Capitalism

I was thinking about how unchecked capitalism seems to create far more problems than it solves. An example of this is how many things are designed to just be thrown away. Ever wonder why you can't just have one milk jug and refill it or bring in a container to bulk buy some Captain Crunch in? Same thing with all of the plastic bags we get. People always give me a funny look when I tell them they don't have to bag something and that I'll just take it out. This cartoon says it perfectly.

I think the government or some other body is needed as a check on capitalism because people will always buy stuff without considering the real cost. Bottled water is a premier example of this. Not only is it usually just filtered tap water from somewhere but creating the plastic bottles uses up a ton of water! How ever did society manage to get by without bottled water for thousands of years? It really irritates me when I someone I think is at least reasonably intelligent has to drink bottled water. But don't suggest to people they can't have it because they will go off.

So anyways, I came up with a new slogan I thought was fitting. Here it is:

Capitalism: Not making your life better, just more expensive.

Big Brother

For those who didn't know I signed up for the Big Brother/Big Sisters in June and I got matched last week and had my first outing with my 'little' on the 12th. His name is David and he turned 12 in August. I picked him up at 6 and we went to the park near his house and chatted a bit and shot some hoops. We ended up playing an impromptu pickup game which he beat me in 5-3. After that we went to the Leatherby's in Midvale for some celebratory ice cream. Turns out that particular Leatherby's also doubles as a small Mexican food restaurant and a place to buy tamale's! David got some bubble gum ice cream and I got his huge thing called the Black and White which I couldn't finish. We couldn't think of what to do next so we drove to my work and I showed him the building and the office. He kept talking about how big it seemed. Then we drove up to my house ('big' again:) ) and played some Madden '08 on the Wii. We were totally murdering the raiders 42 - 7 at halftime when we saved it and I drove him home.

He seems like a well-behaved, smart kid. His favorite school subjects are math and art. He's into muscle cars and rap music and he wants to play football for a living with his backup career being some kind of engineer. Not too shabby.

Retaining wall

For the last couple of years I have had a barren, desolate, and sometimes weed infested side yard on the north side of my house. No more! I've been working for the past week or so to landscape it nicely by adding a decorative fence and some retaining walls. Pics of the work can be seen here.

I've had several people in the neighborhood come by when I've been out working and tell me how nice they think it looks. Even though I wish I'd bought this other house I had looked at for the prestige and valuation, I have to admit that I picked a pretty darned nice neighborhood. Most of the people are friendly, my neighbor across the street has helped me on quite a few projects, my neighbor to the north cuts my hair (and does a good job), I can walk to the grocery store, work is 5 minutes away, Home Depot is 5 minutes away. So why can't I get happy with my house?

Cheeseburgers and bottled water

How many people have seen this phenomenon: An obese American who will only drink bottle water? Don't they realize that most bottled water is just filtered tap water and that the U.S. has the cleanest water supply in the world? Are they convinced that their health problems are a result of their drinking tap water? Maybe they should try eating fruits/veggies instead of McD's and exercising instead of watching TV. I know that some people have thyroid disorders and the like and that's fine, they can't do a lot about it but that is an extreme minority.

Have you noticed that the term 'overweight' discrimination is getting a lot of play in the media lately? I was reading an article about how some companies are penalizing workers who have high BMI's in the form of payroll deductions (essentially higher premiums). The same companies provide support for weight loss and will refund the money if that employee gets below the target BMI. For some reason this has people in an uproar, claiming that all of these people can't help it and to discriminate against them is cruel. Let's dissect this argument. First of all, is it possible that we have evolved to have a 40% obesity rate in the last 30 years? That's the only way I can think that these people "can't help it". Secondly, why is it okay to discriminate against someone who can't control their urges to harm others but not those who can't control their urges to eat? Many people say the second option is a victimless crime but in reality it is not. Weight bias is not simply about looks, it implies several things about that person including the fact that they are generally less healthy and have poorer productivity. This ends up costing everyone of us whether through higher premiums or job loss because of low productivity. This ends up feeding into the welfare and medicaid/care systems and before you know it we're victims. I love the idea of penalizing people who decided to engage in unhealthy activities (smoking, not exercising, eating poorly, drinking to excess). Why should everyone else pay for your poor judgement?

Native American?

I had an interesting conversation with my friend's wife who is from Peru. She was asking if I had seen the movie 'The Patriot' and told me that she needed to get a native American's perspective on the movie. I told her I wasn't a 'native American/Indian' and she said that she had just meant someone who was born here. That makes me wonder if people who come here from other countries are likewise confused about what exactly a Native American is. For all intents and purposes, this is my native land...my family emigrated here 120 years ago and all I've ever known is America. It's my home, I'm proud to live here, and would lay down my life to defend her. So am I or am I not a Native American? Maybe we need a different term to describe what people around the world know as 'American Red Indians'.

Thoughts?

Haircut!

