Hobbies

I see on Facebook memes about people not having hobbies.
Before the pandemic, my work had a meeting where we had an icebreaker where we drew a piece of paper and shared something about himself based upon the color of paper drawn.
My color of paper was to share my hobbies. Rather than say I like Pittsburgh sporting teams or reading or blogging I threw out that my hobbies are whatever my wife wants me to do.
My wife says I'm on my phone too much. I probably am, but I have nothing better to do. She gets annoyed by my wanting to do anything beyond doing her bidding. I'm probably over exaggerating.
Anyways, the icebreaker worked in the sense coworkers from other departments were more inclined to small talk.
Blogging haitus probably occurred to being busy. I have several blogs, but I ceased being active back in December across all of them due to my finally having a 1st shift job. With my being home when everyone else is, I don't have access to a computer like I used to have.
I have a number of interests. I don't follow the news as much since it's mostly fake in that it's insincere. I enjoy twitter, as a means of my info diet, but I mostly follow the Dilbert Guy. I try to to follow economic news, since I have a few 401(k) platforms which I used to monitor daily.
Discover Card says I have a credit score of 849.

finished TLAF

Funny how a book fits timely with one's mindframe, for I recently "quit" and feel great. Maybe I need to revisit Clay's work? I think he said stuff I wasn't ready to pursue.

Cybertrash

Remember Myspace? Did you leave it formally, or did you just forget to logon indefinitely?
I read the headline about Lady Gaga having 71% of her Twitter followers being "fake accounts." When you are talking about millions of unattended accounts, it makes you wonder about cybertrash. It's in Twitter's best interest to have as many unique users as possible for valuation of the company and its marketing reach, but a deluge of redundant content makes searching the internet feel like the pre-Google days where everything  seems to be garbage when you use Google to look up a roommate you have lost track of 10 years ago.

I tell people if I can't find you on twitter or Facebook, then you may as well be dead. Google seems to index those two locales more than anything else.

Trivial thoughts. When I die, I will be abandoning at least 10 email accounts. Spam finds me, so I suppose that I  must exist in some plane of reality, regardless if I'm alive or not.


Is it possible to destroy the internet? What if an EMP  somehow wipes out all digital knowledge, would that throw the world back into the dark ages? 

Sad to think that "57 channels and nothing on" meant something when 57 channels was a lot of channels. Imagine if there was no television from all the satellites becoming somehow fried. Scary, huh?

Cleveland, land of uninformed

From the Cleveland Plainer Dealer Online:

A myth that President Obama is giving people money to pay their bills has prompted thousands of people across the country to try to pay for utilities, phone service and loans using bogus bank routing numbers.

What is point of watching the news?

I read some articles on the trial, but no where did I see it mentioned that Jerry Sandusky was a closeted gay man. He engaged in sexual relationships with underage boys, so he's a child molester/child rapist. The boys were men when their stories became known. 

Why didn't they tell anyone? Were they afraid of being labeled"gay" in the eyes of peers? Did they want to protect Jerry Sandusky because they cared for him? Why did Joe Paterno let the boys' abuse be covered up? Was JoePa gay? Did JoePa like to have sex with little boys, too? Did Jerry and Joe share a perverted secret?

There are days that I wonder about what is reported in the news. How much of it is verified as fact? How many facts are left out of the story to give biased spin? What questions were asked when doing the story? What questions weren't asked when doing the story? Were the sources biased? Were the sources vetted?

We live in a 24/7 news world where everyone can don the reporter handle and blog about whatever they feel needs to be set loose upon the clutternet.

Amazingly, major news sites have been known to use The Onion as a source for some of their stories.

There's been a lot of spin about who is a bigger offshorer of American jobs, but the term being bandied about is "out sourcer in chief." Most Americans outsource their dry cleaning, food gathering, energy generation, communications network, entertainment, and children's education, so the latter term seems to be a stupid one to be used by President Obama, because using his logic everyone that owns a television is outsourcing, thus evil.

Facebook Tuesday

Not sure where time goes, but I find myself only looking at Facebook on Tuesdays anymore. Funny how I went a while without using an account to using one again for work. When I lost that job, I facebooked to feel in touch with current events, and finally I'm weening myself off again with my being less of a recluse.

Having regular contact with the outside world has given me more reason to blog, and Facebook isn't a place for blogging.

Twitter has been a main staple of my Info Diet of late in that it's where I get my insight into current news regarding SPORTS that interest me. I had a feed that was following friends and worldly events, but that was too inane for my obsessive need for more info about a certain team that hasn't outright sucked this MLB season. I didn't use twitter much last year, but it's caught on amongst the sports reporter crowd for breaking news.

