Reflections

(Posted via email from hochmann-y goodness)

Practicing in the Middle of the Fire

Bodhisattvas practice "in the middle of the fire." This means they enter into the suffering of the world; it also means they stay steady with the fire of their own painful emotions. They neither act them out nor repress them. They are willing to stay "on the dot" and explore an emotion's ungraspable qualities and fluid energies -- and to let that experience link them to the pain and courage of others.
~ Pema Chodron, No Time To Lose (p. 11)

Here is the ultimate practice of the Mahayana Buddhist: live "in the fire" of real life, and use it. Don't run away from the bad things in your life, don't overly indulge in the good. Everything is grist for the mill, as Lama Surya Das is fond of putting it. The only truly negative experience is the one that is left unexplored, unanalyzed, and unused as fuel to propel oneself into further spiritual development.

(Posted via email from bits of buddhism)

Buddhist Book Review: The Path to Enlightenment

The Path to Enlightenment is a book with very interesting structure. It is the present Dalai Lama's commentary on a text by the third Dalai Lama, called The Essence of Refined Gold. That text, in turn, was a broad discussion of Tibetan Buddhism from start to finish. The Essence of Refined Gold starts with a discussion of teaching, teacher, and student, then moves on to details about different steps on the path to enlightenment.

All the usual Buddhist elements are included in The Path to Enlightenment: suffering, the end of suffering, and the Mahayana emphasis on motivation to end the suffering of all beings, not just oneself. It reminds me a lot of another Tibetan classic, The Jewel Ornament of Liberation. That book and The Essence of Refined Gold share the common style of being like a university text on enlightenment -- direct, concise, almost academically explicit in their descriptions of suffering and why the world we think we live in is not something to cling to. Layered on top of that, the Dalai Lama's comments are a splash of cool water on your face. His ability to expand, in modern ways, on the original text is very helpful.

However! I must point out that the title of this book should be taken very literally. It is indeed a look at the entire path to enlightenment. It moves on very quickly to levels of study, practice, and insight that your average American Buddhist will be a long ways away from. In this sense, The Path to Enlightenment is a great overview of what Tibetan Buddhism is, where it leads, and why. But you can't use it by itself as a manual for your own practice. As the introduction to the book states, this kind of text would not be read by somebody sitting alone in their house -- it was meant as a framework for study with an accomplished teacher. Perhaps it should be renamed to Enlightenment: Teacher's Edition.

Overall: a great far-reaching guide to the landscape of Tibetan Buddhism. I just wish it came with a student's workbook for everyday practice!

(Posted via email from bits of buddhism)

Memorial Day Trip to the Zoo

Some pictures from our trip to the Rio Grande Zoo on Memorial Day.

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Skateboard Sunday!

Click here to download:

MOV06664.MPG (3186 KB)

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A Day in the Neighborhood

Photos from wandering around our neighborhood on this lovely, cool Sunday morning.

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The Old Job

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Treating Happiness Like an Enemy, Misery Like a Friend

Why should we cultivate a spirit of generosity and generate the motivation to live up to our spiritual potential? Why do Mahayana Buddhists wish to become compassionate bodhisattvas who aid in liberating others? Because:

 

All beings suffer in the same way as we do, and some are even more deeply immersed in sorrow. Yet all of these beings wish to experience only happiness and to avoid all suffering, frustration, and pain. They wish lasting happiness but do not know how to cultivate its causes, and they wish to avoid misery but automatically collect only causes of further misery. As Shantideva said, "Although seeking happiness, they destroy their own causes of happiness as they would an enemy. And although seeking to avoid misery, they treat its causes as they would a close friend." 

~ His Holiness the Dalai Lama, The Path to Enlightenment (p. 136)

(Posted via email from bits of buddhism)

A Samsara Day

Lately, I've been reading The Path to Enlightenment by the Dalai Lama. It's his commentary and elaboration on a work by the Third Dalai Lama, called The Essence of Refined Gold.

One thing His Holiness points out in this book (and which I have seen in other Buddhist and especially Tibetan texts) is the way we treat our bodies. He's not making the point you might think, that we abuse our bodies with unhealthy foods and lack of exercise. That is one extreme and it's the extreme we usually think about here in 21st century America. The Dalai Lama says this:

[This] body keeps us running all our lives. We have to run to fulfill its endless needs, to keep it away from things that may harm it, and to protect it from anything unpleasant. We have to give it pleasure and comfort... This body indeed causes us much grief in this life and, sadly, in their quest to satisfy its many needs, most people just ollect an endless stream of negative karmic instincts.

