An Excellent Professional Networking Tool

Facebook, friendster (anyone remember that), Quxo (or that?), myspace, and all the rest of the online networking sites had a great idea; to get people connected and, in effect, show how one is connected to others who aren't necessarily their immediate friends. How do we use such sites? To give running commentary on the mediocrities of life (and, yes, I participate in these commentaries as much as the next guy) and to proposition people to come to our adult only sites (for those interested, my adult only site is linked from the title of this post).

There's nothing inherently wrong about these systems; after all, they are designed specifically for bootycalls. But there is now a system that networks even better than the social sites only it's geared towards professionals. LinkedIn allows you to create a profile that, in essence, is a personal resume'. In constructing your profile, you have the opprotunity to not only list current and prior jobs, but also what field or industry defines your profession. It is even possible to give and receive recommendations, thus providing second or third tier connections knowledge of who is and who is not reliable in their performance. In my experience with the system so far, I haven't come across anything lacking -- they've even got locations categorized. Oh, and its free. We all recognize the expression, "It's not what you know, but who you know." I think this site is finally a positive, productive, and practical (the three holy p's, in my book) step forward to utilizing the power of the search engine to full throttle.

Attachment: A Bad Rap

Absurdities on the Road

A couple of interesting points grabbed my attention as I was driving back to Springfield this afternoon. First was a billboard, which I imagine was advertising some sort of concrete sealant, but the only words which could be read at a high speed were "A Dry Crack is a Happy Crack." Naturally, after 6 hours of driving in the middle of a July afternoon, I believed in their message. Ironically, if not in a disgusting way, about another couple miles on I spied a restaurant I hadn't noticed before. No joke, the name of the place was "The Feed Lot." Ok, so a play on farming lingo is fine for a midwestern restaurant (which appeared as though it were part of a chain). However, do Americans really need a feed lot? And midwesterns, at that? An animated version of Animal Farm comes to mind in which Snowball and Napolean slowly morph into humans while a couple human businessmen slowly morph into pigs, the two species meeting as a very unfortunate looking hybrid between the two. And finally, again with the midwestern theme, is the milemarker discrepancies. See, I exit I-44 at 82A (for those who don't know, as I've noticed this appearently isn't very common knowledge, exit numbers corrospond to mile markers). As such, every milemarker I see tells me how many miles I have left through simple subtraction. But then, as just one example, I'd see signs that said "Springfield - 153 miles," or "Springfield - 134 miles"...but these two signs were not 19 miles apart as measured by the similarly governemnt-installed milemarkers. Assuming, of course, that they're measuring the same Springfield, either 1) the government workers of Missouri can't subtract or 2) at least one of these government workers is a crow.

Offline

I'm off with Relic in tow for a trip back to Springfield, MO. I'll be "home" for about a week, during which time I may or may not have internet connection (or worse, only dial-up), so I might not be posting on DW. When I get back, though, it'll be just one week left to go till I move up to Madison. The crunch time for packing and getting pints with friends will commence, which will hopefully lead to an adventure or two. In the meantime,

Namaste'.

MonoCulture

Best Hummus Yet

1 can Garbanzo Beans, rinsed and refilled with fresh water
8-10 Queen Green Olives (with those little red things)
2 Cloves Garlic (1 tsp. minced)
1 Tbs. Tahini
Drizzle of Olive Oil
Squirt of Lemon Juice
Salt to taste

Step 1: Add ingredients to your handy Cuisinart Mini-Prep Plus, which no self-respecting bachelor should be without.
Step 2: 'Chop'
Step 3: Eat the best hummus yet. Highly recommended with baby carrots.

So Do We Get Our Light

"It is not a dream, it is a simple feat of scientific electrical engineering, only expensive — blind, faint-hearted, doubting world! […] Humanity is not yet sufficiently advanced to be willingly led by the discoverer's keen searching sense. But who knows? Perhaps it is better in this present world of ours that a revolutionary idea or invention instead of being helped and patted, be hampered and ill-treated in its adolescence — by want of means, by selfish interest, pedantry, stupidity and ignorance; that it be attacked and stifled; that it pass through bitter trials and tribulations, through the strife of commercial existence. So do we get our light. So all that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combatted, suppressed — only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle."

