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Technical Difficulties With Automated Blog Posts

[20100131] The blog is still refusing mail from gmail. I've stopped the forwarders. When the mail server stops trying to deliver mail (probably by the 5th). I'll try another strategy.
I'm trying to find the equilibrium between Google News Alerts, Gmail and Blogger to permit automated posting of Google News Alerts to the blog so I can have them for reference and work on other things. My goal is not to focus on one news topic, but to have the varied topics in the news feeds automatically posted in the blog daily or weekly because I can capture more unique data that way.

Suicide Bomb News Feed

The Jihad News Feed

Witch News Feed

Ritual Abuse and Killing News Feed

Faith Heal News Feed

Female Genital Mutilation News

Exorcism News Feed

Child Bride or Marriage News Feed

Church Abuse News Feed

Animal Sacrifice News Feed

Religious Exemption News Feed

Monday, January 4, 2010

Prayer Free Problem Solving Procedure

Here is a problem solving procedure that I've made from a lot of different ones that I've researched over the years. I never found one comprehensive and general enough to use for training new technicians in a wide range of troubleshooting skills so I made this one which I have hanging in my office (in pieces with tape). You can call it a critical thinking guide if you want but I prefer "Analytical Thinking". Try it out, apply it to your religion, but be careful! I did and look what happened! Give me some feedback. You can find another copy of it in the sidebar.

Define:
If you can't explain it clearly, you don't understand it yourself. Talk about it with other people. Engaging your speech in your thinking will help you understand it better.
* Describe specifically what we are trying to solve.
* How many are affected?
* How should we expect it to work?
    |_Why should we expect it to work like that?
* Do I have all the information?
* How can I restate the problem?
* Restate the problem as a question.
* What does everything have in common?
* What are the differences?
* What is the most important thing?
* Where does it come from?
* Where does it go to?

Brainstorm:
Write things down, make lists, draw pictures. This "extends" your brain and lets other people read your mind.
* What are the assumptions?
    |_Verify assumptions
* What is known about it?
    |_What do I know about it?
    |_What do my peers know about it?
    |_What do experts say about it?
    |_Who is an expert?
    |_Why are they an expert?
    |_What does the documentation say about it?
    |_Is the documentation reliable?
    |_What is the source of the documentation?
* Have I ever seen anything like it?
* What confirms it?
* What disconfirms it?
* What else could cause this?
    |_How would it cause it?

Create Timeline
* When was the last time it happened?
* Is it happening now?
* When was the last time it worked?
* When was the last time it failed?

Diagrams:
Lists, Functional Block, Flow Chart, Hierarchy, Timeline, Venn, Causal, Hypothesis Matrix
* What does it depend on?
    |_How much of what it needs is it getting?
    |_What is the hold up?
* What depends on it?
    |_How much is it producing?
    |_How good is what its producing?
* What relationships does it have, what does it connect to?
* How many "connections" does it have to which "neighbor"? How "tightly coupled" is it to anything?

Divide and conquer
* Can I solve part of the problem or improve it?
* Does it work somewhere else?
* Pick a point in your diagram and start there. The point that most things have in common is a good place to start.

Test
* Figure out a way to test it.
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served since Nov. 13, 2009