Though human birth is an incredible gift in the Buddhist understanding of the world, it can also be an anchor that drags us down. Even our purest spiritual motives may be sullied by craving for money, power, sex, or craving for a cheesy double beef burrito from Taco Bell.

This thought stuck with me throughout my day today and it had interesting effects. At lunchtime, I was hungry -- but everything I looked at or thought about seemed about as desirable as a mouthful of ashes. The pleasure of food (especially my beloved junk food) had, for a time, been replaced by a glimpse into His Holiness's understanding of just how hollow material pleasures can be. It sounds like a terrible thing to lose an appreciation for some worldly pleasure, but it was not really a loss. It was a gaining of peace. I craved nothing, and felt happier inhabiting the moment I was in.

What a gift it would be to keep that peaceful dwelling in the present, to give it momentum into future days. How great it is to live here, now, entirely free of leanings to or away from things. That's a very hard state to maintain, and I doubt I have the skill to make it an everyday mode of living anytime soon -- but who knows? My samsara day taught me a lot.

(Posted via email from bits of buddhism)

Bodhisattva - The Desire To Benefit All

Early in my explorations of Buddhism, I encountered Mahayana Buddhism -- basically, the path that focuses not just on enlightenment for your own sake, but enlightenment for the sake of all beings. In the Mahayana, practitioners don't just try to become enlightened to end their own suffering, but so that they can go beyond that point and gain the insight and spiritual tools necessary to help others ease their own pain.

I found this great, all-embracing kind of compassion really hard to fathom. Can people really bring themselves to the point where they want to benefit all beings? Even, as Lama Surya Das put it, to benefit the creepy crawlies in the dark and the shiny eyes staring at you from the forest?

The interesting thing is that as you generate more and more awareness in general, you come to see the people around you in a new light. People who might have pissed you off and sent your blood pressure sky high, you begin to see some elements of why they act the way they do -- patterns and cycles of perpetuating their own suffering. Sometimes you feel pity for them, or a smug superiority... But as you move further along the path, you feel empathy and a desire to help somehow.

I'm not omniscient, of course! But if you open your eyes (literally and spiritually), you can see the bad habits and patterns that both you and others get caught up in. Our habitual suffering is like getting sucked into a whirlpool of our own creation, and it just spins us around. Seeing this in other people can seem really tragic and heartbreaking.

When that awareness comes to you, and you feel that overwhelming compassion for a person flailing about in the whirlpool, what can you do? If only it was as easy as tossing them a life preserver and a rope. I cannot solve your problems for you; I cannot end your continuously repeating patterns of co-dependence/fear/whatever. So, what is a boy to do?

I think this kind of thing is what formed the Mahayana school of Buddhism and the ideal of the bodhisattva (one who uses enlightenment for the benefit of all beings). When you can see everybody around you stuck in whirlpools of pain, who wouldn't want to become a bodhisattva and find a way to rescue everyone?

I'm not enlightened by any stretch of the imagination. Not even close! But I'm beginning to see what motivates people to go down that Mahayana path. I know so many who suffer in nightmare worlds of their own creation, and I also know that nobody but themselves can end those patterns. And the only way they can do that is if they have a guide or a helper. To journey towards becoming a bodhisattva is to commit to be that guide for all who suffer -- which is pretty much everybody at some point or another.

So in the spirit of Mahayana and the bodhisattva, let us each hope that we can learn and evolve spiritually so that we can be a light for others, and perhaps find ways to liberate them from the cycles of suffering.

(Posted via email from bits of buddhism)

Living with Fearless Authenticity

Pop quiz, hot shot! What do the following have in common?

• People I met in China
• Friends on Twitter like BeMeaningful, HappyLotus, and coffeesister
• My employers at my current job

Give up? What these people (and others I have not mentioned) have in common is that they all have taught me, in some way, about something I call fearless authenticity.

People I met in China: Living in China for two years, something gnawed at me about my surroundings. Was it communism? No, China is in fact more blatantly capitalist than even the USA in many ways. Was it the environment? Well, China has a lot of pollution, noise, etc. problems, but those were not usually what bugged me. Though I did not fully understand it at the time, I have now come to realize that China tends to be a very unfriendly face for living an authentic life.

