If one lesson can be learnt by all this it is to stop blindly leaping to every new iOS release.

Gordon Kelly is a frequent critic of Apple so I have always taken his iOS update reports with a grain or three of salt. But with the recent 13.x releases, I now wish I’d listened to him and held fast to iOS 12.

My SE, which usually held a good battery charge all day, drains down to 5% within an hour simply sitting on my desk.

My SE is 2+ years old so, on the off-chance, I’m having a new battery installed this week. If I still see a drain, I’ll know it’s iOS.

I have turned off automatic updates and am holding fast, for better and worse, at 13.2.1.

Update, 2019-11-13: Took my iPhone to an Apple certified service shop. The repair guy hooked my phone up to his diagnostic computer and it said the battery had gone through 600 recharge cycles; Apple says the battery has a lifetime of 500 cycles. So yeah, the battery was shot. The Battery Health setting is an OK criteria (mine was at 88%) but not the decisive one; it’s the number of cycles that is decisive. But the user cannot see the number of recharge cycles a battery has gone through, only a technician. Charging the phone up now; hoping for good times ahead.

And the latest update. I have Downlink set to update my desktop every 20 minutes today. Not sure of the lag time between the satellite snapping the image and the app processing it, but it’s effectively real-time for my needs.

Working at home today, awaiting the rains from Hurricane Dorian here in central NC. The coast has been evacuated. This screenshot is of my desktop; the photo is NASA satellite imagery from a Mac program called Downlink.

Yesterday, I weighed 210.2, about a pound under my control line. This morning, I weighed 211.8, about a pound above my control line.

I could attribute the increase to a bigger than usual lunch, a supper of starchy leftovers, trying to lose weight in the winter is a mug's game, the dates I snacked on in the afternoon (if grapes=candy, then dates=chocolate caramels), a week of consistently poor sleep, or 104 other variables.

No matter the cause, I have to take the scale’s report as truth and act accordingly.

Mark Forster, when he devised his version of the No S diet, defined a set of rules for such occasions. Every day he was over the line, he added a rule. Every day he was on the line, he kept the same rules. Every day he was below the line, he relaxed a rule.

It’s an eminently sensible plan.

I started defining my own set of rules, ranking them by severity, etc. but decided to go easy on myself. I have my own toolkit of techniques; as I mark my weight on the graph, I’m already calculating which ones I will deploy that day.

The techniques are a mix of the following, in no particular order, and as the day allows:

• No snacking
• No sweets, though an apple or clementine is allowed
• Water, coffee, and herbal tea only (no ciders, no diet sodas)
• Only cold boiled potatoes during the day, with a normal supper
• No seconds, smaller portions
• Stop eating by 7pm or thereabouts
• Extra laps around the parking lot at work, or a workout at home
• Skipping one or two meals
• Start eating at 4pm and stop eating by 8 pm

Today, I had 3 meals (cold boiled potatoes at lunch), small portions, no snacks, and walked the parking lot at work. I did have a cider.

If my weight is still over the line tomorrow, then I will aim to have my large meal about midday. I’m scheduled for a workout, so that will help burn some calories. For the rest of the day: eat less, move more.

Although trying to lose weight during winter is like pushing a car out of a ditch.

Update, 1/27/2018: I weighed 209.8 this morning, a little less than a pound under my control line. Success! The goal today is to eat sensibly, have a workout, and continue to stay on or under the line.

Durham NC got about 8-11 inches of snow today. Here’s a shot from our backyard (taken by Liz) this afternoon and from our front porch this evening.

The key tool for me will be a weight-tracking chart made with pen and graph paper.

The chart format is described in the 1975 book Total Fitness in 30 Minutes a Week by Laurence E. Morehouse and Leonard Gross (long out of print). I first heard of this book through Mark Forster’s article.

The goal of the chart is to help you track losing a pound a week. This is a sustainable and non-superhuman rate of loss that should, we hope, prevent feelings of deprivation and will-power stuggles.

Here’s how Morehouse presents the graph in his book:

• Dates run along the horizontal axis.
• Weight is on the vertical axis. Each block on the graph represents a half-pound, so weight amounts are placed on every second line.
• Starting from the upper left, count down two blocks and over seven. Make a dot. Continue counting down two and over seven, making a dot at each intersection, till you get to the lower right. In the image, those dots are on days 7, 14, and 21.
• Use a ruler to draw a line from upper left to lower right connecting those dots.

That line determines your weight control program. My graph runs from 1/13 to 2/20, about 5 weeks. Every day I weigh myself, my weight will be above, below, or on the control line. For fractions of a pound, round up or down to the nearest half-pound.