Well I finally got a haircut that doesn't leave me looking quite so shaggy. I've been growing it out for quite some time now and decided that I needed a cut that was a little more manageable. I've been loving my Jeep but it's so windy that everytime I would get out of it when I wasn't wearing a hat the hair on the left side of my head would basically be standing up (sort of a modern flock-of-seagulls doo).

Here it is (thanks to llama for the pic):

Why do we waste so much time watching TV?

I went to Dallas last week for some Rest and Relaxation and ended up watching a significantly larger amount of TV than I normally do. The shows can be broken down into two categories:

1) 'Funniest Videos'

I'm not sure why people like watching these shows. Most of the videos were terrible with a common humor theme being some poor idiot getting kicked in the balls or some other form of physical injury. When the camera panned over the audience they looked like they were all trying to appear happy despite getting root canals. The videos that were funny usually didn't win or even make it to the list of finalists. Add to this the fact that the announcer always makes bad puns and I can't understand why we watched them. But watched we did, basically just killing time. Is that what most people use TV for? Just killing time between real-life events?

2) 'Reality TV'

Okay, this trend has really just gone too far. We were watching a reality tv show about a chain of tanning salons! Basically any reality tv show functions on the premise that there is all this back-stabbing and gossip-mongering going on. Based on this premise I'm going to create my own reality tv show called 'Real Losers' where you watch a bunch of people watching different Reality shows. The drama will come from how much weight people are gaining and how crappy their personal skills become. Throw in a little conflict with everyone having their own favorite reality show and fighting over the remote and I'm sure we'll have a winner. Oh, and I'm gonna need some hot dudes and chicks so people even care what they think. Apparantly everyone's personal life is so shitty that they have to watch tanning salon jockeys to excite them. Seriously people, what happened to us? Get off your ass, go outside, and enjoy the reality show called 'Life'.Publish Post

Ups and Downs

Yesterday we put a project I'd been working on into production, tried it out, and everything seemed to work. I then came back and was sort of basking in the afterglow of putting together something useful and then actually getting to see it in action. I was truly a proud father.

This morning I came in to find that my child had betrayed me and was not working properly. Turned out we'd never verified that it was putting good information into the database! Fixing it was pretty simple and we got everything taken care of without too much difficulty but I felt like an idiot, especially since I had been so proud of it before.

Moral of the story: Pride truly cometh before the fall.

Whenever this sort of thing happens I like to inventory what went wrong and make a 'process' for myself to be sure that I don't do it again. I'm getting a pretty long list now but with each addition I'm improving the quality of my work and that is definitely something to be proud of.

3 easy steps!

On one of those annoying ads that pops up on the bottom of Messenger I saw this headline for a book: 3 easy steps to solving your money problems. I didn't click the link but this is how my book would go

1) Stop buying shit
2) Start saving some money
3) Don't buy dumb books like this

Pretty simple right? Then there was another ad for a book on how to never be late again. Here's my book for this one:

1) Pay attention to the time
2) Leave early
3) Don't waste time reading dumb books like this one

It then occurred to me that everything in life can be distilled to 3 easy steps

1) Grow up
2) Have some self-control
3) Don't read stupid self-help books

There you have it. It's so simple! I should create an informercial and get the mindless masses to send me their not-so-hard earned cash.

The Dodo

Last night I had my first opportunity to eat at the Dodo. I took Melanie out for some shopping and dinner to celebrate her new teaching position at Hayden Peak and that's where she decided to eat.

Anywho, the appetizer (Brie and fresh fruit) was awesome. The wedge of Brie was actually quite large and the baguettes were delightful. The fruit, a blend of stawberries, pineapple, grapes and apple/pear slices, was fresh and crisp and delicious. Somehow a grape managed to work its way into my nose and I believe we both ended with fake Apple slice smiles.

Melanie had a gorgeous stuffed portobello mushroom dish which was also quite large. This was one of their specials so I'm not sure how often they actually have it. A an aside, their menu was actually pretty small (which I like) but they had 4 or 5 different 'daily' specials. I ended up with a tasty quiche dish and gazpacho which, unfortunately, was served on a 'skillet' looking dish that reminded me of Village Inn or one of those places.

Now for the best part: dessert! I'd read somewhere that they had some of the best desserts and I think that factored heavily into the choice to eat there. We split a tollhouse pie which was a pie crust with nestle tollhouse cookie dough inside. The cookie dough was pretty much raw and delicious. To top it off there was a healthy serving of whipped cream with chocolate chips. Needless to say it disappeared quickly :)

Other 'log' types

My friend and I got to talking about how ubiquitous the term 'blog' has become these days and how it is really a short cut for (we)blog. We also thought that there should be some cool him names for other mundane things like talking (tal)klog and writing things down (pape)rlog. Here are a few others

(ea)tlog - This is a log of what you've eaten. Ex. Dude, I've got to hit the bathroom and dump my tlog.

(debu)glog - The log from some software. Ex. Dude, some jerk deleted the glog so I have no idea what happened to the server last night.

Feel free to add any others that you come up with on your own