My new post at Art of Manliness is up, here’s a sneak peak, read full post here:

Thinking about men I admired, it dawned on me that most had a quiet contempt towards any excess of material possessions. Their expertise and confidence were displayed by the fact that they did not require much to live successfully. They could just as easily get along for a week in the woods with nothing but a knife as they could living in a posh suburban neighborhood with all its amenities. Possessions had no control over the trajectory of their lives. They were not gadget junkies, seeking their fix from the latest Best Buy sale.  They were in control of the things they owned, not the other way around.  Real manliness meant freedom from the bondage of material goods.

Popularity: 2% [?]

What an incredible year it’s been! The birth of our beautiful daughter Malone, moving to Washington, celebrating 2 amazing years of marriage with my wife, starting out my career as a C-17 pilot and meeting some great new friends. Oh yeah, and then there’s this blog.

I started writing on a consistent basis just over a year ago with the sole purpose of passing on various lessons in skilled living to anyone that might be interested. I’m not going to lie, at times the daily grind of blogging can be a bit challenging, but overall, the experience has been wonderful. Connecting with readers, making new relationships, and learning to put ideas into words have all made blogging something I’d recommend to anyone.

Here’s a quick snapshot of Schaefer’s Blog in 2008:

• Total Visitors – 131,785

• Total Pageviews – 236,546

• Comments – 686

• Subscribers – 641 (started the year with 11)

• Google Page Rank – 4

Thank you to all of you who have subscribed, commented, told friends and been a part of the community. I’ll do my best to make sure 2009 is even better. And with that, here are the top 10 posts for Schaefer’s Blog in 2008 as voted by you and your pageviews:

1) 7 Ways to Remember What You Read – the immense benefits of reading are only as great as one’s ability to remember and process the information. Nothing is more frustrating than reading a great book and not being able to recall any of the major points a year or even a month later.

2)  The Lost Art of the Push-Up – As much as I hated it, the push-up helped mold me and keep me in incredible shape. In the process, it also found its way into my heart as an exercise that while not flashy, gets results.

3)  The Holy Trinity of Fitness – Keeping in theme with classic exercises that don’t require thousands of dollars of equipment or gym memberships I present 3 exercises that will give you an incredible workout and get you in great shape if done consistently.

4)  Whatever Happened to Personal Responsibility: A Rant – at the end of the day it’s about taking a coat when it looks like it’s chilly outside.  You can choose not to, it’s true, but don’t whine when you get cold.  Life’s about choices.

5)  Change is a Community Project – Change does not happen in isolation, change happens in the midst of quality human relationships.

6)  5 Things to Remember While Traveling the World – I have now been to 6 of the 7 continents, with hopes to travel to Antarctica in the next few years. Some of my trips have been short, others long, but all of them have combined to give me a much better idea of what it takes to be a skilled world traveler.

7)   7 Common First Time Home Buyer Mistakes – Now that we’ve finally found a home I wanted to look at some pitfalls for first-time home buyers. Some we narrowly avoided, others we fell right into, but they are valuable things to think about when facing this milestone.

8)  The Greatest Buying Opportunity of Our Time – When the market is going down in flames, seasoned investors see incredible buying opportunities where novices see only doom and gloom.

9)  How to Kill an Organization: 5 Barriers to Kaizen – The philosophy of kaizen is something that is of great benefit not only to businesses, but churches, non-profits and civic groups as well. It seems like a no-brainer, yet few organizations really practice it. Why? Here are some thoughts.

10)  20 Things to Do In Your 20’s – The twenties are also foundational years for us and should not be wasted or lived unintentionally. With the help of some friends and mentors, the following are some of the best things we could think of to do in order to make the most of your twenties.

Popularity: 1% [?]

As many of you know I have become a regular contributor to the incredible blog, Art of Manliness.  My latest post is up now and I thought you might want to check it out.  It is the second in a three-part series entitled, “The 3 Man Killers: Money, Power and Sex.” My post on money is found here.

Here’s a teaser for you:

How many times have you heard someone passionately proclaim, “If I were in charge things would be different!” All of us have a notion, some of us more than others, that if we could just get some power then things would be better. “Such men can envision no problems in there own future kingdom,” wrote Gene Edwards in Tale of Three Kings. In these men’s minds, if they were in charge, the stars would align, all war would cease, and we’d all hold hands and sing “We Are the World.”

So it comes as no surprise that men will go to great lengths, often sacrificing their integrity in the process, to obtain the power they so desperately desire. And when they finally get a little power they cling to it tightly, believing it has always really belonged in their hands anyway.

Yet, holding onto power is much like trying to secure a handful of sand- the tighter you squeeze the less you can have.

Please take a look at it here and leave a comment if you are so inclined. Sorry for the low posting frequency here on Schaefer’s Blog the past couple weeks. My life has accelerated a bit as I wrap-up my final training before I go on my first C-17 mission. Thanks for your patience!

