1. What's your favorite vacation spot? I tend not to go to the same places over and over again. I like San Diego it seems to be a very relaxing place. The Jersey Shore always has a soft spot in my heart. Portland is a great place to relax. I like going back to Philadelpia to see my family.
2. Where do you consider to be the biggest hell-hole on earth? Mexico City. I have never been there and I cannot think of a reason I would want to go there. I know this is not rational, but I have read a lot of bad things about that city.
3. What would be your dream vacation?
4. If you could go on a road-trip with anyone, who would it be and why? I like taking trips with my friends. I am taking a trip with Cathy this summer. I have known her for a long time and we have driven a lot with each other. She is someone who I can really have fun with in the car. I would like to take a long trip with Jeremy. There is something about the way the two of us see the world. We have taken really good road trips to Pittsburgh and Toronto. He would be great to drive cross country with. We never have enough time to talk. A cross country drive might be what we need to say everything. My sister Kathy would also be nice. I would like to take a trip from San Diego to Seattle. Kathy makes me work harder on vacation. I make Kathy relax on vacation.
If I took a road trip with someone famous, I would choose Richard Ford. I think he would have a good stories to tell. I think I could get along with
5. What are your plans for this weekend? I have no plans. I am on call this weekend at work. I might play some card games.
I did not watch the Grammys last night, but I hear that someone went off on file sharing. I think they need to stop living in the past. They do not see the future is there for the taking. Record labels should find a business model that makes money and consumers want. Even if they make less per property. The smart thing is getting people coming back for more. They could totally change the paradigm.
I also have little time for Millionaires talking about someone pitching there pockets.
All this makes me think about farming. Over all food is cheaper today then any other time in history. Technology has put a downward pressures on costs and production. A smart label would see the same is happening with the record industry. You have to make more of it to make the same profit. Farmers who stood in the way of this idea failed. I think the consumers should show that record lables that stand in the way of this idea should fail also. Some people think we should Boycott the RIAA altogether. That is not such a bad idea. I want to remind you I am a man who is usually pro business.
I am not a bible thumper, but the idea of people having chips under there skin scares me. There is something creepy about this whole idea. The Bible says 666, but it could mean 6 to the 6th power, to the 6th power. I think that it would be harder to fake, but faking it would make the stakes much higher. If someone did steal your identity, it would be much harder to prove you are who you say you are.
I feel that I should blog everything that I see about Enron now. There is something about this story that I just love. The more I learn the better it is. You can check out what The Onion has to say about Enron. You might also want to check out there voice mail system.
Sad Salvation comes up one of one when you search for "ain't nothing going" "my stride" +lyrics on google. I know it is more then two words, but it is still pretty cool.
A friend sent me a message with above as the title line. The message linked to his web site. I know that Chuck Jones Is smiling on us every time we listening to this clip.
Here is a story that scares me. I do not want the government to decide copy-protection standards. I think our government should be doing better things with its time.
I just love the Enron story. No matter what, more and more just keeps happening to it. The Astros have purchased back the naming rights to Enron Field for $2.1 million dollars. I would think it is worth a lot more then that. Back in 1999 Enron purchased the naming rights for 30 years. Next time I bet there is a morals clause in that contract.
I found a web site with all the playmate centerfolds since 1960. You can look up important dates in your life and see what the centerfold looked like that month. 10/1991 is the first one that I can remember that was younger then me. That is an important date in everyone's life.
Lately I have been hitting my stride at about 10:30 PM. This is a bad thing. It means that I stay up to about 1 AM writing. It also means that I have a hard time getting up in the morning. I have the easiest time writing as the hours get later. I am not sure why that is. I know that I will have a hard time getting up tomorrow morning. I need to get this writing done sometime. I just wish I needed less sleep.
It is time to learn more about ourselves by asking and answering questions.
1.) In what way is your online personality different from your off line personality?
I think I am much less serious in real life. I think that I show a bunch of different parts of myself on line, but it takes a couple of projects to do that. I would have to meet someone after they had only know me on line to get a good answer to this question.
2.) Do you have an unusual animal story? Tell us about it. When I was young my next door neighbor had a collie name Cookie. Cookie would always bite at the heals of my feet. I was only five or six at the time. It really scared me to death. All the adults would just laugh. I was really scared. As an adult I can see how this might have been funny. At the time it was not fun. I was happy when Cookie got old because she did not chase me around.
3.) Why would you, or wouldn't you want your mother to read your blog? Most of the things on my blog is open to my family to read. i do not think she would be shocked by any of it. I also do not think it would be that interesting to her either.