Morehouse describes the protocol:

• The objective is to always be on the control line.
• If you’re below the line, eat what you want so you’re on the line tomorrow.
• If you’re above the line, then reduce the food and increase physical activity so you’re on the line tomorrow. Morehouse recommends eating 200 fewer calories and burning 300 extra calories by physical activity.
• By the end of the first week, you should know what foods or activity are needed to stay on or below the control line.

Morehouse makes the point that your daily weight will of course fluctuate for any number of reasons; some we can control, some we cannot. But for the purposes of this exercise, treat the weight as true and adjust accordingly. As Morehouse says,

We pay attention to the scale, particularly since it’s such a good source of motivation, but we don’t take it too seriously.

If you’re above the line for several days in a row, then it ain’t the weather; do what you need to do to bring your weight below the line. But if you're below the line, hooray! Take advantage of the fluctuation.

Keep tracking your weight in this way till you reach your target weight. In my case I’d like to be 195 lbs. So, if all goes well, I’ll get there sometime in mid-May.

There are spreadsheets out there (the Hacker’s Diet being one) that track one’s weight daily and smoothe out the fluctuations. And any app store is lousy with weight trackers.

So why use pen and paper? For one thing, I like looking at the chart and seeing how long this will take. It reminds me that sustainable weight loss is a slow process – slower than I’d like, frankly. But whenever I’ve tried to lose faster than this, I would rebound to some degree. 

Making the chart involves me in the process and updating it every morning is also more active than simply typing my weight into an app. When I record the weight and note its position relative to the control line, I immediately begin planning my day’s eating and activities.

What do I do when I’m over the line? When I figure it out myself, I will post it here!

In all the year-end roundups on the various blogs, I enjoyed David Cain's 16 things I know are true but haven’t quite learned yet. I already knew and practice #2 but several, like #s 1, 3, and 6 -- I still struggle with those. (But substitute MacBook for smartphone.) It made me think of a few things I know that I am still learning are true for me.

I work for a government contractor, and we were sent home at 11:30am on Tuesday, Oct. 1. The company (rather generously, believe it or not) covered everyone’s hours that week. This week, we’re taking mandatory vacation. No indication yet what next week’s plan is.

I’ve not been that disturbed. Oh, I’ll pay for this time off, no question. I will wind up owing the company hours or days, or I won’t have any vacation pay over Christmas. But for now, I am quite simply enjoying my time. I also know that this is a temporary problem, unlike being unemployed (which I have endured). I have the feeling I’ll be back at work soon enough.

(On a related note: I avoid much of the news surrounding the shutdown. I can’t do anything about the situation, apart from write to my representatives, which I did. So I’m letting them handle it while I get on with my life.)

Last week, I focused on creating a set of emails for the neighborhood association’s upcoming community meeting. I devised a set of twice-weekly emails, wrote them all, sequenced them, and then set up email reminders for myself. My system will remind me when it’s time to post an email to the neighborhood listserv and then I’ll take care of it. It took way longer to do that than I thought it would, mainly because I was procrastinating on writing 8-10 emails. But once I got started, I was able to push through and get them done.

Which then left the problem of what to do with acres of unscheduled time. Is that a problem? It doesn’t have to be. But I’ve discovered over the years that if I don’t have a project or some structure to my day, I do go to pot pretty quickly.

This would be a golden time to update my LinkedIn profile. I could also call that entrepreneurial non-profit and set up an appointment to talk to them about starting their program. Right now, all my eggs are in one employer’s basket; it might be better for me to start my own endeavor that puts me more in control. I’ve written the email to the non-profit, but I’ve not sent it yet. I don’t know why.

I have a creative project I had set aside so I could focus on the neighborhood project; I’m trying to not chase two rabbits anymore. I’ve been ramping up the research and writing on that project. I find the mornings are the best time for me to write and edit, or sometimes later in the evening. Afternoons are for housekeeping, laundry, desk cleaning, reading, and, if possible, a 20-minute nap at 2 or 3 pm.

I also charged through a few motivational books by the coach Steve Chandler on my Kindle. I’ll probably write them up here sometime. I’m reading a third book of his to see if the same themes recur.

I’ve also taken the opportunity to meet friends and acquaintances for coffee, without feeling the need to hustle back to the office. Running errands has also been less stressful. I do like to leave the house at least once a day, even if it’s just to put gas in the car, otherwise I get cabin fever.

