advice, mama kat, writer's challenge

Advice For The Lovelorn

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OK, so I lied. But the title go you to read didn’t it. It’s that time of the week – time for Mama Kat’s Writer’s Challenge. This week featured a number of prompts that didn’t enthuse me to the point of taking quill in hand (or finger to keyboard as the case may be). But at least number one came through and spoke to me:

1.) Share one piece of great advice you’ve received from someone who knows stuff…

Rather than one piece of advice, I thought I’d share several.

  • Water flows toward money. (From my grandfather, in reference to the fact that money can abrogate water rights quicker than a lightning flash.)
  • If a simple physical model can’t explain it, you have the wrong idea. (Richard P. Feynman on why complex mathematical models of reality are often wrong.)
  • There will be many people you can love and who can love you in your life. The one you marry will be the one you are in love with at the same time you both want to get married. (A paraphrase of a discussion with my mother.)
  • Don’t tease the sow. (My uncle, warning us to stay away from the vicious man-eater that was the old breding pig.)

So what is your good advice?

BTW, here are some tidbits of advice I found floating around Google:

Which one do you think is better?

social networking, tv, waste

Disturbing

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An article by Nicole Ferraro, “Intelligence Down, Social  Networking Up“, has some really disturbing statistics in it. The most disturbing is from our friends at A. C. Nielsen about the amount of time being spent on social networking sites by the populace of various countries.

Time Spent On Social Networking Sites

Add the fact the Nielsen also reports that Americans are glued to the boob tube 151 hours per month on average and you have a pretty good basis for understanding the decline and fall of American productivity. 151 hours a month comes out to 5+ hours a day. So we have 6+ hours on the social networking sites plus 5+ hours glued to the tube. It’s really fortunate that at least some people can multi-task; otherwise we would have only a few hours a day left to work and interact as normal human beings.

Inquiring minds want to know: do you find this as disturbing as I do? The loss of productivity, the increased obesity due to inactivity, the failure of normal human to human interaction and socialization – it all seems a high price to pay for things as mindless as TV and facebook and twitter, and …

ads, odd

Feel the …

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I happened to see an ad on TV tonight for a product that shall remain nameless (but you can find it here). The ad featured the catch-phrase “Feel the Heal”, trademarked by the nameless company, proving you can trademark anything. You can imagine what happened from there with my strange bent of thought. Heal came across as Heel, since that is what it sounded like. And from there I meandered down a hundred possible interpretations of the phrase, none of them good. Some examples:

Feel the Heel #1 – A picture of a rather elderly gentleman with a foot fetish sprang to mind. This poor fellow was kneeling at the feet of a beautiful model and trembling with awe and desire as she lifted her high heel clad foot to him with the words “Feel the heel”.

Feel the Heel #2 – A group of people are partying, dancing and drinking, having a great time. A group of young women are sitting around a table discussing the bad behavior of the cad at the club. One woman pipes in with “Feel the heel”. The others look aghast at her. She explains that he will undoubtedly be intimidated and go for safer prey.

Feel the Heel #3 – The star quarterback is lying on the field,writhing in pain. The head trainer turns to the team doctor and says “Feel the heel, feel the heel”.

So what comes to your mind now as I shout “FEEL THE HEEL’????

Does it change after seeing this picture?

interviews, Molly, weather

Sunday Going Down

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Just when you thought the weather couldn’t be any nicer for this time of year, today it is cooler and as the air pressure rises the winds are a-howling. In fact, the weather service is blaring this tidbit over the game I’m trying to watch:

Issued by The National Weather Service
Denver/Boulder, CO
1:02 pm MST, Sun., Jan. 24, 2010

… HIGH WIND WARNING IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 PM MST THIS EVENING…

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN DENVER HAS ISSUED A HIGH WIND WARNING… WHICH IS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 PM MST THIS EVENING.

* TIMING… STRONG WINDS WILL CONTINUE ACROSS THE AREA THROUGH THE AFTERNOON. THE WINDS WILL DECREASE THIS EVENING.