We Blogging baseball.... (sung to the tune of Talking Baseball)
Spring Training has opened, the players are reporting, and people are starting to talk baseball. All the teams are in the hunt and young people from all of the country are getting to know their players. I will be going to baseballjunkie.net and baseball-reference.com. I cannot wait for opening day.
Just when I think I have seen everything in the Middle Eastern Conflict, I read this. Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has made an amazing proposal.
I am not sure it will work. I am not sure all the sides can agree on it. I just hope they can. Everyday my heart bleeds for this conflict. Both sides make such painful mistakes. I do not want to still see this in another 20 years. I think they have to solve it now. There is so much blood that has already been spilt, I am not sure if they can work. Tonight, I will pray to God that it does.
This story makes me a little happy. I do not like the idea of copy-protected CDs. I like having the phycial CD and I like to use MP3s on my computer. I just wish this went to court. I would like to see a real judgement on this case. The record label was smarter then that.
This story is for Meg and the Not.So.Soft London Crowd.
This morning on NPR there was a story about surveillance cameras in Time Square and London. London might have the most public surveillance cameras in the world. According the store the average Londoner get photographed by 300 cameras a day.
I feel that I have a lot of ideas to write, I am just not sitting down and doing it. Right now there are about six or seven things on my mind that I could write about. I did watch almost four hours of television today. Most of the time I have spent at my computer has been wasted. I have been just screwing around with my time and not doing anything useful.
I am almost overwhelmed by my own ideas. This happens to me all the time when I am shopping. I have too many choices. Every choice means there is something I will not be doing. I freeze up and I cannot decide anything. I end up doing nothing.
Right now I have one hand writing my this and my other hand using Quicken. I have to pay my bills before the month ends. It is something else that I have been putting off for no reason. I split myself between these two tasks so I feel like I am doing more. I know that I am doing less by splitting these tasks. I still do it anyway.
I wonder if part of my problem is actually my writing. I wrote something yesterday that seems to miss the point about how I am feeling. I keep on having feelings that I cannot really explain. It is like I cannot get the the important parts of my feelings.
All of these things keep my from getting it all out. I feel that I have a lot of things to write about, but I am not sure if it all that interesting. I do not know what people think about my writing. I get feedback from very few people.
There seem to be questions that I keep on asking myself over and over again.
*What does it mean to be living in the exact time in this exact place?
*What meaning does my life have?
*Where is it all going?
I know that eveyone asks the questions in their lives. I know that part of the human condition is to strugle with these ideas. What worries me is how often I find myself asking these question. I think that I am asking them all the time. I never have any good answers for any of them.
I have the feeling that I am always asking them so often because of the status of my life. I ask them because I unsure about the way my life is going. I ask them because I feel that I am not going the right direction. I ask them because I do not understand my place in this world. If my life was clearer to me, I feel I would ask these questions less often. I wish my life was at a point where I would not ask them at all.
Blogger runs ads on there home page. The ads are right above the the log in. The ads are cheap enough that regular people can buy them. The last time I looked it as $10 for 8000 impressions. It was a good enough rate that I even bought some for Sad Salvation. I think I might have gotten 20 visitors for that $10, but I know my readership is going up.
If the ads sound interesting, I click on them. I want to see what is going on with other web logs. I feel I should click on these ads if I expect other people to click on mine. Many times the web logs are at the same level as Sad Salvation.
Recently there was an ad about a girl describing boredom. I clicked on the ad to find an entry about why she weblogs. She admits that her weblog is not great or even good. The point is that she does it for herself. She know that people she knows and people she does not are going to read it. What does it mean that you are going to do something for yourself and other people are going to read it?
Something about the entry really speaks to me. I want to keep reading this web log more often. I want to see what kind of things she is going to say that might upset people. It might inform me about what I am not saying about my life.
It looks like I will not hit the road at all until my trip to Portland at the end of March. I have been thinking about taking a long day trip, but looks like it is not going to happen. Part of the problem is that I am on call every other weekend. That cuts in half the weekends I can leave town. I do not want to not answer the on call phone. That is a way to start having to work weekend again.
The other problem is that I keep on finding things to do on my none on call weekend. I was not on call this weekend, but I was invited to go out on Saturday night. In two weekends someone is having a big party I want to go to. There will be no road trip that weekend. I think my next good weekend is my trip to Portland.
It would be nice to get a day trip in before Portland, but it is not going to happen. Portland is an important trip. It will decide if I drive cross country this summer. I know that I am putting a lot of press on what I can learn on one trip.
