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“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

Brief Review — GreenMade InstaCrate Collapsible Crate

The GreenMade InstaCrate Collapsible Crate is one of the best purchases I’ve made in the past year. I picked up two at Costco and threw one in the back of each car. They’ve come in handy for all sorts of things.Those times you may need to carry a bunch of loose items or maybe you have a couple of grocery bags, a bottle of wine, and some beer — pop this up and throw them in here. They fold down flat when not in use so they take up little space so just keeping one where you need it is of no issue. We use ours several times a week.

This would likely make a great gift; one of those “why didn’t I have one of these sooner” sort of purchases. You can get them at Amazon but the identical ones I bought were $7.99 each at Costco when I got them. So, it may be worth look there if you happen to have one near.

The Numbers

Be very wary of any numbers given out without the data behind them…

73% of Americans believe…

One in three people support…

This affects one in every ten…

How did they arrive at that figure? How many people did they survey? What was the actual question asked? Was there A/B testing across a variety of different groups? Where were those people from? Was there a mix of rural and urban? Was it diverse racially and income wise? Unless you and all of your neighbors were polled, be wary; the numbers are a guess in the best light or pure propaganda in the worst.

Numbers are often used to sway and influence opinion and it is especially true when the data behind them, the math, is purposefully opaque. The news media, politicians, professionals, companies, and even fellow citizens do this all the time. They know that people, in general, like our beliefs validated and like being with the "winners". Therefore, if I say a high ratio of some such thing want some other such thing, people will be swayed to include themselves in that "winning" number.

Worse, even if the math behind the numbers is included freely, we the people often don’t bother checking it. We accept it at face value. This is dangerous and foolish and as good as not having the data at all.

Stop this. Always question the numbers. Ask for the data. Get the facts. Check the math.

Lived In and Loved

This site, along with several others I manage, was recently the victim of an attack that injected redirection code throughout my WordPress installation. Thus resulting in visitors to the site being redirected to all manner of scammy/scummy websites. A mess I’m still trying to clean up on most of my sites (for instance, patrickrhone-dot-com is still not fixed).

I believe one of the reasons these sites were an attractive target was due to the fact that so many of them had not been posted to in several months. Thanks to my nonline sabbatical I’d let them go fallow. Thus, it likely looked like no one cared.

But, I do care… A lot! Especially about this place. Of all the places I stopped publishing on, this is the one I missed the most. And, strangely enough to me at least, of all of the sites I wrote and maintained, this one was the newest of the bunch.

But, I liked what I started to build here before taking my break. A microblog before I’d even heard the term. POSSE (Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) before I knew that was a “thing”. But, most of all, a place where I could feel comfortable posting an idea or essay of any length and not let the wholly self-imposed guilt of something only a few words long being a “real” blog post get in the way of pressing publish.

I’ll be honest; things are really kind of rough for me these days. I’ll be spending all day, every day, in a courtroom for at least the next couple of weeks. I don’t want to get into the details too deeply right now but my eldest child is on trial for a serious charge. I have to be there to support that. Then my evenings are packed with all I can’t currently get through during the days.

That is to say that I’m working as best I can to get everything cleaned up and my sites back functioning again but it is very slow going. At least this one seems OK (The Cramped does as well).

This is also to say that I’m weighing ending my sabbatical and posting here more frequently so this place looks the way it should — lived in and loved.