I caught this picture in my Facebook stream and it struck me with such offense the it sickened me.

Here’s my response: Let’s bind up business, take down the bull. Let’s destroy my investments and retirement that I have worked hard to earn and save. Let’s take down the engine of our economy. Let’s make the desire to earn money, to generate wealth, to rise above an act of shame. Let’s elevate inefficiency, mediocrity, and spite of strength to the status of a moral imperative.

I reject this. I reject what it stands for and will do all within my power to fight your false premises. I will work, create, and rise above. I will generate wealth and gain power and influence and not be ashamed.

I will maintain my morals. I will care for the orphans and widows. I will care for the poor and downtrodden in response to my personal moral code. I will fight corruption and theft. I will not corrupt. I will not be stolen from. But I cannot and will not give up that which I have worked for to those that do not work, that do not create, that do not deserve. I will not dumb down my abilities or be less than I can be to balance inequality of income or strength of mind. I will not compromise and I will not be ashamed. I reject this.

I received the following email from a recruiter today:

Hi Joshua Townsend

Hope you are doing great,

I am currently in search of Network Engineer for an esteemed client and I wanted to contact you to see if you are comfortable and available. Please send me a word version of resume and the best way for me to contact.

If you know anyone, who is available and comfortable, Feel free to pass my contact details to them. Thanks in advance and hope to hear from you soon!

Title: Network Engineer

Duration: 6 month(s)

Location: Richardson, TX or San Jose, CA

Skills:

CCNP, EIGRP, ACE load balancing configurations, L2 VLANs, L3 VLANs, Nexus, Cisco IOS, Spanning Tree Protocol (STP), Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP)

Description:

• Must have CCNP or be almost done with in order to apply!!!!

Job Description

• Identifies, diagnoses, resolves and documents network problems
• Create and maintain comprehensive documentation for all implemented networks utilizing MS Word, MS Project, MS Excel and Visio
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills
• Ability to thrive in a collaborative team environment
• utilizing the company change control process in order to ensure compliance with the organizations data center and security standards
• Install, configure, maintain network services, equipment and devices
• Plans and supports network layer 2 and 3 infrastructure
• Strong analytical abilities and professional office experience needed
• A thorough understanding of the OSI network model, Ethernet, and TCP/IP networking

A practical level of experience implementing and administrating common TCP/IP-based services, including DNS, DHCP, HTTP, FTP, SSH, SMTP, etc

Technologies
LAN, WAN, TCP/IP, DNS, Latency, QoS, EIGRP, BGP

Equipment
Cisco Layer 2 and Layer 3 Switches – Nexus 5K and 7K and Catalyst 6500E
Supervisor 720
Cisco 3845 Routers
Console Router configuration
Cisco Network Analysis Module (NAM)
Load Balancing (Cisco or third party)
Cisco Firewalls ASA and PIX

Technical Skills and Requirements
1. Certifications: CCNP (CCNP in progress is also acceptable but is based on experience and knowledge level)
2. Education: Bachelor*s Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology or similar
3. Experience with the following systems: Windows, Cisco Systems, UNIX, Linux
4. At least 5 years experience building and supporting complex corporate data centers and networks

5. Excellent presentation, communication & customer interaction skills

Thanks & Regards,
Ashish Kr Verma
OKAYA Inc.
Where Commitment Is A Passion

I usually just press delete on this nonsense, but like political survey calls and door-to-door siding salesmen, sometimes not answering just can’t satisfy.  And plain old no-thank-you answer won’t do – I like to toy around before I bat you away (really, you woke me up early on a Saturday with an annoying doorbell ring, double-knock, ring to ask if I want new siding when it is plain as day that I am super-pleased with the dented up old siding I have).  This was one of those cases….  Here’s my reply:

Hi Ashish Kr Verma,

I hope you are doing great also!

It is so kind of you to wish greatness on me.  The world would be a much better place if everyone just tried to do great (instead of whatever it is the kids are doing these days).  Your hoping for my greatness adds to my general wellness.  I hope my wish for your greatness leaves you well, as well.