For most people in China, education is extremely regimented and unforgiving of lapses or mistakes. This is often to the point of cranking out lots of graduates who are so desperate that they will cut-and-paste their entire thesis from what their friends wrote the previous year; or cranking out computer "programmers" who can only put together code samples they find in a textbook, lacking any understanding of what the code does. The social system can also be very limiting, relying on bribes and gifts to ensure that people with value stay indebted to you, while simultaneously trying to avoid becoming indebted to those under you.

(I'm not really trying to bash China here. I just want to highlight some of the reasons it is a hard place to live authentically. China is a wonderful place in its own right, and certainly nowhere on this earth is perfect or anything close to it.)

In my English classes in China, the majority of students were paralyzed if they had to do anything that was not spelled out in their textbooks. I had very few students who were not frozen in terror when I asked them to draw even a simple stick figure on the whiteboard -- many could not do it. Creativity, self-expression, going out on a limb, etc. were limited in all but a few I taught. I faced so many students who would tell me their major or their career, and when asked why they went down that path, would answer me with "Because my parents told me to" or "Because I can make lots of money." Students who had real artistic talent would tell me that their family strictly forbid them from devoting any time to their talents because such things could not make much money, or were not suitable for "respectable" people.

America also has its own unique limitations, of course. I love China -- but there are so many forces preventing most people from having anything more than a symbolic kind of authenticity. This makes my love for China and my Chinese friends all the more tragic, seeing them hemmed in by unnecessary walls and limitations. The tragedy deepens even more when the lucky few have a chance to study abroad here in the USA or in Canada. Each student I've seen in that situation has come over here and been crushed by the fear of living in a culture where you have to take some risk from time to time, and where you need to rely on yourself to get a lot of things done.

Great Twitter folk: Why do I so doggedly promote my friends BeMeaningful, HappyLotus, and coffeesister on Twitter? Because they present all of themselves, genuinely, to the whole world. They share their insights, their fears, even their self-acknowledged limitations. They live their lives with passion, sharing that passion with others. Each thing they say seems to drip with an authentic character and authentic desire to spread something positive. You have no doubt when you read their words or have a conversation with them that these are true human beings, with all the greatness and imperfections that comes along with being a real person. There is something liberating about a person who gives themselves to the world unashamedly, without being stubborn or being a dick about it.