--Nikola Tesla

The title of this post is linked to a damn interesting article on Tesla's wireless technology. This is for nerds and non-nerds alike, as there are some really cool ideas and potentials here that fate (and western economy) failed to bring to fruition.

Westbrae

For awhile now, part of my weekly grocery shopping extravaganza has been picking up a can of Westbrae organic corn. I normally heat it up, throw half of it into a baked potato with salsa for lunch, and keep the other half as a side for some later meal. Turns out, though, I never bothered to take a close look at the can. Westbrae is not only a supplier of organic produce, they're also a supporter of the vegetarian lifestyle. Given, they have a vested interest in promoting more vegetables in peoples' diets. But the interesting thing is the vegetarian food pyramid they show on their cans. Instead of being a daily intake system, it's actually divided by tiers of how often each catagory should be eaten. Take a look:

How cool is that? I would say I pretty much have been following that to the 't' without ever really thinking about it. But I thought you might find it interesting to see how a vegetarian's diet is actually broken down. It's not all pastas, or all vegetables, etc. But it's a good balance between energy, protein, and a sufficient distribution of fats and oils...and it's all delicious.

The Third Reason

Three classic reasons to go vegetarian:

1) You don't kill sentient beings. This both decreases the overall pain in the world and increases the overall pleasure (the utilitarian perspective)
2) You eat a healthier, more complete diet able to not only sustain but promote your well-being regardless of your age, stage in life, or how much protein your daily activities require.
3) It's better for the environment.

I've mentioned reasons 1 and 2 before, but I don't know how public the third reason is or how much you may know about it. So, here's a video (linked to Live Earth's webpage):



Not pleasant? True, but it happens (no, really, there's a famous quote to back me up on that one). And the fact remains that for one person to go vegetarian, they would singularly have a more positive impact on the environment than if they switched to a hybrid and lived the perfect energy-conservative lifestyle. What the video doesn't do a great job of explaining is the big picture of animal production; consider the massive trucks, machines, buildings, processing, McWrappers, waste product (those parts we don't eat), waste product (which the video showed), etc. that go into transporting and producing one cow's worth of meat.

However, what the video was excellent at was not proposing a large paradigm shift. One day a week, "say...Tuesdays," is all that's necessary to make a huge impact on the environment (and the overall utility of the world and your own health, to boot).

Attempt Number 2

Try as I may, sometimes I just can't live up to my word. I'll try to keep the posts coming, but this time, I'm going to start off a little slower. Today's post is about my new Ficus Benjamini (or is it Ficuses Benjamina, like Courts Marshal or Generals Surgeon?). Either way, I bought a fairly cheap starter plant today at Lowe's, which had five little shoots of ficus. and I'm going to transform them all into bonsai. I've already trimmed off their tops and some very, very minor pruning. I won't be doing any wiring or defoliation for this season, but hopefully next spring I'll be able to start shaping them a bit. As you can already see, though, I re-potted each individual plant and they've got great beginning form. The first two are going be a formal and an informal upright:



One of the five plants was significantly smaller than the others, so instead of 1) tossing it out or 2) having to wait many, many years before I could begin any semblance of shaping, I decided to attach it to a third informal upright, changing it into a twin trunk design:


In a year or two the little guy will grow into a more balanced size next to the main specimen and you'll see some definite bonding going at the base of those two trunks. Finally, we have my favorite shape of bonsai, the slanting:


This one is going to take on a lot of shaping next season. You can see there was a little natural slanting going on to begin with, but I'll be increasing the angle even more with the next re-potting. The sprig you see coming out on the bottom left is probably going to have to go, and I'm not sure if I can't get any regrowth on those two jins right in the middle; I might have the shape the main lower branch back in the direction of the slant to keep the wind blowing. Anyways...this is what I'm starting with. Again, all of these came in a single pot from Lowe's, but I think they show promise. We'll see how they stood up to my root raking and slight pruning, and I may do some slight defoliation to bring the leaves back down to a more appropriate bonsai size.

Six Months...and a day...

I know...just when I get back into the swing of things with, essentially, a post a day to keep me busy, I pull a disappearing act again. True, it was only a few days this time, but with good reason. The internet connection I use isn't that, uh, reliable. And the past couple days I haven't managed to, um, connect on a whim. And, as anyone out there in blogospherelandshire knows, when a post hits you, you just need to write it then. Otherwise, it'll never come out right.

