News
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Jay: Happy Birthday
To the amazing Norman Borlaug, who is 94 today. I wrote about him on his 90th birthday.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Jay: Randomness and Resume Repost
I think I’m going to spend part of the day cleaning the office before I get back into job hunting. Well, that and I need to run to the store for milk and peanut butter at some point. And I may toss a chicken in the oven from the freezer, with low heat to thaw and cook it slowly and warm the house, though the next two days are supposed to be colder. I seem to be having a problem with having lost warming fat with all that weight, because in what should not be uncomfortable conditions, I am bundled up and still cold. If I don’t do the chicken, I might get yeast and try bread without milk. The recipe I’d been using calls for milk, but that’s not universal. We’re putting back the wheat for Deb before we put back the milk.
Anyway, the point of this random post, going up here because I don’t have any birthdays to be filler, is to post my resume again, partly in case there is any traffic from Mediacasters.tv. I’ll maybe also link the resume near the top of the sidebar.
This is what I’d call a general technical and managerial resume. I need to create one (well, a new and improved one) oriented toward online content, editing, writing, etc., for those prospective options, which really don’t overlap much with the ones where mentioning blogging new media can be detrimental, or at least not helpful.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Jay: The Star
I was pleased to find that quite possible my all time favorite short story is online, by the recently late and great Arthur C. Clarke.
Well worth a read, or a reread, and it’s quite short, no worse than a longish blog post.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Jay: Obligatory Post
Actually, I didn’t have a birthday until I saw one mentioned elsewhere, so I’d planned this to be something for a “no birthdays” morning post.
I was sad but not surprised Amanda Overmeyer was executed last night. Kristy Lee Cook is one lucky country-twanged long-legged hot blond in a short dress. I might prefer to see Amanda to her if I were attending one of the concerts, but I won’t be, it’s not that strong a preference, and this means, as I noted, Kristy needs the performance of her life next week. Though a couple others flopping sufficiently might be enough, if she’s adequate and being cute.
I was shocked that Carly was in the bottom three. She was too good for that, so there has to be some combination of the controversy sucking away votes, people thinking she’s safe, her support not being as strong as I might have thought, or David Archuletta’s lopsided vote totals sucking the oxygen out of the room and making funny things happen with the rest of the totals. Face it, unless there’s enough controversy, backlash, or something, Achoo is the winner and this is a race for second through fourth now.
Today I have to call the nice lady at the hospital whose sole job is to line people up with insurance if they lack it. Because this Republican Socialism thing, it won’t add bureaucracy at all. Probably about the time we’re squared away with free insurance for the poor, I’ll land a job that includes it.
I’ve been meaning to do a giant fundraising edition of Carnival of the Capitalists. It might be worth a few hours of that to fetch a little grocery money or even an additional week of rent and make me think people actually appreciated my efforts all these years. Which I know they did, and not just the few who have expressed an interest in still seeing it or helping. I’ve been told I should emphasize it and look for business development work, or something like that. That may be gotten to soon, before it becomes moot. I’ve been accumulating links for it.
And yeah, fundraiser notwithstanding, you are always welcome to use the PayPal tipjar button, now more than ever. Or use the address for Deb’s, which is actually better, deb at neatlytangled dot com.
It’s so cute. Valerie has taken to putting a mitten on a foot, like a very heavy sock. She just had me put a shoe on the other foot. She loves to change clothes and play dress-up.
Speaking of money, there’s nothing like going to the store with $16 available, needing diapers and groceries, and being focused on eliminating certain things from the diet.
Although we think we have a good idea what is going on with Henry, and what the allergic reaction was about. That and the idea that food proteins consumed by the mother survice intact in breast milk appears to be bogus, if you research it sufficiently.
Still, the discovery that corn, usually corn syrup, is in almost everything was rather startling and something we’d like to start avoiding. It’s also shocking that companies would put known likely allergens in some of the earliest foods one would feed a baby, thinks you buy because they are safe. I’m also wondering about my own levels of food sensitivities, which are not the same as allergies, for which I once tested negative.