My bosses: I have the great fortune of working for two wonderful people, who manage to mingle business with humanity in an admirable way. They inspire me because they can strike a balance between the bottom line and the human line. They encourage us to find ways to channel our desire to help people, to use our capabilities to put food on the table and still meet the needs of actual human beings. I'm not trying to gush here, but it is a stark contrast between this job and my last, where I was a mere theme park attraction to suck money out of the wallets of students who were starved for exposure to native speakers of English.

~~~

What does all this mean? I'm only just now figuring it all out. But these people and situations have highlighted for me something I've been discovering through my studies of Buddhism: to be authentically good, authentically spiritual, is the only path to happiness that lasts. It is a shame that for most of us, it is so rare to be in touch with our fearlessly authentic self. I've connected with that authenticity a few times in the last couple of years, and it has driven me to places that were unimaginably beneficial to my spiritual growth.

In recent months, I have felt like a child running up a grassy hillside. I know that on the other side of the hill there is a vista I haven't yet seen. When I reach the top, I know I will look down into the valley and discover my next burst of authentic living. It's a bit frustrating to not be there yet, but I know that with patience my eyes will open and I will once more live as my genuine self, going down the path I should without fear. How exciting!

(Posted via email from hochmann-y goodness)

Favorite Spiritual/Buddhist Tweets

Here are some good tweets I've seen on Twitter that I thought were worthy of passing on:

Zen_Moments: “Nothing happens next. This is it.”

8C "Question even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than of fear." - T. Jefferson

heykim heard on a commercial just now... but its very true... "no RAIN..... no RAINBOW"

tinybuddha "We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them." ~Kahlil Gibran

majidrazvi "That mind of yours, young man! Driven by logic, but not confined by it. Such an adventurous way to exist."

majidrazvi "A fallen flower, returning to the branch? It was a butterfly." - Moritake

BeMeaningful "Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending." ~Maria Robinson

BeMeaningful "Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." ~Abraham Lincoln

coffeesister The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you. -John E Southard

tinybuddha "It is always easier to be right than helpful" ~Barry Magid

(Posted via email from bits of buddhism)

floating mosque

via flickr.com

(Posted via web from hochmann-y goodness)

UK Continues Descent into Orwellian Police State: "Too Much Bling? Give Us A Ring!"

In the latest example of innovative policing in Britain, the Gloucestershire force is encouraging members of the public to report people wearing too much 'bling' during the recession.

via dailymail.co.uk

(Posted via web from hochmann-y goodness)

Meaning of Life

via icanread.tumblr.com

(Posted via web from bits of buddhism)

Why Google Chrome Matters: Netbooks!

I don't know if Google was smart enough to see netbooks coming when they started working on Chrome. Regardless, Chrome fits neatly into the netbook situation.

As you may recall, I just got my Eee PC last week. I love it, it has awesome battery life, and it all around just rocks. After I got it, I updated XP to the latest patches and also grabbed Internet Explorer 8. Ever since IE7 came out, I've turned around on my (previously strong) opinion that Internet Explorer sucks. IE7 changed my mind, though I still did not like it quite as much as Firefox. IE8 is even better, and since I run XP on my netbook, why not use IE8?

Part of me really wants to use Internet Explorer 8 as my main browser on here. It has virtually no compatibility issues with sites I use, and I love web slices (snippets of web pages you can embed into the bookmarks toolbar) and accelerators (quick tools you can use with text you select on web pages). IE8 has geeky features I like, and it generally works very well.

However, there is a problem... IE8 is slow, S-L-O-W on my netbook. It's fine for static web sites like online news, and it works decently for video sites like Youtube and Hulu. But it is dog slow with the sites that matter most to me, like Twitter, Facebook, and Gmail. Clearly Internet Explorer's Javascript engine is not up to snuff for these kinds of sites. When I use Twitter and I start to type in a message, there is a huge lag between my keystrokes and letters appearing in the text box. Twitter is actually pretty lightweight, so why this kind of thing happens is a bit odd -- I think it just goes to show how un-optimized IE8 is right now. Facebook is even worse, with all its little pop-up boxes and things that can reveal when you click on them.

What does this have to do with Chrome, and with netbooks? Well, not only does IE8 churn away slowly when using the sites I mentioned, doing so makes my computer work harder. The CPU has to work harder, which in turn produces more heat. More heat means the fans come on. Fans coming on means more energy use, which in turn means lower battery life.

Chrome performs way better than IE8 on my Eee PC. There's no delay doing anything, ever, on any site. Facebook and Twitter are smokin' fast, responding almost before I can finish clicking my mouse button. And not once have I had my netbook's little fans kick in, except when doing something really intense like watching high quality video -- which will eat the battery anyway.

To sum up: piss-poor web browser performance = more work for the computer. More work for the computer = bigger drain on the battery. Not only does Google Chrome keep me from having to tap my fingers on the table in impatience, but it buys me even more time away from a power outlet. That is critical for "ultramobile computing," which is what netbooks are all about.

