Obsessions: The Ever Changing Scanner

Crappy Food Addict

2010-03-07T06:28:00.000-08:00

Farming and growing things appeals to some base instinct for me. But when I am busy, running around the sprawling suburban strip-mall world, I feel guilty when I eat crappy long distance food. Eating nutritionally questionable food prepared by minimum wage workers, served up in a fluorescent homogeneity, gets me feeling bad about my squishy belly. It hangs over my waistband, just enough to make me uneasy. That wad of fat equates to heart risk and a shorter life and every crappy meal is a decision to ignore it. What’s one more installment of Five Guys? To hell with running today, I’m going to eat some Cheetos. That’s the wrong answer and I know it. So why the hell can’t I stop? It has a lot to do with my being a crappy food addict.

I am addicted to sugar, and saturated fat. I am addicted to the weird feeling of relaxed fullness after eating total crap food. It is a physical sensation which differs completely from the lack of sensation I get after eating healthy food. To get a warm feeling from healthy foods, fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nuts and beans, I must have a little bit of patience. But as a wealthy American, patience was never something I was taught about much. For my entire time on earth I have had a lack for nothing. Any food which I desired has always been available to me. These choices have robbed me of gratitude and patience.

I want to go back to farming, but it needs to be sustainable. It should be human scale because quality and size are impossible partners. More on this to come I think...

TD Bank Customers: Why you should move your money

2010-01-10T18:13:00.000-08:00

Why TD Bank Sucks

Most banks charge customers for overdrawing an account, unless they take advantage of overdraft protection. Understandable. But TD Bank is taking $15 from certain accounts in “service fees” when the balance goes below $100. Apparently, when TD Banknorth changed into TD Bank back in the fall they instituted this new policy.

Grassroots Move to Community Banks

The Huffington Post reports that we should all move our money to smaller community banks. TD Bank and Bank of America are stealing your money.

SEO Article Writing and Rewriting: 3rd World Wages

2010-01-09T07:19:00.000-08:00

Registering for oDesk has been an education. Article writing seems like a way to make some money. My command of basic English writing skills, so I thought, may be in demand. As I prepare to graduate from my university experience I need to figure the new writing career out. Here are the goals:

Exterminate Need to be Supervised
Work in Pajamas
Continue be Stay at Home Dad
Feed Family

Some simple goals, some lofty. It has occurred to me that I might need supervision, but I just don't play well with other alpha males.

So I scored a job on oDesk rewriting articles. $10 for 10 article rewrites, 250 words per article. Well, I had a look at the articles, and I even did one. It took me an hour. So I may be a right brained sort of person, focused on the big picture and all that goes with that, but that remains $1 per hour. No thanks.

This blog entry puts the world on notice: I can write good content on anything. Try me. You send me an email and tell me about what you are looking for. I will send you an email back telling you how much and how soon. Sounds good, right? We will see.

New website

2010-01-04T13:32:00.000-08:00

I just found this stupid chat window open in my browser. Funny that they would be so pushy, all i did was look at their price schedule...

Simon: This is your online writing consultant. Let me assist you with a custom paper...
Simon: hi
you: I am researching the availability of prohibited academic work for an article about the decline in American standards of education. I do all my own writing, so... I guess this is a bit awkward. Comments?

TechCrunch, Twitter and Digital Age Ethics

2009-12-27T13:44:00.000-08:00

The first question that comes to mind pertaining to the TechCrunch publication of internal Twitter communication really has little to do with Twitter’s strategic planning. How did this seemingly enormous data dump happen to land in TechCrunch’s lap? According to TechCruch, their receipt of the material in question originated with a hacker, who intends to go public. It seems strange that upon receiving zip files loaded with illegally procured files there would be any consideration of publication whatsoever. Any blog or journalistic outlet must consider the role it plays in these situations, particularly when shielding illegal activity. To flirt with the TechCrunch logic it follows that if any unscrupulous hacker manages to gain access to confidential data, publication ought go to the highest bidder, thus provoking a foreseeably real market for blogworthy secrets. This position is preposterous, and TechCrunch has pried open the debate about business ethics in the digital age.

