Getting Things Done in Gmail

A friend emailed me recently to see if I wanted to hire a “starving student” part time. I realized there were several projects that I was working on that I could use a little help with. It would free up some of my time and give the student some pocket change.

To prep for this, I am migrating my personal Getting Things Done system from outlook to gmail. That way, my assistant can access my todos from any web browser.

I’m using a system recommended by Kelly Forrister. The article to set up the system is here.

So far it looks good and simple.

Dear Diary

This is a story I wrote in college. I think the assignment was to write from the point of view of the opposite gender. I’ve clearly used it to process some life experiences as well. It’s sad but I wanted a record of it anyway.

Dear Diary,

The Doctor says he doesn’t know how long I have. He says that I found the lump in my breast about two weeks too late… just two damned weeks! He says he doesn’t know if the therapy will help. It’s supposed to be painful; I’ve heard those stories. God I need a cigarette! Harry took it pretty good when he heard the news about the tumor being malignant and spreading and all. Spreading… oh my God, did I really write that? I say good because he didn’t break down or anything the way Mama did on the phone. That’s been one of the worst parts of this so far; seeing everybody around me fall to pieces except for Harry. I guess that’s what husbands are for. Jesus, you would think that they were all going to … I mean you would think that they were all sick and not me. Well Diary, I’m very tired and I need rest for the chemotherapy so goodnight.

Dear Diary,

I never new life could be so painful. I went to Johnson’s Hospital for my third chemotherapy session. The stuff they use on me is called cist platined salt or something. I can’t tell whether it is helpin’ me or making me sicker than the cancer. I felt horrible the first time they gave it to me and apparently it gets worse each time. I know it was the second. First the nurse sticks that I.V. needle into my arm then that fluid starts runnin’ down into my arm from that little bag. Then drops of sweat start to break out all over my forehead then my whole chest HURTS. It hurts like somebody just hit my breast real hard. Then my stomach feels this horrible cramping pain worse than any pain from the flu and I start to vomit all over the place. It’s like my stomach wants to fold up and leave my body through my throat. Got it’s terrible. It takes me three days to recover from the stuff and as far as I know it’s much more tiring than the cancer. I know it’s silly to say but at least my hair hasn’t fallen out or anything . My face is real pale but with a little makeup I can still look pretty nice. Whenever I look in the mirror and look good it gives me courage to think that everything might come out all right. Well that’s all for tonight Diary, goodnight.

Dear Diary,

I’ve been out of the hospital for a week now. Today I had enough energy to go down to M.C. Jenny’s and buy some nightgowns. You see lately I’ve been sweatin’ a lot at night, so much that one night I thought I’d wet the bed. So I decided to get some more nightgowns so that I would always have a fresh one. I got my neighbor Janet to drive me to the store and help me pick out the gowns. After picking out the robes I waited in line for a long and tiring time. Finally I got to the stupid checkout lady and gave her my credit card. After ringing everything up she goes away for a minute and comes back and says loudly so that the whole line can here “I’m sorry but you have no credit rating” shocked and embarrassed I tried to convince her that it was a big mistake. She was in a real bitchy mood and disagreed. Well we got into a big argument and finally I shouted out “for Christ sake give me a break I have cancer!” and started sobbing and sank to the floor from the physical and emotional exhaustion. Well, Janet paid and somehow got me out of that stupid store with the bitchy clerk. Later I mentioned this story to my doctor. He told me that sometimes computers talk to one another. Apparently a medical computer told a credit computer that I was terminally ill and slashed my credit rating so I wouldn’t go on a mad shopping spree. Terminally ill? Is that really happening? God I don’t want to die. Well that’s all for tonight. Good night.

PS. Oh Vera that stupid maid quite yesterday. She called up and made some excuse but she really is afraid of catching my illness. Now I need to find someone else to clean the house while I’m in the hospital.

