Work hard, crash

It's been one of those weeks where all the projects that have been pushed back suddenly become urgent. As a result I've been working more hours than is really good for me. The money is nice, but next week needs to be lower pressure.

Other side effects include a backlog of things I want to blog about, so there will be at least one consolidated post of those today.

The week hasn't been completely work though
- I took time on Wednesday to go and see (& enjoyed) How to Train Your Dragon & and have lunch with niennahirilfea and friends.
- ShadowRun (Tuesday) ran this week after missing last week, and we are having slightly fewer blatant disasters on our second run even if acquiring our target for the wetwork mission is proving tricky.

The plan for today is low-impact:
- There's still one small work project I want to get done and sent back. That's better than the 5-hour one I did have scheduled for today, but which managed to get done.
- Bloggage
- Gardening if the weather doesn't pack in too much (edit: nope)
- Blobbage
- Party

Blogging round up (1: misc)

Eric Ries (silicon valleyer), on the the New Zealand culture of humility and potential for lean startups (at IdeaLog).

I’ve become a bit suspicious of the reports I get from Kiwis, because I’ve learned there’s a pathological humility in the culture. So plenty of people say they’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur and when I ask what they do now, they say “I run my own business.” Is that not an entrepreneur? And they say “Well it doesn’t really count—it’s not a very good business.”

I’m told New Zealand doesn’t have much of an entrepreneurship culture, and then everyone I meet is running their own business, or wants to. People tell me they’re doing three different projects, but they’re not a ‘real’ entrepreneur.

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At SciBlogs making buildings more energy efficient doesn't necessarily result in less energy use as people use the same amount of energy to make themselves more comfortable.

Which make perfect sense to me - the goal of much of the work I've had done on my house has had the objective of making it more comfortable without increasing my energy spend (including insulating myself from the effect if increasing electricity prices). Actually reducing the energy use while still achieving the increased comfort level is a bonus.

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Seth Godin on how to think about buying a house. It resonates with a conversation I had with -someone- earlier in the week. Point 2 of 10:

A house is not just an investment, it's a place to live. This is the only significant financial investment that has two functions. Things like cars and boats always go down in value, so most of the time, if you're investing, you're doing it in something that you don't have to fix, water, fuel or live in. You shouldn't fall in love with a bond or a stock or a piece of gold, because if you do, you won't be a smart investor. The problem (as people who sell and fix and build houses understand) is that you just might fall in love with a house. What a dumb reason to make the largest financial investment of your life.

I also like point 6:

6. Debt is an evil plot to keep you poor.
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