Clearly many bloggers don’t toe the same ethical lines that real journalism does, given the tools and training involved this comes as no surprise. But what about the real motivation behind the publication of the hacked material? Nothing other than that most coveted currency of traffic and viewership motivated this clearly unethical post. Given the clearly sensitive nature of the information Twitter stands to take at least some modest blows in terms of perception on the street, not to mention the carefully managed relationships with high profile stakeholders such as Diddy. Media moguls like Diddy rely first and foremost upon the credibility afforded by the millions of young, financially liquid consumers that drive their business. The language within these Twitter documents marginalizes him and his status, tarnishing both his and the Twitter brand simultaneously. Who is the responsible party for any real balance sheet damage? Any good lawyer will quickly point toward the deepest pockets responsible, doubtfully ”Hacker Croll”, especially given the likely rise in revenues to TechCrunch as a result of this editorial decision.

The paranoia found within corporate culture comes justified with this news.

Elite Socialism revamps the communist experiment

2009-12-27T13:23:00.000-08:00

Elite Access Only

When access remains limited to the privileged few, the pall of socialism cannot be invoked. Kelly neglects the important consideration of access. Becker indicates the vast divide between who will have access to Kelly’s means of production. The very lack of access for so many precludes any socialism. Socialism may have traditionally depended on the vanguard to manage the centralized government as an effort to protect the people, but simply the presence of cooperation, collaborative work, and sharing do not prove a case for socialism.

Ownership: Means of Production

Where in Kelly’s model of Socialism do the proletariat control the means of production? Access to the means of production for an elite few remains a far cry from the control of production falling into the hands of the working class. The elite within the Wiki world clearly maintain access to the means of production, but very few own the hardware and infrastructure which comprise the nessessary conditions for this utopian "new socialism." Even granting that there may be an automatic inevitablity of the internet going forward, the access remains limited to those with access to a network node. When the company providing broadband access decides to limit bandwidth thanking to profit margins, the elite will grow smaller yet. Socialsim? No, because already limited access depends on the captial concerns of the corporate gatekeepers. Digital divide remains and it prevents socialism.

Faceless Meritocracies

Kelly got one thing right: “we have faceless meritocracies.” Socialism rejects elitism, and the meritocracy finds its ranks among the elite with access. No meritocracy exists which incorporates all possible perspectives when the tools of production remain outside the scope of so many directly affected.

Socialism may fit within many contexts, but in this case Kevin Kelly reforms the term to fit into a world exclusive of many. Kelly writes in "The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online" that open source efforts and collective media have coalesced into a neo-socialist hybrid, neither naughty communism nor evil capitalism. Many of the wiki style cannons and the open source software projects thrive on both altruism and unexpectedly self-sacrificing behavior, he says.

http://harrisoncenter.us/wikipage/new-socialism-global-collectivist-soci...

Works Cited:

Becker, Henry Jay. "Who's Wired and Who's Not: Children's Access to and use of Computer Technology." The Future of Children 10.2, Children and Computer Technology (2000): 44-75. Print.

Kelly, Kevin. "The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online." Wired Magazine 22 05 2009: 1-4. Web. 13 Oct 2009. <http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-06/nep_newsocialism>

Malecki, Edward, . "Economic Geography of the Internet's Infrastructure." Economic Geography 78.4 (2002): 399- 424. Web. 14 Sep 2009. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/4140796?cookieSet=1>

College At 35

2009-08-22T12:51:00.000-07:00

Being a 35 year old college student has some interesting advantages. The obvious benefits relate to seriousness, dedication, efficient time management, and overall focus. One underlying angle that only just occurred to me connects to personal empowerment. When I was 18 or 20 I had no idea that anything and everything was possible. 15 years of life experience can have some very dramatic effects upon the bearer, and the most valuable relates to this growing grasp on the sheer possibilities in life. I am not a victim of circumstance, but the purveyor of my own destiny.