You came right out and listed availability and comfortableness important factors in future conversation you you.  Since you have been so forthcoming with me, I’ll cut straight to the point:  I am not currently available – my wife of 8 years can attest to this fact.  I will say, however, that I am quite comfortable – I have a great family, a nice job, a quaint little home, amazing friends, good health, and most of my hair.  I have found that comfort and availability often run counter to each other, and that when they do run together it is often a sign of mental illness, infidelity, or an inherent misunderstanding of the OSI model, if you catch my drift.  If you’ll settle for one of your two qualifying factors for talking to you, I’ll continue to speak towards your 6-month Network Engineer position with an esteemed client in Richardson, TX or San Jose, CA.

As for my skills as they pertain to the job you have described, I can do all of that and more!  The only skill I lack is CCNP.  CCNP is a really hard skill to learn – I’ve heard there is even a test for it! Can you believe that?  I have thought about learning CCNP, so I feel that I might as well be almost done with it (and I hope you’ll agree).

However, because of my low degree of availability and high comfort factor, I am afraid that I may not be the ideal candidate for the 6-month Network Engineer position with an esteemed client in Richardson, TX or San Jose, CA.  Maybe if you had a position:

1.)  close to my Northern Virginia home… let’s just say if I hear more than two songs on the radio on my drive to my current office in the morning it is a bad start to the day – a commute to Richardson, TX or San Jose, CA would really put me in a bad mood, thus inhibiting my ability to fulfill these essential job functions:

• Identifies, diagnoses, resolves and documents network problems
• Create and maintain comprehensive documentation for all implemented networks utilizing MS Word, MS Project, MS Excel and Visio
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills
• Ability to thrive in a collaborative team environment
• utilizing the company change control process in order to ensure compliance with the organizations data center and security standards
• Install, configure, maintain network services, equipment and devices
• Plans and supports network layer 2 and 3 infrastructure
• Strong analytical abilities and professional office experience needed
• A thorough understanding of the OSI network model, Ethernet, and TCP/IP networking

2.) that lasted more than 6 month(s) – I’m big into commitment, I dig jobs that last years, not months

3.) that more closely fit my skills and interests (you should have noticed I’m a technical manager with a background in VMware virtualization, storage, and Microsoft server systems),

4.) with an awesome company (your client may be esteemed (more like ego-maniacs, am I right?) but my current employer is just downright cool to work for), and

5.) presented it to me in a not so spammy way… I might entertain a discussion with you about it.

But then again, probably not.  I’m really not into unsolicited commercial email, which really is what you sent me (there should be some kinda law about that….). Thanks to you, I am now really turned off by esteemed clients everywhere in Richardson, TX or San Jose, CA.

I guess what I’m really trying to say is “thanks, but no thanks”, Okaya?  I hope you are as passionately committed to removing me from your mailing list as I am to adding you to every spam filter I can find.

Thanks & Regards,

Josh

I have finally picked back up The Way of the Wild Heart and started reading it again.  It seems an appropriate week to start reading the book again, since it is just past Father’s Day and in light of an exchange with my sister on her blog regarding our own father and our relationship to him.  I’ve been in a bit of a funk lately and I’ve been struggling to figure out why.  I’ve been exercising, have a great new job that just seemed to come to me instead of me trying to force something that just wasn’t right, and am daily in awe of my children.  I started to put my finger on the problem yesterday during a long run – I am lonely.  Damn lonely.  Not in a solitary confinement I don’t get to see anybody type of way, but a more primal way – a lack of masculine initiation, validation, companionship way.  Many of the guys that I had developed a real friendship with – men that could mentor me, walk with me, understand me – have left.  A couple to Tennessee for promising new jobs, one who up and left on a grand adventure to LA, one left behind at a job where things just got nutty, and one who is currently deployed.  And this has left me coasting, not living like an adventurer – someone who leads other men, or a strong guide for his own son’s masculine journey, or a husband passionate about loving and uplifting his wife.  It’s not like I am a bad person, or really any different from most men.  It’s just that I can see that something is missing – the something is what John Eldredge calls fatherlessness.  He puts it like this in chapter 2:

Whatever life has taught us, and though we may not have put it into these exact words, we feel that we are alone.  Simply look at the way men live.  If I were to give an honest assessment of my life for the past thirty years, I’d have to confess the bulk of it as Striving and Indulging.  Pushing myself to excel, taking on the battles that come to me with determination but also with a fear-based drivenness, believing deep down inside that there is no one I  can trust to come through for me.  Striving.  And then, arranging for little pleasures along the way to help ease the pain of the drivenness and loneliness.  Dinners out, adventure gear.  Indulding.  A fatherless way to live.

That sounds a lot like me – pushing to create meaning and find pleasure but constantly feeling a lacking sense of fulfillment, in the deepest sense.  And that’s what struck me in Tom Wolfe’s quote from The Story of a Novel:

The deepest search in life, it seemed to me, the thing that in one way or another was central to all living was a man’s search to find a father, not merely the father of his flesh, not merely the lost father of his youth, but the image of a strength and wisdom external to his need and superior to his hunger, to which the belief and power of his own life could be united.

My sister laid out a bit of history on my dad, and certainly there is more than the one final blow of abandonment that she wrote of.  Dad did some things right and some things wrong, and I’m sure most of what he did – good and bad – was right out of his own father’s playbook.  I suspect if I were to ask my dad the big question, “do you have what it takes?” his answer, after peeling away the defensiveness, anger  and nearly endless ways to prove his abilities and worth his answer would be “no”.  But I think the he did well enough with me that I could probably answer a resounding, “I don’t know if I have what it takes”.  And I hope that I can help my boys be able to answer “yes”.

I am trying to be more purposeful in initiating my sons into the world of masculinity, even though they are only 2 and 1 years old.  I want them to know that they have what it takes – and that I believe that about them and will help them in their journey.  I’m sure my sons will feel that primal bond to me as a father, and to their grandfathers and great-grandfathers.  And through that bond they will undoubtedly inherit some of my flaws – my temper, my self-doubting, and insecurities.  And I think that Eldredge has it right when he writes that,

Being a father is a noble undertaking, and a terrifically hard one.  A “hazardous conquest,” as Gabriel Marcel wrote, “which is achieved step by step over difficult country full of ambushes.”…  If our earthly fathers faltered along the way, it may have been that the country they were asked to travel was more difficult than we know.  The longer we live, the more I think we will see our fathers’ failures with compassion, and-I hope- we will see all that was good in what they were able to offer.”

I am learning to see my father in that way, and I hope to God that my boys can say the same about me.  I need fathering still – from my earthly father, from the men that I surround myself with, and from God – I am an unfinished man.  And because we live in a fallen world, where thorns and sorrows grow, I have to start my understanding of masculinity in God.  I have previously read this verse and thought it sounded rather wimpy.  But maybe there is more strength behind than I previously read:

Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.”  So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has also made you also an heir. (Gal. 4:6-7 NIV)

I am 3 pounds heavier now than when I started running three weeks ago. Muscle mass, anyone?

05272009

Widget powered by EveryTrail: GPS Geotagging

I am slowly bumping up my distance, running for longer periods of time, and feeling pretty good about it all (although my knees have been screaming at me the past few days).

Having my BlackBerry Storm with the EveryTrail application for tracking my distance/time/tracks helps, as does music streaming through Pandora on my BlackBerry. And of course, pushing my Everytrail stats to FaceBook, my Blog, and Twitter keeps me accountable to all of you to stick with it.

]]> http://joshuatownsend.com/2009/05/fatter-than-ever/feed/ 2 http://joshuatownsend.com/2009/05/running/ http://joshuatownsend.com/2009/05/running/#comments Wed, 13 May 2009 18:32:16 +0000 Josh Townsend http://joshuatownsend.com/?p=67

I have started running again.  Enough of being a fatty.  Today was the 2nd run, and it hurt.  But I’ll probably stick with it – I kinda want to see my boys grow up (despite what my cholesterol says).  Maybe I’ll even throw in some pushups and situps for good measure.

