Tech Review

I followed my friend Tom's advice and spent some time with my kids this weekend. After we introduced ourselves to each other, we talked about some fascinating things for which my kids curiously couldn't summon much enthusiasm: SEO, pagerank, sitemeter, the future of the Republican party. They tried, selfishly in my opinion, to talk to me about some of the things they care about. My son plays baseball somewhere. My other son babbled something about interlocking plastic pieces and apparently there's a game out there called "Yu Gi Oh.". My daughter won something at school or maybe got kicked out...I don't know, but either way, it wouldn't have made a good post.

My wife mentioned leaving, but I think she just meant that she was going to the mall.

Really, it was one of the best weekends of my life for its complete relaxation and lack of drama. My wife was in a state of euphoria conducting her garage sale, and when she's happy, I'm able to do other stuff. My kids were relatively nice. Technology-wise, it was a winning week, with successful upgrades and a new phone and computer in the home. Entertainment-wise, I watched a few episodes of Firefly.

Firefly - The Complete Series

I performed two works of techity (technology charity); I fixed one of my students' computers and gave another one that I had in the garage to another student so that she can do my homework.

I was a man in a complete state of peace. Which usually means that I should prepare for some kind of problem soon. As Solomon said, "This too shall pass." Far be it for me to add something to the wisest man in the world, but I will anyways: it's not a good idea to get too up or down and never, ever, get complacent. When things are going well, that's when you have to work hardest to keep things going.

One thing I didn't do is blog. I don't know if you know what I mean, but I have so many things to write about, including some thoughts on the things above, that I freeze when I approach the keyboard and wish to avoid the computer altogether, which I'll do for a couple of days.

My blogging friend Tom asked me how I manage to write a post every day, when he finds it difficult to write a couple of posts a week. My father also wanted to know where I find the time to blog, what with me having a family, a full time job (teaching), and a part-time job (Army reserve).

Ihe secret of prolific blogging is simply this: ignore those things in you life which are much more important. Tom, for example, owns his own construction equipment business. He probably wakes up, goes over plans for some digging things or whatever people use to construct, takes care of his workers, looks at "the books." I'm also sure he goes home and does something like talk to his wife.

I, on the other hand, haven't talked to my kids since Obama proposed the stimulus bill. My dog barks at me when I come home. My wife and I keep tabs on each other through Twitter, even though she's in the next room.

Tom, I promise you twice the traffic-- and probably a whole $12.00 a month more in adsense-- if you follow my lead.

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.

-Charles Dickens
from David Copperfield.

David Copperfield

David Copperfield (Penguin Classics) by Charles Dickens

It takes money to to make money and it takes credit to get credit. They sound like a catch-22s, but they each have their internal logic. It takes money to make money is just a fact of life, a financial variation of the philosophical precept of causation, used sometimes to prove the existence of God ("something can't come from nothing," is one formulation), like it takes a seed to make a tree while the second has to do with one's reputation and being compensated for maintaining a good one (something Obama is subverting with his policies). In other words, justice.

Many people will face a situation, as I once did, where youthful or even aged indiscretions lead to bad credit. I found myself in this position after college, not because I was poor, but because I was too irresponsible to pay my college loans on time. From bad situations spring character. One of the proudest moments of my life is when I crawled out of a debt hole. I bounced back and now have good credit.

Even more than dieting, it doesn't take counseling or expert help to alleviate credit problems (unless you have extraordinary situation like an illness or job loss). The first step is to stop digging (spending), of course. Then, fill the hole- spend less money than you make. I did this. The third step is to start piling on the positive. Take out a bad credit credit card, for example, and use it only for groceries, and then pay it off every month. You build your credit and won't spend on things you can't afford.

Above all, remember that a majority of society owing money is a historical aberration. My father never owed money on anything except his house. You should strive for the same, with college or some other positive investment being an exception.

Here.

Thinking:

The list has two functions, related to each other:

(a) To rank the most popular children's books so that (b) parents can choose the best ones, as children don't have access to credit cards.

Questions:

Are parents really buying gay-themed books for their children, or are agenda-driven adults buying them for themselves or to manipulate the statistics?

Are the people complaining, parents?

Last year, Microsoft was accused of censoring 'gay-sounding' gamertags on Xbox Live. A few months later, Apple's iTunes suffered a glitch that accidentally censored some song titles and artist names, despite neither being explicit. And now in 2009, it's Amazon's turn to wear the think-of-the-children hat.

Over the weekend, hundreds of gay and lesbian-themed books -- such as Heather Has Two Mommies and everyone's favourite, Daddy's Roommate -- vanished from Amazon.com's search listings. It appeared that the company was trying to make best-seller lists more family-friendly, and that the sales rank, which Amazon uses to list search results in order of popularity, of over 50,000 books were nullified.

Amazon, however, has since stated officially that it was merely a "ham-fisted cataloging error", and reports from anonymous Amazon.com employees confirm they were dragged from their Easter celebrations to fix the "screw-up".
A butterfly flapping its wings in Amazon's office...

In a world where putting a single full stop in the wrong part of a URL can send you to gay porn instead of your local police department's homepage, we're inclined to believe Amazon.

But our own conclusions didn't occur to thousands of angry Internet users over the weekend. And it didn't prevent a weekend of Amazon bashing, viral complaint-making via Twitter, and even the creation of a 20,000-member strong petition against the company's apparent hatred for all things gay.