My university, a state school with pockets of both ineptitude and brilliance also ranks very high in terms of value. For $10,000/year I have access to a fairly broad selection of classes, decent library resources online (great for the aspiring researcher or obsessive scanner), subsidized health insurance, some really bright educators (I do stress SOME), and classrooms filled with sleepy young people 15 years my junior. This last point, the typical college student body, presents the very best opportunity for the “non-traditional” student. A huge advantage exists when 85% of your classmates only show up half the time. First, the class size immediately shrinks providing more relative time per student during the allotted period. Want to leverage this? Sit up front and never miss a class. I treat this mid-life education exactly like I treated all my jobs, with total ownership and responsibility. When I show up for every single class and I am literally face to face with the professor it makes a serious impression. These overworked and sometimes underwhelmed teachers come to expect apathy from their students, yet when cogent adults present bright attentive behavior and salient questions consistently they tend to remember this at the end of the semester when calculating grades. This continues to be my top tactic in earning the dean’s list every semester without sacrificing in the many other aspects of life (kids, wife, house, job, staying out of trouble, hobbies, sleep).

The obvious point often missed by my younger peers is that I actually absorb more by being there all the time, cutting down and even eliminating the need to spend time on course material outside of class. This applies most particularly to the general education requirements of freshmen and sophomore level courses. Last semester I took a 100 level American History class at 8am. I drop my children off at school at 8am every weekday anyway, and their school allows for half hour early drop off for folks needing to get to work. How difficult was it to get my kids up a 30 minutes early vs. the payoff of being one of the only students to consistently show up for an 8 o’clock class? Easy beans, considering my past careers have demanded far earlier attendance than this, it still strikes me a practically sleeping in to get to the earliest classes offered. I love to hear them whine about how early that is when the day is actually half over with.

Since beginning a blog in earnest, my interest in improving my web design skills grows. While my university does have a well respected school of engineering complete with computer science curriculum, there lacks a really good web design class for those of us not within that track. For English Majors such as myself, the closest thing to what I was interested was “Web and Presentation Writing”, a perfectly tuned class for the skill I’m after. Except the class filled up with upperclassmen long before I could get a crack at it. I want these skills now because I want to build an awesome blog now, not 2 months before I graduate and wander back out into the cruel world. If I can build my readership before getting out of school, I might stand a chance at some income generation before we become a starving family. Okay, so we likely won’t starve, but you get my point.

So how to get into the fall class that filled up before summer break? Easy. I’m going to show up, attend the class anyway and utilize my growing rhetorical chops to convince the professor why I ought to be in his class. He has the ultimate say, and we both know at least a few of the currently registered students will never show up. Okay, see you in ENL 368.

2009-08-07T04:58:00.000-07:00

Stop by local small engine repair shop to check on lawn mower status.
Mow lawn, depending on step 1.
I think I’m in a holding pattern until the grass is cut. Sure, I could get back to painting my daughters room, but if I finished that job there will only be another waiting for me behind it. I think I might just persist with...
Feeling sorry for myself, and resenting the rest of the world for all the problems which are clearly either my fault or a direct result of my deranged thinking. Boy, being organized really helps!
Proceed to movie store for the sweet relief they call suspension of disbelief.

Customer Service Question of the Day: Best Buy

2009-08-05T11:44:00.000-07:00

I wonder why Best Buy would insist upon maintaining ignorance among its highly trained sales force concerning the status of the ST-12? After several HOURS on the phone, my fabulous film making wife continues to encounter problems presenting this particular exemption certificate to this particular hard drive selling outlet. My suggestion to her? See you at the Apple Store honey, where the fine art of customer service is not (yet) dead... Perhaps the lowly sales associates there understand the importance of each and every $500 hard drive sale.

P.S. to all you escalation department managers at Best Buy, here is the link
www.mass.gov/Ador/docs/dor/Forms/Wage_Rpt/PDFs/st_12.pdf

Is this mental illness?

2009-08-04T12:04:00.001-07:00

I really have to shout out to the folks at Sears. Thanks for taking my $35 extended warrantee so that I can wait 2 weeks for my lawn mower repair. My lawn has already reached the knee high phase, so no rush. What was I thinking? I distinctly recall insisting that I did not like nor desire an extended warrantee due to the very serious likelihood that I would be flushing that $35 right down the drain. Shame on me for falling prey to the awesome sales tactics (outright lies) of the sears sales dude. “You can take the mower over to Dartmouth and they will fix it right there.” No, they will put it on a truck and haul it to East Cutty where they will do the minor repair that I could have accomplished locally while I wait. The other possibility is that I heard all that, because thats what I wanted to hear, and he actually told me that I would take the two weeks that it actually will. So as my demeanor deteriorated in the Sears today while recounting my plight, and I was concurrently confronted with abject apathy from the most important ($9/hour manager) person in the store, a nearby customer (fellow alpha male) actually told me to calm down. Wow. Hadn’t seen that coming. Then he told me to grow up. Uh oh, I think I might be doing ‘that’ thing again. When I inquired about who the fuck he was, he helpfully suggested (to the $9/hr manager) we all invite the police. Umm, I guess I had passed that sweet spot of effective communication, and no matter how “right” I thought I was, this little adventure had started to get a bit rotten. Sure, there may be some parts of that overripe banana worth eating, but it will be a lot of work and a lot of squishy rotten shit leftover. And what to do with the leftover? Huck it out the window? Not from the back of the cruiser Chris, those windows don’t roll down.

