Interesting Quote

Author Jim Collins notes,

One day early in my faculty teaching career — I think it was 1988 or 1989 — [my mentor John] Gardner sat me down. “It occurs to me, Jim, that you spend too much time trying to be interesting,” he said. “Why don’t you invest more time being interested?”

If you want to have an interesting dinner conversation, be interested. If you want to have interesting things to write, be interested. If you want to meet interesting people, be interested in the people you meet — their lives, their history, their story. Where are they from? How did they get here? What have they learned? By practicing the art of being interested, the majority of people can become fascinating teachers; nearly everyone has an interesting story to tell.

I just read that over at Ramit Sethi's Blog. I think that it is a cool way of looking at things so I wanted to toss it out here. It seems like lots of people get caught up with trying to be interesting, but have a hard time actually pulling it off. I can remember many times where I or my friends wanted to "do something interesting tonight". According to this quote all we had to do was be interested. It seems like it might be an oversimplification to say "all you have to do is be interested", but it is definitely a good point of view.

Ryan Pollock is going down!

Ok I'm going to admit something totally selfish. One of the reasons that I started actively blogging again is because I want to be the top "Ryan Pollock" when you search on google. I think that I either was the top or was close to the top years ago when I was actively running and had a lot of results up on the net. Since then other Ryan Pollocks have emerged that are, according to PageRank, more important than me. The competition is rather fierce for the spot. We have some other sports players, some business type people, and then the end-boss of the "ryan pollock" google search game. His name is Ryan Pollock and he owns ryanpollock.com. The reason that this guy is going to be tough to take down is that he works at freaking Google! The dude also took out a google ad for his name!

Its going to be hard, but I'll be the top Ryan Pollock eventually. I'm going to really enjoy topping out that cheating google-Ryan Pollock. When I resurected this blog in June I was not even on the first page of results. Now I am #5! I don't know why but its my post about OpenMoko that put me up there, very strange.

I haven't been trying too too hard to get my PageRank up. I put more references to my name in the site than were there before but thats about it. I might subscribe to one of those blog notification services that ping all the blog index sites when you update. Thats probably about all I'll do, except keep posting of course.

All other Ryan Pollocks consider yourself warned! I'm coming to get you!

Finding a Good Garage

I just got a call from Jerry, my mechanic in Waltham, telling me that Tora's car is all fixed and ready to be picked up. I'm psyched that I finally found a good mechanic in Boston. Tora and I don't like going to those national chain type garages because they seem like they just don't care. My neighbor recommended this little garage right around the corner from us and I think its going to work out really well. Its so close that I can walk back home after dropping my car off. Thats hot because its always a pain to find time to drop a car off and get picked up. Definitely digging this place, they take the time to explain what the problem is and go over the bill with you. Sweet!

I'm so psyched about my new mechanic that I might just break my car on purpose just to get it fixed, thats how awesome it is.

Plug for Pangie

Pangie asked me to plug his new blog to get some people heading over there. I think he is required to keep a blog for one of his classes, but as always his writing is really good. If you are a teacher then its probably more interesting but it can be funny even if you aren't. Check it out!