Let's Look at Corporations

Perhaps Eastman Kodak would not have gone out of business if more people that they were more of a nuclear threat than most people knew.  They have a Californium Neutron Flux Multiplier

inspired by: http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2012305120025&nclick_check=1

Meetings Make You Awesome

I like interacting with intelligent people over the internet.  Actually getting to meet intelligent and motivated people in person is even better, which is why I wish they had this in my city:

www.creativemornings.com/

Let's get on this internet

Fans

One month from today on Wednesday, June 20, 2012, the Summer Solstice will occur.  If you don't have a plan to beat the heat yet, now seems like a good time to think about doing so.

My initial though is to hire women to fan me while wearing swim suits but, unfortunately, this is not practical from a financial point of view.

Air conditioning is cool (hilarious, right!?!) but it takes a lot of energy and energy is expensive in California.

Fans are a really good solution to managing high temperatures.  I've spent hours with my nose in home furnishing magazines recently and it seems that big faced silver/ nickel colored metal fans enclosed in matching metal wire enclosures seem to be popular these days.

If you could find such a fan with working motor, you could build your own stand for it to make a fancy floor fan. 

Here is an example of the type of fan I'm talking about, which happens to be done in brass instead of nickel/ silver:

Source

Also, birdcages seem  to take up a lot of background space in home furnishing publications.

This post sort of relates to an earlier post about clocks, which can be viewed online here.

Future World Interests

Today I try to predict the future.  Certain places will enter the thoughts of many people around the world as they become featured on international television broadcasts.

Some people who live in these cities will be able to turn a nice profit by increasing the price they charge for motel and apartment rentals, transportation, etc.  Those of us who do not live in these cities should be able to profit from the attention these cities will draw in some way.  I'm not exactly sure how.  My guess is that one could write and publish information on these cities.  Content providers should be hungry for stories about the culture and people who inhabit these cities.  In the weeks leading up to the major sporting events that are due to take place in these cities I expect there will be significant spikes in the amount of internet traffic driven to sites that provide useful information to tourists interested in visiting these cities.

If it were me, I would want information written by someone from the country I live in who actually takes the time to visit the city s/he is writing about.  It would certainly help if that person were a talented writer either working with a photographer or someone who is a talented photographer or videographer themselves. 

World Affairs:

A mulitlinguage young man named xxx xxx Henry left his comfortable East Coast life to travel on board a ship bound for West Coast of North America by way of Cape Horn.  Wishing to share his experiences with others he kept a diary of his travels and after the voyage took the time to translate those notes into a book that relates his experience of the voyage.  Not long after a man named xxx found gold at an old saw mill.  All of a sudden men decided to pack themselves in ships to take a similar journey.  In planning for the trip they needed some reliable information that might help them to prepare for the journey and give them some information on what they might expect to find in California.  They tuned to Henry's famous book, Two Years Before the Mast because it was virutally the only book written on the subject and Henry had written about the journey with clarity and masterful detail.  

Insert video of insano

Today we are awash in information.  I would be surprised if there are any locations around the world where you might find yourself without  

If you're going to pick a place to focus your energy on studying or learning more about I think it's safe to assume that China might be a really good place to start researching.  If you're not into China, you might think about researching and writing about the cities where the upcoming Olympic games are to be held:

2012 - London, England, Summer Games

2014 - Sochi, Russia, Winter Games

2016 - Rio de Janeiro, Summer Games

Also of note are the cities in which the World Cup will hold its matches.  They are:

2014 - Rio de Janeiro

I would assume that the newspapers of those cities would print valuable information about the people living in those cities and the affect that the Olympics are having on them.

Managing Data

At My First Full-Time Job

At my first full-time job after college, I was the most informed when it came to all things computer and technology related, which, among other things, made me responsible for networking the computers in the office.  My first job began in the days before Dropbox and similar programs/ services were available.  Since the office I worked in was small (only one other computer using person and I at first) it was possible for us to get by just emailing each other the documents we were working on.  This worked OK except that our non-computer using employer seemed to go out of his way to assign updates to be made to the documents we were working on to the person that didn't have the current version of the document on their computer.  I could access the files on the other employee’s computer, which she knew I could do.  I tried to teach her how to do the same to access files on my computer but I had to explain it verbally every single time, which threw off my train of thought and made email the better option.  Plus, there was no accountability if a file was deleted or went missing and no quick way of establishing which of our documents was the most current.  When we added more people the ability to quickly access the file on the other employee's computer because more time consuming because it could be in several places on either one of two computers.

Finally, I switched everything over to DropBox.  Every document we used would live inside a single folder.  A few dozen sub-folders would help to keep the tens of thousands of documents in some semblance of order.

My Hard Drive These Days

I took the lessons I learned about data management with me after I left that job.  My hard drive these days has a single folder that takes up 90.1 GB of hard disk space in which there are currently 91 sub-folders that contain 86,238 files scattered across 10, 675 sub-sub (and lower down the nesting tree) folders.  Some of these folders, i.e. "Pictures", "Movies", graphic design source files and some of the projects or things I'm not currently working on are stored separately on a 1.5 TB Western Digital external hard drive I bought for $99 in folders that use the same 91 names as the the sub-folders on my working hard drive so that, in theory, I could quickly merge them all and store everything on one hard drive.