I’m roughly following the Couch to 5k program found here: . Seeing walking intervals in the program makes me not feel so bad about actually having to stop and walk for a bit during my runs.

Here is today’s run:
wednesday run at EveryTrail

Map created by EveryTrail:GPS Geotagging

My sister posted a note on a family breakfast favorite: ‘Oatmeal Cake’.  As she recalls, we first learned of Oatmeal Cake (a wonderful breakfast dish that my wife refuses to serve me because of the high fat content) at a retreat center up in the mountains of north central Pennsylvania.  Maybe the low-fat version that Pamela posted could actually get made in the Townsend household?

The memory of Oatmeal Cake reminds me of the couple times we did go as a family to the retreat center.  It was a beautiful location and a nice change to catch up with a childhood friend, Chip.  I remember climbing the mountain, a tree that grew up between a massive rock, splitting it in two, and the good food.

Oddly enough, however, the most vibrant memory I have of the place is that of old lady perfume and emerald colored sequins.  During one of our visits to the retreat center there was a group of old ladies also staying there.  They invited us kids in for arts and crafts time where they were making some little contraptions out of emerald colored sequins.  To this day, certain old lady perfume and seeing emerald green sequins in craft stores takes me back in time, as though I am being yanked into an alternate reality, like no other memory trigger I have.

Isn’t it funny how some things have the power to trigger such seemingly random memories in such a powerful way?

“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who are not.”

- Thomas Jefferson

]]> http://joshuatownsend.com/2009/03/bailout-i/feed/ 0 http://joshuatownsend.com/2009/03/book-study/ http://joshuatownsend.com/2009/03/book-study/#comments Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:03:03 +0000 Josh Townsend http://joshuatownsend.com/?p=46

My buddy Wade has invited me (and a bunch of other guys) to join in on an interactive book study centered around The Way of the Wild Heart: A Map for the Masculine Journey, by John Eldredge. Basically, we read the book simultaneously and post comments, thoughts, etc. on each chapter on our blogs.  I like the idea and plan to participate.  I have already read Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul, as has my wife, Stephanie.  I dare say that Wild at Heart was more influential for Stephanie, helping her understand the often confusion things that I do because of my man-ness (not an excuse, just an explanation).  I am working on The Secrets Men Keep: How Men Make Life and Love Tougher Than It Has to Be now, but will jump right into The Way of the Wild Heart: A Map for the Masculine Journey as soon as I finish up and look forward to a discussion with other guys trying to understand manhood and who we are called to be as mean in the world, nation, with our families as husbands and fathers, and in our own minds.  Wade has always been a source of encouragement for me and I look forward to this experiment with him and the rest of the guys joining in.  Feel free to join in if you want!

Round-about Christmas time I start to see the Samuel Adams Winter Classics Mix Pack on store shelves.  I love all but one of the 6 selections in the Mix Pack (especially the Old Fezziwig Ale – the Christmas cookie of beer).  The one that I don’t care for is the Cranberry Lambic.

Sam Adams Cranberry Lambic

The Samuel Adams website descibes the Cranberry Lambic this way:

Samuel Adams® Cranberry Lambic is a fruit beer that draws its flavor not just from the cranberries it is brewed with, but also from the unique fermentation character imparted by the rare wild yeast strain. The result is a flavor rich in fruitiness and reminiscent of cranberries and bananas, cloves and nutmeg. The yeast fermentation also will create a slight sourness on the sides of the palate, a signature of the original Lambic style which, with the subtle cereal note from the wheat malt, remind its drinker that, as fruity a beer as this is, it is still a beer.