Dear Diary,

Well I’m in the hospital now. I heard the doctor talking with Harry yesterday. he told hjim to get use to the idea that I might not come home again. You guessed it the drugs aren’t working as well as they should. So much for the wonders of modern science. God I hurt. I hurt all over like my body is on fire. Every time I breath it is painful. Even the large amounts of painkiller I’m on don’t stop it. It does make me sleep alot thought and that is good. When I sleep I forget about how much it hurst, about how my chest is all swollen, my body riddled with tumors. Instead I dream of pleasant things: of my early days with Harry, of college, even of being a cheerleader in junior hiugh. Well I’m feeling very tired so I guess that’s all. Goodnight.

Just Turn

This is a story I wrote during my MIT years. Except for a small change to obscure the name’s of some lotus eaters, I have resisted the urge to edit the writings of my teenage self. Enjoy.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget that January in 1985. It wasn’t just Sydney. It wasn’t just Ross and it wasn’t just the snow; it was everything. This was my first real vacation in two years. Naturally it was time to party, and party I did.

I remember watching Sydney’s svelte frame dancing as coloured lights played off her long blond hair. I remember laughing with my new friend Ross, laughing like I hadn’t laughed since before my brother’s death. But most of all I remember the trip to the ranch.

Ross had invited Sydney, five other friends and me down to his ranch for the weekend. It was a very special trip home for me. True I had never been to Ross’s Ranch before but I am a Texan. For us home is not one house or one city but a whole land. I suppose this is why I like Ross so much. We are both very Texan. We both know how to ride horses, we both know the frustration of putting up barbed wire fences, we both know the loneliness of hearing the wind blow across the Texas plains on a hot summer day. Most of all we both have a strong love for our land. All of this allowed me to form a very close relationship with someone I had only know a few days.

The trip was a great adventure for all of us. Driving to the ranch involved fitting eight of us into a pickup truck and driving not just on the highway but on a two mile stretch of mud which had once been a dirt road before the rain began earlier that day.

The two miles seemed to be about two hours as we trudged ahead (at somewhere between one and five m.p.h.) occasionally seeing the eyes of deer glowing in the headlights. Sydney’s boyfriend Greg and her roommate Doug road out back to aid the trucks traction. The remainder of us got to listen to Ross tell a ghost story. It goes like this:

Long ago in a small Texas town a beautiful Spanish girl was getting ready for her wedding. Her parents had got her a very elegant wedding dress. It was very long and was a delicate white. The church bells were ringing and the whole town was gathered at the church. Everybody that is except the groom. They waited for hours but finally the bride’s parents were forced to cancel the wedding. Upon hearing this the already upset girl lost her senses and ran out of the church and into the countryside looking for her husband to be. In her confused state she ran near a rattler which bit her on the ankle. Within twenty minutes the girl was dead. Two days later a cowboy reported seeing a white figure, sobbing in grief, running across the land. Similar reports followed. Ross said that even to this day people see this white apparition flowing across the Texas plains in the middle of the night.

By the end of the story we were almost halfway to the ranch house. We made it without too may problems. The house was very cold so after unpacking and watching a movie on the VCR the eight of us went to sleep on two mattresses we had put on the floor of the room in the middle of the house.

I awoke the next day to a great surprise. It had snowed; all around the house all I could see what white and grey – white land and grey sky. We were in South Texas about an hour away from the Mexican border and it had snowed. And it hadn’t just snowed on us. According to the radio it had snowed two feet on the Alamo! This had not happened in one hundred years. The eight of us were overwhelmed by the historical significance of that special day. To celebrate, some of us decided to drop some acid. We also decided to go outside and look around. In about an hour everybody was dressed up in all the clothes they had brought. Sydney wore an electric red rain slicker and a baseball cap. She and her friend Becky look like real outdoors people. I had on a green army helmet with a purple Indian scarf covering my ears. Greg said I look like and Asian soldier. All the other boys looked like typical Texans with cowboy boots and flannel shirts.

Outside things were beautiful. Small yellow flowers poked out of the ground preserved in cases of ice. I could clearly see the leaves and stems of each plant. They looked as if they would be preserved for ever; never changing. Birds moved slowly because of the cold. So slowly that Becky even caught one. Later in the day I saw an image on the ground of what I imagined to be a smiling snow God. It was as if he had come and tried to freeze time by sucking the warmth and energy out of the land. He did not stop time but he did slow it down. For some reason I felt that he slowed it down for me.

