Living Forever With Good Health

On. house cleaning service cary nc

2012-02-05T17:46:00.000-08:00

Plus, this book failed to bring out the drama of the events. The main character and her friends meet a cult based on David Koresh, but it predates the zombies, so it says nothing about their new world. In fact, the cult is living well, so she is subliminally giving the impression they're a good thing. But there's barely a fight when they leave. Not even between the character's lion and the cult leader's tigers. Yawn. Same when they encounter a group who are celebrating the violence, even against living people not zombies. A little conflict, then they're gone. I finally gave up about 3/4ths of the way through. I wouldn't have lasted that long except I kept trying to figure out Hocking's appeal. Maybe she's better in her vampire books. Or will someday be a house cleaning service cary nc.

On laminate floor

2012-02-05T17:41:00.000-08:00

I also tried to read Hollow Lands by Amanda Hocking. I'm sure glad it was free. Everybody who's a writer interested in the Kindle knows of Amanda. She's managed to promote her books to make a lot of money,including landing a lucrative contract with a legacy publisher. Now I really wonder why. It's not that she's a bad writer. She's just not a good writer. Her prose is colorless and free of detail, except when she's describing clothes. Then she's particular. And some of the fighting against zombies in the book is told well enough. Good writing reads smoothly, while giving the impression the writer is in control, knows all the details of the scene and is giving the reader enough to make it real for them, even a laminate floor. I've often heard of cardboard characters. Hers live in a cardboard world.

On Medical Liability Insurance

2012-01-28T20:40:00.000-08:00

The on-going threat to Tom Sawyer in Tom Sawyer the novel is of course Injun Joe. I'd forgotten or never knew Tom and Huckleberry Finn originally saw Injun Joe kill a man in a cemetery late one night. They had another brush with him, and then Tom sees him in the cave when he's lost with Becky. However, the cave is then boarded up, so Injun Joe dies there of starvation. I'd have preferred a little direct solution, but I guess Twain didn't want Tom to kill anybody even if in self-defense. After all, he didn't have Medical Liability Insurance. Maybe that would have been too much for readers of that time. But it was one way to have Tom be indirectly the cause of Injun Joe's defeat.

On ACH payment

2011-12-30T20:15:00.000-08:00

It may not directly affect your next ach payment, but recently some scientists finished a dubious accomplishment of the year -- finding the chain of mutations of the influenza virus H5N1 -- bird flu -- which could make it easily transmissible between humans. The reason it didn't become a pandemic in 2005 when it made the media spotlight is because it infects people deep in the lungs, and this inhibits transmission through the air. It's also the reason it's so deadly. Now this new virus -- created by scientists deliberately -- could go from person to person easily, and so could cause a pandemic. I don't know if it's confirmed it's as deadly as the original bird flu, however. So far, it's been kept under control so nobody has gotten sick from it -- yet.

On swimming pool pump motors

2011-12-23T21:22:00.001-08:00

And I read Edgar Allan Poe's first short story, about two Hungarian noble families who've hated each other for centuries, and how one finally wins thanks to a supernatural intervention. Kind of good though he'll get better. A short story by HP Lovecraft is next on the list. I have a craving for Robert Louis Stevenson and William Hope Hodgsdon as well, but will probably wait and finish the John Le Carre novel I'm in the middle of first, though so far it's not really very good. Hopefully it will get better. I haven't been a big Le Carre fan, since I never understood The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, but I did enjoy a recent one. But so far, this one, could be used for the swimming pool pump motors, but perhaps it will have a good ending.

On pool safety covers

2011-12-23T21:16:00.000-08:00

I've also sampled some of the other public domain works I've downloaded to my Kindle. I read All's Well That Ends Well, a play by William Shakespeare, though it was odd in ways. I never understood why the man didn't want to marry the woman who was promised to him by the king. Then there's a scheme for her to replace a woman in bed he does want to seduce, and get his ring. And it seemed that not much was done with the traitorous advisor who is found out late in the play. That doesn't seem to relate to the romantic plot, which is not about pool safety covers. A short story by Lord Dunsany about a centaur who goes and takes a beautiful woman, but it's pretty slight.

On nj electricity

2011-12-17T20:21:00.000-08:00

However, I did know the Kindle library has a large number of older classic books that were published prior to 1923 so they're now in the public domain. I'd forgotten how many great books that would include. And people have created huge collections of authors. So my Mark Twain collection includes all his novels, short stories and essays, everything except the few books published by his daughter in the 1960s, such as Letters to Earth, his anti-religious book which he didn't dare publish in his lifetime. Those collections are often just a few dollars. And many individual books are there for free. So I have enough on my Kindle for maybe $20 to read over the next two decades if I read nothing else, which of course won't happen. I want to read more contemporary thriller and horror novels, using nj electricity to light the bulbs with.

On buy ipod touch

2011-12-03T18:22:00.000-08:00

Van Lustbader does seem to know something of the Yakuza, the organized criminals of Japan, though having them worth with the Mafia to create some super transnational criminal organization is not very credible. There's some subplot about Linnear developing a super computer, but nothing is done with that. Lustbader friend is a detective in the US who's following the mafia widow he's in love with. People come and go, nobody stands out. It's hard to see how they're connected to everybody else, and whatever parts of the plot you can figure out. Part of that may be that it's a continuation of four or so earlier books. I know I've read at least two of those, but I can barely remember which ones, or what happened, because they're just as confusing. Better to buy ipod touch and just listen to some Japanese music.

On babiesnbellies for maternity dresses

2011-11-20T18:48:00.000-08:00

Without Remorse does have flaws in several areas. What was the purpose of killing John Kelly's pregnant young wife at the very beginning? We don't even know her, but with him we're kind of upset, and then right away he's picking up a hitchhiker and has sex with her and then they fall in love right away. Even though it'd been six months for him since his wife's death, it'd only been a page for us the reader, so it seemed fast, and I was confused by the chronology. I guess it was meant to magnify the depth of Kelly's despair, making it more logical for him to go killing Pam's killers. He couldn't get revenge for his wife's death, which was a mechanical accident for which there was no blame on any person. But he could go after Pam's killers, and did so in a pretty credible way, along the way taking down high level drug dealers. If his wife had stayed alive to shop for babiesnbellies for maternity dresses, none of that would have happened, and we would have lost John Clark's services to his country.

On Christmas gifts for her 2011

2011-11-05T21:55:00.000-07:00

The really odd thing about Desperation is that King deals explicitly with religion and the nature of good and bad in the universe. He's never done that in any other book that I've read -- and I've read most of his stuff. His other books have dealt with religion and the nature of good and evil and the universe implicitly -- it's hard to write horror and avoid such questions -- but never explicitly. When he writes about organized religion he depicts maniacs such as Carrie's mother. So it's amazing that he treats "God" relatively sympathetically in this book. Even quotes the Bible at the end. Even draws a clear parallel between the boy in the book and Jesus, though the boy is not depicted in such grandiose terms. His job is to stop the evil that has taken over a remote town in Nevada before it can spread into the rest of the world. He isn't happy about what happens to him and his family, would rather focus on christmas gifts for her 2011.

On Aldelo System

2011-10-29T20:30:00.000-07:00

And it's apparent King has kept up his habit of not doing thorough research. The mine in Nevada has a history of using Chinese labor to dig the mine after the white miners walked out because it was too dangerous. That may well be plausible. But he has at least one of them be a woman engaged to one of the other miners, and they would have had women with them. Chinese women were not brought to US to work in mines. And he has a Chinese man shouting in Mandarin, which I doubt, since Chinese laborers were taken from provinces closer to the Pacific coast. I suspect they would have either spoken Cantonese or Hakka. Other stuff about the mine must have been researched, though, I admit. He never brought up the Aldelo System.

On metal hose

2011-10-29T20:24:00.000-07:00

In Desperation King even goes so far as to draw a parallel between the boy passing around sardines and crackers, and they satisfy everybody even though there were only a few tins and half a roll of crackers, obviously referencing the miracle where Jesus fed the multitudes with just a few fish and loaves of bread, and everybody had enough to eat. Yet he has even the boy believing God is cruel. And I'm not sure I like the character of the serious writer who won the National Book Award, and I wonder if he's modeled on anybody in particular, though not many writers wind up marrying Hollywood movie stars, even ones that are over the hill, as he did. But I'm nearly the last 5th of the book, even without a metal hose, and it's now apparent King is making a Great Statement about how we should not be exploiting the environment.

On Victoria' Secret Coupons

2011-10-08T19:33:00.000-07:00

I can only speak for myself as a man, and I enjoy seeing beautiful women in Victoria Secret lingerie. Somehow such intimate apparel increases both the impression of a woman's femininity, and the overall feel of intimacy, of having a woman in her own bedroom. It can be hotter than seeing a woman fully nude. It enhances her beauty, and teases the man by putting up just a slight barrier between him and the woman's body, yet makes her seem available because lingerie is gone after just a little bit of effort. Of course, the whole point of victoria's secret coupons is to save money, which everybody needs to do these days. So women should give lingerie to their man as a gift to him, and maybe to herself.