I found the brew to be just too juicy and sweet and as a result always end up with several bottles tucked into the back of the kitchen cabinet.  I tossed a couple this past September that were left over from the previous year’s Yule celebrations, and let me tell you….. phew…. a super sweet fruit beer just doesn’t keep.  I nearly gagged as I poured the thickened, chunky, and just plain spoiled beer down the drain.  And it broke my heart.  I hate waste, especially a wasted beer.

I was poking around in the kitchen last weekend for some tasty treats and found a couple of bottles of Cranberry Lambic from this past Christmas.  Determined not to let them go to waste I quickly came to the conclusion that the best thing to do with them would be to bake – Beer Bread.  A Google search yielded a recipe (I’m just not creative enough to make one up on my own).  The recipe is simple:

Cranberry Beer Bread
3 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
0.5 tsp salt
0.5 c sugar
3 tbsp vegetable oil
12 oz cranberry lambic
0.5 c dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 180ºC/350ºF and lightly grease a loaf pan.
In very large bowl, whisk together dry ingredients. Stir in cranberries. Make a well in the center and add vegetable oil and beer. Stir just until no streaks of flour remain. Pour batter into prepared pan.
Bake 55-60 minutes, until top springs back when lightly pressed. Turn out of the pan and allow to cool on wire rack.

I didn’t have enough dried cranberries in the cupboard, so I went halfsies with the raisins.

The result: a nice sweet bread that was enjoyed with breakfast, and again with dinner.  The kids loved it too.  I have one more bottle of Cranberry Lambic in the cupboard, so I’ll be making another loaf soon.  I plan to use the same recipe for similar breads this summer: I am thinking that apricot beers, Sam Adams Cherry Wheat (this is a Sam Adams fruit beer that I CAN get behind!), and even a chocolate raspberry stout could be used for some great baking experiments.

I have merged http://iknowthings.com and http://joshuatownsend.com. http://joshuatownsend.com has received a face lift as part of a stimulus package at tax-payers expense. http://iknowthings.com has been redirected to http://joshuatownsend.com and content from the pathetic posting history of http://iknowthings.com has been imported to http://joshuatownsend.com. http://joshuatownsend.com has become the new hub for things about me on the interwebs.

“Diet Dr. Pepper: There’s Nothing Diet About It”

What the crap does that mean?

I just finished the last piece of my grape pie. For those of you who have never experienced it, Concord Grape Pie may be the most special treat of the fall season. The hearty taste of concord grapes are sweetened with just enough sugar to let you know that you’re eating dessert (although I have been known to serve it for breakfast as well). I thought I would share the recipe with all of you so you too could partake in Concord Grape Pie goodness.

We all know that a good pie starts with a good crust. I like to keep the crust on my grape pie simple to prevent the pie from being too rich. Here’s how I do it:

Cut together 2 cups of flour (1 whole wheat and 1 white) with 1 cup of shortening.
Add 1 egg, 1 Tbsp vinegar
Add about 5 Tbsp of water with a fork (fork keeps it fluffy)
Roll out the crust on a floured surface. This recipe makes 2 crusts, and the grape pie only uses a bottom crust so save the 2nd for another pie or make some cinnamon pinwheels with it.
Lay the crust in a pie plate and sprinkle it with sugar and milk.
The crust does not need to be pre-baked for a grape pie, but if you ever want to use this for another pie that needs a pre-baked crust, you can bake a single crust of this at 450F for 10-12 minutes. Poke some holes in it before baking to keep it from bubbling.

As for the good stuff, preheat the oven to 400F and gather up 4 cups of clean fresh concord grapes (that’s about 2 dry quarts or 1 1/2lbs).

Slip the skins from the grapes, setting the skins aside. If you don’t know how to slip a skin, it’s simple. Squeeze the little bastards until the pulp and seeds pop out where the stem was attached. It’s fun and the kids can help (but the grapes do stain).

Throw the pulp with seeds into a sauce pan and bring it to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer, uncovered, for 5 minutes.
Transfer the pulp to a sieve or colander with small holes to strain out the seeds. You may have to mush the pulp through the holes with a spoon – don’t waste any pulp, just get those nasty little seeds out. Once you are done, add the skins to the pulp.

