Blog of Josh Hall

If you give an adult LEGO enthusiast a brick, he’s going to want a container to put it in.

When you give him the container, he’ll probably ask you to help find all the bricks in his inventory of the same shape.

When he’s finished finding all the pieces of the same shape, he’ll ask you to help sort out all the like colors of that same shape.

Then he will want to build something out of his newly sorted pieces, but he’ll need to get out his other pieces out too.

When he pulls out his other pieces and gets to work, he’ll notice he needs to make a BrickLink order for more of those pieces to finish his new creation.

When he makes that BrickLink order, he might throw in a few more pieces, just because they’re cheap and he doesn’t have them!

When he finishes his new creation, you’ll have to get the camera, white backdrop, and lighting for him to take a picture of it.

He’ll want you to upload the pictures to MOCPages or Flickr so that all his friends can see the pictures of his new creation.

When you upload the pictures, he’ll get so excited about LEGO creations that he’ll want to look at everyone’s latest activity.

When he looks at everyone’s latest activity, he’ll want to post his own comments and favorite their creations.

Then he’ll want to go see the creations in person at the upcoming brick convention, which means he’ll need to bring something to display or to enter a competition.

He’ll decide what he’s going to build and then start to think about what pieces he’ll need to make it.  Chances are, he’ll need another piece he doesn’t have or more pieces of the ones he does have.

And chances are if he asks for another brick, he’s going to want another storage container to keep it in.

Modified by Josh Hall from Laura Numeroff‘s “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie”

If you’re not inspiring change, solutions, or actions, you’re still just complaining.

Saying things should be a certain way is just a different form of complaining.  Maybe even a lazier form.  If you think your vision or suggestion is the best, stand behind it and prove why it’s the best.  If you can’t get your message across, that’s on you, or it’s just a reflection about your suggestion not being a very good one.

This is kind of a memory, but I just remember how much of a kick I got out of my Pitt username when I was a student there.  Most students had their 3 initials, then “st” to signify they were a student, and then a random one or two digit number behind it.  I think the ST only was used once there were too many active usernames with the same initials.  Either was, I had always used the handle sixf00t4.   When I got to Pitt, I was so pleased to find out that my username was jdh64.  It was perfect.

Once I got my job at the Pitt helpdesk, I had a lot of people ask me if I had pulled strings to get that username.  It was just fate.

If you are relying on electricity, you aren’t camping.

That includes having to recharge or replace batteries.  I’m all for modern camping, but the point of camping is to get away from your normal life, not bring all the crap along with you.  Some people would say that if you can’t carry it on your body, you’re not camping, but I’m not that rigid.  I would say that as we see innovations in technology, we’d expect to see at least some increase utility in camping, but those 2 trend lines should not run parallel.

Travel season is upon us!  Where are you headed this year?  We’re not sure what we’ll do yet, but will probably involve going away for at least a weekend, maybe more.  Kallie seems to want to get to a beach of some sort too.

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Explanations should only be given when they’re asked for.

Otherwise, they’re called excuses.