I am not only down 29 lbs from my high plateau and 39 lbs from my absolute high (and annoyed it hasn’t budged further for a few days), but also thinner than the current weight would imply. I went from 42 required to falling off to 40 fitting comfortably to 40 wanting to fall off. Which means some of the tighter pants in that size I have somewhere should fit.
This was supposed to be quick.
The job hunting proceeds apace, subject to excitement and interruption and confusion and mild sickness and such. I have to make a list and follow it today. I’ve been doing a lot of networking-related activity.
Okay, I can’t remember anything else I might have intended to say. I need to get to the actual stuff to be done, starting with an announcement about CotC and link to the resume over at Bizosphere.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Jay: Big Cuba Begets Big Sugar Begets Big Corn
Since we unofficially had added corn to the list of possible allergy suspects and Deb was initially supposed to be avoiding the allergen possibilities, that led to some label reading and the dismay at almost everything being made of corn syrup. As I said, ADM must be proud.
What doesn’t have corn mostly has wheat. The baby’s oatmeal that’s an introductory food that’s supposed to be utterly pure and safe contains wheat. It didn’t used to, which was partly why that was our preferred brand, but apparently that came with the fancy new packaging.
What I pointed out to Deb, in our discussion of Big Corn, and their having the ethanol farce now so they could dispense with the corn syrup nonsense, is that the corn syrup thing is partly a reaction to Big Sugar. Most people don’t realize the extent of sugar protectionism in this country.
In turn, what’s a huge sugar producer? Cuba. Who are some of the domestic sugar producers? Cuban ex-pats. How did all the Castro administrations and associated congresses respond to Cuba being a gulag and to the vote buying of the Cuban-Americans? By fruitlessly restraining trade, topping it off with extra protection for domestic sugar.
Why shouldn’t Big Corn step in and profit from it?
Idiocy.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Deb: Spitzer, again.
I guess I like to live dangerously, posting news from actual newspapers and all. Like the NYT.
Anyway, I said all I really had to say about the thing, and then he said it better.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Jay: Still Excited
About the Spitzer thing, but it’s interesting to see the AP spinning those pedals back as vigorously as they can.
How do you recover from this, even if you don’t get charged, even if you don’t resign? The sheer vehemence of the pleasure so many people derived from it tells you something about accumulated reputation.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Jay: Eliot Spitzer
I know I’m supposed to avoid writing about news items, but I just want to say that I am absolutely thrilled at the Eliot Spitzer news. Usually I am one to be sympathetic when someone is having a Worst Day Ever, but it seldom gets so appropriate or seems so like karma in action.
It’s a bit odd that he hasn’t resigned.
Which one should not have to do merely for hiring a prostitute, mind you, as that should be completely legal. But it’s not, and he’s built a career on persecuting not only things like this, but things that aren’t even illegal. Which is talented, yet repulsively corrupt.
Now off to make supper and tweak the resume the rest of the way, so I can send it out the door.
Update:
See Radley Balko.
Jay: DST is Evil
I really hate daylight savings time.
People who call a clearly wrong number repeatedly aren’t so cool either. And if they aren’t calling the wrong number, and somehow have an almost entirely private number for a reason, even though they are in an exchange where I know nobody and know of nobody who could possibly know me or be connected enough to have been given the number, there is no reason not to leave a voicemail. I just can’t imagine who would be calling my cell from Blackstone.
Trying to force it and being frazzled from the time change weren’t the way to get the resume I am working on the rest of the way done, so there’s a bit more to do this morning. Then it’ll go to practically everyone I know and to job sites and whatnot.
I’m downright spaced out from odd and minimal sleep, and I think mine was awesome compared to Deb’s. At least the girls seem to have slept mostly okay (still sleeping), except one crying incident from Valerie, which seemed to be because she was uncovered and was cold. She asked not to wear a diaper overnight for the first time, so I thought maybe the crying was because she’d wet, or needed to go and was holding it an refusing, but apparently not. She finished training before Sadie and has already gotten up dry some days, so she may do just as well as Sadie has been doing.