The weather lately has been cool, due to Tropical Storm Karen, so I set up my office on our screened-in back porch. It was lovely. Whenever my eyes or shoulders got tired, I could set the MacBook or Kindle aside and look out at the trees and the bird-feeders and just relax. It’s so odd to have so much less thinking going on in my mind. The job takes the best hours of one’s day, and the days are filled with a thousand decisions related to problem-solving, writing emails, deciding where to go for lunch, returning phone calls, etc. With less on my plate, with fewer problems to solve, there’s subsequently less on my mind and my god is it peaceful.

Tomorrow is my banjo lesson in the morning. I will shop at the grocery after to get the food I’ll make for supper tomorrow night. And I’ll have time to write, read, have a nap. It’s not like floating down the Mississippi on a raft, but for me, it’s pretty good.

Updated on 2026-01-10

Up early and walked down to Patti's house, where we carpooled to the Creative Entrepreneur Expo 2013, sponsored by the Durham Arts Council. When I first saw the email advertising this half-day workshop, I thought, "No. I'm not a 'creative,' and I am not selling any services to creatives. So there." But then Patti forwarded it to the neighborhood listserv. And then Liz reforwarded it to me. At this point, the knocking on my door is getting so loud I can't ignore it any more. So I arranged with Patti that we would buddy-up and attend together. My intention was to have no goals or objectives about the day; I just wanted to expose myself to what was going on and see if anything resonated with me.

I have a coffee while we examine our materials and a young woman, Heather, walks up, introduces herself, and asks what our businesses are. Patti explains her business and I say, rather smugly, "I'm just exploring today. Just want to see what's out there and what's going on." She nods. Heather tells us about her business, which helps artists grow and manage their businesses.

Several memories and ideas bubble to the top of my brain and collide: this is an opportunity to try out ideas in a non-judgmental space, what can it hurt to put myself out there a little, follow the energy, one of Mike Uhl's early urgings to me to become a time management coach, since he'd benefited from our frequent conversations about his workflows and habits at the office, if the next thing I say isn't interesting then I can tweak it for the next person, oh come on what could it hurt.

So I tell Heather that, well, if I were to sell a service, it would probably be something like this (dredging up the old marketing template of "I help X do Y so that they can Z"): "I help artists and creative entrepreneurs solve their time management problems so they can get more of their creative work done." Her eyes widened, she smiled, she leaned forward -- I'm on to something! I mention it again later to an artist who we talk to; she's immediately enthusiastic and suggests a few venues where I could hold small roundtable discussions on the topic with artists.

Met a few of the vendors and talked to one fellow who's part of a non-profit that helps veterans get their own businesses started. I rattle off my spiel to him. He nods his head, leans forward, says I could register as a government contractor to teach stuff like that.

We go in to the keynote and receive some fabulous information on Durham's "Creative Vitality Index": in short, compared to the rest of the state, similar cities of our size in the Southeast, and the US, Durham is incredibly energetic and vibrant as more artists settle here and more revenue is generated from arts and culture activities. I don't know how they gather their data. I note that technical writers count as a creative jobs category and the numbers of technical writers in this area have decreased markedly since 2006, which confirms my observations.

I heard one of the vendors say that way more people showed up than they expected, and the second-floor theater was indeed packed. The keynote speakers were entrepreneurial gurus who have started their own organizations and teach at Duke. Their aim appeared to be to introduce common business  concepts and jargon to the artists, with their core message being that with the decline of traditional industries and revenue in this geographic area, the arts and culture are taking up the slack by bringing in increasing levels of revenue; therefore, more opportunities may arise for profit/non-profit collaborations.

It wasn't the first time that day that we would hear about how artists need to manage their work as a business. Fred Hathaway of Entredot gave a presentation on the basics of business, with the (to me) comforting idea that there is a method here and no one needs to create a business plan from the start. He echoed the keynote speakers' advice to stage lots of small experiments, fail quickly, and iterate often. Plan while doing and do while planning.

For me, the star presenter was Tivi Jones of Tivi Jones Media, who gave a great talk on creating a marketing plan. She called on people at random and asked me, "Sir, what is your business?" I cheerily waved my hands and said, "I don't have a business. I'm just observing." She moved on to  someone else and I was instantly besieged by thoughts: Why did you do that? This is the perfect place to try out the pitch. The energy in the room is great. You're never going to get a better opportunity than now. Just do it.

So after she posed the next question on her worksheet -- What problem does your product or service solve? --  I raised my hand and said I'd changed my mind. I said something like, "I help artists and creative entrepreneurs figure out custom time management solutions so they can end their days feeling more productive rather than tired." (In talking with Mike about elevator speeches, we'd noticed that the most memorable ones included a built-in duality or contrast.)

Even before I finished my pitch, Tivi sort of yelped and said, "I need this!" The woman sitting beside me asked for my contact information. A man asked me later for a card (I didn't have one! I was only going to explore!).

