Year: 2007

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Are clothes lines passe?

Yup. The dryer has died a horrible death. It would seem the heating element has gone out. That means we have two dryers in the basement without a means to dry clothes. The quandary! Do I repair one dryer, two dryers, or no dryers? I could get environmentally sound and setup a clothes line behind the house. I think perhaps I’ll do some shopping today. Considering the dryer is over 10 years old and runs almost 24/7 I think it has served its time.

Update: The heating element will be available for $57.06 tomorrow but Dave’s Repair suggests that I am skipping a couple of troubleshooting steps. It could simply be that our dryer vent is blocked (anyone thinking squirrel?) or that our circuit isn’t providing 240V. Hehehe! Whar’s my meter?! The parts supply store also explained that a new dryer isn’t likely to be that much more energy efficient that the efficiency comes from how well it heats.

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Watered to death

A woman drank so much water trying to win a Wii for her 3 children that she died. The coroner’s office called it "water intoxication." A radio station had a "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest. I wouldn’t believe this bizarre story if it was by anyone other than the Associated Press (and I still have my doubts). Strangely, the 28 year old woman’s name was Jennifer Strange. Nothing on Snopes yet.

Can you drink too much water?

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What’s the hardest thing about working from home?

It’s the stigma! This post inspired by the implication that our family could do something another family could not do because "they have a job."

I get an overwhelmingly large number people that either directly or subtly imply that I "don’t have a job" which is really very wrong. I have a job. I don’t have benefits. I have cash flow issues because I do not get paid until the job is complete and I tend to underbid my work. My job is very demanding. For instance, I have 3 projects going right now. One is a 3-5 week project (that means working a minimum of 40 hours per week for the next 3 to 5 weeks). That’s a job! One of the other projects probably has 40 hours in it. That’s a job! The 3rd project is at its tail end but back and forth with the client will consume another week and then we enter the next phase of that project. That’s a job!

I will work days, nights and weekends to see these jobs done well. I do not take vacations but because I work odd hours I do sometimes take time in the day for the family. However, that does not mean that time is always available. My other jobs include sales and marketing, customer relations and tech support, accounts receivable and payable as well as other accounting duties, and information technologies (to support myself). Additionally, I have started entertaining switching to corporate work and interviewing, social networking, and job searching itself can be a 40+ hour job unless you are willing to take the first thing that comes along.

My wife has a job! She is raising 5 children. She has meetings at schools, reports, grievances, paperwork, cleaning, cooking, emails, phone calls and more. Her job has no hours because if she is awake, she’s working! That’s a job!

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A full-time stay-at-home mother would earn $134,121 a year if paid for all her work, an amount similar to a top U.S. ad executive, a marketing director or a judge, according to a study released Wednesday. [Source]

I can’t do my wife’s job. I tried. When she is sick I try to do her job but the house looks terrible, the laundry does not get done, the children do not get cleaned well, and I can’t match a child’s outfit to save my life among many other things. When she is not around, I watch the children and try to work but mostly I watch the children. I really respect AT and other single parents. They work much harder than the rest of us.

Working remotely with so many different people has really shown me that there is a future in getting people away from corporate offices. I think in the next 10-15 years we will see a great trend in encouraging people to create home offices and work from their houses (at least part of the week). [Source] [see also]

Just because someone works from home does not mean they are playing, goofing off, not working, under no obligation, or don’t hold office hours.

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Daddy’s a traitor

And Evan is a manipulator! So he’s tired. He needs a nap. I take him down to the crib and he leans his head forward, turns in slightly, and lays calmly and gently on my chest with his head tucked under my chin. "Protect me Daddy! Don’t abandon me!" I rock him. Give him a pacifier. Then callously place him in the crib, zip up the crib tent, and walk away with my heart broken.

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Are you Web 2.0? Get with the times!

Have you followed the Web2.0 craze? (Don’t tell anyone but it’s just a buzzword..) Did Web2.0 overwhelm you? Still feel like maybe you aren’t sure what Web2.0 is? Get ahead of the game for the next round! Web3.0 is here!

Web 3.0? Still not sure what Web 2.0 is? In short, Web 3.0 is the opposite of Web 2.0. This web site is devoted to explaining what exactly Web 3.0 is and how it will ultimately change humanity. [Source]

Eh? Clear as mud?

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PETA Wins! The cows are free to go.

Looks like the future of our meat supply could be from labs not farms.

A single cell could theoretically produce enough meat to feed the world’s population for a year. [Source]

This could be a boon to the fast food industry if it meant cheaper meat! But don’t worry. We are at least a decade away before the protests of "that’s not right" come.

The technology to grow a juicy steak, however, is still a decade or so away. No one has yet figured out how to grow blood vessels within tissue. [Source]

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Knoxville Asperger Support Group

The upcoming meeting dates for the Knoxville Asperger Support Group are:

  • January 22, 2007 (Please note this is the 4th Monday, not the 3rd, as the library is closed on January 15th)
  • February 19, 2007
  • March 19, 2007
  • April 16, 2007
  • May 21, 2007

The support group has a Yahoo Group which can be found on http://groups.yahoo.com/ by searching for Knoxville_Aspie_Support. It meets the third Monday of every month unless there is a conflict or holiday (such as this month) at the West Branch of the Knoxville Public Library (map) at 100 Golfclub Rd from 6pm to 7:30pm.

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Monday is a holiday – How do you abbr it?

So, my son quips that Monday is "Martin King Luther Day" but before I can correct him it becomes evident that he is making fun of our dry erase calendar by the front door that is clearly marked "MKL." So when I wake the teen girl I ask for an explanation. She says, "I know it is Martin Luther King Day but Granny told me you abbreviate it MKL and that’s how it is written on our church bulletin."