On carhett coats

2011-09-23T22:42:00.001-07:00

In a way I don't like leaving. It's kind of nice to be within a few minutes walk of a bunch of bank ATM machines, and two JolliBees and a McDo and various other fast food places and a grocery store, and the bookstore where I can buy supplies for myself and for the kids for school. Still, I'm a close jeepney ride to all those things, and far enough away from home that the kids won't be interrupting me. I enjoy being with them but I need to focus on work so I can pay their bills in the future as well as now. And the workers at McDo know me and my orders for breakfast and lunch, so I won't see their bright smiling faces as often, because unlike in US where everybody is happy and polite because they have to be, most in McDo really are happy and wish you well. At least it'll stay so warm I won't need to wear any carhartt coats.

On car title loans California

2011-09-23T22:35:00.000-07:00

In my last week of working at this Internet cafe, except for intermittent periods, or waiting for my own Internet access to be hooked up, or brownouts. I've got my own place finally. I should have done it months ago, but I wasn't sure how much it would cost, or how much I'd have to pay for a laptop. Still not sure about that, but I can get by for now on a good one. Goodbye to no longer being allowed to download and keep programs I need such as Filezilla, Notetab Lite, and Gimp. And young teenaged boys screaming at each other while they play games. And, hopefully, slow playing videos. And low sound volume on them. And holding broken headphone earpieces to my ears. And also the organ playing across the hallway. And I won't have to get any car title loans California to do this either. I'll still have to ride a jeepney in the morning and probably a tricycle home or jeepney home.

On Wilson cell booster

2011-09-17T21:15:00.000-07:00

The Black Dahlia cops are mainly mean in carrying out their duties - some smart, some stupid. They were more aware their main duty was to keep antisocial elements under control. There's one scene where they want to interview four witnesses who have falsely confessed to the crime to make sure they really were false confessions that's sickening in its brutality, though it didn't use a wilson cell booster. Still, I didn't like the main character as well as many readers on Amazon did, so I wasn't so taken with him, and so in the end this book was not really satisfying to me, though he does discover the the true killer - and then lets them go - an act of mercy I don't condone. Somehow I didn't figure out his psychological makeup, so I didn't follow all his weird psycho-sexual twists and turns, which were a lot more complicated than anything Raymond Chandler wrote.

On roadside assistance

2011-09-17T21:10:00.000-07:00

Well, I finished reading The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy this week, and I'm not certain what to do think. He's quite good at depicting what Los Angeles what like in the 1940s, in ways Raymond Chandler could probably only hint at. I seem to recall reading one book by him before, but I didn't care for it. As I remember, it started out as a good mystery police procedural but all the police were totally corrupt, and it devolved into a complex mess of who was "running" who, that is which higher up police officers using lower ranks to carry which criminal acts. This book does have police corruption, but they're not totally on the side of the criminals or criminals here. Not politically correct, though, that's for sure. Still, they'd provide roadside assistance to you if your car broke down someplace.

On pool heat pumps

2011-08-28T00:59:00.000-07:00

Another book I read recently is Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane. I'd read one previous book by him, and was impressed at how he could build up some intense emotions. However, I was also annoyed by some illogic and lack of attention to detail. The hero's crazy buddy served in the Marines during 1982 in Beirut, and the hero tells us that one time his buddy made a map of Beirut and included streets not included in the official street guides. So I asked myself, how did he know they really existed? He doesn't. Anybody could add new streets to a city map and nobody would know except people in that neighborhood. Besides, Beirut is an old city that probably has many narrow places we wouldn't even call alleys let alone streets, and they're probably in constantly flux. I think that's also the book where some character is given the background of an Army kid who grew up in such places as North Korea. North? Mmmm. But there was no role in that other book for pool heat pumps.

On Depression Rehab Treatment Centers

2011-08-14T01:07:00.000-07:00

Well, Italy has passed some tough monetary measures in an effort to reduce its debt and to avoid the kind of problems that Greece has been suffering from the last few years. With luck, they can avoid hurting Italians so much, so they don't have to open up new depression rehab treatment centers, and will avoid the civil problems of Italians rioting in the streets. You have to feel sort of sorry for some of the people affected by these measures. On the other hand, they're benefiting from a form of welfare. Lots of Europeans would rather work less and just get by, because they have that option. Of course some Americans do too, but it's not an option for so many of us.

On Samsung LCD

2011-08-14T00:59:00.000-07:00

I think one thing that people who need some extra money can try to do is be a mystery shopper. That's where you go into a place of business, usually a store or restaurant, pretend to be real customer, and then make a report on it to the head company, listing all the good points and bad points. If you actually buy something, they usually pay for it, such as if you try shopping for a samsung lcd. When I worked at Dominos that franchise would sometimes have other managers call from a phone located in another store's area, but we somehow always knew when this was happening. If we got any real mystery shoppers from the company itself, we were never told.

On straightening irons

2011-08-07T00:51:00.000-07:00

One thing I don't understand, is the use of straightening irons by people who want to have straight hair instead of curly. My own hair is pretty curly, and though I guess that's a problem for women, it wasn't for me. (I didn't worry much about how unruly it was, and now there's very little left on top to be curly and unruly). One of my nieces is nicknamed Curly, and even her mother didn't understand how funny I think that is, since I used to be called Fuzzy when I was younger and still had hair on top of my hair to be fuzzy. Apparently her hair was curlier when she was younger and they gave her that nickname. Still, it's kind of wavy and curly at the bottom though it hangs down straight, and I think it looks nice. So I hope she never straightens it. And then there are many people with straight hair who get it made curly and fuzzy.

On low cost life insurance

2011-08-07T00:44:00.000-07:00

Major events have happened in the financial markets. Just about a week ago, the big news was a deal between Democrats and Republicans to raise the debt limit in return for future budget cuts to about the current level. Supposedly attention then shifted to the debt crisis in Europe, not to how to get low cost life insurance, but on Thursday the US stock market went down over 500 points, the biggest in points since December 2008, part of the entire recession and bear market. However, I suspect that slide was greater in terms of percentages. Still, on Friday it went up by just about the same. Tomorrow? Who knows?

On mantel designs

2011-07-10T19:22:00.000-07:00

What I found unconvincing about Debt of Honor by Tom Clancy is that he has Japan, China and India all working in concert -- except that Japan is in the forefront of confrontation with the US. It's their plan, but they convince the Chinese to cooperate enough to help with the economic sabotage and to keep a unified Korea quiet by threatening them. India is having a military standoff with the US but it's not clear yet whether they intend that to go to shooting stage, or whether they really think they can take over Sri Lanka without opposition at sea. So far, China has taken no risks and done very little, so it's not likely Japan will want to give them full access to Siberia. And will India stand by while its historic enemy China becomes even more powerful, in league with Japan? Is Sri Lanka worth that? For the tea? So far as I can see, he's playing with some ideas as mantel designs, trying to make things seem worse, to make central threat from Japan seem credible, or to justify cooperation from Russia, or to set up later book where Russia and China go to war, which I haven't read yet.

On telephones cellulair

2011-07-10T19:18:00.001-07:00

I'm reading Debt of Honor by Tom Clancy, which is a pretty interesting book. Some of the appeal of such books is, of course, the feeling of being an insider. How many of us know so much about radar on aircraft and sonar on submarines? It's about a war with Japan, which seems crazy, but he makes it credible, especially because at that time the US was downsizing its military in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. I have to wonder how much the downsizing portrayed in this book represents actual downsizing of US military in early 90s? And I have to hope that since we've been having several wars, that we have strengthened military to be stronger than portrayed here in this book. Of course, although the equipment was up to date for that time, it's behind now because they don't even have Téléphones cellulaires.

On desk name plates

2011-07-10T19:13:00.000-07:00

It's the rainy season here where I am. Contrary to my expectations and fears, it's not pouring down constantly. Some days are still sunny, warm and clear. However, you never know. I heard some terrific downpours last night while trying to sleep. This morning when I left the house to walk the four blocks or so to where I pick up public transportation, it was cloudy but no precipitation. I walked about a block, and then it started to pour. Fortunately, I'm always carrying an umbrella. However, that's only a little protection when it's pouring and the wind is blowing the rain toward you under the umbrella. So I got fairly soaked by the time I reached the main road. Since then it's been dry enough that I'm almost dry now. Well, still damp but no longer sloshing. Still, a wet day here is better than a dry day at a day job with desk name plates.

