Election Day is Coming, plus my semi-annual rant against (really in favor of) Daylight Saving Time

The time where we decide, not only who will head the executive branch of our federal government, but who will fill many other important positions in federal, state, and local governments is just around the corner.  Some people have already voted.  Maybe you have.  I'll avoid the awkward political discussion by simply urging you to vote.  Voting matters.  If you are eligible to vote, (citizen, non-felon in most states, etc.) do it.  If you want to know my opinion about who I think you should vote for, email me or something.

The other thing that's coming up is the end of Daylight Saving Time.  It's the magical time of the year where most of us set our clocks back an hour because the government says to.

Well, it's stupid.

There are plenty of reasons to just stick to one schedule.  Most of them are things that don't know how to read a clock, like cattle.  The reason that's a part of my reality now are my children.  They have no idea what time it is.  Ever.  I have a hard enough time convincing them that the lack of sunlight outside means it's time for bed.  They stick to their internal clocks.  For example, my 3-year-old son wakes up every day between 6:15 and 6:30.  He doesn't care what day of the week it is, if it's a holiday, or even what time he went to bed (unless we keep him up really late).  Can you imagine how frustrating March will be when I have to get him up an hour earlier than he's used to, just because some people thousands of miles away in the Capitol Building said we should?

I really don't care whether we're on Standard Time or Daylight Saving Time.  I just want to pick one and stick with it.  (Arizona and Hawaii are my role models in this situation.)  I prefer staying on DST year-round.  Why?  Because in the winter, there aren't enough daylight hours for it to matter which time we're on.  In the summer, there are so many daylight hours that it doesn't matter.  When it matters, near the equinoxes, I would rather go to work in the dark and play with my kids outside while the sun is shining.  But I'll sacrifice that if it means I don't have to switch my clock twice a year.

If you live in Utah, please encourage your state legislators to support my father's bill that would give voters the power to choose whether the state should opt out of DST.

This blog is a zombie -- you can't kill it. But this isn't a zombie post.

I feel like a zombie right now, but that's because I've been getting up early every day, either to get ready for church, or to go running, because I'm excited for college football (#GoCougs), or because the kids are awake.  I've got a lot of little projects that I keep cycling through during my free time, this blog being one of them, so I keep track of what's going on with Slack.

Slack is a program (kids these days would call it an app, but I'm old enough to remember when Windows 3.1 was what there was) that is designed to consolidate messaging between members of a team, like at a company or business.  I've taken the features available on the free version and turned it into my own private version of Facebook. See my previous post.

I wanted to show you how I use Slack, and invite you to join our Slack if you're interested.  Right now, the Slack is really centered around the things that I think are important, but you can help make it even better.

First of all, you should know that you can create more than one Slack "site."  So, on the left-hand side, in the green oval, you'll see that I have 3 Slack sites that I'm a part of.  One of them is from work (we mostly use it to share YouTube videos with each other, so that we can do research and not miss out on the nonsense that happens in the office), one is a personal one for my writing projects (like this blog, the novel I'm working on, my atrophying podcast, and my social media presence), and the third is my "public" Slack, which I'm hoping to use as my mini-Facebook.

Inside the red circle are the main channels within the Slack.  A channel is like a page within Facebook.  Kind of.  They're more like chat rooms.  All channels have to be in all lowercase (this is a stupid limitation) and begin with a #.  #announcements is the main channel on the Slack.  Everyone who will ever join the Slack is automatically added to #announcements.  We use it for... well, announcements.  Things like announcing new channels, welcoming new people to the Slack, explaining rules that are particular to our Slack, reporting on the progress of my other projects, and meta discussions about the Slack itself.

The other channels I have set up are mostly centered around discussion topics:

• #cfb is for college football, including the Top 25 ranking I do throughout the season (see my Twitter feed @gkthurston for more details).
• #photos is for sharing pictures that I don't want to be as public as they are on Twitter/FB.
• #pkmngo is for talking about Pokemon Go, mostly posting updates about which Pokemon we've caught.
• #politics is for political discussions.
• #running is for updates about my running activities, and to help keep myself motivated to run.
• #scripturestudy is for sharing insights that you find while reading the scriptures.  It helps me me even more motivated to study the scriptures.
• #sports is for discussion of all sports, though right now I just have a bot adding college football scores as they happen.
• #random is for discussions that don't fit anywhere else, like sharing funny videos.

I also have a series of channels that are location based.  The idea behind these is that when group members travel, they can post in the channel belonging to that area, and the Slack members who live there can give them advice about places to see, things to do, where to eat, and even set up a meet.  I'm currently subscribed to all of the location channels, and I'm the only one that really uses them.  But it's a good way to remind people of where and when I'll be.

You'll see that a lot of these things aren't information I want to be available to the general public, which makes it hard to decide who to add to the Slack.  So far, the problem has been solved by a lack of interest from others.  But I think a good minimum standard is people that I've met in real life and had a significant interaction with.

The last thing I'll write about is keeping up with the Slack.  It's designed to be a messaging program.  It's not very effective if people don't check it often.  But with the low amount of posts, it's not very rewarding to check the Slack constantly.  The best solution is to download the app on your phone (available on both Android and Apple as far as I know) and let it notify you when things happen.

Anyway, if you want to join the Slack, you have to be invited.  And you have to contact me to send you an invite.

Welcome to Slack

I don't know how many of you have heard of Slack. It's a platform designed for teams to work together on projects. I found out about Slack because they help sponsor a podcast I listen to.  After about a month of hearing ads for it, I thought I would just check it out to see what it does.  I made an account and now I'm using it as my own little personal version of Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Reddit.

A few of examples of projects I've been working on via Slack:

1. Writing a novel. I'm currently at >5000 words and my goal is ~50,000 words before I'll be ready to edit, fine-tune, etc. Slack has been useful for organizing my thoughts, and my brother has left me valuable feedback on Slack too. It leaves the Google Doc clear of meta discussion clutter, focusing only on editorial suggestions and the story itself in Google.

2. Running goals. I've been using it to help me keep track of my run times and distances. It's really nice to have a space where I can post stuff like that, and I know that my wife will see it.  And it keeps me accountable to my inner circle of friends and family.

3. My new fantasy football pick 'em league. Slack makes it really easy to survey people, on their own time, as well hold discussions on different topics, like college football.

I think that my favorite part of having a Slack (I actually have two now) is that I can post the things I want, without worrying about what people might think.  There's no pressure to like anything, I don't have to add people I've met once as friends, and people are free to join or leave any channel or discussion they want.  In this way, it's a lot like Reddit, except that I can control who gets to enter.  I can keep out all the crass language and not have to deal with it.  So, maybe it helps me be a dictator of my own little world. 

Anyway, after testing out Slack for a few months, I think I'm ready to let more people into my own social media platform and join the discussion I'm currently having with myself.  If you want an invite, please send me a message, tweet @gkthurston, or otherwise get a hold of me.  Give me an email address and then check your spam folder, since the invites come directly from Slack (there isn't another way to do it) and might look spammy to your filter.

Ye Olde Podcasting

Like I mentioned, I thought I would try my hand at podcasting.  So, here it is!  Just remember that you were probably going to waste these 6 minutes on Facebook anyway.

Here's to hopin' that there ends up being an Episode 2!  Enjoy!