Rolling with the flow....

Not seeing any perceived progress for what seems like forever can drive a normally upbeat person to depression.  That wasn't difficult to say, but it was difficult to admit.  

In the beginning, finding companies and positions to apply for was a challenge.  I don't see many undiscovered companies anymore.  The number of positions hasn't decreased, in fact, it has increased.  The unfortunate issue is that you never know if the companies have processed your applications.  They move so slowly...

To switch to some topics that are more upbeat; I am really looking forward to the Olympics starting very soon.  The competitions, the historical story-lines, the whole package. There has been so much publicity about security at Sochi that one begins to wonder if the success of the terrorists is the terror that is created by the fright generated by all the publicity, rather than an actual event.  Of course, they can't take the chance that it is a hoax.  I guess only time will tell.

Isn't it amazing how much bad publicity that can be generated for every possible presidential candidate?  Whether the accusations are real or not isn't the issue.  It is the so-called bad press that the candidate receives.  Perception is so much of what the public remembers.

For those of you that were REALLY turned of by the bad conducts of the American Idol judges last year, let me say that that appears to be quite over.  I said I'd never watch it again unless JLO comes back.  Well she did, and this year so far has such a different feel than last year.  These judges are having fun and they are ADULT!

Well, to add insult to injury, my computer recently went belly-up, bigtime- unrepairable.  Lucky for me I have an cloud service that backs up all my files.  The only task worse than buying a car is buying a computer.  What I have just looked at in the store- without even buying one, is already way out of date.  It is very difficult to honestly believe that you are getting what you want, for what you want to pay for it- AND that it will still be usable in at least a year!

I am putting this post together on a borrowed computer, so hopefully, my next post will be on the new one...

Expensive Operation

A woman was having a medical problem - her husband's snoring. So she called the doctor one morning and asked him if there was anything he could do to relieve her "suffering."

"Well, there is one operation I can perform that will cure your husband, but it is really rather expensive. It will cost $1000 down and payments of $450 for 24 months, plus payments for extras."

"My goodness!" the woman exclaimed, "it sounds like leasing a new sports car!"

"Humm," the doctor murmured, "too obvious, huh?"

Progress is not always in a positive direction

As interviews go, I have had one of worst recently that I can recall.  The interviewer was obviously stove-piped on his own products and could not see that good engineering practices and a broad set of experiences could possibly have any relevance to his needs.  I treasure my capability to analyze almost any process from an outside-the-box perspective.  Obviously, this wasn't the right person to interview with.

Do any of you feel that Chris Christie is getting a bad rap?  Apparently the Democrats believe that he is a threat to Hillary's future campaign, so they are raking his character over the coals.  He was (and still may be) the Republican party's best and only hope of a decent show at the primaries.  My bet is that he will be totally exonerated of any bad or illegal doings, but will have had his name drug though the equivalent of the Holy inquisition for no other reason than to breed doubt amongst the voters.

I just spent just under an hour bouncing around on the Covered CA site for Obamacare.  They couldn't possibly have made it any simpler, except for the most important part; which doctors does it cover?  Seems like a simple idea: "I want to keep the same doctor that I have had for(ever)".  Can I?

The Bible According to Kids
The following statements about the Bible were written by children and have not been retouched or corrected (i.e., bad spelling has been left in.)

- In the first book of the Bible, Guinesses, God got tired of creating the world, so he took the Sabbath off.

- Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree.

- Noah's wife was called Joan of Ark because Noah built the ark, which the animals came to in pears.

- Lot's wife was a pillar of salt by day, but a ball of fire by night.

- The Jews were a proud people and throughout history they had trouble with unsympathetic Genitals.

- Samson was a strong man who let himself be led astray by a Jezebel like Delilah.

- Samson slew the Philistines with the axe of the Apostles.

- Moses led the Hebrews to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread without any ingredients.

- The Egyptians were all drowned in the dessert.

- Afterwards, Moses went up to Mount Cyanide to find the ten commendments.

- The first commandment was when Eve told Adam to eat the apple.

- The seventh commandment is "Thou shalt not admit adultery".

- Moses died before he ever reached Canada.

- Then Joshua led the Hebrews in the battle of Geritol.

- The greatest miracle in the Bible is when Joshua told his son to stand still and he obeyed him.

- David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fought with the Finkelsteins, a race of people who lived in Biblical times.

- Solomon, one of David's sons, had 300 wives and 700 porcupines.

- When Mary heard that she was the mother of Jesus, she sang the Magna Carta.

- Then the three Wise Guys from the east arrived and found Jesus in the manager.

- Jesus was born because Mary had an Immaculate Contraption.

- St. John, the blacksmith, dumped water on his head.

- Jesus enunciated the Golden Rule, which says do one to others before they do one to you.

- He also explained that "Man does not live by sweat alone".

- It was a miricle when Jesus rose from the dead and managed to get the tombstone off the entrance.

- The people who followed Jesus were called the 12 decibles.

- The epistles were the wives of the apostles.

- One of the opossums was St. Matthew who was also a taximan.

- St. Paul cavorted to Christianity. He preached the holy acrimony, which is another name for marriage.

- A Christian should have only one spouse. This is called monotony.