On Honda generator

2011-06-25T19:40:00.000-07:00

Shibumi is a strange mixture of fact that makes the story credible -- and pure absolute bullshit. I'm assuming the information regarding the Japanese game Go and the Basques and spelunking is accurate. It certainly seemed to me. But on top of that he adds the four stages of lovemaking (according to whom?), a man who raises girls from infancy to be extremely high-class, expensive courtesans, and and exotic multi-ethnic brothels in Ceylon (which even then was Sri Lanka) and Madasgasgar where Nicholas learned to be a great lover. Nicholas once worked for the man who raises the courtesans and was paid by having one given to him for a few years. Trevanian conveniently skips over the implications and potential of the age at which they begin and that when the girls have no choice (they were put there by parents at infancy), it's basically slavery, meaning this man must be prepared to control and punish any who want to run away. And the idiocy of putting the greatest brothels of the world on poor islands just amazes me. He obviously researched Japan, but figured those two places were simply exotic and threw their names in when they couldn't even afford a honda generator.

On bulk shea butter

2011-06-25T19:36:00.000-07:00

Yes, the more I think about it, the more I'm surprised that Shibumi by Trevanian is considered such a classic. One author wrote a novel that was the story of how Nicholas went into China and successfully performed the mission that made the CIA spring him from jail in Japan. This was mentioned briefly in Shibumi but not fully told as the deal was the point of Nicholas' life story leading up to the events of Shibumi. It demonstrates that thriller readers must go for something well-written with an interesting character and a different point of view, even if it's not bulk shea butter and adds up to a mess, which it does in my opinion.

On age spots

2011-05-21T20:36:00.000-07:00

But I did find one potential bright spot, a video course that may help me multiply my efforts through outsourcing. That's assuming I can find a good person to be a VA for me. Hopefully my wife or my sisters-in-law know somebody. I want to have a powerful residual income stream before I have too many more age spots, so I worry a lot about how more money is going out than coming in, and how I can increase the money coming in as well as decrease what goes out. It's an uphill battle. I'm sure I can add more to my portfolio, but I can I add enough of them, fast of them? That is the question. I'm working hard, but don't have as much time here as I did back in the states when my time was all my own once I took care of daily errands such as shopping etc.

On buy gold coins

2011-05-14T20:09:00.000-07:00

A lot of people certainly want to buy gold coins these days. I can understand the impulse, though I don't share the impulse myself. It's certainly obvious that the US government is taking a weak US dollar approach to paying off its many days, including the benefits that it legally owes US citizens for various reasons, because it passed the laws and now people receiving those checks and other benefits don't want to give them up. The welfare state is painting itself in a nasty corner. Bush, although certainly a weak dollar president in many ways, at least wanted to begin Social Security reform, but could not get the political traction.

On rop term life insurance

2011-05-08T21:42:00.000-07:00

I just finished a thriller by Dan Brown, one he wrote before The DaVinci Code. It too has to do with hidden codes and secrets, though in a much more modern way. It's about the National Security Agency, the NSA, which most Americans are unaware even exists. The CIA get all the publicity, the NSA is happy about that. Nobody except the heroes should take out rop term life insurance, as is normal with thrillers. You never know who is going to do. He uses the same opening formula. Somebody dies, and that sets off a chain of events of the book. In this case, the dead guy figures out what he did wrong and tries to correct it, but without thinking up bizarre codes for the rest of the book to figure out. In a sense it's more credible than the deaths which open later books.

On chocolate gift baskets

2011-04-30T23:50:00.000-07:00

I plead guilty to not buying the kids any Easter candy. That kind of tradition, such as chocolate gift baskets, is not done so much here. They focus on the religious aspects of the holiday. We did go to an Easter service last Sunday. Besides, they get quite a bit of candy and soda as it is, more than I like them to, but not as much as they'd like. There is no shortage of snack foods on the streets and in the malls. There're people selling stuff everywhere you go, and lots of it is snack food. And they soon learn how to buy it when they have money of their own.

On metrogel

2011-04-30T23:39:00.000-07:00

To my surprise, though I guess I shouldn't haven't been, the kids took to swimming almost right away although to me it was still cool. I waded a little big in the water and felt it was still pretty cool, and the air at six was still pretty cool. But the kids got in and started swimming around a lot, except the very youngest of them. Even without metrogel, one girl would not go in at all. One a little older got dragged in some but didn't like it. One finally went in a little with me hours later and was surprised to learn she liked it. But her one year old sister played and swam all day.

On management jobs

2011-04-30T23:34:00.000-07:00

It's quite hot here, but yesterday we went to the beach. I had my misgivings because the ostensible reason was to help relieve our coughs which me and my friend and most of the kids have. They believe that breathing sea air very early in the morning is good for your lungs. May be true, I don't know. We did leave about five o'clock in the morning and got there maybe an hour later, so it was still earning in the morning, although we missed first light. But arranging for everything took many administrative and management jobs. We had to hire a car to bring the kids while loading the truck up with food from their favorite fast food, which included a lot of fried chicken to last the day.

On emergency road service

2011-04-10T01:24:00.000-07:00

I'm reading the Fellowship of the Ring again for the first time in forty years, something I've dreamed for years of having time to do. Boy, if ever a bunch of travelers needed emergency road service, it was those hobbits and Aragorn. And they haven't even gotten to the really heavy duty dangers yet. It's lucky that Tolkien posted elf lands conveniently where they were most needed. And too bad the movie had to eliminate LothLorien. I'd forgotten that came after the gates of Moria. I'd mixed it up with Rivendell, and kept wondering where the white light fluid Frodo wears around his neck would come from.

On outdoor ceiling fans

2011-04-02T21:08:00.000-07:00

Right now I'm staying in a new house in a new subdivision, certainly the most luxury I've ever enjoyed before in this country, more even than the apartel where we used to stay. The one bad part is that there is no yard or open space for the kids to be running around in. Houses here don't really have yards, though houses in the country will have open space around them where kids play and plants are grown for food and flowers. But here where it's more the city, the only open areas are lots where houses have not yet been built, and so we don't have permission to let the kids go there. So they don't need any outdoor ceiling fans of course. I did see a few kids playing outside in the street the other day when I went for a walk. It didn't seem too dangerous, because there's not much traffic, but they were older than some of my family's.

On acne

2011-03-26T21:40:00.000-07:00

Then after the abused wife is taken to jail for killing her husband -- which was actual murder in my opinion -- the hero of The Rainmaker is ready to mount her legal defense. Okay, she would need one and has the right to one - but should it be someone who's in love with her and who was actually present at the crime scene. Is that ethical for lawyers to represent women they're sleeping with? Well, okay, I'm sure it happens a lot, almost as much as acne, but it seems unethical to represent someone for a crime which you all but witnessed yourself. Grisham would condemn that if done by a Republican. All his Republicans are stupid or mean and unethical. The fancy law firm bugs the hero's office.

On www.sensareviews.com

2011-03-26T21:34:00.000-07:00

And it's amazing to me that John Grisham did allow the abused wife to murder her husband once he was helpless, and to have the new lawyer hero bring a gun with him when they went to the apartment. Liberals don't like guns or self-defense. I think it was smart to bring it and to use it, though the hero is not good with guns, obviously, so the husband still has the advantage. He doesn't give the hero time to use the gun, let alone time to look up www.sensareviews.com, so he still has the advantage. Except there are two of them, and so they do manage to disable hubby. They would have taken her clothes and left together, but they didn't. But as an abused wife she had the right to kill her abuser according to Hollywood. Not in self-defense, which I'd go along with, but after stopping the attack.

On network reviews

2011-03-26T21:26:00.000-07:00

I doubt if you could find this in netbook reviews, because it's not politically correct to say this, but I believe that in The Rainmaker the movie John Grisham (assuming this was in the novel he wrote, which maybe it isn't - I can't say because I haven't read it, only seen the movie) he sanctions murder. The abused wife the hero falls in love with goes to her husband (with our hero) to get clothes because she's finally decided to divorce him. Great. Hubby comes in and fights the hero and his wife. Predictable. They fight back. Great. I believe in self-defense. But after they manage to subdue hubby, she takes an aluminum baseball bat and kills him. Not so great. They should have just left. When it went beyond self-defense, she had no right to kill him, I believe.

On suboxone treatment detox centers

2011-03-26T21:22:00.000-07:00

Although the medical portion of the movie The Rainmaker was about leukemia and not suboxone treatment detox centers, there's another subplot. The brand new lawyer hero meets a woman who is getting beat up by her husband. Of course he wants her to use him to help her file for divorce. So far, so good. Obviously she does need to do that. But he's obviously turned on by seeing her bruised and bandaged and in a cast and needing a wheelchair. To the extent he feels pity for her, okay, and it's okay to be turned on by her after she's recovered and is attractive again. But he's turned on by her victimization.

