Tricks to Deal with ADHD

Although I have not been officially diagnosed ADHD I find that I am very distracted and have trouble gathering my thoughts. Here are a list of things that I have found help.

-Make lists of short attainable steps to get done what you want to do. The list will probably pop into your head in the wrong order, but once you have captured them all you can go back and organize them. At least this way you capture what needs to be done before you mind gets distracted and you forget what you were doing and what the steps were.
-If you are working on a computer shut down notification icons like email, social networking sites, and so forth. You are likely to lose focus and be distracted when a notification comes in or you will be tempted to go check sites for changes.

-Exercise. My dad often says that teachers told him that they could tell a big difference between when I walked to school and when I got a ride.

-Make it interesting. ADHDers are capable of hyper focus if it is something that interests them. Find ways to use that to your advantage to get lots done quickly. Find ways to make it interesting or even entertaining without creating more distractions for yourself.

How to Play the Card Game Frustration

A few months ago my wife's sister and her boyfriend taught us a card game, which they call Frustration. While they were over this weekend for Christmas they refreshed us on it. I thought it might be useful to some, but possibly mostly to myself if I detail the game here for reference later.

Object of the Game
Do not get points. End the 6 hands with the lowest amount of points.

Game Play

• Use standard 52 face card deck. Not sure, but I think when you get more people you may add more decks. We played with a single deck and four people.
• Go around the table from person to person laying down a single card. Once you go around you determine who gets the trick based on who had the highest card of the suit that was led. Much like what you do in Euker.
  
• They is no trump.
• Aces are low.
• Play six hands and add up the scores to determine the winner based on who has the least amount of points.
• The six hands are as follows:
  
  • Hand One - Each trick you take gets you ten points.
  • Hand Two - Each heart you take gets you 10 points.
  • Hand Three - Each queen you take gets you 25 points.
  • Hand Four - The king of spades gets you 100 points if you take a trick containing it.
  • Hand Five - The last trick of the hand gets you 100 points.
  • Hand Six - All previous five rules. In the previous hands each rule only applied to that hand and did not apply to subsequent hands. In
    

Patrick Norton's Wardrobe on DL TV

I was watching a recent episode of DL TV today and they read a viewer email about Patrick dressing like a gas station attendant. He commented that he has two shirts like that and he said that apparently wore them too often. I had noticed the shirts as well, but to me this was like Patrick's trademark. It is not unheard of to have personalities have clothing they always wear during appearances.

The other point that was attempted in the viewer email was that it was making geeks look bad by him dressing down. Are we geeks really known for our fashion sense?

I have a few friends like Patrick, who are into tech, but also know their way around an engine. I find that it enhances their abilities when working on computer hardware. Someone thinking that looking like a grease monkey invalidates any opinions one has about technology is short sited.

Star Wars Battlefront II

It took me a while to figure out what was going on with the game. At first I wanted to be a jedi all the time, but I think I like the concept of mostly just being regular soldiers.

Here were some questions I had that I think I figured out and some questions that I still don't understand.
-How do I be a Jedi in this game? You can earn points or be the server and set the server to spawn the heros more frequently and set a lower level of points that are required to become a hero.
-How do I pick which hero I can be on a given level or is it set? Mos Eisly assult comes up as Heros vs Villians, which allows you to pick any of the heros or villians, depending on which team you are on. That still doesn't answer how to pick a jedi when in Jaba's palace rather than being Boba Fett.

Found a FAQ site on this game that looks like it might be a little helpful. http://pc.ign.com/objects/737/737696.html#reviews

Linux Bootable CD/DVD

I haven't wanted to take the time to do a Linux install and don't know much about recompiling the kernal, BUT I have wanted to learn how to use Linux. What I have elected to do for the time being is use versions of Linux that I can just boot from a CD and go.

The go part has been a little rough as I have been having trouble getting any version of Linux that boots from a CD to use my WIFI adapter. Nonetheless I have been able to learn a few things.

Here are links to the bootable CD Linux distributions I have been trying.

http://www.ubuntu.com/
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html