So, how about it, Microsoft? Are you going to get Internet Explorer up to par for netbooks? I wanna love IE8, but I can't stand a lesser user experience and crappier battery life. Don't miss out on your shot to kick Google's butt in the netbook market... Which, by the way, you currently dominate. Will it stay that way?

(Posted via email from hochmann-y goodness)

Flowers Near Wyoming Library

These pictures are from the Rose Garden, around the Wyoming Library (a.k.a. Hillerman Library).

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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From Mother's Day

A couple of photos from Mother's Day brunch -- me, Suzy, my dad, and my step mom Pam.

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Four Days with the Eee PC 1000HA

I’ve had my Eee PC for a few days now, and I’ve had a chance to play with it a lot. What follows are my impressions so far.

[I assume the majority of what I describe here will be the same for the Eee PC 1000HE, which is basically the same computer except for an even better battery, Bluetooth, and some other minor bells and whistles.]

Hardware

This is a very solidly built device. It feels sturdy on my lap or on a desk. I was very pleased to find that the back of the LCD (the “top” when the netbook is closed) does not feel flimsy at all. It has no give when you press on it, unlike the disturbingly weak-feeling shell our Toshiba Satellite laptop has.

The touch pad works very well, and has a good feel when moving the pointer. The mouse buttons also work very well, if you know how to use them properly -- press the angled part at the edge of the computer, not the tops of the buttons. This is actually very natural positioning for your thumbs anyway, given the small size of the device. The two-finger scrolling works decently, but is sometimes flaky. Two-finger zooming with the touch pad is not very useful -- it’s too sensitive sometimes, and it’s hard to be precise. I’ve found the zooming to be more trouble than it’s worth, generally.

The keyboard is a big homerun for this Eee PC -- the keys are large enough even for my gigantic monster hands. The “chiclet” style keys have a nice feel when typing, and a reasonable amount of give. The keys around the arrow keys are a bit cramped, but not hard to get used to. As soon as I pulled the Eee PC out of its box and set it up, I was able to type at roughly the same high speed I do on a full-size keyboard.

Another biggie on my list: fan noise. The Eee PC is extremely quiet most of the time. If I didn’t have the screen turned on right now, I wouldn’t really be sure the computer was even on. The fans do kick in when doing intense stuff like playing high quality video, or loading complicated Facebook pages in Internet Explorer -- but even then, the fans are usually a soft whisper. Nothing like the jet turbine sound that comes out of my Toshiba at the slightest CPU use.

How about the screen? It is extremely crisp and bright. Even outdoors in the bright sun, I can read things on the screen perfectly.

Software

The Eee PC gets a huge thumbs up from me because it is not loaded with all the crapware you find on most PCs. It comes with Windows XP SP3, a couple of utilities for adjusting the touch pad and shortcut buttons on the device, Skype, and Microsoft Works. The Eee PC also includes a trial version of Office 2007, which can be unlocked if you already have an Office 2007 license key.

The Eee PC comes configured with something called “Boot Booster,” which seems to cut down on a lot of the self-testing most PCs do when you turn them on, thereby letting the machine boot up faster. This little netbook boots rather quickly, and it doesn’t take long to get to a usable XP desktop. I poked around with Startup Control Panel and other utilities, and there really isn’t any junk loading at startup. Such a welcome change from computers like my stepfather’s Dell, which came with over 30 pieces of spyware, adware, and crapware preloaded from the factory.

Microsoft Works is a very nice suite for home and small business use. It has 90% of the features of Microsoft Word, Excel, etc. that the average person will need every day. It seems to lack some more professional features, such as style sheets -- but most people don’t even know what style sheets are, much less how to use them. Works is fast, clean, and sufficient for pretty much anything you need outside of very specialized office use. I wouldn't want to use it for a 50 page document that requires consistent formatting and layout, though.

Performance

As mentioned above, boot time is rather good. I usually just use suspend mode, which is even faster. Other performance is also very good for a small device like this. Playing high quality Youtube and Hulu videos online -- smooth as butter. I had some issues with watching old episodes of Star Trek on the CBS web site. Oddly enough, the videos were very jerky in a small window, but playing them full screen was almost perfectly smooth. 

Overall, the performance of the Eee PC is awesome considering its portability and quiet fans.

Battery and Other Stuff

The Eee PC is running on battery as I type this. The battery is currently at 92% -- wireless is on but not being used heavily, Asus performance settings at "high performance mode" (i.e. not power-saving mode), and the screen turned up to maximum brightness the whole time. I’ve got an estimated 5 hours and 10 minutes of battery life left. I bet if I was making heavy use of wireless, that would drop down to around 4 hours. Either way, that’s pretty respectable.