On SSDI

2011-03-12T19:02:00.000-08:00

Recently I read a good hardboiled crime novel by John D. MacDonald, JUDGE ME NOT, which was written and published before SSDI became law. MacDonald was one of the later hardboiled crime writers to come along. He honed his craft and was discovered and became a bestseller in the 1960s. This one is from his early period, and is about a man helping to clean up a small city of its local organized crime. I didn't find the ending scene where he and a lawyer invade the gang's sanctuary very credible, but it otherwise works pretty well. The title most likely is meant to apply to the call girl that the hero falls in love with, but could apply to many of the characters, none of whom are all good or all bad.

On Rocky Patel

2011-02-27T16:59:00.000-08:00

It was interesting to read Ken Fisher's book Debunkery to see the things I both agreed with him on and disagreed with him on, even though he never mentions Rocky Patel. For example, he points out that people are living far longer than they used to, so reaching age 65 doesn't mean you should stop investing for the long run. Not at all. You may easily live another twenty or thirty years. And he points out that beta is not a measurement of risk. A stock's beta is a measurement of a stock's past risk. I don't like equating beta with risk either but I call it volatility, and that's not risk. He is firmly on the side of investing for capital gains. He dismisses the idea of investing for income. But he also agrees with me that everybody should invest outside the United States as well as in it, for safety through diversification.

On 18th birthday gifts for her

2011-02-27T16:55:00.000-08:00

Nor did I realize how many pidgin and creole languages there were in the world, and had been in the past, until I read The Power of Babel. A lot of times these come up with people associate socially and economically, to buy and 18th birthday gifts for her, for example, and yet they don't or can't learn each others languages thoroughly, so they do just enough to get by, and mix up both sometimes. I'd just heard of pidgin English from reading old books referring to it in the South Pacific, but pidgins have come up all over the world where people have encountered each other and had to get something done. As one polyglot on Youtube points out in a video, people have been learning languages long before there were dictionaries and grammars and languages schools and teacher. Yet somehow they did it.

On diet pills

2011-02-20T11:02:00.000-08:00

According to the weather forecasts, two more snow storms are coming in this week. Just when it took over a week of warm weather to melt all the previous snow we had. Just when I was hoping to get a new roof on Monday, after waiting for well over a month since making the final arrangements with the roofing company. According to the weather I read, starting tomorrow the upper Midwest will gets lots of snow, but it won't be this far south, but later (Tuesday?) will come a second storm that's farther south and in my area will be a mix of snow and rain. Just what I didn't need. Or can't it wait a day or two until this house has a new roof. Maybe I'll need to shovel my driveway again, which is better than diet pills for losing weight when I have to fight the ice and break it up. Well, maybe it will clear up and I'll get a roof late in the week.

On best acne treatment

2011-02-20T10:52:00.000-08:00

Wow, there's a news item from Portland Oregon about a couple who shoplifted $5 million worth of merchandise from Safeway stores. They stole mostly small and ordinary items, though that included DVDs and such. What the article leaves out is what the couple did with this stuff. Obviously it wasn't just for their own personal use. But how do you fence razors and shampoo? Maybe they also stole the best acne treatment. Who knows. Were they selling it on eBay? That would work for the DVDs, but not for the ordinary stuff. Selling it to their neighbors for half off? They got away with it for years, but finally were under suspicion and investigated with security cameras and putting a tracer on their van. With so many stores such as Wal-Mart using security supplied by RDD chips, I'd be afraid to take anything. I wouldn't know what to do with extra bottles of shampoo. After you've stolen a lifetime supply, what do you do with it? Where do you keep it?

On pre workout supplement

2011-02-20T10:29:00.000-08:00

There's an interesting story on the Drudge report today about a news item of a guy living in India who has thirty-nine wives. Yes, you read that correctly, and he's adding more. What the article leaves out is how he makes his living. It does say he's the leader of a religious "sect" that says that having multiple wives is all right. And he and his wives look Chinese rather than Indian, so maybe he fled anti-religious China for India, though neither country officially recognizes the marital rights of the extra wives. He says that he enjoys having many people to look after. I have to wonder if perhaps they are all living on the donations of people in the sect. Maybe he's just a successful businessman who is openly married rather than keeping mistresses on the side as so many wealthy men in Asia do. Even in China, though it's politically correct there, and can get you in trouble if you get on the wrong side of the government. I wonder if he takes a best pre workout supplement before going to bed at night. Supposedly they rotate sharing his bed.

On natural makeup

2011-02-12T08:19:00.000-08:00

Back in my hippie days, of course I didn't want women to wear makeup, because that was so unnatural. However, years later I changed my mind. And I know it's not just a modern fashion. Women wore some form of makeup even in the Paleolithic era, so it's a natural urge. I can understand now wanting to wear a lot of unhealthy goop on my face, so I applaud the trend for natural makeup, so women can enhance their natural beauty but do it in a way that adds to it, and supports the health of their skin and body so they don't lose that beauty and health in the long run by using makeup.

On personality assessment test

2011-02-12T07:28:00.000-08:00

Companies are organizations of individuals with a wide variety of talents, interests and aspirations. And companies need a wide variety of tasks performed, from getting wastebaskets emptied at night to selling their product to managing a large manufacturing plant. Yet people vary a lot -- not just in their skills and education -- but in their mental and emotional ability to perform these tasks.

For example, accountants need to be analytical and detail oriented, but not people oriented. Good sales people are always as gregarious as the stereotype is, but do have to get along well with people and yet have the toughness not to take rejection personally. But many kinds of people might graduate from business school with a degree in "Management." Taking courses qualifies them to get their feet in the door of a company, but does not by itself tell those companies which role the new graduate is truly suited to serve.

The personality assessment test is one tool they use to match people with the jobs they perform.

On rack card printing

2011-02-12T07:24:00.000-08:00

Recently I read a pretty interesting article on cell biology and how he believed that relates to spirituality by Dr. Bruce Lipton. It doesn't include a chapter on rack card printing, but it does goes into a lot of detail about cell structures and how cells react to their environment. His contention is the the effective brain of a cell is not the nuclear, because cells can survive for quite a while without a nuclear, but the cell membrane which picks up the biochemical signals from its environment. According to him, these can override or ignore or selectively choose the genes and DNA, which most biologists believe determines the fate of cells.

On shoes women

2011-01-29T11:15:00.000-08:00

I've started reading a very interesting book that's also very controversial, about the natural of sexual relationships between cave people, before the agricultural revolution. Although they didn't much wear shoes womens were not confined to one man, or one man to one woman. The book is SEX AT DAWN, and the authors point out that many other hunter gathering societies shared food. Their societies did not revolve around the nuclear family, as so many people today believe, preach or assume. It makes a lot of fascinating points. I don't know whether they're correct, but they make many interesting points based on what we know of hunting gathering societies in our time and the near past which were studied before much contact with civilization.

On rifle scops

2011-01-23T08:33:00.000-08:00

I've also just started reading Emergency by Neil Strauss, in which he details the story of how he went from a normal modern American taking civilization for granted and being totally unable to accomplish any survival skills to becoming aware of just how fragile our current state of law and order is, and determined to learn what he needed to to survive. It opens with him going with a survivalist type of guy who has a bumper sticker of a rifle scopes and the words this is my peace symbol on it. Sort of like my favorite house sticker to see on a front door: Forget the Dog, Beware of Owner. Anyway, the guy is showing him how to kill and butcher a goat.

On which diet pills work

2011-01-15T09:31:00.000-08:00

Last night I read a book on walking. According to the author, instead of asking which diet pills work, you should be out walking. Trust walking, he says. Of course, lots of people don't or can't. They want to lose weight without putting in any exercise, even walking. And now in winter, it's very hard. I don't like to go out when it's very cold and there's snow and ice on the street. I do shovel the snow from my driveway, so that's exercise. But instead of walking I sit on the stationary bicycle, but I have to admit that's very boring. I'd rather be moving and seeing a change of scenery than just sit in one place and peddle my feet. I can walk for a hour or more, but I can't ride the stationary bicycle for more than thirty minutes at a time.

On oily skin treatments

2011-01-15T09:25:00.000-08:00

This week I tried to read The Fed by Martin Mayer, but I mostly failed. It's not that it was imprenetrable and detailed, or even about oily skin treatments instead. I could read the prose. I just couldn't get a handle on what it meant. Mayer has written a lot of other books about banking and finance, but I'd never read one before. I guess I won't try any more. I was looking for a factual, historical account of The Federal Reserve, of the economics and politics of the time, and how it has changed since. He touched on these topics, but in a very skipping from here to there. Much of what he wrote seemed to touch on things, but I'd wanted a much more complete story, from the beginning to now. I guess that would require a very long book. I know William Grieder wrote one some years ago, but I'm not so sure whether or not his bias against the Fed would affect the book.

