Ted

Matt on Candace Gingrich: A Letter to My Brother Newt Gingrich: "I love that this is happening..."

Jan-Paul van den Bos on How to Sync Entourage, iPhone, and iCal: "At first it seems if setting..."

Rick Hightower on How to Sync Entourage, iPhone, and iCal: "Thanks. This helped a lot. I..."

Joy on How to Sync Entourage, iPhone, and iCal: "Hi - in iTunes, I don’t..."

Matt on Don’t want to be in there.: "Well, the fact that it passed..."

Josh on Movies.app - Find movie showtimes, reviews, and tickets on your iPhone: "Movies is great, but I think..."

Matt on What’s going on in there?: "the republican congress is realizing their..."

My friend Chris turned me on to the concept of this book initially, which made me wonder what I could learn about the topic. I gave it a whirl anyway.

I think this book falls in the category of owners’ manuals for how to be an adult, and there’s nothing wrong with reading those once in a while. After all, how often does someone actually sit you down and counsel you on how to be one? We often learn by our last intense experience doing something well or not so well, and that’s not really the best way to learn things (all the time).

It was a quick read, and yes, I did learn something. I was a little taken aback that some of the things suggested as topics/approaches to avoid, especially in the workplace, and, well, I don’t typically avoid them. I’m not talking about off-color jokes or sexist comments. Things like genuine comments of appreciation in every conversation.

There are also some practical tips, like holding a drink at an event in your left hand rather than your right so that you don’t shake hands with a wet, cold hand. Or keeping your drink no more than a quarter full so that you can always end a conversation by telling someone that you need a refill. There are a bunch of other little tidbits in there. There’s also a nice section on how to be liked - and yes, at our tender ages, we probably have a good sense of how to be liked or not. This is like dressing on the salad, it just makes it taste better.

I have to share one tip for dealing with not knowing someone’s name that I really liked: “Tell me you once forgot the name of a very nice person.”

Isn’t one of the greatest things about Life the fact that we get to know some very nice people?

I came across an article about Lane Hudson’s blog about Rep. Foley in the Advocate (described also on Queerty),and decided to look it up. It’s the blog that started everything. Here it is:

Stop Sex Predators: Emails from Congressman Foley to 16 Year Old Page!!!!

What to say except we have a ways to go if we want to say that we respect our youth and humans in general, regardless of their background or identity. It is a brave thing to reveal information like this to the public, or anyone. If you don’t act on it, it is the same as doing the damage yourself.