Tuesday used to be my favorite day of the week. Still might be my favorite, but it's not as defined as it once was. I will discuss that in more detail someday, but not now, for Tuesday is now for doing things I meant to do on Monday.

Having a blah day

Not saying I am bored or anything, but I've been feeling less than motivated of late. Could be I'm neglecting to take my vitamins regularly, or my thyroid is not happy with me. Who knows?

Dogs days of June, I guess. Baseball season has been filled with ups and downs, and I'm a junky. I can't give it up. I can give up Camels and Bass, but following well compensated athletes, I can't.

Something wrong with following sports when there's much more that is actually important to be accomplished.

I guess that all commercials placed during sporting events are dead giveaways as frivolous wastes of personal income for anyone watching such things knows how to waste time and money to be "entertained" without giving a second thought.

I gave up tv in that I feel no desire to watch things that eventually are available on DVD.

Just have to figure out how to stop being consumed by the radio and internet time bandit. If I sleep through such things, they will still happen without my needing to know about them when they occur. Infovegan concepts transferred towards productive activities that have gainful results beyond the lull of blah when the fix of following a winner doesn't manifest itself in real time and sputters in a numbness of frustration. If only I could program myself like a robot.

New Twitter handle

So I changed my handle on Twitter, I found one that wasn't taken and works for me in a more professional way. (Hint: I don't pronounce the "a" in my name, so I dropped it.)

Thing about changing your handle is that anyone can swoop and take your discarded handle and potentially do harm to your brand. Followers follow the new handles by the email address associated with the account, not the handle itself. So, your account can be blocked based on email address associated with the handle, but you can still follow under another account with associated with another email address.

If you are in the habit of blocking people willy-nilly, I suggest that you make your account private in the first place.

I have a ton of email addresses, so I could have a ton of Twitter accounts. I don't tweet often, but I follow people regularly. Some I shouldn't because they aren't Infovegan.

Clean Coal

I grew up in a coal/steel mill area. I heard stories of how things used to be during their peak production, when residue would be swept from porches regularly.

Never saw anything like what was described on the ground or in the sky. Industry died, but things were done "cleaner."

Supposedly there's 200 years of coal available, but it's not good for the US, but okay for China to use.

An uncle of mine worked on clean coal. He was a smart guy, hence he was a chemical engineer. He died from cancer in 2006. I wish he was still around, I'd like to hear his opinion.

There's so much biased information out there. Is either side right? Sherrod Brown voted against the coal industry. Rob Portman voted in support of coal industry.

An actual Jobs Bill

So I have a blog, I technically produce content to share with whomever stumbles upon my random commentary on simplicity of life and the happiness found within it.

I live in Ohio, so I am a target of unsolicited political calls, mail, email, radio ads, television ads, and web ads. I cannot avoid a national election, let alone a statewide election.

This election is being framed as a popularity contest as they normally are, but I've never been much about hype. I look at the issues that concern me and think of the long term goals of the candidates.

I always pick the lesser of two evils.

What are the issues that effect me most?

Only one is on my mind, for I'm unemployed. I've had a hard time keeping a job after being laid-off a couple times. My industry was never outsourced to a third world country, but the funding essentially was hijacked by the same sort of  circumstances that made sending jobs overseas practical from business standpoint.

"Loopholes" are blamed for outsourcing.

Is it a "loophole" that Amazon does not have to charge local taxes when it ships merchandise across state lines?  Yes, they deliberately look for tax loopholes and monitor threats to them. Supposedly, the sales tax loophole will end this year, but I haven't seen much about congress fixing the problem of late.

I haven't heard anyone bash Jeff Bezos in a while, but I hear about nameless Wall Street types or anything related to Wal-Mart. 

Amazon is worse than Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart supposedly destroyed small businesses, but Amazon went further and took revenue away which paid for Police Officers, Fire Fighters, and School Teachers.

If Commerce Law was implemented to make the market place fair for bricks and mortar storefronts vs virtual entities, then a lot of the tax funding problems we see will be addressed.

More funding for local governments directly related to consumption would been seamless since the price differences aren't going to jump for local merchants, while online retailers can find other ways to squeeze their profits to offset shipping costs. People will still buy stuff if it saves them time.

Seems too simple, but more local sales, means more salespeople needed locally. More people working locally along with more local sales means more tax revenue. More tax revenue means more funding for public entities, which allows for more employees which can buy more things beyond sustenance levels. Another benefit is that there is less need for the generation of tax revenue from other avenues.

Destroying Amazon's loophole will benefit all. Amazon will survive because people like Amazon for reasons beyond the sales tax aspect..

News coverage from major networks chooses to ignore these facts because they are sponsored by CORPORATIONS that exploit these tax laws and their viewers in kind purchase online to avoid taxes.