On obx vacation rentals

2011-01-15T09:21:00.001-08:00

I've just started reading Deadly Honeymoon by Lawrence Block, a very slim paperback crime thriller with a young couple taking their honeymoon at an isolated rented cabin by a lake. However, it's not obx vacation rentals. I'm only a few pages into it, but they've met a man next door who seems a puzzle. He used to be in construction on Long Island, but now he says he's retired, but may relocate, and he's lonely, so he's glad to talk to them. Yet it's clear he's hiding something that is going to involve the couple in something they don't like. He's got to be hiding out, or why pick such an isolated place? They weren't looking for company because on a honeymoon they only need each other, right? This was made into a movie starring nobody I ever heard of, so maybe it was Block's first big success. He's sold many more books, and had some of them turned into movies starring Whoopi Goldberg.

On sale

2011-01-09T06:54:00.000-08:00

So I've been checking around these various eating plans, and also the plan described by Tim Ferris in his new book The Four Hour Body, which has what he calls the Slow Carb diet, but that isn't primitive based because it does allow for legumes -- that is, beans and lentils, but which he claims works well. There's the Paleo diet, which may be the original. But I think I like the Primal Blueprint the best. And it definitely seems to be working, based on the picture of the author, who's right about my age and who has an incredibly in shape body, and his wife who's just a few years younger but who has a body that looks like she's still about twenty. Their faces are slightly older. Not "old," but obviously over twenty not baby faces any longer. But both bodies appear to be in good health from this plan. Don't wait for a sale.

On flip cameras

2010-12-31T12:07:00.000-08:00

Recently I read a great book on health and anti-aging called the Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson. It's a total program of diet and exercise which I guess is why he calls it a blueprint rather than a diet, but that's where you usually find it in a bookstore. He advocates a low carb diet somewhat similar to the Zone, but he says stop eating all grains completely. Dr. Sears allows small amounts of grains (such as croutons in a salad or half a hamburger bun) and occasional slow cooked oatmeal and some soy. Plus he advocates 3 kinds of exercise - long easy distance, some heavy lifting, and some sprinting. He used to be a world-class marathoner and triathlete but now recommends not training that way. You don't have to live like a caveman totally, though - you can keep flip cameras.

On banking careers

2010-12-26T09:03:00.001-08:00

Another movie I watched last night was about the adventures of a Indian version of James Bond, pursuing the head of Pakistan's ISI because they're supporting terrorists in the Kashmir region of India. There was a lot of crazy action, most of it hardly credible, but that's certainly true of Hollywood too -- even more so, because Hollywood movies have a bigger budget to waste on fancy equipment and computer graphics. This relied more on his ability to disguise himself, but there's a scene where he breaks into a building that relies on a lot of high tech mumbo jumbo that is probably -- like most movie portrayals of computer hacking -- meaningless. However, unlike James Bond, he falls in love with the beautiful woman, and winds up happily married to her. He survives the movie, but in real life banking careers would be much safer.

On cigar auction sites

2010-12-19T09:56:00.000-08:00

I remember once when my grandfather picked me up at swim team practice at the YMCA, inside during the winter. He arrived early while we were still swimming, and sat smoking a cigar. The fumes got into the pool area and nearly choked me, and everybody else I'd guess. I have no idea what he would say now about cigar auction sites, but he did like to smoke them sometimes. In the summer after eating dinner he'd go out to the front porch to smoke, since my mother didn't want the smell inside her house. I guess he just came from a time when many men smoked cigars. It was a common habit when he was younger.

On cheap car insurance

2010-12-12T16:06:00.000-08:00

But when it comes to disappointments, Breathless by Dean R Koontz is far so than Mister Slaughter. At least Robert MacCammon tried to give readers a good novel. Koontz didn't even try. To his credit, he's trying to get a message of hope for the world, but it's not convincing. Does he really think we're on the verge of some transformation -- that all we need is for a new species of dog-person to appear to entrance us? Hard to say. I don't necessarily want novels about cheap car insurance, but I would like conflict, drama, escalating tension, a strong climax -- and believable and credible. It's hard to do well, but Koontz is not even trying.

On ATV Accessories

2010-12-04T15:37:00.000-08:00

Around twenty-five years ago, I answered a help wanted call for a second job because I really needed to make more money, and I didn't like the telemarketing job I had every night with DialAmerica. Telemarketers hate telemarketing just as people hate getting called do. Of course, that's partly we got so much abuse from those people. Anyway, I needed to make more money, so I hooked up with a company selling really high class fire detection and alarm systems for homes. They made the average $10 smoke detector look like a child's go cart, and they're the Ferrari. They're not ATV Accessories, but if heat built up in a room it'd melt a component, setting off 130 decibels for twenty or thirty minutes, with no batteries, just wound up metal.

On acne solutions

2010-12-04T15:06:00.000-08:00

I tried to watch another movie Monday night, but I couldn't get more than about forty or so minutes into it. It was supposedly a suspense, but there wasn't enough emotion to have suspense. It was Russian, and European movies available in the United States tend to be artsy fartsy, boring and minimalist if not downright experimental or some shit. This wasn't experimental, thank God, but it was very minimalist. It's about two Russian boys, one about ten years old and one old enough to need acne solutions, whose father appears one day after abandoning the family twelve years ago, and takes them on a fishing cross country trip but acts kind of weird. The story summary on the package said they suspect he might not be their father, but their mother said he was, and she should know, right? Anyway, it was so boring I lost interest.

On tea tree oil

2010-11-28T07:22:00.000-08:00

It's worth understanding when we watch ancient battle scenes recreated in the movies that many of the men died following the battle if they got any significant wound, because that was before the discovering of penicillin and other antibiotics. I can remember several cases in my life where small wounds got infected and could have threatened my life without antibiotics to stop them. If I'd gotten them a hundred years ago would I have died young from that one? Maybe not, but maybe. The tallest man in the world Robert Wadlow died from an infection of a wound on his foot caused by poorly fitting shoes because they had to be specially made for him. In Australia, however, people discovered how to extract tea tree oil from the metalleuca tree, and that's a very power natural germ killer when applied externally. It's not medicine to be taken internally, but it's good for killing germs in wounds, like betadine or cream.

On payday advances

2010-11-28T07:12:00.000-08:00

I've continued to watch a lot of Chinese and Bollywood movies, to live for a short time in worlds where nobody does anything so ordinary as get payday advances. Last night I watched An Empress and Warriors, a costume martial arts drama starring Donnie Yen who's a Hong Kong star of many martial arts movies. It was too politically correct for my tastes, but basically well done. After a king is killed by his nephew, his daughter claims the throne to keep the peace, between a loyal general and the traiterous nephew. But after learning how to be a soldier she winds up with an eccentric genius doctor in the woods who gives her a dream of peace. And of course the traiterous nephew continues to threaten her, that being the way of evil dudes. In the end there's a wild battle with Donnie Yen taking on the entire army single-handedly. Of course he dies, but takes the nephew and his right hand guy with him, giving the empress a free hand to declare peace universally though how she's going to stop the other kingdoms is not spelled out.

On Sirius

2010-11-21T08:38:00.000-08:00

The Indian movies I checked out from the Asia Center this week have turned out better, at least so far. I watched one movie starring Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol that has been playing at some theater in India since it opened in 1995, setting a record. Why that theater kept playing it before it became famous for doing so, I don't know. It is an entertaining story of their love affair, which must overcome the marriage Kajol's father has arranged for her. And do so by getting the permission of her father. So it attacks an Indian tradition but not in the head-on way that would be done by a Western movie where an arranged movie would be treated like some past monstrosity. Here it's given respect, but love is presented as better, and finally Khan convinces her father of that. They are reportedly the biggest romantic couple in Indian cinema and have starred together in movies I haven't seen. But it is fun if you're not too busy with a sirius.

On fat burners

2010-11-14T08:20:00.000-08:00

Recently I've been watching a lot of Chinese martial arts costume dramas. These tend to have a lot of fighting, and be historical, or at least take place in the past. I watched one last night which was the first such by Zhang Yimou who's probably the best known Chinese director in the world. He came to fame with dramatic stories such as Red Sorghum and Raise the Red Lantern which were a form of social commentary. He loves the dramatic use of color. The first action film he made was Hero, which I watched last night. It stars Jet Li who's well known as a martial arts actor, but has never been in such a high quality production before. I found the sequences amazing, because he wants fights to express emotions and deepen artistic intensity of the film, not just be slam bang action as most such movies are. He had one that is similar to such Hong Kong fights where Jet Li fights Donnie Yen (another action star), but at one point they do it only in their minds, which is a switch, but emphasizes mental development. The two women, one a famous dramatic actress and the other Zhang Zuyi who's a rising star, do not need fat burners. They're both terrific too.

