100 Things I Learned in 2006

1. Looking for a job while unemployed is no fun.
2. Sometimes when you leave a bad job, you find a much, much better one.
3. You post more blog posts when you are unemployed.
4. I am able to function semi-coherently at altitudes above 14,000 feet.
5. But I can hardly sleep at all.
6. Sometimes Democrats do win elections.
7. George Bush is not a popular president and Americans do not want to drink a beer with him.
8. People aren't ignoring Iraq and they are just as mad about it as I am.
9. Don't ever own a credit card. Refuse all offers for one.
10. At some point, I'd like to have kids.
11. A company I used to work for has a turnover rate around 30%.
12. The military containment of Saddam Hussein from 1991-2003 cost the US $1.5 billion a year. The Iraq War now costs that much a week.
13. I like writing much more than computer programming.
14. Nobody parties harder than the Colombians.
15. Just about every Colombian is an amazing dancer.
16. Dancing is fun when there are a bunch of prescribed steps.
17. Karl Rove is not a genius.
18. It's not possible to get Steve S to do anything. Any time he shows up, it is the exception to the rule.
19. If I feel a certain way about something, I'm usually not alone.
20. Putting a party who believes government does not work in power results in policies which do not work. And, in the case of Iraq, fail catastrophically.
21. Dominoes is one of the most fun games ever invented.
22. Car alarms are still the most annoying device ever invented.
23. Miami airport is very poorly designed. Almost as bad as Logan.
24. "np" on IM stands for "no problem."
25. You regret the things you didn't do much more than the things you did.
26. When someone is screaming at you, it's best to not say anything and let them scream themselves stupid.
27. When you hear the phrase "You think you're better than me?" in a bar in America, there's going to be a fight. (credit: Jim Rome)
28. If there is one people on this earth who know how to live, it is the Austrians.
29. There is tremendous value in doing what you say.
30. College graduates drink more alcohol per capita than people who did not go to college.
31. Ivy League graduates can sometimes be "crack-smoking stupid" and "the stupidest fucking guy on the face of the Earth."
32. After reading Ed Viesturs book, I realize mountain climbing is even more dangerous than I thought it was.
33. There is a section of Everest known as the "Death Zone" where temperatures can be -100 degrees Fehrenheit.
34. The most dangerous mountain as calculated by a German statistician is not Everest or K2, but Anapurna, which no one has ever heard of.
35. The trail up K2 has a section that makes me ill just looking at it.
36. "Happy wife, happy life."
37. Bands I discovered this year: G. Love, Killing Joke, King Missile, Neutral Milk Hotel, Dresden Dolls, Trans Am.
38. The Japanese have a really interesting approach to teaching.
39. Nothing clears my mind quite like a nice long walk.
40. People hear what they want to hear.
41. People believe what they want to believe.
42. You don't always have to convince people. All you have to do is plant the idea in their head.
43. When presented with doing the difficult thing and doing the easy thing, choose the difficult thing even though you don't want to do it. You'll feel better afterwards. Example: sit on the couch or go running?
44. Do things that make your friends say "Wow."
45. Great name for a play that played in LA: "People spending money they don't have to buy things they don't need to impress people they don't like."
46. Learn by doing.
47. You can push yourself farther than you think.
48. Life is a balancing act between laziness and pushing too hard.
49. I learned a lot about Republicans this year.
50. It's time to file Avian Bird Flu away with Ebola, SARS, and the West Nile Virus. What should we be afraid of next??? I'm sure CNN will be there to tell me.
51. There is a use for Shockwave beside creating the most annoying ads in the world.
52. When you create a website devoted to making fun of corporate prose, the things you write eventually make it back to the companies. Smart people take it in stride and build on my criticism.
53. Gay marriage has been in effect in Massachusetts for a couple of years now and my heterosexual marriage is still doing okay.
54. I probably look back at Nirvana the same way older people looked back at The Clash when I was 14.
55. If I hear the word "Hello?" on the subway, most likely it is somebody picking up their cell phone.
56. While speaking into a cell phone on the train, the correct statement following "Hello?" is "I'm on the train."
57. Africa's poverty has to be seen to be believed.
58. Sun Tzu said, "Know your enemy, know yourself - 100 battles, 100 victories."
59. The best learning-a-foreign-language CDs are from Pimsleur.
60. Bush is constantly being surprised by things he did not anticipate.
61. Few people inspire as much loathing in me as the sight of Dick Cheney.
62. Al Capone's down the street gives you a free slice of pizza for every six you eat.
63. The restaurant Pho Hoa in Chinatown has such a devoted customer base that someone scribbled "I [heart] Pho Hoa" on the wall facing the windows. Yes, customers really are defacing buildings in their enthusiasm for this restaurant.
64. When writing a website devoted to making fun of corporate prose, you have to make sure the entry does not have any errors.
65. This takes a long time.
66. Chuck Klosterman is funny but I can see why people are annoyed by him.
67. One of the best books I read this year had a cover that inspired my wife to say, "This looks like the most boring book ever." Judge for yourself:
    
    
    