And oh, my brain is buzzing.

I'd already decided to take the rest of the day off from work. I check out a book from the library. I go by Parks & Rec to pick up free tabloids and giveaways for our Sunday neighborhood association meeting.

It's now 2pm and I've not had lunch. I grab a hotdog and eat it in the parking lot with my windows down. A woman in scrubs asks me to help her get a traffic safety cone unwedged from under her car. Why the hell did she run over the cone in the first place? Nonetheless, I crawl around on the pavement and somehow wrestle it out.

I go home, prune some tree limbs, and cut the grass, since light rain is being forecast every day for the next week and I hate cutting wet grass. I shower and nap.

Liz comes home and we go to a new restaurant for us, Dain's Place, which has awesome hamburgers. I debrief Liz about my day and show her the stack of papers, business cards, leaflets, etc. that I collected.

As we walk out, we see Peggy Payne walking down Ninth Street in a cobalt blue sequin party dress and cape, handing out cards advertising her new novel, Cobalt Blue, and inviting us to a reading she's giving with her friend Carrie Jane Knowles, whose novel Lillian's Garden has also been released. (Peggy and I were both in a creative writing class taught by Lee Smith in the mid-80's.) Liz and I agree: when you're invited to the party, say "Yes."

To pass the time before the reading, we go to a near-empty Francesca's and get ice cream. Thence to the Regulator Bookshop for the reading, which is very well attended and entertaining. I also see David Halperin there; I'd last seen Peggy at the book launch for David's novel.

What a rich, bizarre day for me. I met more people today than I normally meet in a week. I made a list of at least three new people I want to take out for coffee and a door has opened for me to ... do what? I don't know. But someone was knocking, and I opened it. I did some hard physical work that also made the house look good. We went to a new restaurant on a Thursday night (!) -- very out of character for us -- and diverted ourselves to an impromptu book reading.

Thence home, where I checked my email for the second time that day and saw that there really was not a lot worth spending my time on at all.

Thence here, where I wanted to write up the events of this day before their freshness faded.

And so to bed.

In the late ’90s, I decided I wanted to take piano lessons. By chance, a flyer at the Regulator Bookshop let me know about Mara Gibson, a Duke PhD student in composing, who taught piano on the side. I worked with her, I think, for about 2 years before she left Durham to finish her PhD. A few memories I have from that period:

• Those big dogs!
• Chatting about art, the art instinct, the artist’s life, etc.
• I found that when I practiced every day, even if just for 15 minutes, my playing got better. Weird.

Mara held an annual recital for her students at the back of Boyce Piano Emporium on 15-501. Her students all sat up at the front of the room, with the invited audience sitting behind us.

I didn’t realize up till then that she mostly taught kids from elementary age up through high school, with only seven or eight adult students. Mara had sequenced us so that I sat next to a junior high kid, I think, who was playing before me. He said, “That seat is for Mara’s students” and I said, yes, I know, I’m one of her students.

The younger students started by playing their recital pieces. After the last little person played their song, Mara called my name and I could hear the titters and amused murmurs from the audience as I lumbered up to the piano to announce my recital piece. You could hear them thinking, who the hell is this?

“Hi,” I said, “my name is Mike Brown and I started taking lessons with Mara about eight months ago. I’ll be playing three short pieces by Dmitry Kabalevsky. And,” I paused, looking around the room at the kids and parents, “I believe I’m the first person playing today who is over 6 feet tall.” That got a nice laugh and Liz said later it definitely broke the tension.

I think it was on the first or second piece, I burbled something and got a bit lost. So I stopped, smiled, excused myself, took a breath, and started in on it again. The pieces took less than 2 or 3 minutes to play, and it all went fine.

Many parents came up afterward to congratulate me and expressed their wonder and admiration at my performing a recital piece in front of a room full of people. I thanked them and then waved my hand at the kids – who had just done the same thing that I did. The parents seemed to think that performing was something children naturally did, whereas an adult putting himself in a position where one could fail (or succeed!) publicly was something they couldn’t conceive of doing.

Mara eventually left Duke to finish her PhD. Since 2004, she has been on the faculty of the Conservatory of Music and Dance, University of Missouri-Kansas City, and is now at Louisiana State University. She leads the life of a busy artist, academic, and mother, and I’m so happy to see her making so many big contributions to her art and her community.

Mara has also started selling some of her compositions digitally on Bandcamp. You can listen to the full pieces and then purchase and download them to your computer. It is so cool to have a Mara Gibson playlist on my iPhone.

Updated on 2026-02-25