Most effective diet pills for women

2010-11-14T08:08:00.000-08:00

2nd Chance by James Patterson is another example, though of a formula he's found to be a winning one. It's the latest in a new series called the Women's Murder Club, which is a group of female friends who talk over the latest case over food and drinks, helping Lindsay get promoted. Yet they're also professionals connected -- one the assistant district attorney, one the coroner doing autopsies and one a reporter. She is obviously the most professionally conflicted, since she must not write too much about the inside of the case which she learns. The cases are highly dramatic -- no simple, ordinary murders in Patterson's books -- yet we're also distracted by Jill's losing her baby while pregnant, the reporter dating the black minister, and Jill's father suddenly appearing after leaving the family in the wake of the beginning of the current case (20 years earlier). So he combines the elements of soap opera with hard boiled, dramatic murders. These women eat and drink a lot, and are concerned about their weight so they run. They're not the kind looking for the Most effective diet pills for women, since that wouldn't be as cool for such ambitious professional women to admit to. It's a detail Patterson or co-author is not likely to admit to.

On metal buildings

2010-11-14T08:02:00.000-08:00

I also read 2nd Chance by James Patterson and one of his zillions of co-writers (who probably do most of the real work) recently. I can say that I figured out before Lindsay the homicide detective that the man she thought was the killer Chimera was not him, but of course I had the advantage of knowing that there were too many pages of the book remaining. I didn't pick the real killer, however. I went for her father, the ex-cop she's estranged from, but he turned out to be a good guy instead, meaning the author decided not to get too twisted after all. The true killer was twisted, though. And I missed the obvious clue Patterson planted legitimately. I wasn't reading close enough to catch what Lindsay and everybody else missed as well. At the end the killer imitates Charles Whitman and climbs up to the top of metal buildings towering high over a campus with a high powered rifle and starts picking them off, but of course Lindsay bravely saves the day by herself.

On Cubic Zirconia

2010-11-06T07:48:00.000-07:00

You'd think most people, especially women, would know about Cubic Zirconia, and how it looks like diamonds. Yet recently I read an otherwise excellent thriller where a woman and her idiotic but criminal boyfriend hijack a diamond smuggler and steal all the false diamonds he was carrying (as a trap for them, because the mob suspected someone was after them), but the woman and the boyfriend think they've got a huge stash of money. Then he gets thrown in jail for six years for a totally unrelated -- and very stupid -- charge, and she's forced to hide under a false identity while waiting for him to get out of jail. Because they each have keys to the safe deposit boxes where they've stashed the diamonds. She needs him to get all the diamonds, which of course she plans to steal from him after killing him, but they don't get that far.

On refrigerator filters

2010-11-01T11:44:00.000-07:00

In re-reading SWAN SONG I was surprised to see that the movie the creature is watching in Times Square just before the nuclear war was a real one -- FACES OF DEATH 4. I can recall watching a FACES OF DEATH movie years ago, but hadn't remembered the series. Maybe when I first read SWAN SONG I thought McCammon was making it up, and forgot it promptly, until one Halloween one of the later ones was carried by a movie theater in St Louis. I've always wondered how much of that movie was real and how much fake. I could believe, for instance, that somebody had made a home movie of a frat boy jumping off a college dorm building and dying because they made the rope too long, because they forgot that there was no 13th floor. However, when it got to the drawing and quartering supposedly done behind the Iron Curtain, and a human sacrifice and the mutated fish, I couldn't believe. But it was more interesting than a movie about refrigerator filters.

On fat burner that works

2010-11-01T11:39:00.000-07:00

I got tired of reading modern thriller and crime novels that disappointed me, so I started re-reading SWAN SONG by Robert McCammon, which has become one of my favorite novels of all time. Somehow, it grows on you. I remember once mentioning at a sf convention that it seemed to me to have been at least partially derivative of Stephen King's THE STAND, and author Brian Hodge who apparently is a friend of McCammon's, got really angry with me, talking about what a great artist McCammon is. Actually, I like SWAN SONG better than THE STAND, and I'm enjoying this second reading, since I'm spotting foreshadowing that I didn't before. I'd forgotten a lot of details. It truly takes place in a world where finding a fat burner that works is the least of anyone's concerns. They're just trying to find enough of any kind of food to stay alive.

On best products for hair loss

2010-10-25T10:09:00.000-07:00

What are the best products for hair loss? I don't know. Me, I'd rather be looking for the best products for hair regrowth. I've found losing hair easy. It happens naturally. I don't have to buy any products to lose hair. It just started happening when I was still in my twenties, even before I got married. I wish I'd found the best products to simply keep the hair I still had when I was fifteen years old. But they didn't have the scientific advances in products that we have now. It's amazing we all didn't just fall apart back then, there was so little we knew about biology, nutrition, and good health. We bought any old product that some national company promised us with expensive TV commercials or radio ads would do the job. If Clearasil had really worked to cure acne, wouldn't it still be the preferred cream for curing acne?

On how to lose weight

2010-10-25T10:06:00.000-07:00

One thing I haven't read recently is books on how to lose weight, though sometimes I enjoy doing that. I just haven't kept the same attention to my weight that I was giving it just a year ago. Life has a way of making that difficult sometimes. Just to save money, I've spent a lot of this year eating free food that otherwise would have gone to waste. What could I do? Inconvenience other people? Spend lots of extra money? Let that other food -- some of it lovingly prepared at great trouble -- go to waste? I have done fairly well with exercise. I did get out of shape when I was at the hospital almost all day long, but now I'm doing better -- running 3 times a week and walking almost every other day. And I hope to get back to Hindu pushups and maybe Hindu squats soon.

On eye wrinkle cream for men

2010-10-25T10:03:00.001-07:00

One of the worst parts of getting old, or perhaps the worst reminder of it, is seeing other people age. My cousin now has gray at the temples. How can that be? He's ten years younger than I. I remember when he was a little baby. He was still a kid when I was a young adult. How could he possibly have gray at the temples now. And I hate to see other people I knew as a kid or many years ago, because they invariably look much older, even the ones still in pretty good shape, such as one of my neighbors whom I knew in junior high school. Even many guys now need eye wrinkle cream for men. How can that be? I remember when they looked so young. Like me in older pictures of myself. When I look in the mirror to shave, I kind of close my eyes and wonder what happened.

On rfid blocking wallet

2010-10-10T08:02:00.000-07:00

One thing I intend to invest in soon in a rfid blocking wallet, and I hope to get something that also covers my passport. I know my passport has rfid in it, and I don't wish that information scanable by scammers in an airport or anywhere else. I understand why it could save Wal-Mart a lot of money. I'm fine with it preventing theft, but not with it facilitating theft of my personal information. It's bad enough that hotels use them to track minibars and think you ate something that you didn't, just because you moved some items around. At worst you get charged expensive rates for stuff you didn't even eat, and at best you've got to wait for the hotel staff to check behind you.

On jobs

2010-10-10T07:48:00.000-07:00

Over the years, I've had many jobs. When I was very young, I worked various minimum wage jobs, especially related to swimming such as lifeguard, swim coach (at small places) and swim teacher. I finally got tired of that, returned to school, and took a minimum wage job in a pizza place to get through school. Worked my way up from bartender to assistant manager, at the princely rate of from $2 to $3. Then I quit when I graduated and goofed off while looking for a "real" job, and finally wound up with the Social Security Administration, where I stayed for over thirty years. But that wasn't enough, so I worked part time in telemarketing, selling cable TV and finally pizza delivering.

On Outer Banks rentals

2010-09-19T21:37:00.000-07:00

Wouldn't it be great to rent a house in the Outer Banks area for a weekend, a week or even an entire month? What a great vacation. You could rent a house from Carolina Designs the best of Outer Banks rentals. You could spend the day on the beach, enjoying the wind, the sand and the surf. There's nothing better than swimming in the ocean and the lying in the sun and then have a drink of something refreshing and a quick nap, then do it all over again, until it's time to eat. There's a great variety of food available, from hot dogs and sandwiches at Capt'n Franks, to Thai food at at the Thai Room, to High Cotton BBQ and Mama Kwan's Caribbean cuisine. You can fish at Avalon Pier, Nag's Head Fishing Pier, Outer Banks Pier, Sound Pier, Pirates Cove Marina, Oregon Inlet Fishing Center and Broad Creek Fishing Center and Marina. Or charter a boat to go to the rivers or out into the ocean. When the sun goes down, you can visit other restaurants more oriented to night life, such as the Lone Cedar Cafe, Outer Banks Brewing Station, and Barefoot Bernie's Bar and Grill, and the Comedy Club for entertainment.