Like this one: Yesterday marked the 6th month anniversary of me giving up cigarettes. That's right...six months with not a single puffed, dragged or bummed cigarette after many, many years of regular smoking. Of course, the great expounding I had planned on this topic is now lost somewhere within a dream I had last night of myself lacking any corporeal existence yet somehow still bouncing at the bar at which I work. And while that dream was definitely interesting, it pales in comparison to the witty puns I had worked up for my 6th month anniversary post. Ok, so maybe you lucked out in that I forgot the puns.


But I'll get back to trying to keep up with fairly regular posts, here. Mary left a comment, and a question, to my last veganism post I'll be addressing shortly. And as the month counts down, the move to Madison will be ever approaching leaving me with ever increasing complexities in my life. And, as this summer has essentially been a vacuum of experiences, I feel lucky to have had enough material to post what I did. So, in sum, look forward to new posts soon. I'll try to jot down my posts in the word processor program if I can't get the internet rolling, that way DW won't just turn into a messed up excerpt from The Interpretation of Dreams.

Of course, in the meantime, you can check out the linked title of this post, directing you to the amazon.com site for a book on how to stop smoking. I know, it sounds cliche'. But after/while reading this book, I quit cold turkey from the better part of a pack a day, sans any nicotine replacements, and haven't had any trouble refusing offers since. So I recommend it, and would be more than happy to send my copy to anyone who wants to read it. Just let me know. Till next time...

Namaste'.

Book Review: The Children of Hurin

For graduation, my parents got me a set of bookends shaped like the knight and rook chess pieces. They're great, because I often times have 6 books going at once; you can never know what you might be in the mood for, right? So on my end table, between my favorite spot on the couch and my armchair, there are several books within reaching distance, all of which have a random sliver of parchment sticking out the top marking the moment I had to get ready for work or remembered my rice was done cooking. And as I've nothing else really going on this summer, I thought I might make use of my time by periodically providing a literature review.

I'll begin, then, with one of those books that didn't last long between the bookends, The Children of Hurin (pronounced "Hoo-ren"). And before you discount the possibility you might actually like this book based solely on the Tolkien authorship, allow me to point out the best thing about it: Unlike Tolkien's other works, with myriads of Valar and Feanor's offspring, or cousins and sire lineages going back ages, The Children of Hurin is surprisingly readable with a limited assortment of key players or names to recall with every passing mention. There is an appendix of names (both places and people), but in addition the short cast, the editing his son did resulting in a surprising flow of characters coming into the story and staying in the forefront of the text and your mind till their role in the overall myth comes to a close. As such, I never had to refer to the appendix and only very, very rarely caught myself trying to recall who a person was (mainly because Turin, who's the main protagonist, changes his name from time to time). But I'd say that was no more than reading any well-written work of fiction.

And I used 'myth' in describing this work for a purpose. One of Tolkien's original aims was to create both a cosmologically complete and yet personally relevant system of myths for the island nation of Britain. Those who've undertaking the Lord of the Rings know just how personal and detailed Tolkien gets, and those who've read his Simarillion know he backs up those personal stories with an overarching, coherent mythological system. But that's I think the greatest asset to the Children of Hurin -- it provides a level of myth more easily digested than the tombs of LOTR yet with the artistry and depth of characters, environment, and meaning which made Tolkien's other works so powerful.

In sum, I highly recommend this book, even as a primer/introduction to Tolkien's works. And honestly, seeing the movies is sufficient background for this read; you know there are men and elves who are good, orcs and Easterlings (savage men) who are bad, and anything else you need, if at all, is found in a brief introduction by Tolkien's son. Of course, this is before the time of Suromon, so Morgoth Bauglir, who was Suromon's original master and is the incarnate form of the evil Valar (or Demi-God) Melkor, is the main antagonist. The book is a complete story, in and of itself, and is everything a myth should be. It's rare for me to get but 50 or 60 pages read in any one book at one sitting. However, the first night I read 200 pages of this book and then finished the remaining 60 or so up the next chance I got.

I highly, highly recommend it.

"They Remind Me of Who I AM"

Another beautiful film, spliced from the longer version of Ashes and Snow.