I found a career!!

2009-08-04T08:26:00.000-07:00

I discovered the following email while enjoying my coffee this morning. 10 am is still kinda early, right? Read on to learn of my priceless opportunity:

Student,

I am sending this email to inform you about the opportunities of the Marine Corps Officer program for college students and gauge whether or not you would be interested in learning more about the program. If you are please reply to this email with your phone number and a good time to get in touch with you, and I will give you a call to ensure you are qualified and that you possess the maturity and prowess to lead Marines. If you are not interested please reply as such. Maybe you have what it takes to be one of us. I have attached some supplemental information about our aviation program as well as officer candidate school or feel free to visit our web site.
http://www.marineofficer.com/

Semper Fi,

SSgt Huff, M G
Officer Selection Team

Now, I kinda felt like I might get in some trouble if I didn’t “reply as such”, so here’s what I replied with:

Dear Sarge,

I'm a colorblind recovering alcoholic born in 1973. Still want me?

Student

P.S. I hate authority.

I love being a student, if nothing else my school email address get shared with the Marines. Semper Fidelis. Always Faithful. If I became a jarhead, then I would have to say Semper Fi. Always Fa.

For Hire: 35 y.o. Male, colorblind with emotional problems

2009-08-04T07:08:00.000-07:00

I quit my job two summers ago. It was approaching 6 figures with benefits, the culmination of years of hard work with this particular job in mind. I had a goal and a plan and I executed everything well enough to attain the goal. Then I spent five years living the dream completely miserable, stressed out and mentally unhealthy. So I went back to the university I had wandered away from as a freshmen, and they accepted me back with very little fuss. A re-enrollment fee of $100, and I was the instant thirty-something freshmen. Meanwhile, my wife of 10 years returned to the workplace after her hiatus having the kids and changing diapers. She had always been interested in the movie business and now she produces feature length films. Inside of two years, she has established hundreds of industry contacts, worked for world class production companies, and rubbed elbows with household names. She loves what she does.

It took me 15 years before I landed my dream job, and I ended up hating it. I was going for the money, the golden parachute my fore-bearers had sown the seeds for. Bad news: I should have done the thing I aspired to when I was 14, not the financial security I thought I wanted when I was 18. 3 semesters to go, then I will likely pursue a graduate degree. But the gravy train runs out with my undergrad work, so I will need to go back to work. Here is the interesting catch, while enrolled as a full-time student the family health insurance costs me roughly $10,000 LESS than direct purchase. So that is ten grand less that I have to go out and earn. Staying in school actually pays for itself. Regardless, I still need to make $300 a day to pay the bills. So how do I watch movies, write, and live like a rock star without obtaining another boss (very likely a total prick)? Welcome to my blog.

Gates Arrest Due to Race? Try Class.

2009-07-24T15:07:00.000-07:00

The arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. by Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley has so much less to do with race than it does class. By class I refer to the wide gap that exists in this country between all people, whether black, hispanic, asian, white, or any other group and that blue line of law enforcement. The police state we live in under the auspices of the rule of law extends only to the courtroom or between lawyers, but when it comes to the ego driven power hungry police men and women on the beat, all bets are off. We do love the notion of freedom for all, but only if you choose the utmost revernce for all those with a gun and a badge. Cross that sacred barrier of lawful insult, intentional or otherwise, and all colors can plan on the long, sleepless night on cold hard bench with toilet paper pillow. In the lyric words of Ice Cube, "Fuck da police..."

Why are we here?

