Stuff I Learned Yesterday
About Stuff I Learned Yesterday
Stuff I Learned Yesterday is a podcast that aims to encourage, inspire, challenge, motivate, and improve the lives of those who listen to it. Stuff I Learned Yesterday is released each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Each episode ranges from 5-15 minutes long and contain short stories based on real events and lessons learned by the hosts. Friday episodes are called the Friday Forum and are filled with inspirational and motivational thoughts submitted by Stuff I Learned Yesterday listeners. Submit your story for a Friday Forum episode by calling 304-837-2278, visiting our feedback page, or click on the Send a Voice Message button on the left hand side of this page.
79- The Declaration of Independence
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When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. Read More…
78- Staying in the Same Place
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Just last week I was at my favorite coffee shop. I ordered my usual cup of black coffee and sat down at my favorite table to get some work done. At the table next to me there were two men enjoying coffee and chatting away. One of the guys was younger and one was a little older, perhaps a father son relationship, I don’t really know, but it was clear that the older one was a sort of mentor or teacher to the younger one.
I am an expert at working in noisy, busy environments, I can tune out everything going on around me. You could let the zoo loose inside the coffee shop and I wouldn’t even know it. And that is exactly what I did on this day, tuned the world out to focus on my work.
I can’t even tell you what the two men were talking about, I was focused on my work. But out of nowhere I just happened to clearly hear one sentence that the older man said in response to something the younger man had said. It was such a simple thing, but it really caught my attention and I have been thinking about it ever since. Read more…
77- Three Ingredients For Ignition
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Are you ready for a lesson on auto repair troubleshooting? Good. There are 3 things required to make an engine operate: air, fuel, and spark. These three things not only have to be present, but they have to be combined in just the right way at just the right time. If you have just 2 of them, you get to call a cab, hop on a bike, or take off walking.
Last Saturday the kids and I hopped into my car to go grab some PVC pipe from the hardware store, but my car wouldn’t start. It had given me some trouble the week before, but after a couple of attempts at starting it, it fired up. However, on Saturday, it was a different story.
While I knew the car was not out of fuel, my first thought was that fuel was not getting into the combustion chamber. The likely candidates would be the fuel filter, or the fuel pump. Since the fuel pump is located inside the gas tank on my car, replacing it would require removing the gas tank and mess of other things that are beyond my ability to do myself. So I decided to start with replacing the fuel filter. However, before I headed off to the auto parts store, I decided to give it one more chance to start. It didn’t start up, but I noticed something new.
Now as I tried to start it, I could smell fuel. This meant that I was wrong. Fuel was making it to the combustion chamber, so one of the other two ingredients must have been missing. It seemed very unlikely that it was an issue of getting air into the motor or that the motor was losing compression. It was more likely an issue of not getting spark.
Now it was about this time that my son had decided that he wanted to watch me work on the car. As is the case with most 9 year olds, he’s very inquisitive. He wanted to know what was wrong and how I was able to figure it out. I told him all the stuff I just told you. Since he was just in time to help me troubleshoot the electrical system, I let him help me out. Read More…
76- Discovering a LOST Adventure
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I just published episode 48 of We Have To Go Back Podcast which is the LOST podcast I do with my wife. We love LOST. We love LOST so much that when we found out last fall that a get together was being planned in Honolulu for the 10th anniversary of the LOST premiere, we immediately started making plans to attend the event.
This is a big deal for us for several reasons. We’ve never traveled anywhere together for a fan gathering before. Yes, I’ve gone to several comic-cons, but Kari has never had any interest in those. Kari doesn’t really like to travel. We’re taking the kids along with us on the trip. This is a big deal because we’ve never taken a family vacation before. We never took a family vacation when I was a kid, so this will be my first family vacation ever.
We’ll also be extending our stay so that we can take our time and really enjoy the island and time together. We’ve reserved a condo that’s on the 35th floor and has an unobstructed view of Diamondhead and beautiful views of the ocean. As you can imagine, there are cheaper vacations that we could take, but none of them will include the LOST experience.
I’ve said it before, although not on this podcast, that LOST change my life. I know that sounds dramatic, but it did. In fact, it’s safe to say that without LOST, you would not be listening to this podcast today. Despite what you may think, I really don’t watch a lot of TV. At any given time there are 2, maybe 3 shows that I watch per week. If I’m podcasting about it, of course, I’m watching it. Right now I’m watching LOST via Bluray, Alias via Netflix, and Falling Skies live each week on TNT.
That’s the way it’s always been for us. We may talk about TV a lot, but that does not mean that we watch a lot of it. Before LOST came along, TV was not really important. We watched it, of course, but casually. I can’t even tell you a single show we watched before it with any regularity. And then we saw the previews for LOST. It looked really good. I mean, really, really good. So we made it a point to make sure we were in front of the TV, tuned to ABC at 7pm central on Wednesday, September 22, 2004. Except for the day our son was born, October 13, 2004, we never missed watching an episode live. Read More…
75- Friday Forum
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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, I once got kicked out of a fast food restaurant for starting a food fight, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I’m pleased to bring you another installment of the Friday Forum.
Golden Spiral Media now has a Patreon page! Patreon provides a way for you to financially support Golden Spiral Media for as little as $1 a month. In return, we’ll be able to do some cool things and improve some of the things that we do. Additionally, you’ll get some cool stuff in return for your support. Head over to www.goldenspiralmedia.com/patreon for more info.
Friday Forum
Today is the Friday Forum!! In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share two Friday Forum contributions that fall into the category of “stuff I didn’t expect to ever receive for the Friday Forum.” You can participate in Friday Forum by visiting our Feedback Page or calling our voice feedback line at 304-837-2278. Read More…
74- The Beautiful View of a Happy Accident
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About 10 years or so ago I was working at the bookstore and I had just been promoted and given the responsibility of organizing the e-commerce operations for the company. Our company had its own distribution warehouse and it was designed to send one massive order to each store every week. It was not at all designed to send several small orders to customers all over the country every day.
