Todd Sattersten :: Astronaut Projects

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Best of 2008

I know I am suppose to write this post before the year end, but with travel and children I ran out of time.

So, in no particular order here is what has happened and what rises above the rest when I think of 2008:

• E started kindergarten and Z started preschool.
  
• I posted my favorite business books of 2008 over on the 800-CEO-READ blog and Inc.com worked with us on their selections.
• Jack and I turned in the manuscript for The 100 Best Business Books of All Time in April. And we just got finished books today and they look great. The book hits shelves February 5th.
• My 91 del.icio.us bookmarks remind of these yummy sites:
  
  • Spoonflower for custom fabrics based on your designs
  • Sticker Robot for custom stickers
  • Moo for business cards, holiday cards, and sticker books from your Flickr photos
• We survived the snowiest winter on record in Waukesha. I think it was 109".
• That turned into a flooded basement after warm weather and some huge rains.
• Mac Apps you should be using: NetNewsWire for RSS feeds, Ecto for blogging, VoodooPad for note taking, and possibly WriteRoom for a clutter-free writing space.
• Mac Apps to consider: Things (I use to manage to-dos in BaseCamp, but I think I like this desktop/iPhone combo better) and TweetDeck (allows filtering, grouping, and searching all in one Tweeter app)
• I posted 305 tweets this year. I would have never guessed that and TweetStats tells me I have been accelerating my use of Twitter.
• Music that worked for me:
  • Juniper Tar
  • The Refugees
  • Bon Iver
  • What Made Milwaukee Famous
• This American Life provided the best description of the credit crisis I heard, read or watched anywhere. Listen to The Giant Pool of Money. It is worth all 58 minutes. In second place is Michael Lewis' Panic, an anthology of articles, reports, and missives on the bubbles we have gone through since 1989.

What Science Says About Happiness

Dan Pink linked to this article on Alternet titled 10 Things Science Says Will Make You Happy.

The piece is really good but Dan's provided a more interesting set of headers:

1. Stop and enjoy the present.
2. Don’t compare yourself to the Joneses.
3. Don’t obsess over money.
4. Aspire to leave an imprint.
5. Be intrinsically motivated on the job.
6. Build a supportive network of family and friends
7. Act optimistic even if you have to fake it.
8. Gratitude, baby, gratitude.
9. Exercise is all good.
10. Givers gain.

Great things to think about as we head into the New Year.

Happy New Year, everybody!

The Christmas Album 2008

Enjoy this year's Christmas mix and links to those from the past.

1 Season's Greetings | Robbers on High Street | Seasons Greetings - Single (2:25)
2 Christmas | Blues Traveler | A Very Special Christmas, Vol. 3 (5:48)
3 Christmas in Dixie | Alabama | The American Farewell Tour (3:37)
4 Christmas Must Be Tonight | Daryl Hall & John Oates | Home For Christmas (4:29)
5 The Christmas Yodel | Riders In The Sky | Christmas the Cowboy Way (2:40)
6 Holy, Holy, Holy | Sufjan Stevens | Songs For Christmas, Vol: V Peace! (3:50)
7 Three Kings | Eclipse | Three Kings (4:04)
8 Santa's Got A Brand New Bag | The Bobs | Too Many Santas (3:30)
9 Deck the Hall (With Boughs of Longboards) | Rick Springfield | Christmas With You (2:15)
10 Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas | Bebo Norman | Christmas...From the Realms of Glory (3:17)
11 Goodbye Charles | Over the Rhine | Snow Angels (2:22)
12 Santa Will Find You | Mindy Smith | My Holiday (3:53)
13 J.S. Bach's Christmas Oratorio - BVW 248 #41 | Bela Fleck and The Fleckstones | Jingle All the Way (4:30)
14 Mr. Heat Miser | Big Bad Voodoo Daddy | Everything You Want For Christmas (4:24)
15 Hallelujah | Brandi Carlile | KCRW.com Presents (4:25)
16 I Saw Three Ships | Barenaked Ladies | Barenaked For The Holidays (1:07)
17 Still, Still, Still | Garrison Keillor and the Plymouth Series Music Ensemble | Now It Is Christmas Again (2:49)
18 This Time of Year | The Mighty Mighty Bosstones | A Santa Clause - It's a Punk Rock Christmas (2:22)
19 Merry Xmas Everybody | Camp Freddy | Merry Xmas Everybody (3:45)
20 Someday At Christmas | Jack Johnson | This Warm December: Brushfire Holiday's, Vol. 1 (2:13)

Past Albums

• 2007 Christmas Album (Perry Como, Jack Johnson, The Weepies, Leigh Nash)
• 2006 Christmas Album (The Waitresses, Five for Fighting, Blind Boys of Alabama, Billy Mack)
• 2005 Christmas Album (Louis Prima, Dolly Parton, B.B. King, Whitney Houston, Dixieland Ramblers)
• 2004 Christmas Album (Guster, Bobby Vinton, The Eagles, Yutaka, Rhonda Vincent)
• 2002 Christmas Album (Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Jars of Clay, Jimmy Buffet, Sting, Tina Arena)

P.S. All the song links send you to iTunes.