I did some casual looking up of what some of my more antique books are fetching online. That ranges from next to nothing to as much as $202, without a lot of rhyme or reason. The oldest is from 1849 and isn’t worth much.
I’d not be looking to sell it, but the Preston Ellis book on family history and descendants of William Ellis of Biddeford is on eBay for $37.50, and can be had newly printed for $70 and change. I paid $30 Canadian for mine in, I believe, 1993. Speaking of which, I realized last week that this is one of the every five years when there tends to be a family reunion. Whether I ever go to another of those and hang around not knowing anybody and being shy, I’d love ti visit PEI and Nova Scotia again. This will be ten years since the last time. It’s sad that it’s going to be so hard to do, even when there’s money and transportation and time. Passports to go to Canada make me not want to go just on principle.
Anyway, time to get on with the day…
Update:
Valerie made it through the night, and a long one at that. Yay Valerie!
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Deb: Here’s some content.
Saw this linked in a thread on Ravelry and found it fascinating:
What follows is the March 27, 1964 New York Times article that first broke the story of Kitty Genovese and the 38 witnesses. It remains today the primary source of popular information about the case. However, as explained below, evidence from her killer’s trial and other sources shows that the popular account of the murder is mostly wrong.
Damned internet. I was supposed to be making dishcloths!
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Jay: This and That
The gout is a lot better. Yay! The kids hurt my left knee to a surprisingly painful degree. Boo, hiss!
Discussing the possibility of some cool writing work in an area of interest.
Today I need to go back over my US taxes and finalize the forms (there’s always a copy of one or more that gets miswritten and crossed out or such), then do the MA taxes. While I’m at it I should probably make the partnership tax forms ready to mail eventually and put them somewhere safe. None of this will actually go out until it must, after all, but I needed the info for the former partners, and my own for other purposes. While I’m at it, I also need to file a couple quarters of “nothing to see here” zero sales tax returns and mark the last one final.
It’s American Idol night, so let’s hope bedtime goes better tonight. Sadie’s been a mess in that regard, and Valerie is two. Speaking of which, Sadie is now on her third of three dry nights. Apparently there will be no more diapers for her, which is great because we were down to one or two and that $7 buys a lot of milk. Okay, very little milk, at $4 a gallon, but still. That probably means the farmers get about a quarter a gallon, the stores get about a quarter a gallon, and the rest goes to transport, processing, packaging, and profit for the milk companies that are the self-designated sole profitees in the sorry supply chain. Kind of like the insurance companies of dairy. But I digress, and have not actually researched.
Yesterday was eaten by the bears of redaction. At least I learned a thing or two about .htaccess and robots.txt, the latter of which I had never yet used in almost eleven years of working on web sites. Heck, it’s been so long, I say “web site” instead of “website.” I’ve never been so impatient for Google to crawl on through and update itself. Darn cache transactions.
What else?
Sadie may have developed a food reaction to tomatoes or something else in common to my chili and my red sauce. Yay. Both also contain red pepper, garlic, maybe a couple other things at least in trace amounts. I just realized I used no oregano in the red sauce, but then there’s some in the Italian seasoning. Well, there’s also beef, but who would react to that? Not a thrilling development, if it’s more than coincidence.
There are other odds and ends to do. We started working on planning blog maintenance services yesterday, but we have kids and relatives. I have to return to my resume, retweak my LinkedIn profile, maybe post a couple more things. And right, it’s time for Carnival of the Capitalists over at Bizosphere. Maybe I can do that in the time it takes to cook a chicken later. Not many entries, but I have a few things I can add and call it a small edition.
I have an idea for selling a domain name more effectively, which should take an hour or two up front and a few minutes a day to pull off after that. That might be something to work on late at night when the kids are done with me and I’m drooling on the keyboard wondering didn’t I have things to get done or something.
Okay, off to it. If I start somewhere, inertia will favor momentum over rest. Heck, as restful as it may seem, even typing up a post like this serves to ramp up momentum.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Jay: Welcome Maggie!