At first I thought building a bonfire was a stupid idea without any meaning, but later I changed my mind and helped the others out. When we finished I had a wonderful feeling of accomplishment. I think the rest of the group did too. Greg said “isn’t this incredible? Regardless of what kind of environment man is put in he will always conquer the elements around him. It’s his nature.” It was true. On a freezing day, in the middle of nowhere we had started from scratch and recreated what man is most famous for: fire. It was then that I learned that though in one way fire is meaningless just as life can be meaningless in another way it is important. It was important then because I decided to give it meaning. The lesson of the day was: life is what I make of it and that for me its significance comes from setting and realizing goals – turning fantasy into reality – forcing the element of nature to conform to my will. But this is not unusual . After all it is human nature.

Not only did I learn a great deal that day, I had fun too. At one point Ross and I decided to feed the deer on the land. We got  big pails, filled them with corn and starting at the ranch house began walking towards the mesquite throwing out handfuls of the beautiful yellow kernels. What we were doing was almost a form of modern art. Everything around us was dull and grey and we were throwing the golden coloured kernels all over the ground. It was like splashing bright paint on a white canvas.

Later in the day four of us went to watch a small pond freeze while the rest cooked some lunch. True the pond was a long ways away and it would take a while to freeze, but we were tripping so we didn’t mind. The crystal structures would form across the pond and the entire layer of ice would move upward a few millimeters leaving a pocket of air and water underneath. By stepping on the ice we could move the air around. So we amused ourselves by jumping around on the ice for about thirty minutes. At one point I misjudged it’s thickness and got my shoe wet. Though not exactly thesis material THIS was scientific observation at its best!

All the while this was going on we noticed a small but bright speck in the distance near the ranch house. As it got bigger we recognized Sydney. Soon we saw that she was carrying something. We figure that she had come all the way out here to bring us some lunch. Sydney arrived beaming. She proudly present an icy brown box and said “look y’all. Corny dogs!” Why she was so happy I will never understand. Syndey had brought us a box of frozen, uncooked, totally useless cornydogs. It wasn’t that she forgot to cook them. She was just like a little child who wanted to show of her new discovery. To have Sydney walk all the way over to the pond with a box of frozen corny dogs was really funny… At least we thought so.

That night we sat around the fire. It was still snowing but we were very warm. Sydney was walking around with a little pot of beans and feeding them to all of us. I felt wonderful. I was together with my friends, I was happy I was home. But then things changed. Suddenly, with fist clenched and tears brimming from my eyes, I wanted to hold on to that moment and never ever let it go. This feeling was even more intense because I felt the snow god’s spell melting and knew that with each passing second this moment of my life was coming closer to its end. Then, as if she had heard my thoughts, Sydney said “hey wouldn’t it be great if sometime in the future when we were lonely or sad – when things aren’t going well if we could stop for a moment. Turn. And be here; just turn, and be here. It would be just like stepping into a photograph.” I agreed and comforted by the thought relaxed and enjoyed the rest of the weekend.

Now it’s been a long time since that weekend at the ranch. Ross is across the sea studying in Spain. Sydney is at home but I’m far away in a strange place called New England. I don’t know when I will see either of them or my home again. Every now and then things get really bad and I get very depressed. During these rough times Sydney’s words come back to me like a voice carried on the dusty Texas wind. Then I pause for a minute and I slowly turn on my left foot… It is snowing, cool air chills my face. Sydney is standing there with her red jacket on looking like a camp fire girl, and Ross is sitting by my side. For just a little while I’m there and things are all right.