Here are some of the 91 sub-folders that have titles which I feel comfortable sharing and in some cases a brief description of the contents of that folder.  The rest either refer to specific people, i.e. the names of my parents, the name of some of the neighborhoods where I have lived in the past, or things/ projects:

·         00_Inbox – a folder that contains all of the stuff that would otherwise take up space on my desktop or in my Downloads folder.  The items in this folder are to be sorted and kicked into one of the other folders or deleted when I have time.

·         01_Films – I added numbers to the more important/ frequently used folders

·         02_Music

·         03_Photos

·         07_Books

·         09_ReviewAndDelete – serves the same function as the 00_Inbox except that this one is called “09_ReviewAndDelete” to help ensure that nothing on this system is where it should be.  Argh.

·         Accounting – more boring

·         Apartment Hunt

·         Articles

·         BusinessCards

·         Cache – files containing some of the quasi-impressive things I’ve accomplished in my life

·         CellPics- no real reason these shouldn’t just be filed in the same Pictures folder as everything else except that I haven’t bothered to move them over yet

·         ContactLists

·         Correspondence- this contains Words documents of both the physical letters I write and copies of their associated envelopes

·         Directions – what’s the point in looking something up twice?  When I look up directions online I save a copy here just in case I need to get somewhere and I don’t have access to the internet.  This is also a bit of a holdover from my time at my first job where my employer didn’t use the computer and needed directions printed out for him.

·         Disputes – I don’t get into a lot but whenever a situation arises that might find its way into a courtroom in this insanely litigious country we can still legally call the United States of America without fear of being sued for trademark infringement or libel yet, I believe it’s important to keep everything that relates to any disagreements that arise.  If I ever get around to it I might share the story of two of these situations which both relate to scams involving trying to dupe those hunting for jobs.

·         Education

·         Entertainment – a collection of lists some of which have found their way onto the Clean Sheets and Dirty Girls site

·         Exercise

·         Famous Works of Art – should be merged with Photos

·         Fitness – why is this different from Exercise?

·         Flash Cards

·         Food – contains recipes, grocery lists, menus and photos of food

·         Fonts

·         Goals – “Own your own house” doesn’t need to be written over and over again but at least with this folder I have a place to put such statements

·         Hiking – moved along with Fitness into Exercise

·         InstructionManualsAndDirections – instead of keeping tons of little booklets of different sizes for everything I take digital photos of them once, or get the .pdf copy from the manufacture’s websites, and recycle the original physical copy.

·         JobHunt

·         Journal – The slightly more adult version of “I sat behind Samantha in class today.  Her hair smells fresh like a green meadow the morning after a gentle rain if that meadow were also the spot where a crate full of products from Bath and Body works burst open after falling from a cargo plane high above.”

·         Labels

·         Lists

·         Misc

·         MovingInformation – probably should be merged with ApartmentHunt into one HouseHunt folder

·         Notes – why is this different from the Journal folder?

·         OED – personal copies of some of the things I’ve looked up on the Oxford English Dictionary over the years

·         OLD – stuff that there is no point in deleting entirely but doesn’t come up regularly

·         PersonalInventory – What I would like to do is have a document or database that contains an entry for every single thing I own that includes the date I purchased it, what I paid for it, where it’s located (although this really is thinking ahead to a time when I have more living space it would still be nice to know, for example, that I have a big pack of AA batteries in a drawer before I go out and buy new ones).  Also, I think such a list would help to suggest what I might need a new one of in case I see a sale on something.  My hope is that such a list will help me to become a bit more of a minimalist by forcing me to track and therefore justify to myself after the time of purchase why I bought such a thing.  I haven’t really gotten around to doing this project because to do it right would involve me picking up and photographing everything I own and moving things is a pain.  Plus, I don’t have enough space right now in my tiny little room for everything to go anywhere but in piles and unpacking things and adding to that problem seems like a nightmare scenario.

·         Photography Ideas –

·         Photoshop

·         Portfolio

·         ProfilePictures

·         Projects

·         Receipts

·         ReviewAndTrash – my goodness I’m bad at keeping everything in one Inbox

·         Sites – backup copies of the websites I’ve created

·         Sounds – contains sound effects ,which in my mind are different enough from music to warrant their own folder

·         Templates

·         ToDoLists – #1 Empty To Do List folder

·         Travel – information about possible destinations

·         Wallpapers – setup to rotate every five minutes, which I find is long enough not to be distracting yet short enough that it’s usually different every time I glance at it.

·         Wanted Items – helps me to justify buying anything I find out in the real world since I previously took the time to note it here and list a reason why it would be helpful. In theory this stops me from buying things I don’t need.

·          

Job Hunt

As I send out stacks of resumes, I often listen to music.  I also read the news.  Somehow I think that trying to find a job that I can be proud to describe to anyone who asks what I do might not be the path to home ownership and financial security I had envisioned.