Tomorrow: The Holidays Officially Begin

I know they have been going for a couple of days already (our family even exchanged some Christmas gifts on Thanksgiving), but starting tomorrow we are going to be serving up some holiday cheer in the form of seasonal music.

First, I am going to post the list of songs from my annual mix CD. I am on year 7 of this exercise. You'll also find links back to the prior lists.

And starting Monday, I am going to post a song every day on my Twitter account that you can listen to and in the majority of the cases download if you like. If you want to follow along, follow me on my twitter account or subscribe to my tumblr blog.

The Hobo Parade

Every institution has traditions, some stranger than others.

At my alma mater Michigan Tech, they have a parade for homecoming. So, nothing unusual there. It's the theme that might catch people's attention.

Everyone dresses up like hobos.

The alumni newsletter captures it from a vantage point I know well - from a member of the pep band.

Maybe more here soon...

I find myself lately using other tools to do most of my online posting.

Flickr takes my photos via email from the iPhone or upload from the laptop.
Twitter capture those quick thoughts.
Del.icio.us saves the good stuff for later.
And tumblr pull that all together simply for others to follow along.

My longer posts have been showing up on the 800-CEO-READ Blog and even there they have been infrequent.

I think I am going to try to get back to putting some things up here. There are some things in length and intent that would fit well here, if I could find the time to write them.

So, maybe you'll start to see more here soon...

(In the meantime, follow along using the tumblr link above.)

Great New Tool: Addict-o-matic

I read a blog post a year ago that said you should judge new software after seven days after installation. The writer believed if you had changed your behavior and integrated the new program into your work routine than it was worth keeping. I use that rule alot. Textpander, Voodoopad, and MindManager all passed the test.

I am finding the same thing happening with Add-o-matic. This is a simple metasearch engine that displays material from 18 different sites. Every day when I visit and do my business books keyword search, I always find something interesting. The results change frequently and I find material that I can't through other search mechanisms, even Google Alerts and Tweetscan.

Check it out and see if you find the same.

Boom Goes The Resume

Seth has a great post up titled Why bother having a resume?

There is something comfortable about the standards of a resume. You know how to fill in the blanks. The format has already been worked out. The only question left is if you are going to send it in a Rich Text Format or Word Document.

If you blow up the resume, the questions are wonderfully endless.

• What I am going to say?
• How I am going to say it?
• Is this really what I want to do?

I was describing my career to someone last week and realized the textbook method doesn't really explain who I am or what I want to do next. Today, I was looking at the description at the top of my tumblr blog and came to the same conclusion.

Every person is a sum of their experiences and certainly my mechanical engineering degree and the time at General Electric is important, but there are a whole set of new things that show better what I can do and want to do with my time.

This image is from a document I turned in for a chance at an internship with Ben and Jackie from Church of the Customer. I always liked this representation, experiences overlaid and fading with time. That collage is three and a half years old and would look quite different today.

As I look at the things that I am interested in now, there are seeds in those past projects and positions, but they would be hard to see through bullet points and required corporate speak of a standard resume.

This post should not be considered by anyone reading that I am looking for a new corporate home. Seth's post just made me think about the stories we tell other about what we do, both in form and content.

Wisconsin Music - in person and name

• Bon Iver - Justin Vernon wrote his album "For Emma, Forever Ago" in a Northwestern Wisconsin cabin.
• Collections of Colonies of Bees - My good friend Jon plays drums in this Milwaukee-based group. They just returned from a SXSW performance, and a little bee told me that we are doing a project with Justin.
• Juniper Tar - They get another piece of link love because I like them and their album a lot.
• What Made Milwaukee Famous - Paste Magazine introduced me this month to this Austin-based band. The name is what first caught my attention, but their pop rock hooks drew me in.
• The BoDeans - this master of the bar band genre is from my town of Waukesha. Find a live version of Still The Night; I have never heard a song where the audience has a part. Kurt and Sammy have a new album called Still, which is solid and familiar.