Stuff I Learned Yesterday

I won something yesterday!  It’s pretty cool, really.  It’s a high quality microphone attachment for Apple devices like the iPad, iPad mini, and iPhone.  It’s called the Zoom iQ5. If it sounds like something that you might find useful, you can check it out at www.goldenspiralmedia.com/iq5.  That’s a link that will take you to B & H Photo and Video.  

Would you like to know how I managed to win this really cool microphone?  Here’s my secret.  I entered the sweepstakes.  That’s it.  Now, you may not think I’m being serious but I am.  The reality is that if I would not have entered the sweepstakes, I would not have won the mic.

And so it is with our goals.  What is your goal?  Lose weight, publish a book, start a podcast, develop a tutorial, learn how to crochet, build a birdhouse, restore that old car in your garage?  None of those things will ever be done if you never take the first step, and all of them can be accomplished if you do.

Now, of course, there is a big difference in taking the first step in winning something, and taking the first step to giving up an addiction. I recognize that.  However, I think the main difference is the way we look at it while we’re standing in that starting spot.

Let’s think of these things, and the journey we’ll go on, like we would a Monopoly board.  We all start out on the space marked GO.  What else is on that square?  An arrow that is pointing us in the right direction.  The very next space after GO is Mediterranean Avenue.  It only takes one step to reach that space and the cost is only $60.  The last property on the end of the first side is 9 times farther away and will cost twice as much.  If you desire to reach the end of the next side of the board you’ll have to travel 19 times farther and pay over 3 times the amount as Mediterranean Avenue.  The end of the third side is 29 times farther at over 4 times the cost, and the final space, Boardwalk, is a distance 39 times farther and will cost nearly 7 times more than Mediterranean Avenue. Read More...

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You know what I enjoy?  Well, lots of things, really, but to be more specific, I enjoy sitting at a computer and producing podcasts or building websites.  I can easily spend over 12 hours a day doing that stuff and not feel tired.  You know what I don’t enjoy?  Working out in my yard.

As you probably know by now, it was right at a year ago when I left the company I had worked for for 19 years so that I could follow my dream of producing podcasts and building websites full time.  Last year I was focused totally on my business and saw my yard as even more of a nuisance than I normally do.  I kept up with mowing it, but that was all.  Since my wife doesn’t like yardwork either, this meant that our flower beds were totally ignored all year.

We hated not giving them any attention and were really embarrassed by how terrible they looked.  We have two flower beds in our front yard.  One of them contained a big bushy plant that must be the most resilient plant on the earth, and the dead stems of a plant that didn’t have near the staying power of his bedded brethren.  In the other bed was a fire bush that we like because it too won’t die and it turns a really beautiful red hue in the fall.  It was joined by two other bushes that were scrappy, but not really attractive.  They looked malnourished and half dead.  Probably because they were malnourished and half dead.

Both of the neighbors that flank our house have beautiful yards.  One of those neighbors, Allen and Mandy, look like they are going for the yard of the month award...except our neighborhood doesn’t have one of those.  They are incredibly nice people, and besides being pretty similar in age to us, they also happen to like Fringe and some of the other TV shows that we enjoy. Read More...

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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday.  My name is Darrell Darnell, when I was 9 I sat on the front row of the movie The Return of the Living Dead just to prove to my brothers that I was brave, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living.  In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I’m happy to share another installment of the Friday Forum. Read More...

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Time sure flies, doesn’t it?  It’s hard for me to believe that 20 years have gone by since I graduated high school.  I’ve mentioned before that I graduated from the thriving metropolis (if you use the word metropolis in the loosest way possible) of Wellston, OK in 1994.  I moved to Wellston before I went into the fourth grade.

It was an odd adjustment for me.  I had previously gone to school in a much larger school district and the class structure was quite a bit different.  Of course, like any new kid at a school, I knew no one and had no friends.  I don’t know what it was that brought us together, but I soon became friends with a kid named James, and we were pretty much best buds from then on out.

We were a small class.  I can’t find my senior yearbook at the moment, but I think my graduating class was around 36 kids.  My wife finds it hard to imagine what my high school experience was like.  She graduated with a group of over 450.  The thought of a school with that many people freaks me out a bit.  Since we were such a small class, and a small school, everyone knew everyone else.  Just about everyone got along with each other, even if we did really hang out.  I pretty much always struggled with trying to fit in or dealing with the fact that I felt like I didn’t fit in.  I never really felt like I wasn’t liked, just that I was an odd ball.

I wasn’t athletic at all.  Hanging out around the jocks was really not fun for me.  If I was going to get picked on by a group, it was them.  The band geeks were nice, but I wasn’t in the high school band, so I didn’t really hang out with them much either.  I don’t really know why, but I was never interested in the party scene.  In a small town, that’s pretty much all there is to do on a Friday or Saturday night.  So, as I said, I just felt out of place.  I was a geek, but that was before geeks were cool.  Geeks are cool now, right? Read More...

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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday.  My name is Darrell Darnell, my favorite cookie is oatmeal raisin, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living.  In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share a story of conflict and confession. Friday Forum Friday Forum is your opportunity to Share what YOU’VE […]

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