My Toshiba, even when it was newer and the battery was in better shape, could not manage more than 2 or 2.5 hours on battery. That's especially true with the screen brightness cranked up. Using the Eee PC as I am right now -- for working on documents -- is something I bet a lot of people would do on the go. If that’s the intensity of your work when away from AC power, you will probably get at least the 5 hours battery life I’m looking at so far. And if you get the 1000HE, you could conceivably get 8 hours or more with that improved battery.

Other goodies… The Eee PC came with a nice soft case to slide it into. It won’t protect the netbook from serious impacts, but it will keep it free of scratches if you slide it into a pocket in your bag (or your cargo shorts). The computer also comes with a special little cloth for shining up its fingerprint-prone polished surfaces. 

A side note, a lot of sellers don’t point out that the Eee PC comes with a DVD so you can restore Windows XP or the included utilities. You need to get a separate external DVD drive to use that, but it’s handy to have -- especially if you hose the hard drive so badly you can’t use the built-in restore system that normally does not require the DVD.

Summary

I did a lot of research before buying this Eee PC. While I knew I was getting a great machine, it still managed to blow me away in some respects. If you want a highly-portable but still highly-capable computer, I strongly recommend the 1000HA (and by extension, the 1000HE).

The Good

• Great keyboard and touch pad.
  
• Excellent battery life.
  
• No pre-installed crap -- just XP and software to get stuff done.
  
• Good performance for such a tiny machine.
  
• Very quiet under most circumstances.
  

The Less Good

• Depending on which application you use, the external speakers can either fill your room with sound (Windows Media Player), or be too soft to hear even at the highest settings (Hulu).
  
• Two-finger scrolling takes some getting used to, and the two-finger zooming is of dubious value at best.
  

(Posted via email from hochmann-y goodness)

The Tyranny of Normal

The word (and concept) "normal" often bugs me. What is it about numbers and majorities that make people passively adopt them? I'm not saying all notions of normalcy are bad -- social norms help us function in public life, especially when interacting with people we don't know or when performing the everyday "rituals" of our world (like supermarket shopping, negotiating a busy intersection with complicated traffic signals, etc.). But the word "normal" can easily become a prison, or worse, a source of powerful suffering. Sometimes a tool for good, it can also be something to bludgeon ourselves or others over the head with.

If you're in a relationship, and your partner says to you, "Why do we do X? Normal couples aren't like that", what happens? Immediately your relationship has been contrasted to this idea of "everybody else" -- or at the very least, the idea of "normal" people.

We pay lip service to the idea that people are individuals, yet we prize the normal, the average, the majority. When that contrast appears in your mind, suddenly you see your relationship in a judgmental light. Now it's not good enough, or it's lacking in some way; or maybe it's just different, and that bothers you. It never bothered you before, but now the comparison to "normal" has gotten your attention.

Again, I'm not saying normal is categorically bad or that things against the current are always good -- what I am saying is that, like every single thing we conceptualize, "normal" can be helpful or harmful. All too often, we mindlessly define "normal" as some golden yardstick that everybody else gets, but we don't. We measure our lives against that impossible yardstick, and what is the result? The life we lived happily yesterday or five minutes ago is now suddenly subpar. Life didn't change in those 24 hours or five minutes -- our perception changed, and it changed by including an attitude of judgment that wasn't there before.

Find that delicate balance between living authentically,and following the herd. Don't fight the normal just to be a contrarian dick, but also don't follow it just because you think it's in The Script everyone has to follow.

(Posted via email from bits of buddhism)

Orbiting Around Our Possessions

"The more things we own -- the greater their total mass -- the more they grip us, setting us in orbit around them. Finally, like a black hole they suck us in. Giving changes all that. It breaks us out of orbit around our possessions."
- Randy Alcorn, The Treasure Principle (p. 34)

(Posted via email from bits of buddhism)

Tips & Stuff I've Learned About My Eee PC

I've had my new netbook (an Eee PC 1000HA) for over 24 hours now, and I just wanted to document a couple things I've learned about it. I'll post pics and a full review soon, but for now I want to throw the following out into the blogosphere. These are some tips that have helped me work with and enjoy the computer more:

• Peoples' complaints about the touchpad buttons are a result of not using them properly. As a reviewer on Amazon pointed out, the buttons are very well designed for the small size of the computer. Instead of pressing down on the top of the button with your thumb, it is much easier (and sensible) to press the angled part that is at the edge of the computer. I think Asus designed the buttons this way on purpose to suit a more comfortable "reach" for your thumbs given the small size of the keyboard and touchpad. Having followed that reviewer's advice, I've had no problems using the touchpad buttons, and haven't strained my thumbs trying to click the (much more resistant) top part of the buttons.
• The two-finger scrolling on the touchpad is a bit counter-intuitive. Here's what works for me:
1. Don't press too hard on the touchpad when you want to scroll. The harder you press with your fingers, the more likely it is to not scroll or to screw up the scrolling direction.
2. Don't squeeze your two fingers together when you scroll. It works better if there is a small gap between your fingers, say maybe a half inch or so.