On iphone warranty

2010-09-19T21:29:00.000-07:00

I see that the banks on Wall Street are suffering from a downturn in activity, the trading of stocks and bonds and the issuing of them, and managing merger activity. I can't say I'm particularly upset about it all, since I suspect that they are ripping off investors a lot in those activities. It's necessary for the markets to be liquid, but that shouldn't mean charging too much for the access to the markets. I think they sell a lot of useless, dangerous and unnecessary financial advice, and people buy it because the average investor doesn't realize the markets are unpredictable. Modern finance and Modern Portfolio Theory is way beyond them. They don't take the time to find out about all that. They're more concerned with their iphone warranty than with whether their portfolio is beating the market or not, so they're just happy if and when it goes up.

On best weight loss supplement

2010-09-19T21:21:00.000-07:00

Not long ago I read an interesting article in TIME (yes, that issue came out months ago) on how Facebook is "redefining" privacy. I have to admit, that concept made my spine crawl. Who asked anybody to "redefine" privacy. Privacy is privacy. What Facebook is doing seems to be trying to eliminate privacy. That's redefinition only in the Orwellian view of the world where peace is war and love is hate. I have to admit, I am now more reluctant than ever to ever press the "like" button I see on websites, because I don't want Facebook to then contact my friends and tell them that I am recommending that particular thing whether it's a product or a piece of content. If I find the best weight loss supplement and therefore like it, that doesn't mean I want my friends to think I'm pushing it on them, or even to know that I am buying such supplements. When did I give Facebook the right to make recommendations in my name? I didn't.

On migraine headache treatment

2010-09-19T21:16:00.000-07:00

I want to get back to running regularly. This past two weeks have been hell. I've been at the hospital too much and too long to run. I walked a few times, but had no time or energy to run as I wish, even though it's not a migraine headache treatment. I like to run more intensely than most people, working up to nearly full speed. I can't keep that up, so I run for a lot less time than most people. I'll run four time, then walk back to where I began, and complete that in about twenty minutes. It doesn't sound like much, and I don't pretend it's a marathon, but I go from a light jog to nearly all out sprint within that time. I do spend time huffing and puffing, out of breath with my heartbeat very fast, so I know it's working on my heart and lung capacity. Anything that gets your breathing hard is good exercise. So light jogging is not as good in my opinion, because it's not intense enough, and you spend a lot more time at it.

On free weight loss programs

2010-09-19T21:11:00.000-07:00

So anyway, now the weather feels hot again. Maybe it's just because my room is hot, especially with the lamp on, despite the open window. My mother kept the air conditioning on but she's gone and so it's now turned off, and we're using open windows instead of the air conditioning. I guess we'll go back to air conditioning this Wednesday when we have people over. So I'm not used to feeling this hot, but I know it's good, I should get used to it, because when I leave I'll go to a tropical area with no air conditioning, and though where I'm going cools down a lot at night, it still gets pretty warm, and there are no free weight loss programs, because there's little demand, most people want to eat more than they can afford to. Some of the wealthy probably follow fads to lose weight.

On supplements for weight loss

2010-09-19T21:06:00.000-07:00

The weather here in St Louis area has been variable, which mean it's been normal. Early September got pretty cool after the very hot summer. The man my mother wanted to trim her sweet gum trees in the front yard finally called, then came by and did the work last Tuesday. He needs supplements for weight loss. I doubt he gets up in the trees himself anymore. But he had a crew who did a good job at it. That will make her ordinary yard man happy. He cuts the grass in the summer and rakes the leaves in the fall, and he told me that he wasn't looking forward to raking those leaves because it's such a big job, so he hoped the tree man would get the branches trimmed back before all those leaves fell to the ground, and he did do that, so the amount of leaves will be a lot smaller this year than last year.

On over the counter prenatal vitamins

2010-09-19T21:02:00.000-07:00

Yes, the good psyche doctor is totally unprepared for the liberal New York City media to brand him a rogue, demented out of control killer, for using a gun to kill a man in his own home, who may well have tried to kill him, wife and daughter. He resented being compared to Bernard Goetz, who shot some teenagers years ago who attacked him on the subway and was eventually convicted and spent time in jail. I personally thought Goetz was not a bad guy, though he apparently did violate New York City gun laws. It's okay for the criminals to do so, but not for good citizens to defend themselves, and that even seems to be the attitude of the author. And the psychiatrist did not dispense over the counter prenatal vitamins, he had helped many other people learn how to control their emotions, but he could not control his own panic. He was too much out of touch with himself.

On most effective diet pills 10k

2010-09-19T20:56:00.000-07:00

I wasn't always sure what side Jason Starr's social commentary was on. The psychiatrist thought the press of New York City would call him a hero for killing an intruder in his house to protect his wife and daughter, but nobody does that, not even his wife and daughter who wish (and with good reason, by the end of the book), that he'd just stayed in the bedroom waiting for the police. And actually, I believe that is their standard advice for such a situation, to barricade yourself in a bedroom, call 911 and wait for police to arrive, don't try to confront intruders yourself even if you have a gun. But the psyche doctor ignored it, and let panic overcome his own reluctance, so his killed the intruder who did not have a gun because he expected the house to be empty. However, we know the second one did have a gun and in fact came close to killing the doctor, but chose to run immediately instead. By the end of the book the doctor needs Valium and other drugs, not the most effective diet pills 10K.

On insurance quotes

2010-09-11T20:40:00.001-07:00

Today I watched a full length movie almost nonstop for the first time in 7 months. It was Gladiator on TNT. It did have commercial breaks, and I did have to miss some parts of it to take care of some business, and I could not hear the sound well, but I got most of the meaning. When he goes home to find his son and wife murdered, my aunt said something about how life was rough back in those days, how people mostly just had to fight to survive. That is true for the vast majority of people. They did not qualify for insurance quotes, even if there were insurance companies. And actually there were some systems of paying life insurance or lifetime annuities back at least as far as the Middle Ages. But probably not in the days of the Roman Empire. It was a fun movie to watch, though. The various gladiator fights were well done. So were some of the secondary scenes, such as men around a table betting on a cobra.

On Sony VAIO

2010-09-11T20:34:00.000-07:00

It hardly seems possible, but it's time to start thinking about getting a new computer. I now have a desktop that's getting close to two years old. It will works really well, and I can watch videos and listen to music while I work, but I know it must be behind the times, and also the operating system Windows Vista is apparently considered their makeshift OS before they released Windows 7, so now it's behind the times. Also, this is a desktop and I may need to be more mobile in the near future. I am thinking about getting a Sony VAIO, but I don't know yet. There are so many choices, and I can no longer keep up with all the models as I did back in the 1990s when every hardware or software improvement was big news. Now it's more taken for granted, and only new gadgets such as iPad get publicity.

On Cyber Monday

2010-09-04T08:50:00.000-07:00

The weather here around the St Louis area is dramatically different. Everybody but me is glad. It's gone from the 90s to the 70s. Yesterday when I was out running, I noticed how cool the wind was, how I could feel Autumn in the air, reminding me that by my calendar, it is Autumn, because it's September. And although it could stay centered in the 70s, sometimes hotter and cooler, through November, winter does follow Autumn, and I was sad to think of that. No telling what the weather will be by Cyber Monday. It could still be mild like this, but it could also be cold and snowy, and I'm not ready for more cold and snow. I enjoy weather in the 90s. I think that's close to the perfect temperature for the day, and in the 80s at night.

On medical job search

2010-08-28T09:33:00.000-07:00

I guess the medical job search is tough these days, thanks to the recession. I remember about five or so years ago hearing a radio ad from a hospital looking for experienced nurses to pay them around $80K which is pretty good pay around here. However, I'm sure medicine is still a good field to enter given the increasing aging of the baby boomers. I for one plan to stay far from hospitals and nursing homes for many more years, but it's inevitable that as baby boomers in general age, some of them will require additional medical care. But that is not an immediate need. I'm sure that by then we'll need to import many more doctors and nurses trained in other countries, because there aren't enough children in the US willing and able to work at those jobs.

On auto insurance

2010-08-22T07:59:00.000-07:00

It's funny how times change. I remember when the state of Missouri made passing emissions control tests mandatory for getting your car license renewed. I didn't realize Illinois had passed the same law until recently when my mother's car license renewal didn't go through because she failed to take the test. It's as mandatory as auto insurance. So I got to drive her car to Woodriver and find the testing site. I waited in line a few minutes, and the actual test itself took only a few minutes, much shorter than Missouri's. And then I expected to get some paperwork for my mother to mail back, but it's all done electronically. She got a photocopy to keep in her glove compartment, but that's all. The state of Illinois kept her original check, so presumably they'll be mailing her the license stickers now that they know her car passed the test.