    
68. Humans touch their face every three minutes.
69. China is way into rowing and will be a powerhouse in the Olympics.
70. Just when I think the situation can't get any worse in Iraq, somehow, it does.
71. More reporters have died covering the three year Iraq war than in the entire course of the Vietnam war.
72. New Guinea contains 1/6th of the world's languages.
73. Americans love reading bulleted lists.
74. The movie "The Grifters" was based on a book by Jim Thompson.
75. A good reading goal is to read a single author for every letter in the alphabet. I did this in 2006 and stopped on Auster, Paul. I couldn't pick a single author for 'B'.
76. Paul Auster's New York Trilogy is amazing.
77. King Leopold was a monster.
78. You can only read so much Philip K. Dick before start losing your bearings.
79. There is a beach on an island off the coast of San Francisco that features perfect waves that has never been surfed. The beach lies in the middle of the greatest concentration of great white sharks in the world.
80. Great white sharks can reach sizes of six feet wide.
81. Rattlesnakes exist in New England.
82. Timber rattlesnakes hibernate in dens that were established eons ago. Once that den is destroyed by poachers, the rattlesnakes cannot find or make another one and it wipes out huge swaths of them.
83. There is such a thing as a rattlesnake poacher.
84. A rattlesnake does not want to bite large animals it cannot eat. Biting large animals depletes its venom, which it uses to hunt.
85. Killing rattlesnakes is easy. Stupid people can do it just fine.
86. Bill James' theories about baseball are applicable to the real game and are part of the reason the Oakland A's are good every year even though they have one of the lowest payrolls in the league.
87. I like American history more and more as I get older.
88. A lot of historical figures were filled with self-doubt and moments of despair.
89. The number of visitors to your site is directly related to how often you post new information.
90. Bill Belichick is a fascinating character even if he does always wear rumpled grey sweatshirts and gives the world's worst interview.
91. Crowds are sometimes very smart.
92. Except when there is a bubble and everyone is piggy-backing off each other.
93. Playing tennis is fun even when you are terrible at it.
94. So is golf.
95. There are a lot of Armenians living in Watertown, MA.
96. A large immigrant population of Iraqis are settled in the area around Detroit, MI.
97. I am fascinated by settlement patterns.
98. If I start listening to an episode of "This American Life", I cannot stop until the program is over.
99. Eating bad tartar sauce can make you ill to the point you think you are dying.
100. Man, once you turn thirty, the years go by even faster.

Comments

['Chelle]

"B" authors to try:
Lawrence Block - "The Sins of the Fathers", or "When the Sacred Ginmill Closes"
Rick Boyer - "The Whale's Footprints"
or, for something completely different,
Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton - "The Last Days of Pompeii"

Drop me a line if you get stuck again, and I'll see what I can drum up for you. Enterprise should always be encouraged.

[Lili]

Paul Auster`s New York trilogy IS amazing!

[Leigh Ann]

Number 26 is SO TRUE!!

Great advice!

[Save and Conserve]

i enjoyed that post very much ... proving #73

keep 'em coming!

[Dave G]

'Chelle - I misspoke! When I said "no single author for the letter B" I meant as in, "There were so many good authors with B last names, I couldn't pick one." I will look into the ones you suggested though. Here's my book list for 2006: http://www.davegreten.com/booklist2006.html

Lili - what makes it doubly amazing is I picked it off the library shelf more or less at random. How often does that happen?

Leigh Ann - Glad you agree! Seriously I should have learned this way back in 1997 when I witnessed someone else do it really well but I was young and dumb.

S&C - Glad you enjoyed it! Credit should go to http://www.communicatrix.com for inspiring the idea (and a big thanks to her for sending traffic my way).

[Jayson S.]

Great list...you learned alot this year! I learned something new today...I'm not the only one who read Canticle for Leibowitz!

[Mozza]

I received a phone call while on the bus today and, remembering your post, said "I'm on the bus" to cut short the conversation.

(full disclosure: I hate speaking on the phone anyway)

[Rollo Jenkins]

Another moron with to much time on his hands and to little brains in his head.

[sandra]

Yes, yes, yes (but 100 times over). I've done #1 (and it really does suck) and having come from Detroit, I can verify the Iraquis thing. It's always been a bit of a delicate cultural balance around there (as in, there's not much of one).

[Dave G]

Jayson - I hope you enjoyed Canticle as much as I did. I started listening to some recorded lectures on sci-fi last year and that was one of the recommended books. If you look at my reading list you can see a bunch of them running from #28-#43:
http://www.davegreten.com/booklist2006.html

Mozza - If I prevented one unnecessary cell phone conversation from happening, I consider this blog post a success.

Rollo - I appreciate your comment. Can I offer a tip for better writing? You need to use the word "to" correctly. "To" as you used it in your comment is defined as "Expressing motion in a particular direction." That's not correct. You should have used the word "too" which is defined as "In excess." Don't feel bad, plenty of super-smart people mix up this spelling twice in one sentence.

Sandra - I can imagine this makes for an interesting mix. I wonder why Iraqis would settle there? The Armenians of Watertown originally settled there because they worked in the tanneries that used to be all over that area.

[proca]

75: Barnes, Julian.

[Dave G]

Proca - Thank you, Julian Barnes sounds like a good suggestion. I am intrigued by the title "Flaubert's Parrot."

[JP]

If you wrote this list in 2007, than didn't you learn #65 in 2007? Looks like you need to find something else you learned in 2006.

[Dave G]

JP - Ah, now I see what you are saying. I was unclear when I wrote that line. #65 is supposed to refer back to #64. But yes, writing this list took a loong time and that is something I learned in 2007.