For a little over a decade I threw a party the Saturday of Martin Luther King’s birthday never thinking that it could be construed as of a bunch white boys debaucherously celebrating the death of a black civil rights leader. It was just an excuse for a handful of friends to get loopy. It just happened to be a 3 day weekend for most people and an easy date to remember. These defunct parties are a huge source of contention between Cathy and I so I will say no more other than we always referred to the holiday as MLK weekend when not directly calling it The Long Island Tea Party aka The LIT.

Time to do some searching. Hmmm. It appears that the City of Bettendorf Indiana does indeed respect MKL day (as seen in the <title> of their press release). Ah! Looks like Stacy is looking for some ski buddies for MKL day. She’s got some decent slopes (Keystone and Copper). Raw Dogma references MKL Day as its source but does not actually link to the source or make the source findable in anyway. The Asbury Seminary will not hold classes on MKL Day. Oh no! Am I detecting a trend between "church bulletins" and seminary’s slighting Martin Luther King by intentionally getting his initials wrong? Surely not! Buckman Arts Magnet Elementary School is also closed for MKL Day. And Psychology 2606 at the University of Colorado at Boulder is closing for MKL Day.

In 1983, the 98th Congress passed Public Law 98-144 to honor the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. This was first celebrated as a Federal legal holiday on January 20, 1986 and has been observed on the third Monday of January since that time. Congress’ intention was that the holiday “serve as a time for Americans to reflect on the principles of racial equality and nonviolent social change espoused by Martin Luther King, Jr.” (36 USC, Section 169j). [Source]

Conclusion: my hypothesis is that people have made a typo abbreviating Martin Luther King, Jr’s name as MKL instead of MLK. Because this has made it into church bulletins and references that people respect without question, some people have accepted MKL as the abbreviation. My conspiracy theory above was a joke. I don’t really believe there is an underground racist movement to disrespect the holiday, or the man, by intentionally getting his initials wrong. I could not find anything that definitely abbreviated the holiday as either MKL or MLK. Perhaps there is a conflict in the abbreviation MLK and indeed MKL could be the "official" abbreviation (but I doubt it).

Our world has changed dramatically in the past 50 years. It wasn’t that long ago (1877 to mid 1960s) that people of different race ate in different sections of restaurants, used separate bathrooms, and even had separate water fountains. There are racial inequalities that still exist and social reform that still needs to happen. I think some of our current political leaders would like to see social reform go backwards (maybe not racially speaking but ideologically speaking). I think our near future holds revolutions to be had in economic injustices, educational reforms, and other non-racial issues. So is this just another 3 day weekend for you? Or will you take "time … to reflect on the principles of racial equality and nonviolent social change espoused by Martin Luther King, Jr.?"

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Stars Wars IV after seeing I, II and III

If you are a Star Wars fan then you might enjoy this writeup about the continuity of the story. When we watched the first Star Wars movie we made assumptions about what preceded the story. Eventually, George Lucas let us see the back story. Now, Keith Martin has laid out exactly what that back story means to the first, er fourth, movie and how things change in light of those revelations.

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Think Globally

Our world is shrinking. Companies send IT jobs abroad but the tech industry also imports. I work with several companies abroad or in other states. I work with almost no local companies. I have to admit that it is a cool feeling to quote projects in foreign currencies. I only hope the US dollar doesn’t change too much between the beginning and end of the project!

Working remotely with so many different people has really shown me that there is a future in getting people away from corporate offices. I think in the next 10-15 years we will see a great trend in encouraging people to create home offices and work from their houses (at least part of the week). Customer service personnel, financial people, IT people, programmers and many other types of jobs could be done with short centralize meetings or even via video conferencing and desktop sharing. Office costs in furniture, heating/cooling, electricity, leasing and other infrastructure costs could be severely reduced. Transportation costs could be greatly reduced. Imagine if 50% of the work force suddenly quit driving 30-40 minutes each direction to work! I see it! I can imagine government tax cuts to encourage such a future!

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Your Happy Meal Just Got More Expensive

Minimum wage has been increased from $5.85 to $7.25!

The vote was 315-116, with more than 80 Republicans joining Democrats to pass it.

The bill would raise the wage floor in three steps. It would go to $5.85 an hour 60 days after signed into law by the president, to $6.55 a year later and to $7.25 a year after that.

[Source]

That means someone working a minimum wage job for 40 hours will get $290 instead of $234 or a week’s worth of work. Of course federal and state taxes must be removed as well as social security and medicare.

Do you remember your first minimum wage job? I think mine was $2.35 an hour. I seem to also remember a $2.85 per hour figure. One of my early jobs paid $3 per hour under the table and I remember being thrilled with it because it was over minimum wage.

Jobs I did prior to college included baby sitting and yard work of course. I also worked for a construction guy. He would have his high cost labor just leave debris all over the job site and then on the weekends I would come in and move trash to the dumpster. He (Steve Garvy) would also pay me for odd jobs like once he paid $85 for me to take a machette to a quarter acre of over grown land. The weeds were 12 feet tall. I washed buses (the small shuttles although there was one about 3 feet shy of a city bus). Too young to drive, my friend and I drove them anyway. Our duties expanded to include maintenance including repairing a defective car phone (yes it was wired in), checking fluids, and changing tires (yes, I bent the frame on a bus with the jack). I also slid one sideways in a snowy parking lot for fun. I worked at a Wendy’s for 2 months. I also worked at a K-Mart as a cashier, cashier supervisor, toys department, electronics department, floor supervisor, and night stockman (nothing more fun than playing dodgeball in a Kmart at 2am!). My favorite pre-college job was selling flowers outside of an Amish market in New Jersey.