On stainless steel drums

2010-08-22T07:49:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown author of The DaVinci Code. I suppose this one is popular too, though whether people are just as excited about it, I can't say. It basically tries to repeat the formula only with different details. It largely succeeded, though without getting me involved emotionally. This time, he leaves behind the ancient cities of Europe and places the book in the mystic heart of the New World -- Washington D.C. I have to assume that his tour of weird Washington -- or rather Masonic DC -- is interesting. We see every cryptic landmark from a CIA sculpture to stainless steel drums. Then he throws in some pseudo-science. He teams Robert Langdon up with a woman. And they must decipher hidden codes. The villain loses in the end -- and I have to admit I didn't see the final revelation of his identity coming. And there's too much preachiness at the end.

On Online Schools

2010-08-14T08:15:00.000-07:00

One thing I think is great about the Internet is Online Schools. When I decided to go back to college, three years after dropping out, my only option was to go to a physical college or university. And the only real financial option was to go to one close to where I was living. So I had to work part time at night. Many other students worked full time in the day and went to school at night. And I had to drive there through some of the worst winters in recorded weather history, in a junky old car that had so many flat tires the AAA canceled my membership. Now people have the option of taking classes completely on their own schedule. Plus, people who are teachers have the option of making extra money by teaching classes online. So it's good for everybody concerned.

On Hinkley lighting

2010-08-07T09:35:00.000-07:00

One thing that amazed me about Ultimate Fitness by Gina Kolata, is that although she delved into the physiology of exercise, and how to get better from exercising, and went into the history of interval training, she never once mentioned Hans Selye. Although he didn't have the benefit of Hinkley lighting, he was the scientist who discovered how living creatures adapt to stress. We now commonly use the word to mean a mental or emotional irritation, and that's one manifestation, but really stress is anything that makes our bodies have to adapt. Exercise is very stressful. But after we do it, our bodies recover, making us better able to go through that stress again. She approaches it, in discussing swimmers who swam so much they weren't given time to recover, but she never addresses this directly.

On an elliptical trainer

2010-07-31T07:11:00.000-07:00

I read a book BANK ON YOURSELF by Pamela Yellen about using whole life insurance to finance future purchases from your cash surrender value, or rather borrowing from the life insurance company using your cash surrender value as collateral against the loan. There was a small smidgen of information about the plan, but way too much fictional garbage and people who used it to buy this vacation and that trip and that car and on and on, and maybe also on an elliptical trainer. You'd think financial freedom came from spending more money than you have. If that were true, most Americans would be truly wealthy. We are in comparison to much of the world, but not in a secure way, because of personal debt. This can help, but sweeps the check writing under the rug.

On testosterone booster

2010-07-10T10:30:00.001-07:00

Any time now, my mother who is very sick is getting a dinner from one of her friends from a woman's social organization. The woman and her husband are head of this county's Republican party and have been putting on the local tea parties on this side of the river. And he's a high up doctor in a local hospital. I doubt she'll bring my mother a testosterone booster, however. Yet it's good so many people are helping her out. I'm here to help out, but I'm not a cook. She'd have to eat fast food every night, which I'd be glad to go get for her, but it's not the way she's used to eating. She's used to mostly her own home cooked meals, but now should not be cooking on her own. I can warm up stuff that her friends bring, but I'm not a cook. My sister does that when she's here, but she lives in the Boston area.

On fat burner

2010-07-10T10:11:00.000-07:00

Recently I finished a writing job that was pretty interesting -- writing a chapter on social technologies for a book. The book was written through such a technology -- crowd sourcing. The various chapters were assigned to writers at a site where they compete to write the best ones. So my version for my chapter was the best, so I won. It's not like elance where everybody competes for jobs by cutting their prices. On this site the jobs are required to be fairly high -- at least $200, to motivate people to compete. If the price is too low, there's no incentive to work hard as a fat burner, and get the job done well. Because you don't win every time. I've won some, but lost many. So I have to balance the potential reward against the risk of wasting time.

On protein powder

2010-07-03T08:49:00.000-07:00

Until recently, I was incorporating protein powder in my diet. I used to add it to plain yogurt. Yogurt itself is a protein food, since it's made from milk, but it does contain a lot more carbohydrates than many people realize. I didn't realize it myself until one day I looked at the container of the vanilla yogurt I was eating every night before going to bed, and was shocked to see it was not even close to being a Zone food, because it had so many carbohydrates, and that was vanilla, so it didn't have the added fruit that many cups of yogurt do that people think are so healthy. Anyway, I figured out that by adding a big scoop of the powder of whey protein to plain yogurt, I got something pretty close to the Zone balance of protein and carbohydrates, and maybe even fat although I did usually choose the low-fat yogurt. I'd eat that after exercising since the powder is supposed to help build muscles.

On how to prevent hair loss

2010-07-03T08:44:00.000-07:00

I recently read a fairly interesting book Reunions by Raymond Moody, which is not about how to prevent hair loss. I thought it would be about near death experiences, because Moody is the author of the original book in 1977 that brought them into the general knowledge. However, it turns out he'd also become interested in crystal gazing and other forms of using mirrors or reflective bodies of water for meditation, creativity and contacting deceased loved ones. The third is obviously the most dramatic and controversial, and even now I'm not sure how to react to it. It seems easier to accept meeting the dead in the stage between life and death that people seem to be in during NDEs, than when you're simply sitting in front of a mirror, even with all the preparation he puts people through. He goes into great detail about the environment he created to facilitate that contact.

On best colon cleansers

2010-07-03T08:23:00.000-07:00

I finished reading an intriguing book by James Patterson, Violets Are Blue. It's sort of a continuation of Roses are Red, in that the real main storyline concerns the top killer and criminal The Mastermind. I have not read the earlier Alex Cross books, but it may be the last of entire series about the Mastermind, though he's not called that in those earlier books. Yet he is in them, and plays some vague roles alluded to in Violets are Blue, but not having read those earlier books I don't know whether his true colors are revealed in them. But the front story of Violets are Blue is also quite interesting -- about some killers who think of themselves as vampires and occupy the entire Goth scene, which he makes very colorful and dramatic, probably more than it actually is in real life. Characters who like to drink blood are probably not good prospects for buying the best colon cleansers, although being really alive they do eat solid food as well.

On mattresses

2010-07-03T08:17:00.000-07:00

I've slept on a variety of mattresses over the years, from the ground to wooden floors covered with a straw mat to concrete floors covered with a thin foam rubber mattress to actual beds, with both very firm and soft surfaces. I prefer firm, though with enough padding so I feel comfortable, though even that is a luxury in much of the world. Right now I'm sleeping on a bed that folds out from a small couch. It's a small mattress over hard iron springs, but it's sufficient for me. It's narrow, but I have no particular reason to move around a lot or have a wide space. I used to sleep on a queen sized mattress and box spring that rested on the ground, but I think I pretty much remained just on one side of it, so the rest of it took up the room and was awkward for no practical purpose except it was easier and cheaper to keep and use what I had instead of dragging it to the garbage dumpster and then spending money I didn't have on another one.

On netbooks

2010-06-19T08:23:00.000-07:00

I supposed one of these days I'll break down and buy netbooks or some other small device which I can carry around with me, and write in places where I do not now, because it's too inconvenient, because now I write only sitting at my desktop PC, and that's obviously not possible to use while I'm out and around. The cliche is to write at Starbucks drinking lattes or something, but I don't drink anything related to coffee -- especially not if it costs the price of a full meal. When I do go to shopping malls, I generally do just as my Grandpa used to say, go in, get what I want, get out. I have eaten in them when I feel hungry, but then I always take a book to read. That's my main away from home time filling activity when my mind and eyes are not otherwise occupied -- reading. And I really don't like the idea of changing that habit.

On a slide show

2010-06-12T15:07:00.000-07:00

I supposed they're going away now, in favor of laptop computers transmitting Power Point presentations, but I remember the slide show. I remember people setting up a white screen in their house, with a slideshow projector, and darkening the room and having people look at the pictures they took on their last vacation. I think this was usually more fun for the person reliving their fun vacation than for people watching it, but with a good one you could learn some interesting things about places you'd never been too before. I've heard of people going to Israel and other places in the Middle East, taking pictures, and then going from church to church with their show. James Michener makes fun of one type of such person in his novel THE SOURCE, especially having them go to Jordan to take pictures of poor Muslims who still looked like people did in Biblical times -- when modern Israelies looked like modern people.

On vitamins

2010-05-29T13:47:00.000-07:00

One thing I'm a great believer in, and that's vitamins. All the studies just keep proving that they're essential for optimum health and fitness, and in quantities far greater than the Recommended Daily Allowance or RDA. And they do help cure or reduce diseases. And that just makes sense. Every vitamin does about one hundred things, some interrelated but many are not. And they work interrelatedly with other, so there's a definite synthesis to taking vitamins together, which was not so well understood in ages past, when Adele Davis would recommend taking B2 for this condition. Now I don't see many bottles in the health food store for individual B vitamins. They should all be taken together in a supplement, in natural form.