how I avoid shopping in chain stores

No matter where you live in the USA, chain stores are everywhere, providing a shopping experience for which there are many negatives:

• Homogeneous shopping experience that doesn't reflect the character of the local community
  
• Low variety of products, while giving the illusion of high variety due to physical store size
• Money leaves the community and goes to a corporation somewhere whose only motivation is to maximize shareholder value
• Difficult for local businesses to compete, especially due to municipalities giving subsidies and tax breaks to large national chains due to their more predictable revenue stream for property and sales taxes
• Stores commonly understaffed with people that lack knowledge and motivation, usually due to low pay and poor benefits
  

In many areas of the country, it's very difficult to avoid them, but it's well worth the effort and over the past 10 years, I've managed to find locally-owned replacements for pretty much everything I need to meet my needs. So, if you happen to live in the Santa Cruz, CA or San Jose, CA area, here are some amazing locally-owned places I've found.

• Bookshop Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz (bookstore)
  
• Chefworks, Santa Cruz (kitchen supplies)
  
• Common Ground Organic Garden Supply, Palo Alto (nursery, gardening)
  
• Country Sun Natural Foods, Palo Alto (grocery, health/beauty)
  
• Eco Design Resources, Redwood City (home building supplies and resources, household products, home furnishings)
  
• Eco Goods, Santa Cruz (clothing, home furnishings, household products)
  
• First Republic Bank, Bay Area (banking, brokerage, home loans)
  
• For Other Living Things, Sunnyvale (pet supplies)
  
• The Garden Company, Santa Cruz (nursery, gardening)
  
• Greenspace, Santa Cruz (home building supplies and resources, household products, home furnishings, clothing, etc)
  
• Illuminée, Santa Cruz (lighting)
  
• Kitchen & Lighting of Scotts Valley, Scotts Valley, CA (The name says it all)
  
• Maximart Pharmacy, Palo Alto (pharmacy)
  
• New Leaf Community Market, Santa Cruz (grocery and health/beauty)
  
• Palo Alto Hardware, Palo Alto (hardware)
  
• Plumbed Elegance, Santa Cruz, CA (plumbing fixtures and supplies)
  
• Pottery Planet, Santa Cruz (pots!)
  
• Roger Reynolds Nursery, Menlo Park (nursery, gardening)
  
• Staff of Life, Santa Cruz (grocery)
• The Nickelodeon and Del Mar Theatres, Santa Cruz (movie theaters)
  
• Teamworks, Los Altos (housecleaning services)
  

So, try these places the next time you think about giving your business to one of these companies:

• AMC Theaters, Century Cinemas
• Bank of America, Washington Mutual, US Bank
  
• Barnes and Noble, Borders
• Home Depot
• Longs, Rite-Aid, Walgreens
  
• Merry Maids
  
• Petco, Petsmart
  
• Safeway, Whole Foods
  
• Target, Wal-Mart

If you visit my Yelp page, I've reviewed many of the companies I've mentioned here and plan to get reviews up for all of them at some point.

how I lost 90 pounds

Surprisingly, few people have noticed, but I lost 90 pounds in the last 7 years. Right around the time that I was working on the Mac OS X team and we shipped the first version in March of 2001, I weighed in at 225. My weight had generally been in the 165 area for most of my adult life, so it was a combination of stress, long-hours, eating poorly, not exercising, and abundant free crappy food everywhere at the office that led me down that path.

I didn't go on a diet in the traditional sense, but here's what I did do gradually over the last 7 years:

• I stopped drinking soft drinks
• I stopped drinking fruit juice unless it was made from real fruit and had no added sugar
• I phased out processed foods entirely
• I started eating more fruit and vegetables (from the farmers market)
• I stopped eating any free food provided at the office
• I stopped eating between meals
• I gradually became more vegetarian year-by-year
• I switched to eating as much organic and locally grown food as possible
• I just ate less food and tried to pay more attention to not overdoing it
  

I didn't go on any low-carb diets or any fad diets where I went crazy eating one particular class of food or completely avoided another. To sum it up, I just ate real food and tried to eat it in moderation. I didn't stop eating fat or carbs or give up eating or drinking anything that were difficult to give up.

The last 50 pounds came with the help of The Hacker's Diet, which isn't so much a diet as a different way of looking at losing weight. The short version is that, instead of counting calories, you just weigh yourself every day, and track your progress using a weighted average. If you're gaining weight one month, cut back on something (it could be something simple like half a glass of milk at dinner instead of a full glass). If you're losing too much, introduce something new into your diet (start having a piece of toast at breakfast). If your weight stays the same, you know that you're getting the calories you need.

The only times that people have actually noticed I've lost weight are:

• When they haven't seen me in a really long time
• When I buy new clothes and they are smaller than the clothes they are replacing

For fun, I put up a chart of my weight over the past 7 years, marking specific events (usually work-related).

slow down and be more productive

Most people would consider slowing down or working less hours would mean less productivity, but there are some people that have seen the light. For the uninitiated, I recommend this video of Carl Honoré, graciously provided free by TED.

I recently finished his book, In Praise of Slowness and it's brilliant. I'm not referring to the author specifically, but the ideas and concepts contained within it.

It should be required reading for every manager in every high-tech company in Silicon Valley. You want a highly-productive, dedicated, passionate, inventive, creative workforce that wants to stay at your company for the long-term? Then read this book.

I won't mention any names, but I recently sent a link to this video to several senior VPs where I work and the only one that responded thanked me, but mentioned they didn't have time to finish it. The video is less than 20 minutes long.