* WINDS… SUSTAINED NORTHWEST WINDS OF 35 TO 50 MPH WILL PERSIST THROUGH THE AFTERNOON… WITH GUSTS TO 65 MPH. THE STRONGEST WINDS WILL OCCUR ALONG THE WYOMING BORDER AND AREAS EAST OF INTERSTATE 25 IN THE AREA COVERED BY THIS WARNING.

* IMPACTS… THE STRONG WINDS WILL MAKE TRAVEL HAZARDOUS… ESPECIALLY ALONG INTERSTATE 76.

FYI, we are on I-76.

The warning blaring over the TV blocked out the kickoff and first three downs of the Colts-Jets game, so I’m really happy that the Colts didn’t do much. It is really annoying to miss a critical play because you are seeing a black screen with a computerized voice s.l.o.w.l.y reading the above announcement. Now if the weather critters can just hold it down for the rest of the game…

Yesterday was a busy day for me. My undergraduate alma mater does alumni interviews of applicants for admission since there are often 20 or more qualified applicants for each class opening. So early afternoon saw me interviewing a candidate. (I get the pleasure for the one or two applicants every few years out here in the boonies since there are no other alumni here. Many years ago when we were in California it was a group effort and we did 4-5 a day for a few weeks of Saturdays.)  The interview was fun and interesting.

Every once in a while you meet a spectacular young person who makes the  interview a pleasure. This was one of those. The young lady was one of the two most spectacular candidates I have seen in the last 30 years of doing such interviews. The pleasure of meeting a youngster that has not only lettered all three years of high school in three sports, but is also intellectually curious and knowledgeable and is involved in literally tens of charitable and community efforts as both a leader and a follower is all too rare. The interview ran an hour longer than normal just because of the interesting discussions on topics ranging from philosophy to literature to mathematics to politics. I really hope she is admitted; I think she would be a definite asset to the campus.

After spending an hour getting my notes into coherent form and filing them with the admissions office, it was time to go to a working meeting related to my real job. Dinner was catered in – by one of the attendee’s sons running to Sonic. It was that kind of a meeting. {*grin*} In any case, it was after 10pm when I walked in the door to the guilt inducing stare from Molly, asking “Where have you been? Where is my chewie? Huh?”

Molly is currently laying on the floor giving me the doggie evil eye:

She wants to go for a walk but the breeze outside and the game inside is making that a slim possibility. We’ll have to see if the guilt of not listening to Molly eventually exceeds the pleasure watching the game.


graduation, prison, speech

Jail Break

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Today featured a moment of true Colorado weather. As I left the prison after being the graduation speaker (92 inmates graduated with vocational education certificates), it rained, snowed, and blazed sunshine in a period of less than three minutes. Proof positive that the old adage “If you don’t like the weather in Colorado, wait five minutes.” is based on a kernel of truth.

I always find it amusing to watch the inmates after a ceremony like today’s. It is standard practice at the prison to have cake and punch supplied by the culinary arts program as the reward for the prisoners at the conclusion. The prisoners line up anxiously for their cake and then politely wait and hope there will be enough to have a second piece. Staff and guests always go first; I’m sure the fact that I always refuse the cake due to my diabetes makes more than one inmate happy I was the honored guest and not someone who might eat the cake.

Why you might ask? Because the diet they get has no deserts and no sweets and is heavy on fats and carbs. So the only sweets they might see in a year from their regular diet is that piece of cake after a graduation celebration. For many of the inmates, it clearly ranks right up their with getting assigned to a red-band group. (Red-band groups are groups composed of prisoners with spotless records and the wardens OK that are sent outside the gates on work details. That is the only way the inmates get a chance to see normal life scenes and open fields.)

It is also interesting to watch the inmates queue up to talk to you. They must have staff permission to approach within arms length of a guest. They must also have permission to speak to you. So they queue up to get permission to even say something so simple as “Thank you for coming.”  or “Thank you for caring.” Makes you really appreciate the freedoms you have in your own life once you spend a few hours there.

It used to be that there was some jocularity amidst the inmates, but it is clear that the murder last week has depressed the inmate population. I wonder how long it will be before some semblance of normal returns. The assistant warden and I had a long discussion on the matter while we were waiting for the inmates to be brought in. They are wondering the same thing.

Time to head for the bed.

Things Done Right