Popularity: 1% [?]

Here are some good links on failure that I’ve come across in the past few days:

From Fast Company, “10 Web 2.0 Ideas that Failed.“  A great look at the other side of the revolution that has brought us Facebook, Twitter, etc.  I like this post because it doesn’t just stop at labeling them failures, but tries to uncover why they failed.

From BoingBoing, “Iran: You Suck At Photoshop,” a hilarious look at Iran’s recent failure to photoshop some of the images from it’s recent missile launch in an attempt to make themselves look more, uh, scary.

A New York Times interview entitled, “Overcoming the ‘Sway’ in Professional Life,” with the authors of the book, Sway. “…a provocative new book about the psychological forces that lead us to disregard facts or logic and behave in surprisingly irrational ways.”  Interesting look at the failure of the interview process to select the best candidate for a job, first impressions, and the need for staying in touch with your customers.

And finally, for all of you pilots out there, some hilarious examples of a failure in communication between pilot and maintenance, taken from ComingAnarchy.com:

The intro to the list explains,

“After every flight, UPS pilots fill out a form, called a ‘gripe sheet, which tells mechanics about problems with the aircraft. The mechanics correct the problems, document their repairs on the form, and then pilots review the gripe sheets before the next flight. Here are some actual maintenance complaints submitted by UPS pilots (“P”) and the solutions by maintenance engineers (“S”).”

Here’s a teaser for you, see the full list here:

P: Left inside main tire almost needs replacement.
S: Almost replaced left inside main tire.

P: Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough.
S: Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.

P: Something loose in cockpit
S: Something tightened in cockpit

P: Noise coming from under instrument panel. Sounds like a midget pounding on something with a hammer.
S: Took hammer away from midget

Popularity: 1% [?]

I know this has nothing to do with my blog, but it is definitely one of the coolest things I’ve seen a while.  Here’s a description of the film from glumbert.com:

“A short film from 1976 where a camera is mounted on the front of a Ferrari driving at up to 140mph through Paris. The film was made by Claude Lelouch, who was arrested when he showed the film to the public. This file is large, and will take some time to load.”

For the Google generation, it starts really getting good around 4 min.  Here’s the wikipedia entry for the film.  Enjoy!

Popularity: 2% [?]

My friend Brett McKay, creator of the popular Art of Manliness blog, had a great idea to start a weekly blog carnival covering topics related to men….hence, the Manival! There are a bunch of great posts included in this week’s carnival, including one of mine entitled, “Man Skills: Make a Decision,” so be sure to check it out here.

Popularity: 1% [?]

A couple weeks ago my beautiful wife asked me where she could find a good list of blogs on parenting, home design and some other topics. I didn’t have a great answer besides, “Uhhh, I guess just look at their blogrolls.” Now I have an answer – Alltop. A couple days ago Schaefer’s Blog was included in the Lifehacks section alongside some incredibly popular blogs like The Art of Manliness, Zen Habits, Dumb Little Man and The Growing Life…very exciting and humbling! So what is Alltop? I like their description best:

You can think of an Alltop site as a “dashboard,” “table of contents,” or even a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet. To be clear, Alltop sites are starting points — they are not destinations per se. The bottom line is that we are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed. In this way, our goal is the “cessation of Internet stagnation.

Simply put, Alltop is the place to go if you want to find quality blogs and websites listed by category. Now my wife is happy, so I’m happy.

ON ANOTHER NOTE. One of my favorite parts of this blog has been meeting and connecting with my readers. Comments are obviously one way to do this, but here are some other ways you can connect with me if you so desire:

Twitter – follow me here.

Stumbleupon – befriend me here.

delicious – add me to your network here

Finally, here’s a little hero shot since I haven’t talked about my day job much lately. This was taken on my initial solo in the T-6 Texan during Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT) last year. Fun times people!

Popularity: 1% [?]

Since finishing UPT about a month ago I’ve had lots of free time on my hands. Here’s what I’ve been reading lately:

Books:
- A New Brand World: Eight Principles for Achieving Brand Leadership in the Twenty-First Century by Scott Bedbury

- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

- Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions by Ben Mezrich

- Living the Resurrection: The Risen Christ in an Everyday Life by Eugene Peterson

- Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality And Spirituality by Rob Bell

- Pour Your Heart into It : How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time by Howard Schultz

Blogs:
- Ben Casnocha: The Blog – entrepreneurship, writing, books and tons of other good stuff

- Ramit Sethi: I Will Teach You to Be Rich – personal finance

- Seth Godin: Seth’s Blog – marketing

- Brian Reese: Brian Reese Blogs – investing, books, business, faith

- Lawrence Cheok: A Long Long Road – personal development

- Akshay Kapur – great blog on health care, economics and business intelligence

- Andrew Pratt: Andrew’s Thoughts – books, business, grad school

- Justin Steinhart: Steiny’s Corner – faith, books, life

Popularity: 3% [?]