3. You can't scroll great distances in just one slow motion, so don't bother. It works best in light, brushing movements. Move your fingers slowly for very precise, but short distance scrolling. Move your fingers quickly to scroll a larger distance with less precision.

That's it for now. Hopefully somebody in the future will Google for Eee PC stuff, find this post, and enjoy their netbook even more! If you've got Eee PC tips, please leave them in the comments or send them to me (@hochmann) on Twitter.

(Posted via email from hochmann-y goodness)

In Honor of Star Trek... Thomas Trek!

(Posted via email from hochmann-y goodness)

Healing Your Attitude

[This post is something of a close cousin to a previous post I wrote, called Worship. You may want to also read that post, where I approach the question: "Real" Buddhists don't worship... Do they?]

Lama Surya Das says that one aim of Buddhism is to "heal your attitude." I've reflected on this lately while thinking about things that a lot of Buddhists do -- for example, praying to the Bodhisattva Guan Yin (the Buddha of Compassion) to help others, or bowing before a statue of the Buddha. These acts may outwardly appear the same as praying/worshipping in other religions, but they carry the special flavor of Buddhism because their real aim is this: to heal your attitude.



You can pray to Guan Yin, but that doesn't mean you have to believe there really is a golden goddess with a thousand eyes and arms, looking down on the earth and answering your prayers. You don't have to believe that she exists and she will hear you, and carry out your good wishes for others. Maybe she does exist, maybe she doesn't. The point is that the act of invoking her in your mind, in your heart, and in your words can have an impact.

Guan Yin represents a force of divine compassion -- a thousand eyes to see the suffering in the world, and a thousand arms and hands to lend help to everyone in need. Keeping her image in your heart can chisel away at cynicism, sarcasm, apathy, etc. and bring out those qualities in you. The Buddha himself represents many things: enlightenment, the power of regular human beings to discover the truth about reality, the desire to guide others to be free of suffering. Whether you think of him as a man or a god, holding the Buddha in your spirit can bring those characteristics to life in your own thoughts and actions.

We don't pray because we think someone will answer our prayers; it's a side benefit if someone does. We pray, bow, contemplate, meditate because those are tools to shape who we are in positive ways. I may ask Guan Yin to heal you, and though you may not be actually healed, my asking just serves to further reinforce that positive characteristic in myself and possibly those around me. As Buddha said, "All that we are is the result of what we have thought." I don't expect a god(dess) to hear me and do what I ask -- I do expect my attitude to be healed over time, and that will spread out into the world through my words and actions.

Just as dropping a stone into a calm, clear lake will send out ripples across its surface, so too do our practices send out ripples throughout our individual being and the world at large.

(Photo courtesy of h.koppdelaney.)

(Posted via email from bits of buddhism)

Gizmodo - "Apple Netbook" Student Project Is a Pencil-Drawn Beauty

Student Kyle Buckner made this 3/4 scale model out of wood, with real working hinges and everything, and hand-drew the Dock, icons, keyboard, trackpad, and even the little Philips screws on with a pencil.

via gizmodo.com

(Posted via web from hochmann-y goodness)

Dear OpenOffice: Why Must You Suck So Much?

Lately, my wife has been doing a lot of work on handouts and materials for her teaching. Since we use Linux on our main PC, she's been using OpenOffice. She likes it for the most part, but it frustrates me to no end -- despite my wish to be happy with it. OpenOffice in general is a decent piece of software, if you ignore the huge memory bloat and terrible performance. However, it has a boatload of niggling things that really piss me off and make me yearn for Microsoft Office 2007 -- which is a fantastic piece of office software.

Big Bugs: A couple years back, I was helping my wife do her 120-page graduation thesis for her Master's degree. We did it mostly in OpenOffice, which turned out to be a huge mistake. As annoying as OpenOffice is for small documents, doing something large that requires consistent formatting is a pain in the butt. Sure, it has support for styles, which you can use to define how things should be formatted across an entire document -- headers, paragraph styles, footers, tables, etc. But frequently, during the months spent typing and editing her thesis, we would open the document and discover that styles were only being applied in a few places. OpenOffice would randomly "forget" to style just some of the headers or tables, even though we explicitly set it to do so many times. Also, it would inexplicably insert page breaks into random places in the document from time to time. These are the kinds of mistakes that are very hard to catch in a long document, and which can cost you big time on something important like a Master's thesis.

... And Small. The thesis is long over (successfully), but OpenOffice continues to enrage me to this day. For instance, why on earth does OpenOffice randomly decide that it cannot center an item vertically inside of a table cell? No matter how many times you click the button, it will not actually do it. There's no table margin settings, paragraph spacing, line spacing, etc. interfering. OpenOffice just decides that it cannot and will not put the text where it's supposed to be.

Now, let me graphically demonstrate another inexplicable formatting bug. Take a look at this:

 

And now this:

What did I change to get this result? Surely I must have adjusted the line spacing, you say. Or perhaps I inserted a blank line before that last line. Or, possibly, I changed the "before paragraph" spacing to make a gap. Nope. I changed the font size from 13pt to 14pt. That's it. For some ridiculous, unfathomable reason, any font above 13pt ends up with those wonky gaps between lines. It doesn't matter which font I use, or what settings I have for line/paragraph spacing. 13pt and below are fine, but anything above gets completely f**ked by OpenOffice.

ARGH! Is this really the best the open source/free software community can do? Why is it so hard, after years of development, to do simple things like put text where it's supposed to be? Firefox can do it, why can't a sophisticated, mature office suite like OpenOffice do it? And how am I supposed to explain to my wife that OpenOffice sometimes doesn't do stuff because it doesn't want to? That's like going to Home Depot and getting sold a hammer that sometimes will refuse to hammer nails. This isn't how good tools work, folks.

Sigh. OpenOffice, I want to love you. I want to prefer you to an expensive, proprietary, but fairly elegant solution like Office 2007. Why do you have to make it so difficult?

(Posted via email from hochmann-y goodness)

Swine Flu and Chinese Visa Policy Change (#hamthrax #pigfloo)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: China Visa Service Center <info@mychinavisa.com>
Date: Tue, May 5, 2009 at 11:25 AM
Subject: Swine Flu and Chinese Visa Policy Change

Dear Valued Clients: We are writing to let you know that the ongoing swine flu has led to some serious changes to Chinese visa policy. Staring May 4th, 2009, the Chinese visa processing time has been changed to 6 business days. Rush and Express services will be temporarily unavailable. Also, every applicant must fill out a Declaration Form and state where you have been within the last two weeks. If you have plans to visit China within the next month and you need to get a new visa, we suggest that you send in your applications as early as possible. You should allow for at least two weeks to get your visa.

(Posted via email from hochmann-y goodness)

In The Sky: Photo by Photographer Peter Dam

via photo.net

(Posted via web from hochmann-y goodness)

Buddhism and Money: The Repression of Emptiness Today

If this critique of the money complex is valid, what is the solution? It is the same solution that Buddhism has always offered: not any quick fix that can be conditioned into us, but the personal transformation that occurs when we make the effort to follow the Buddhist path, which means learning how to let go of ourselves and die. Once we are dead, once we have become nothing and realize that we can be anything, we see money for what it is: not a symbolic way to make ourselves real to measure ourselves by, but a socially-constituted device that expands our freedom and power. Then we become truly free to determine our attitude toward it, toward getting it and using it. If we are dead, there is nothing wrong with money: not money but love of money is the root of evil. However, we also know that our essential nature does not get better or worse; just as it does not come or go, so it has nothing to gain or to lose. For those who do not experience themselves as separate from the world - as other than the world - the value of money becomes closely tied to its ability to help alleviate suffering. Bodhisattvas are not attached to it, and therefore they are not afraid of it; so they know what to do with it.

from "Buddhism and Money: The Repression of Emptiness Today", By David Loy

(Posted via web from bits of buddhism)

Homer Runs Amok

(Posted via email from hochmann-y goodness)

Roses From the Neighborhood

See and download the full gallery on posterous

(Posted via email from hochmann-y goodness)

Cocio

I didn't know we could get Cocio here in the US! I drank a lot of this stuff when I was visiting Denmark back in 2001. Yum!

(Posted via email from hochmann-y goodness)

Noble Speech and Conversational Candy

We would have much peace if we would not busy ourselves with the saying and doings of others.
-- Thomas À Kempis

In Awakening the Buddha Within, Lama Surya Das briefly talks about "noble speech" and an exercise used by meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein:

[He] sometimes asks his students to refrain from saying anything about anyone who isn't present. No talking about people who annoy you as well as not talking about people who enthrall you. That means no conversations devoted to analyzing or dissecting anyone else's problems or behavior -- good or bad -- unless the person you are talking about is there to hear what you have to say.

This is a really interesting exercise, and it's something I recommend everybody should try. Perhaps you could have a "noble speech day" (or even just an hour) where you put that exercise into practice in real life. It's not always practical, of course, but can you go even an hour without talking about somebody who's not in the room?

Just keeping this awareness exercise in mind has been beneficial to me. I've managed to train my brain to (usually) raise a little yellow flag before I talk about somebody else -- it's a brief pause, where I can evaluate what I'm about to say about this other person, and why I want to say it. It's amazing to see how often that brief pause results in an understanding that what I'm on the verge of saying is mere gossip -- pointless conversational candy that at best adds nothing, and at worst fosters negativity.

I'm not always successful at stopping my motor mouth, but any improvement in awareness is a good step in the right direction. Noble speech is a work in progress, always!

Whenever I wish to move
Or to speak,
First I shall examine my state of mind,
And firmly act in a suitable way.

Whenever my mind becomes attached
Or angry,
I shall not react, nor shall I speak;
I shall remain mum and unmoved like a tree.
-- Shantideva

(Posted via email from bits of buddhism)