Adding quotes and attributing a statement to a real person doesn't make it true

So I read a variety of things to keep a mildly balanced Information Diet. If I read something, I question it's validity regardless if I instinctively agree. I try to balance concepts, because "truth" can be all to the POV.

I wonder if people enjoy being miserable.

Masochists make lousy Christians when it comes to the "Golden Rule."

Found it odd that my Myers-Briggs letters match those attributed to Marquis de Sade and Bertrand Russell, but I find the whole list to be very oddly grouped.

Anyways, can someone be sued for libel when they attribute a quote on Twitter that is made up? Twitter is getting to be a place for haters.
Hash tags group like minded folks that can be swarmed by the thought police.

People who live alone shouldn't tweet, for they say dumb things without people around to correct their ignorance/stupidity regularly.
Can you image what Ted Kaczynski would have been like if he didn't get caught in 1996?
He'd tweet, I bet. But then again, he'd like to have more than 140 characters... but there's API for that.
Yes, he would have done such though he hated technology because he had a double standard that allowed him to use a typewriter. He'd terrorize people much like the SWAT-ters.

Never read Bradbury

So it goes that I read everything Kurt Vonnegut published but not a sentence by Ray Bradbury. I feel no mourning at his passing, but I felt little when KV died. Old age is nothing of which to be ashamed, but Vonnegut got nuttier day by day and was consumed by a poor information diet. He loathed war due to his being captured and held at Dresden during its firebombing, so he sought anti-war movements.

Kurt Vonnegut mocked Ray Bradbury by stating that Ray Bradbury was afraid of driving thus the irony of his sci-fi career.

Wednesday, a day for rest.

I intended to work on the tiling today, but my back said it needed a rest. Been in a funk from stooping the last few weeks, now with the end in sight, I need not rush it.

I'm not what I used to be, but I have my moments.

Thinking back to the days of being within an 54' trailer and unloading for 90 minutes straight, five days a week, I know that I could do things without feeling pain the next day. (I only remember one day of waking up too sore to move and I called off.)


The thing is, I got paid the same as if I was on the line where I could stand around BS and drink coffee. I only got in the trailer so I had leverage to get more hours. I had a schedule that worked around J's so that I could be home with baby K. No one said anything to me about it, I just requested the days off weekly and I got them while having a full-time schedule. I usually got Wednesday off since we didn't get trucks Wednesday and Sunday. I worked every Sunday for two straight years. I liked Sundays, I worked mostly alone.


I don't miss working retail, but it was work that I didn't have to think about while home. I didn't have to think much while working, either. It was pretty simple and cut and dry what needed done. I always longed to be done and to go home. I had a lot more energy since I never sat during the workday or stared at a PC, so I got a lot of the initial remodeling done on the house during that time.

Aside from the back, my mind has been mush looking at things online.

Internet speed has greatly reduced my overall productivity. Information is compiled as such a rate that I should be come an infovegan or at least give up following sports. Watching overpaid athletes is a waste of time, but yet so hard to give up.

Being nostalgic, reminds me of my dad saying he worked every summer when he first started teaching. He never worked in the summer as long as I can remember. Hopefully, K and B will have a memory or two me actually fixing something. I believe that B will definitely remember my orthopedic procedures to reattach limbs to her dolls.

The closer I get to finishing the tiling, I think about what will be next. Of course, the more work I do, the more inclined I am to feeling the house could be marketable. We need more room for our cars, and Ohio hasn't been a great place for me to find work.

Ignorance is bliss

Ever get the feeling the world is getting nuttier?
With the explosion of television channels and the internet, there's simply too much information out there for healthy consumption. I read Clay Johnson's Information Diet a couple months ago, and it really got me thinking about how uneasy we have gotten when it comes to how we react to any variety of news.
It seems like everyone is covering the news for the sake of generating revenue rather than providing actual news. So rather than having slow news days, the news makes the mundane into something it is not, News.
For this reason amongst others, I don't watch television regularly. I'm in the dark on a lot of pop culture matters, but I follow people on Twitter. (The things said on television can be heard and misunderstood by the little ears of my children much easier than the 140 characters remitted by those I follow.)  I google things I don't understand, and I often find myself saying "Really, people are concerned enough about 'X' enough to tweet about it?" (Yes, I get the irony of this post, but I have more free time on my hands than I care to have.)
From what I've been seeing online the last couple days, I'm wondering about how many parents will explain to their children that Bo, the First Dog , is not going to be eaten by the President if the latter isn't re-elected in November.

Disclaimer: I stopped watching television in September 2008 when Hurricane Ike knocked out our power for 10 days. It was a cold turkey thing.