, only Monday? And look at me already. My nerves are shot, and if there’s just one more thing… Well, I don’t even want to think about it.
No, I don’t want to hear it. It’s the same old thing over and over, all the time. You see this? You see how my eyelid is twitching? Well, if you looked closer, you could see it. No! Stay away. I don’t need you getting that close to me right now. Just take my word for it, it’s twitching.
And why? Because I’m up to here with all… all of this.
It’s the same thing every week. Do you think I have time for this? What, I’m an idiot? I got nothing better to do than be a basket case all week? I’m a bad person so I should be so stressed out all the time?
You think I couldn’t pick up the phone and get transferred to the Utica office right now? Because I could. And it’d serve you right. Because then you’d get a little glimpse of my world. And let’s see how long you last before your first nervous breakdown. Because I’ve had dozens in my time here, my friend. And I’m up to here with it.
You hear me? Up to here.
You think they put up with this kind of nonsense in Utica? Well, I’ve got news for you, my friend. They don’t. No one does. What sane person would put up with this week after week? Other than me, that is. And the freakin’ jury is still out about my sanity.
I’m too nice, is what it is. And look where it gets me. Monday morning and I’m a total wreck.
Do you want to be the one responsible for my head exploding? Do you want to be the one cleaning my brains off the wainscoting?
Click to view on Amazon.comI love good true crime books, and so does Dr. Mrs. Oblogatory. In fact, it was one of the first things we discovered that we had in common.
Because the nurse who is the subject of this book? He wasn’t good. No. Not at all.
In fact, an un-ironic title for the book could have been—SPOILER ALERT!—“The Cold-Blooded, Creepy-Ass Murderous Psychopath Nurse.”
This is the story of Charles Cullen, a registered nurse who over the course of 16 years at eight different hospitals killed an astonishing number of patients—no one, not even him, knows how many. But it was almost certainly in the hundreds.
I ripped through these 320 pages in a day and a half. Riveting stuff.
What makes this a “good” true crime book? It’s well-written and well-researched. It’s not a cut-and-paste job of reporting done by others. And, unusually, Graeber actually had the opportunity to interview his subject in prison.
Graeber is able to tell his story in straightforward compelling prose, without resorting to the suppositional narrative claptrap that drives me insane. “The air was cool and smelled of hyacinths on the fateful morning of July 23, 1997.”
I hate that stuff, and to me it’s a dead giveaway that the author doesn’t have enough solid factual information to tell the story without limning the fuzzy details around the edges, either because he or she didn’t try to get the facts, or because too much time had passed by the time the author’s research started.
Graeber didn’t have that problem. He has facts. He has contemporary witness and participant interviews. He doesn’t need to lard his story with narrative curlicues.
Almost as horrifying as the crimes themselves are the particulars of various hospital administrators playing CYA. That’s how Cullen was able to find gainful employment year after year and job after job, giving him access to an endless supply of victims.
There have been other notorious “Angel of Death” nurse-killer stories, of course. In fact, criminal profilers have classified these types of killers into two main categories, with the murderous medical workers in each category sharing the same basic motivation.
Charles Cullen did not fall into either category. His motivation was unique. That’s one of the reasons his killing career lasted as long as it did, and one of the reasons “The Good Nurse” is such a compelling read.
Another way of achieving item 3. 
Rich Malley 