2009-07-24T10:32:00.000-07:00

I saw a documentary the other night on Bukowski (Born Into This)If he could continue to write through all that, who the fuck am I to complain? Ugly bugger, prick of a father, drunk. And I happen to have arrested the alcoholism, a daily reprieve contingent upon the maintenance of my spiritual condition. Okay, so now what? Do I write about what a bastard I am, regardless of booze consumption, or better yet the bastard thoughts I have which make the bastard I am look tame? I meet men and think I am better than them even though I feel like they are better than me. I meet women who are bitches and cunts. Children are bastards and spoiled brats, uninteresting bunch, the whole lot.
My bride is involved in filmmaking. Screw that too. (I always reach a point within the first page, a point of self loathing and disgust that prompts the overwhelming desire to STOP WRITING. Enter Bukowski. He thought he should quit, but then another voice told him to “keep the ember alive”, and I pictured that ember like a dying firefly, pulsing its final moments away on my open palm. He received his first acceptance letter later that week, and he knew that the ember lived on. I have done very little toward achieving anything with my writing. I have begun, journaled, scribbled, and mostly gone on in my mind about how I am a writer. Yet I have not begun the gallop toward the requisite 10,000 hours of practice which may or may not amount to proficiency worthy of excellence. I’m guessing, if I’m lucky, I may be anywhere from a quarter to half the way there. Probably a quarter. Let’s look, I am now 35, and I identified this writer within at about age 13. Given normal schooling, and some added scribbles and morose afternoons sitting in diners as a 20-nothing, perhaps I could give myself 100 hours a year writing, realistically. So, 100 times 22 years equals 2200 hours, not quite a quarter of the way. Cool, so if I can keep this up for another 40 minutes, I will have made 2201. Eat the elephant one bite at at time.
So, still within the parenthetical statement, I have overcome the first moment of self-doubt only to encounter the second. This is where the Natalie Goldberg method comes in: just keep that pen moving...)
So filmmaking really commands a lot of our life, and I feel like it sucks. The vibe sucks, with all the smarmy little retro-shoe wearing metrosexuals, and all the... Never mind all that. I am here to give my sociopathic self something to obsess about every day beyond the fact that my soul mate has found something more interesting than me to do for 20 hours a day. Stay tuned

Summer's Cracked up to be...

2009-07-24T08:29:00.000-07:00

Let us see, what happened yesterday? One interesting thing was the prick bastard in the tricked out Mustang who flew by the house with his fucking tough guy car all wound out loud. It almost seemed like straight pipes. So out the door I fly, and the key was sitting in the Rover, so off I go after him. I could go either way out of the drive, we live on a closed loop, but for some reason I thought he might have been headed for a house nearby with rowdy teenagers. Alas, he was simply cruising through, god knows why, our private roads are clearly marked NO TRESPASSING with 20 MPH signs. So my kids ride their bikes here, and I worry about that very possibility of some asshole kid running them over. So I catch up with him around the wooded bend in the road, private spot, flag him down and he stops. I pull up abreast and roll the passenger window down. I tell him my kids ride their bikes here, I tell him their names and ages. I tell him people take the safety of their families quite seriously. He actually apologized, but it was one of those “sure I recognize that this is one of those you are right and I am wrong deals, and that I really have to apologize but I really don’t respect your authority to tell me what to do.” So I stress the importance of his getting lost, and what the hell is he even doing here in the first place? Several apologies ensue, and we reach the parting ways part. He offers to let me go ahead. I insist that he go first, then I get the tough guy stare. Oh no, you didn’t just give me the tough guy stare, did you? Thats when I get out and walk around the Rover to his window, reiterating the high importance of him getting the fuck lost, like right now? He does as he is told, sheepishly, reluctantly. I realize he has a passenger (not that that hadn’t factored into my calculations were things to get physical, but the passenger looked scared in my periphery) and having a buddy with you while you get yelled at by some middle age nut job 10 or 15 years older than you, especially when you are a weight lifting tough guy with a Ford Mustang must sting the ego a bit. Oh well, and they drive away, turning out of the neighborhood. good riddance. Now here comes my lower backache, a debilitating throb in the small of my back, I always picture my kidneys pulsing with blood or adrenaline or some other liquid flood far too copious for these organs to handle. I get weak, and I realize just how fucking crazy I must have seemed to these young men, its no wonder they saw things my way in the end...