Current mood: optimistic
So I was driving a far distance the other day and during that drive I was listening to the radio. I am typically tuned into the Sacramento area classical station(except Friday nights, and sometimes during Saturday too) but due to the fact that I was a bit out of the range of reasonable reception I was tuned to the San Francisco classical station.
I normally frown upon the lack of Saclassical in my listening queue but this particular span of listening was unexpectedly interesting. Not for the music but the DJ's semi-informative question posed to the listeners in the standard prize give-away fashion. The question he posed called for three of the top 10 tools listed on "The 20 Most Important Tools" list recently posted by Forbes.com. I always like an intellectual challenge and my mind immediately went to work. I had no intention of calling in to make an attempt at claiming the prize, even though it was an enticing offering to me, and was much more content just running through the possible gamut of valid answers in my head. I only had a few minutes before the answers were revealed. So where did it lead me in that short time?
My initial thoughts led me to the transistor and naturally on through the standard "microchip/computers are the best thing ever" line of thinking. I am easily distracted by shiny objects, even mentally fabricated ones, and kind of got lost on that tangent before settling back to the reality of things like "the hammer" became considered. Before I realized I was still driving down the freeway(which I realized is not actually free, with all the lame toll-booth/bridges they have around here) the DJ was congratulating the winner of the prize(somebody who had internet access no doubt) and then read the entire list of possible answers, plus the extra 10 that also resided on the original Forbes list. Oh... Oh... Of course... I can see that... wouldn't have thought of that one... etc. A fairly insightful ingestion of information. So I thought about tools for a little while. Seemed fun enough at the time. I still had a long way to drive.
So I have some yard work to do, which is waaaaay overdue, and it came to mind as soon as I got home and saw how bad my yard looks, and how reasonable the weather was, that I should go buy some weed-killing spray of some type. I kind of wandered around Big Lots thinking they seem to have lots of randomly useful things. This, by the way, is a dangerous thing for me to be doing as I sometimes suffer from severe lack of attention, and I often invent all sorts of superfluous uses for every little interesting and somewhat useful item that I see... regardless of my prior want and/or need of the item. To my benefit I stumbled into the gardening tools isle. It was filled with enough imagination-inducing things that I was able to stay there long enough to pick out several useful tools that would greatly aid me in my yard work goals.
Several minutes later, possibly more than 10 minutes later, I was standing in an extremely slow moving yet short line waiting to pay for my hardware and mango juice. I had an epiphany. Sort of a minor one. The concepts which tickled my epiphany nerve were not new to me but they had a certain glow that I could not divert my attention from. Shiny things. Anyway... My epiphany was sort of like this - "Anything you do is always going to be easier when you have the right tools for the job." I was immediately applying this concept to my present need to fix up my yard, and simultaneously understanding the benefits of personal scripture study as they are often seen as tools to understanding how to live. Then I was thinking about many other tools I often take advantage of - computer, car, brain, etc... - and before I knew it I was forking out the dough for my precious findings... the physical ones I mean. I better not get charged to think of something cool!
So I like the band Tool. They are generally impossible for me to understand on any sort of personal level but they make excellently beautiful progressive rock music in their own way. Plus they seem to be less and less conceptually offensive as the years go on. This is all more of a side note really.
I am not sure if anybody really cares about tools like I do but for those who are interested to know the Forbes.com "The 20 Most Important Tools" list and how they arrived at their conclusions I expect this link I have posted will be the quickest way to get there.
http://www.forbes.com/home/personaltech/2005/08/04/technology-toolsmethodology_
cx_de_0804meth.html(update 3-30-12- link is now dead... sorry!)
Or you could just go find it yourself if you don't like that mini-tool I just provided and want to have your own mini-adventure finding it, or possibly something even more interesting!
Tools are wondrous, helpful, dynamically useful aspects of any persons life. The more in use the better I say! The good ones anyway.
Aaron