Mix 1 cup of sugar, 1/3 cup of flour (white) and 1/4 tsp of salt. To the dry mixture add 1 Tbsp lemon juice, 2 Tbps melted butter, and the grape pulp/skin mixture. Pour all of this into the unbaked pie crust in the pan. Bake it at 400F for 25 minutes.

Meanwhile, sift together 1/2 cup of flour and 1/2 cup of sugar. Cut in 1/4 cup of butter until crumbly. Sprinkle atop the pie and bake it for another 15 minutes.

I like grape pie chilled with Cool Whip (but it is also good warm with Vanilla ice cream).

I am working on variations to the pie. I am thinking of making a thin peanut butter pie with the grape filling on top – peanut butter and jelly pie. What do you think? Do you have other creative uses for Concord grapes? Let me know in the comments.

So I have updated this site with a new theme, some new widgets and plugins, and some photos. I hope to start actually using it as life slows down a bit. I got a job offer today, and am following up on a few more options that should lead to offers very soon.

Apparently the cops in Lebanon, PA need some help this time.  Apparently, “they have no idea why [the man] was in the toilet with his clothes off.”  Maybe I can help.  Here’s some idears to get them started.

1.) He was hot as balls.  I mean, it was really hot up there in PA this weekend.  As a mud bath is to a pig, so is a poo-plunge to a man.  Keeping poo from the skin with a layer of clothing only defeats the cooling effect.

2.) He was drunk.  Everyone knows that drunks crave comfort.  I am always more comfortable without clothes, especially when I am hot.  And drunk.

3.) Poo-ing with clothes on is bothersome.  I have never been able to poo when clothed – I just can’t get comfortable.  That is why I poo nowhere but my own house – an affliction that makes road trips, visits to the grandparent’s house, and work so very difficult for me.  This poor fella must have suffered from the same condition.  I suspect that the devil-water gave him the confidence needed to poo in a place other than his own home.  Porta-potties have always lacked hooks to hand your trousers when you poo, and who wants to put them on the nasty sticky floor?  He probably just sat them on the bench and knocked them into the pit as he contortioned his body to reach a poorly placed roll of T.P. 

And when you are hot and drunk and needing to get your pants before anybody realizes that you can’t poo while clothed the only reasonable thing to do is go in and get em.  Comeon folks – We’ve all been there.  Let’s not spend too long noodling through this pot of soup.

Bonus feature:  How I Help

From time to time I like to offer insight into how it is that I came to know things.  Today’s hint: Draw on past experience.

Seeing as how my give-a-damn is busted, and I just don’t have enough energy to write substantive content, I hereby announce a new I Know Things Series: Maybe I Can Help.  I am always amazed at the stupid things the people struggle to figure out – and pay other people to figure out for them.  Kinda like the official studies of why prisoners want to escape from prison.  Really?  You had to commission a study to work through that one?  Maybe I can help….

The first installment comes from here: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN2634668020080526?sp=true.  It seems that Mexico has a shark problem and the Mexican Navy is trying to help out.  Fair enough – the ocean’s got a people eating shark, the Navy has guns (or harpoons or something that could kill a shark) – seems like a no brainer.  But read to the last sentence: “The Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo government is consulting with experts to determine what could be causing the attacks.” 

Maybe I can help: Hungry Sharks.  Shoot em & move on.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Socrates, in Plato, Dialogues, Apology
Greek philosopher in Athens (469 BC – 399 BC)

The examined life is just damn frustrating.

Me, in my head, today, at the office
Average guy in Virgina (1978 – ???)

Found this fun little read while watching the snow fall through my office window today: http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/jan/01/in-case-you-missed-it—2007-50-things-we-know-no1/?imw=Y

I caught this fun little project on Slashdot today.  Mr. Wood and I have been complacent in our brewing lately.  Maybe a brewing robot is just what we need to kick start a new batch – this is about the right time to get a nice light spring ale started.  I’ll get right on it as soon as I finish the kitchen, bathroom, & living room remodel, the basement cleanup, the baby room build-out, actually have (well, not me so much as Stephanie) Michael, and get through new-born hell.  Come to think of it, a new batch of beer may be just what I need to get through this busy season.

