Phil Houtz

Being a sucker for a new frontier I purchased an iPhone last night, or maybe I should say that my bank purchased an iPhone and in exchange I gave the bank another piece of my soul. And I did this knowing full well that the iPhone would make my life into a living hell. Aside…

One of the epiphanies behind David Allen’s GTD process is the fact that you need to break tasks down into “next actions.” For instance, one of my to-dos is the 30,000 mile service on my Jeep. But to do this service I have to do a lot of smaller steps. For instance, before I change…

Popular Mechanics, the perennial bastion of testosterone, offers up 25 Skills Every Man Should Know. Some of the items on the list are editorial are no-brainers, such as Back Up a Trailer or Clean a Bolt-Action Rifle. Well, duh. Those are the basic minimums for manly behavior. Some of the other entries border on wtf?…

This past week I felt a little like a kid who got a pony for Christmas…and a firetruck. First comes the new Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard”, and next comes Gmail with IMAP. Using Gmail as an uber-account for all my mail accounts, I might be able to defrazzle my inbox at last. Using Apple’s…

Like a whirlwind romance my weekend fling with Leopard has been a wild ride. The new Mac OS X hasn’t yet broken my heart but it did break Photoshop 7 and a few other mission-critical apps in my home office. Fortunately the damage was a little less severe at the Evil Day Job from Hell,…

(Warning! Extreme Geek Content to follow.) Is Mail 3.0 set to be a GTD killer app? I’ve been an OS X early adopter long enough to keep my expectations down-to-earth. Last night I paid homage at the Apple Store, got my free Leopard t-shirt and a copy of the new 10.5 system. Here are my…

I have the upper body strength of a ripe banana–as my kids are quick to point out. So my new goal is to get ripped like a rock climber…or to at least be able to do one pull-up by the end of the month. To that end I installed a Metolius Slim Gym in the…

It was just about a year ago I bought my first Land Rover. It was a beautiful car and I really enjoyed driving it. Just not that much. I didn’t get more than five miles from the car lot before the temp gauge pegged. I spent more time trying to get the dealer to take…

If you’ve spent any time pounding your brains out on washboard roads in your Jeep, take a gander at this Youtube video of the Bose Suspension System and tell me what you think. (The Bose system is set to deploy in about five years on high-end luxury cars. Can you say Land Rover?)

I’m just getting over a hypochondrical bout of necrotizing fasciitis and now there is this to worry about–BRAIN EATING AMOEBA. The primary means of infection, according to KPHO Arizona, is through the nasal passages of youths who go cannonballing off cliffs into warm water lakes…take Lake Havasu. Please. One way to avoid certain death from…

Congratulations my lovely daughter. I love you and wish many joyful years ahead for you and Matt.

One hundred and fifty F-ING days without rain in the Southland and it’s going to peel off and piddle on the weekned of Matt and Emma’s beachside wedding. Same thing happened 20 years ago when Maureen and I got hitched. Oh well, the French baker said it is a good sign if it rains on…

It’s about time that I grease up my quill and start penning a couple of wedding toasts…or my name is, well, Toast. Rabbi Gellman gives this trenchant advice on toasting: “Being successfully sober is much easier than being successfully funny.”