Congratulations to Rob May on the arrival of Maggie, and hooray for an easy delivery. She looks like a cute little pixie.
Someday the kids will all have to meet each other, even if we don’t eventually move to the area.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Jay: Obligatory Post for the Day
Seems weird to get this far into the day with nothing here.
I did one of my reposts, this from April 2004, over at Bizosphere: Introversion As Business Challenge.
That follows the previous reposts Partners, Friends, And Uncommon Goals and Business Lessons From Gilmore Girls. I’m also thinking about finding and reposting my drumbeat of posts over the years about the housing bubble.
I should post some kid pictures. even without some of the exceptional ones I know haven’t come off the camera yet, there are plenty. Then again, I think we’re obligated by Parenting Law to give Henry the full third child treatment, so he’s lucky to be in any pictures, let alone have them shown off to the world.
Okay, back to work. I think we have this weeks imperatives and well into next week’s covered without selling the dead cars yet, but I should post those.
Also need to start supper. Well, should have a couple hours ago, come to think of it, as I was thinking crockpot, but 3 hours is not enough for that. Hmmm. Perhaps instead of beef we’ll have chicken brocolli alfredo. Main thing is not to run the oven, as it’s hot and steamy from being 60 degrees out.
I need to work on CotC, beyond merely having screened the entries. I need to continue Val’s story, though at least that’s percolating in the back of my mind. I need to start on the tax stuff. I need to work on the resume variants I have in mind. Being underemployed is no barrier to being thoroughly occupied.
Looks like my brother will be staying with us Wednesday night after he flies in from Ohio and drives down from New Hampshire. That’s always cool. He makes it tempting to move to Ohio, or nearby in Kentucky or Indiana.
Okay, back to whatever…
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Jay: Hallefuckinlujah!
Update:
And celebration aside, he did the right thing and for classy, strategic reasons.
Jay: Carnival of Meant to Write About That
This is a dump of a bunch of links I’ve been accumulating in Firefox with the idea, when saved, that I would post and write something about each of them, or sets of them. I may yet.
12 Breeds of Client and How to Work with Them
WaPo “blogs” reflective of bureaucracy in D.C.
New life inside the depressed brain
Web Video: Move Over, Amateurs
3 simple ways to optimize for Google PageRank
(Skipping the set of four Grapenut pudding recipe links.)
Is the United States on the Brink of Bankruptcy
Magma may be melting Greenland ice
(More recently there was buzz about a volcano under the Antarctic being a factor, too.)
The New Year’s Cocktail: Regret With a Dash of Bitters
Why CNET Is In the Mess They Are In
Mayor Mumbles Menino attacks plan to have clinics in retailers
Chertoff on final Real ID rules: “Reconfiguring our society”
Cutting Through the Katrina Krapola
The Broken Window Fallacy in Software
Cholesterol as a Danger Has Skeptics - New York Times
Best Business Advice - Short and Sweet
New Leisure Suit Larry game announced: Box Office Bust
44 Ways To Improve Your Productivity
Maybe there will be a recession. Here’s what to do just in case
End user training - Whose job is it?
What if the Internet went down...and didn’t come back up?
7 Powerful Steps to Overcoming Resistance and Actually Getting Stuff Done
The Lazysphere and the Decline of Deep Blogging
Can Their Wish Be the Market’s Command?
MySpace wins UK domain name that pre-dated its service
(Would be post, summarized: Utterly absurd result.)
Gen Y, Gen X and the Baby Boomers: Workplace Generation Wars
Online Schooling Grows, Setting Off a Debate
Scientist: All Blue-eyed People Are Related
(Actually, didn’t I post this one? Oh well, it’s still in the list.)
Where the Capitalism Is (Always on Display)
Growing Great Garlic: The Definitive Guide for Organic Gardeners and Small Farmers
(Hi Dad! Hi Wally!)
The Wages of HillaryCare
(Well, this one is from this morning, but I had added it to the bookmarks. HillaryCare = RomneyCare and it impresses me Obama understands the problem.)
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