Modern Men

modernman

Modern Man

During my MIT years, when I wasn’t studying for Calculus tests or dancing in a cage (that’s another story), I was in a band called Modern Man. The band had four members, all from my fraternity ADP. They were Jeet Singh (founder, lead singer, composer), Joe Chung (base player, backing vocals), Mike Fleshman (guitar), and yours truly (keyboard with a bit of lead singing). We wrote and recorded our own music and played around boston. It’s been decades so I am hoping that instead of threatening me with legal action for posting their music the band will refresh my memory with some entertaining stories to add to this post. A few things I do remember are:

  • Performing at one rather famous place for live music (the name escapes me but I’ll update the blog once I get the story straight) and seeing that tons of bands had signed their names on the dressing room wall including “The Cars” and “The Ramones”.
  • Playing at the Battle of the Bands at Harvard and almost cracking open someones skull when I kicked the mic stand onstage (oops)
  • Playing at our frat for a crowd of screaming women with big bows in their hair (our Fab Four Moment for sure)
  • Getting airplay on Boston’s local alternative radio station WFNX.

I can’t think of any funny PG-13 stories about the band at the moment but I did want to post some of our music for old times’ sake.

Forever Lover You Are Escape with Me Tomorrows All Right

PS. Thanks to David Eccles for pulling all of this music off of a 23 year old DAT tape that’s been through a lot.

PPS. All you facebookers will have to go to my site (http://www.kehle.com/2009/08/14/modern-men/) until I get this music player thing sorted out.

Please Ignore – I’m testing audio players

Unless you want to recommend your favorite audio player for blogging you can ignore this post.

I will delete it soon.

Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.

First Option

Second Option

Will You Be There?

Will You Be There?

Confession Time: Ever since the 7th grade, I have wanted to be a pop star. In the 90s this took the form of Hunter Sunday.

As Hunter, I  wrote and recorded some music, did some photo shoots and performed around San Francisco.

My favorite and final gig was at the “Halloween in the Castro” street festival. To prepare, I rented a gorilla suit without the face mask, bought a plastic orange jack o lantern and purchased several bags of candy. The event was staged at the South East corner of Market, Noe and 16th Streets. I showed up about an hour before my 11pm “curtain”, changed into my costume, filled my jack o lantern with candy and gave my music to the sound engineer. I was all set.

What I didn’t expect was the crowd. The performers were hanging out behind the stage and had no sense of the audience.

(Note 1 to Reader: To get a feel for the experience, start playing the music now)
(Note 2 to Reader: No player? Try http://www.kehle.com/2009/08/12/will-you-be-there/ )

Will You Be There?

When my music started, I remember climbing the stairs to the stage and looking out at a sea of people. Every single street for as far as I could see was packed with human beings. I was exhilarated. I began throwing candy into the crowd and shouting “Trick or Treat!”. Much to my amazement, in spite of the late hour, children started coming out from this sea of adults to grab the candy. And they were so happy! So excited! I don’t think I have ever made so many people so happy with such a simple act. I was a wonderful gift to me and was a great way to end my adventures as Hunter Sunday.

PS. I want to thank the engineers at SGI who made a workstation that read DAT tapes and had a great digital audio editor. This event not have happened without your equipment. And special thanks to Kerry Jaggers for making sure the live performance sounded good and finally to Fred Drake for recording my tracks at the Rancho De La Luna. Love you guys!

About Me

My name is Joel.

For pleasure and profit I currently work at Qualcomm. Before working at Qualcomm, I:

  • Supported Mallika Chopra’s launch of the wellness site “Intent
  • Served as Head of Technology for Dan Adler’s Power of Entertainment
  • Helped Murray and Jack Hidary launch iAmplify;
  • Lead the technology teams for several of Idealab’s portfolio companies, including EntertainNet, KidsOnline, Swap.com and Spun.com.
  • Founded Dark Carnival Online, one of the Web’s first media companies.
  • Helped write a software clone of the Macintosh for Quorum Software Systems.

I hold a B.S. in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which is probably why people let me get away with these sorts of things.

For pleasure and less profit I have been involved in a number of other projects including

  • writing, recording and performing music
  • modeling for fashion and art photographers
  • writing prose
  • dancing
  • performing (plays, costume parties, etc.)
  • hanging out with interesting people and get into all sorts of mischief

Each of these bullets contains at least one story. With any luck I will write about them sooner rather than later.