FOR LEXOPHILES (Lovers of Words)

1. A bicycle can't stand alone; it is two tired.

2. A will is a dead giveaway.

3. Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

4. A backward poet writes inverse.

5. A chicken crossing the road: poultry in motion.

6. When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.

7. The guy who fell onto an upholstery machine was fully recovered.

8. You are stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.

9. He broke into song because he couldn't find the key.

10. A calendar's days are numbered.

11. A boiled egg is hard to beat.

12. He had a photographic memory which was never developed.

13. The short fortuneteller who escaped from prison: a small medium at large.

14. Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.

15. When you've seen one shopping center you've seen a mall.

16. If you jump off a Paris bridge, you are in Seine.

17. When she saw her first strands of gray hair, she thought she'd dye.

18. Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.

19. Acupuncture: a jab well done.

20. Marathon runners with bad shoes suffer the agony of de feet.

21. The roundest knight at king Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.

22. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.

23. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.

24. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class because it was a weapon of math disruption.

25. No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.

26. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.

27. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.

28. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.

29. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

30. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.

31. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: ‘Keep off the Grass.'

32. A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital. When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was, a nurse said, 'No change yet.'

33. The soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.

Not A Fun Task

Next to interviews (which I seem to be great at), I really dislike cold-calls to check on positions that I've applied for.  HR departments used to reply right away with messages that claimed that they were evaluating your application to check for a fit.  That gave you a warm-fuzzy that they at least received it.  Now very few applications (at least in my experience) are acknowledged.  This forces a cold-call after what seems forever, but may only be a week.  While they are evaluating many, many applications, I only want to know about mine. What ever happened to manners?

Some companies work very slowly.  It could take a month for them to come up with a suitable suite of applicants to interview.  Waiting is horrendous...

BTW, can anyone claim that they bought a "Made in the USA" Christmas present for a gift?  If you didn't, then consider yourself part of the problem...

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"  (Who can watch the watchmen?)
    -- from the Satires of Juvenal

Overheard on Dear Abby

Dear Abby, A couple of women moved in across the hall from me. One is a middle-aged gym teacher and the other is a social worker in her mid twenties. These two women go everywhere together and I've never seen a man go into their apartment or come out. Do you think they could be Lebanese?

Dear Abby, What can I do about all the sex, nudity, language and violence on my VCR?

Dear Abby, I have a man I never could trust. He cheats so much I'm not even sure this baby I'm carrying is his.

Dear Abby, I am a twenty-three-year-old liberated woman who has been on the pill for two years. It's getting expensive and I think my boyfriend should share half the cost, but I don't know him well enough to discuss money with him.

Dear Abby, I suspected that my husband had been fooling around, and when I confronted him with the evidence he denied everything and said it would never happen again.

Dear Abby, Our son writes that he is taking Judo. Why would a boy who was raised in a good Christian home turn against his own?

Dear Abby, I joined the Navy to see the world. I've seen it. Now how do I get out?

Dear Abby, My forty-year-old son has been paying a psychiatrist $50 an hour every week for two-and-a-half years. He must be crazy.

Dear Abby, I was married to Bill for three months and I didn't know he drank until one night he came home sober.

Dear Abby, Do you think it would be all right if I gave my doctor a little gift? I tried for years to get pregnant and couldn't and he did it.

Dear Abby, My mother is mean and short-tempered. I think she is going through her mental pause.

Dear Abby, You told some woman whose husband had lost all interest in sex to send him to a doctor. Well, my husband lost all interest in sex years ago and he is a doctor.

End of the Year

We had some free passes for The Hobbit and decided to use them while the movie was still available.  I was very impressed with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but the first installment of the Hobbit trilogy was a bit disappointing.  The Desolation of Smaug was not that way at all, except that the movie ended leaving us hanging for the third installment.

The performances were particularly striking (especially elves Evangeline Lilly and Orlando Bloom) and the setting unbelievable.  It is understandable why they spend so much time doing these movies, since the sets are so over-the-top.  The photography is phenomenal, since the dwarves are as tall as 6'2", but look the correct heights for dwarves.  Frequently they are photographed with taller people and objects and the proportions are kept pretty correct.  Benedict Cumberbatch as Smaug was absolutely amazing!

 

For New Year's Eve, we decided to play it low-key.  First we went on a history-drenched Urban Hike about Santa Barbara to retrace the Padre's Route to/from town from the Mission.  It was well attended to the tune of about 140 people, when 70 or less were expected.  The organizers punted and it was very informative and interesting.  It was covered by the local TV station, KEYT.  Then we came home for a quick dinner followed by a late evening movie, The Wolf of Wall Street. 

This movie, albeit way too long, was more than likely more accurate than we'd all like to admit.  The debauchery, drugs, and excess everything was difficult to take (especially for three hours).  While the performances of the lead actors was commendable, I believe the movie was excessive on all counts.  IMHO, it will not be a contender for Best Picture, but will make lots of money at the box office.

A new monk reads the ORIGINAL texts

A new monk shows up at a monastery where the monks spend their time making copies of ancient books. The new monk goes to the basement of the monastery saying he wants to make copies of the originals rather than of others' copies so as to avoid duplicating errors they might have made. Several hours later the monks, wondering where their new friend is, find him crying in the basement. They ask him what is wrong and he says "the word is CELEBRATE, not CELIBATE!"