We knew that it would take a lot of work to scope out the features of the website, build the databases, design the front end, design and connect all of the APIs and hooks into our inventory management system, and many other things that would be necessary before we could start selling online. We decided that while that stuff was being done, we could go ahead and generate some income and learn some operational procedures by selling on third party marketplaces like eBay and Amazon.
Amazon had a third party sellers conference each year and we thought it would be good for us to attend. Since I’d only been at my current position for about 3 months and I was working closely with the president of the company, we decided that both of us would attend the conference.
I had never been to Seattle before, or anywhere in the Pacific Northwest for that matter. I was really looking forward to the trip. I had mixed feelings about traveling with the company president. On one hand, he and I got along really well and had a good rapport, on the other hand, I was apprehensive about it. I didn’t know if he ever took the tie off and relaxed, or if he would be working the entire time we were there. I wanted to see a few things while we were there, but I knew that business duties had to come first. Read More…
73- The Sailor and the Farmer
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When it comes to making choices in my life I sometimes feel like I am in the drivers seat and fully in control of everything that is happening. Other times I feel totally out of control, like I’m in the back seat watching the car that is my life run off the road and into a ditch.
There are days when it all goes my way and days that I would rather forget ever happened. I struggle to makes sense of my own free will and the hand that life has dealt me. I’ve got my own control issues, but that’s a topic for another day.
Today I’d like to tell you two stories. Two stories that illustrate what The Sailor and The Famer have in common with each other. We’ll see if we can’t shed some light on the battle between free will and being tossed around in a river of predetermined circumstances.
Imagine with me the first person that attached sails or sheets or whatever he used to a boat. Everyone must have thought he was crazy.
“You can’t control the wind, how do you know you will be able to make it back to the shore! You are wasting your time, what if there is a storm or no wind at all?” The people must have said.
Surly the first person to try to sail a boat had doubts of his own. In the back of his mind he must have thought there was a chance he would be blown off the end of the Earth.
Now imagine with me the first farmer. Read More…
72- Impacting Your World
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Last Wednesday was a stressful day. I got a late start to my day, which was totally my fault. I knew that my morning was going to be very unproductive and I needed to get a jump on it. But that didn’t happen. Some friends of ours are currently buying a house, and we agreed to watch their kids for a few hours. I knew that while the kids were here, I’d very likely not be able to work very much.
I really didn’t mind. I had a busy day, but not a day that was so busy that I couldn’t handle a few interruptions and distractions from the kids. The kids were really great and I actually got more work done than I thought I would. Their parents arrived around noon and we all ate lunch together. I hadn’t planned for that, but it was really great spending time with them. It was refreshing actually.
The whole thing took a bit longer than I thought it would, though, and I had to push back a meeting that I had scheduled. Again, not too big of a deal. After I wrapped up the meeting I just had 3 things left on my agenda for the day. First I had a podcast to produce for a client, second I had to come up with an episode for Thursday’s Stuff I Learned Yesterday, and third, I planned to attend men’s Bible study at church with my son. I estimated the podcast production to take 1.5 to 2 hours at the most, I estimated the Stuff I Learned Yesterday episode prep to take 2 hours, and I estimated Bible study to take 1.5 hours, including travel time and chatting with the guys.
I started working on the client podcast and it was almost immediately clear that my schedule was going out the window. The recording was in pretty rough shape. It was an interview with someone who was connected via Skype. Most of my clients use Skype as a part of their podcasts. Many of our podcasts use Skype. Skype is usually pretty good and often great. But sometimes, Skype is terrible. Read More…
71- Stop Collaborate and Listen
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Today’s episode is going to take a similar direction as episode 26. In that episode I spoke about the importance of being surrounded by strong peers. I want to talk about this topic again today because it’s that important. It’s important in every single aspect of our lives. I want tell you about some things that have happened over the last two weeks that have made me realize just how important this is. Now, stay with me on this. The first part of this may seem like a Golden Spiral Media infomercial, but I promise it has a point.
One month ago today we published our review of the final episode of Revolution. When we recorded and released that episode I didn’t know what the future looked like for us. Of course, I can’t see the future, but I mean that I didn’t even know what podcasts we’d be doing over the summer. At that point I had spoken with Emilee about possibly doing Falling Skies but we had not yet finalized our plans. I had had a very preliminary conversation with Doug Payton about Under the Dome and had a very preliminary conversation with Brian Kane about possibly doing something. Now here we are just one month later and we have more podcasts going at one time than we’ve ever had in our history.
Emilee and I will be recording our podcast for the Falling Skies season 4 premiere tomorrow night. You can join us for that live recording at 8pm eastern over at www.goldenspiralmedia.com/live. We’ll begin the live show with an interview with Doug Jones, the actor who plays Cochise. We also already have 2 episodes available that recap the series to date.
Brian Kane and Kevin Bachelder recorded the first episode of Arrow Squad last week. I’m not an Arrow fan. I saw the pilot at comic con a few years ago and liked it, but never got into the show. Having said that, I LOVED their first episode. I highly encourage you to check it out. Look for new episodes from them about once a week. Read More…
70- Friday Forum Father’s Day Edition
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Today is the Friday Forum!! In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share stories submitted about dads. Friday Forum is your opportunity to Share what YOU’VE learned, so that other listeners and I can learn from YOU. It can be a message as short as 30 seconds or several minutes long. It really doesn’t matter just as long as it’s something that will benefit others. You can participate in Friday Forum by visiting our Feedback Page.Read More…