Robert Reich, Labor Secretary under President Clinton. had an interesting commentary on patience this morning on NPR.

“After what seemed like an interminable wait on the phone the other day for a service representative to help me fix a holiday gift that wouldn’t work, I heard the dreaded words: “Thank you for your patience.”

I heard them again after sitting on a plane that was stuck on a runway for over an hour. “Thank you for your patience.” Again, at a hotel that had misplaced my luggage. “Thank you for your patience.” A few days ago, at a restaurant where I thought I had made a reservation but somehow didn’t have a table, “Thank you for your patience.”

Again and again — it seems more this past holiday season than ever before — I’m being thanked for giving something I did not give and I don’t have, especially at that particular moment, and that’s patience.

What’s galling is that the thankers know I have no choice in the matter. Whether it’s on the phone or on a runway or in a lobby or in a restaurant, I’m stuck, because I’ve already committed myself to their service, flight, hotel room, or table for two. What I’m really being thanked for is not going ballistic.

The old saw says time is money. But now that most of us are working and commuting longer hours than ever, our time is worth more than money. Time is the most precious thing we have.

And if the market worked like it does in textbooks, we’d penalize companies. We’d pay them for their product and we’d bill them for our time. That way, they’d have an incentive to staff up when they need to, or devise backup systems for when something goes, or give customers better notice of delays — even though these steps might cost them more.

But the market isn’t working, because we rarely connect the price we pay for something with the time we lose waiting for it. Maybe there should be a truth in labeling law requiring companies to disclose not just prices, but also average waiting times.

Of course, given how backed-up Congress is, we’ll be waiting for years. In the meantime, I’d settle for a law banning the use of the phrase, “Thank you for your patience.”

For those of you who have been waiting months for me to post on this site, thank you for your patience.

The remodel is nearing an end.  Some touchup painting, replacing a door, molding, and pulling Coax and CAT5 to the upstairs. 

Sometimes I think the world has gone completely mad, and then I think, “Ah, who cares?” And then I think, “Hey, what’s for supper?”
– Jack Handey

I am no war-hawk, but I do like to keep up on the latest trends in high-tech weaponry.  I have been watching the Army’s Silent Guardian project with keen interest.  A review of this new ‘wave of agony’ weapon was posted here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=482560&in_page_id=1965

Non-lethal force to break up anti-war protests, riots, neo-Nazis, desert raves, high school proms, and bio-physicists conventions.  I love it.

Or a step into the more lethal side of things, researchers at the University of California Riverside are trying to create an annihilation gamma ray laser.  This new laser is made by combining electrons with their anti-partical positron to create a laser one million times more powerful than existing lasers.  Read all about it here: 
http://technology.newscientist.com/article/mg19526216.000-antimatter-molecule-could-lead-to-ultrapowerful-laser.html.

Seems like just what we need to finish off the war in Iraq.

Mr. Wood and I brewed up our second batch of beer on Saturday – an Irish Amber Ale.  We move to second stage fermentation tomorrow.

Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

–  Benjamin Franklin

This blog now available through http://www.iknowthings.com.  Exciting?  No.  But it’s all I’ve got.

“Foolish boy” I said to myself.  How can you be _____________ and so stupid?  Fill in the blank – a father, a working professional, more than 10,000 days old, a husband, a friend….  I’ve been telling people for a while that “I know things,” but on the inside the only thing I know is that I don’t know squat about myself.    And that’s why we’re here (here, as in this blog, and not in some metaphorical/philosophical sense): to gawk, laugh, and wonder in amusement as I prove how much I don’t know, and just maybe to learn something as we explore what I do know together.

My interests are diverse, so hang in there if I post on something that is of no interest to you.  Heck, I might even write on something that is of no interest to me.  This should be interesting for everyone…..