I was glad that I was able to identify the cause of the problem and repair it, in only a few hours.  But I was annoyed that my plans for the evening were shot, and I had an ugly and distorted sense that I'm never able to do the things I really want to do, but must always spend my time responding to emergencies that are my duty.  

I know this view is wrong, but over the prior 9 months or so I'd taken on so much more stuff than I ever had before that I had been wavering between resentment against the world at large and anxiety about not being able to achieve my goals.

I think this experience and my response was a big step on my recovery from going crazy. I reminded myself that to accept those thoughts, about never achieving my goals, would bring about a self-fulfilling prophecy.  And I reminded myself to see how the choices I make even in response to the unexpected emergencies are serving the values I want to achieve and keep.

It was at this time that I also realized I'd gotten impatient. And couldn't remember having that problem since I was a wee tyke when I'd get pissed struggling to untie my shoes.

I think by repeatedly reinforcing a view that I should be getting more done than I was, and actually more than was possible was causing me to have an always present sense of impatience and frustration with myself and others.

I had decided that fulfilling my ambitions should be easy and when I couldn't do it I'd damn the universe for being impossible and myself for not succeeding anyway.

In the end I had to challenge the bad premises by comparing them with reality, and clear out those thoughts that had been gumming up my life.

Oh and if your interested about the AC. I took it apart cleaned a bunch of nasty sludge that had accumulated in the drip pan under the coil. And then using an old wire as a snake, dislodged sludge from the upper part of the pipe. Finally hooking up a shop vac to the end of the condensate line and sucked out anything that would come. It worked fine the rest of the summer. And if there is a next time. First thing I'll do is hook up the shop vac.

So, Anyone have recommendations for companies to clean and service HVAC units annually?

Previously Logical Disconnect served as a diary of rants and various diatribes of no particular purpose and with no cohesive theme. Often it had, as most blogs, come off as complaints and sometimes information that was too personal to be of much use to anyone even those who know me. Primarily it was a personal outlet for unformed notions I wanted to share but with no one in particular.

In some sense the personal nature will continue, however, I have recently decided to use the writing here as a means to further my study of Objectivism.

My plan is to use it to write in order to learn. It became explicit to me when listening to Dr. Leonard Peikoff's lecture series The Philosophy of Education that writing is a tremendously valuable cognitive tool. It forces you to slow down your thought process and make well reasoned arguments. If you don't want the concrete, the writing, to be utter nonsense then you must understand and mentally organize the subject. And by doing this it requires you to integrate the concepts, you wish to write about, into your own hierarchy of knowledge. To really understand the ideas in order to convey them. This is to be part of my defense against any kind of dogmatism or other irrationality in my study of philosophy.

This is analogous to the "trick" I used in college to give focus to study. When it became generally well known that I was doing well, I was often asked for help by other students in my classes. By agreeing to help others I was required to understand the material well enough to convey it to them. And if you have ever tried to teach, especially someone who is honestly seeking to learn, you can't fake this understanding. After spending time teaching the concepts to others, my understanding of the material was unshakable. This activity greatly focused my effort and diminished my need for additional independent study.

By making the writing public I could be subject to criticism or counterarguments which may help me refine my ideas. It will provide additional context to those I have been having frequent philosophic discussions with recently. And will also further my wife's growing understanding that she has chosen a very unique individual to share life with.

I also plan to use the writing here as a tool for introspection and as a secondary value I would like my children to be able to have this as a concrete reference for knowing about their Father. I know reading a copy of a single letter I discovered, which my father wrote years ago at work[1] gave me a different and unexpected perspective and even greater admiration for him.

Yes this is a very selfish motive and personal collection of articles. I intend to derive great value from writing them.

1. Yes letter, not email. I said years ago.

Basically I start trying to plan out some structure that is used to capture the main things I need capturing, which anyone can tell you are a list of your projects. A list of your next actions. And some sort of calendar to capture the hard landscape of what is happening. And finally a reliable reference file. Where to store stuff you may need to reference later, reliably, in a form that is easy to look up.

Well as a guy who builds systems and programs this is a nightmare, I start thinking this is simple enough to build something. Well it isn't, because all of the sudden I have something way more complex than the [37signals](http://37signals.com/) people have built, and it will take me a good 8 or 40 hours to put together. And then I start thinking about backup, because hell if this is my life I better be able to back it up. And of course I don't have time for this because while I am thinking about this I am shirking all kinds of other responsibilities, and the fires are growing all around me. Then I run around for 3 days putting them out and long for an uninterrupted month where I can construct this super-duper life runner application.

Well I am a father, and I work, and I have hobbies, there is no uninterrupted month coming any time in the forseeable future, which I can't really see much of anyway because I am so busy running around putting out fires, or planning for the utopia in some distant future. I really need to work on my middle game.

Anyway, starting today, I am going to errect a little bit of scaffolding to try and hold my life together. I am going to spend about 10 minutes thinking about the simplest system that can possibly work.

*I am picturing a calendar and a notebook.*

I think the biggest thing here is consistency of putting everything there, and to get in the habit of looking at it several times a day. Maybe I can trick myself and write "email" or "bloglines" on the cover, since I typically look at both of those several times an hour.

I have to convince my brain that it doesn't have to be perfect to start using it.