"You Lie,

The job market is tough enough even without people like Scott Thompson resorting to lying to get ahead.  Not only should he be fired but to my way of thinking there should be criminal charges brought against him if the allegation that he did not double major at Stonehill College but instead only earned a single degree proven true. Here is the source.

If Scott can talk his way out of this one, his contact with Yahoo puts him on track to earn $27 million this year according to this article.

Total take for lying = $27 million

Solution to fix this = expand the rules on white collar crime to include lying on your resume and actually enforce them by forcing people who do so to forfeit all of the money they earned from the company they lied to!

Cheat

When it is reported in an American newspaper that some of the best counterfeit money printing houses are producing phony Euros in Italy some would react to the news with mild voyeuristic curiosity about the illegal doings of a small group of criminals halfway around the world.  I on the other hand see it as yet another industry in which American manufacturing and craftsmanship is eroding.

Total take for cheating = "550,000 to 800,000 fake euro notes pulled from circulation annually by European central banks", which could be $528 million if they were all the 500 euro notes that are worth about $660.


Solution to fix this = I don't know, it's Italy's problem.

And Steal"

Apparently a couple of Cubans managed to steal tens of millions of dollars worth of prescription drugs from an Eli Lilly manufacturing facility.

While meddling kids had nothing to do with it, they would have gotten away with it to if it wasn't for the fact that one of them left his fingerprint on a bottle of water left at the scene of the crime.  Also, apparently Home Depot is in the snitching business because they are reported in this article as noticing that a suspicious combination of tools (cutting saws, ropes, ski masks, bags with dollar signs on the sides???) was purchased at one of their stores before the crime.

Total take for stealing = $80 million

Solution to fix this = stop charging so much money for prescription drugs and end the medical/ pharmaceutical complex.

I Answer The 11 Thing Tag a Little More Slowly Than Most

I got hit with one of those blog question things.  All of the text from the other person is highlighted in black with white text, like this.  My writing is in regular black text on a white background, like this.  Here are the rules:

1. Put the rules of this Tag on your blog.
2. Everyone tagged should tell 11 things about themselves, answer the 11 questions asked by the person who tagged you, tag 11 other people and ask them 11 different questions.
3. Let the people whom you tagged know you've done so.
4. Don't tag anyone who's been tagged before.
5. Really do tag 11 others, and don't go all "if you want to, take this tag".

This seems like a lot of work to me.


And here is your 11 questions:

"Are", you mean to say "are your 11 questions".

1. It's Xmas time, who would you most like to have round for Christmas Dinner? I can't think of anyone who I would like to transform into a sphere.
2. What is your favourite day? Payday.
3. If you could steal an idea and have it as your own and get away with it would you? No, I think credit should be given to the original creator.
4. When cornered by 15 Gypsy's how would you escape? Fight your way through or charm them with a dance? I would fight them speaking in gibberish, have it filmed and release it as Snatch 2: This Time It's Even More Difficult to Understand.  
5. Do you love guns or pop music more? Can't I enjoy both equally?
6. When was the last time you nearly or actually got caught having a play with yourself? About a week ago, I went through as much of the "Boil, boil, toil and trouble" speech from Macbeth that I could remember while showering.  I can't be sure if anyone heard me.
7. In how ever many words it takes describe your most passionate encounter with a Delicious scone or cake. I've never had a Delicious brand scone or cake.  I assume the question refers to a specific brand because "Delicious" is capitalized and one only capitalizes specific nouns when they appear anywhere other than the beginning of a sentence.
8. Do you have any spare money for me? Unfortunately, I do not.  Thank you anyway for asking.
9. Would you stop a fight in the street? Only if one of the combatants was on the ground and the other person didn't stop.  A kid in my middle school suffered severe injuries because his attacker viciously kicked him when he was on the ground and unable to defend himself.  None of the people standing around watching this did anything to stop the attacker.  
10. If you could change the colour of your wee as it came out would you? (more for boys this one) No.
11. I love you do you love me? Sure, but my answer to question eight remains the same.

I will not be passing this on to anyone else.

Here is the original post I'm replying to. 

High Speed Rail

California is building a high speed rail line that will allow passengers to travel from downtown Los Angeles to San Francisco in two hours and forty minutes!  In other words, once this line is complete people living in Los Angeles will be able to commute to work in San Francisco or vice versa.

I love the train and am excited that the United States will finally catch up to the level of infrastructure that other countries possess.

California's high speed rail line will be the largest public infrastructure project in United States history.  Some of the highlights of the project include:

• 800 miles of track being laid down
• Trains traveling at speeds up to 220 miles per hour
• $42.6 billion spent to make this thing happen

The group overseeing the construction just noted that the train passed a round of environmental tests.

In theory, construction on the high speed rail line will begin in the second half of 2012 in California's Central Valley.

Here is a video that contains more information about the project:

Hollywood Needs to Help Out with Their Image

I can't wait to ride on this train!

Updated 5-11-12 with the following reading list:

• Can we take a little time to talk about this Ray?