Tips With Job

These are the times that try men's...soles.


(Props to Paste for sharing The Generationals with the musically-discerning among us.)

Tips With Job

I know I struggled a little bit A.) cutting my contraption and B.) getting the cord inside my contraption but it's actually pretty easy.
(Special thanks to Paste for turning me on to Class Actress.)

Brother Joel tells me that when it comes to facebook - resistance is futile.

Ever watch Star Trek The Next Generation?

Sometimes I feel like a young Wesley Crusher when it comes to Facebook (The Game) - and that's it up to me to save the Federation from itself.  This commercial for that episode is hilarious (to me) if viewed through that lens.  (Please also note a young Ashley Judd making her television debut)



"High tech nightmare"

They are just so odd...

hail!

Many thanks to the Mountain Tates for a toaster that makes bread fun again.

(i tried to work "bread ex field" in here somewhere but it just felt forced)

...

My first year out of college I spent Christmas Eve in Proctorsville, VT and per the suggestion of my brother John - who was once no stranger to solo Christmas Eves before the advent of Lisa - I went and had Chinese food for dinner. It's a tradition I've kept alive for the past decade thanks in large part to the guests we always have at the hotel over Christmas. It must be a tradition in the Chinese-American subculture to come to Killington, Vermont for Christmas and to cook up a storm and party like Wok-stars (a-thank you). The same group - in the row of non-smoking double queens - always fixes me a plate and so here I am...tradition alive and well. Stunned, perhaps, this is my third time spending CE at a hotel with what were once total strangers but are now familiar acquaintances...stunned but thankful.
My stomach may be full...but there is room in this inn.

Gingrich gets a few more points with me

Occupy wall street in the micro

I am one of the 4%...on ebay at least. Ebay is, in some ways, it's own little economy. Buyers and Sellers peddling and competing with their own little paypal currency.

 Participation in this economy is entirely voluntary and your success either in finding the best deal or in getting the best yield for your selling efforts is solely dependent on the individual. About a year ago I began to sell on Ebay in earnest. (I'd go on craigslist looking for bargains and then I'd go on Ebay and flip the item for a profit. Recently I've become a "coupon magnate" selling mass quantities of coupons.)  Whenever I sold an item this past year, just like the rest of Ebay, I was charged 5% of the sale price. Or I was taxed, if you will. But just like any ideal economy there are rewards for hard work. I began to pride myself on my accuracy of description, prompt return of emails, dispute resolution, speediness of delivery (as well as quality of packaging materials) and I also began adding a personalized, hand-written note in each sale.

 This week I was rewarded by being labeled both a power seller and a top-rated seller.  Classifications determined by a calculus that includes factors from both buyers and from Ebay itself and classifications I can stand to lose.  Buyers have rated me as above average in every category with Ebay concurring - and Ebay acknowledges that I bring in above-average revenue for them without any unnecessary work on their behalf.

So now I pay only 4% in seller fees and I am "taxed" less than about 96%  of the Ebay population.

This was no accident and while I don't equate my ability to flip a cell phone on Ebay to some grander economic achievement - the lesson for me is quite clear:  There are winners and losers in this American economy of ours and at times we will all be both.  But what this economy is most certainly not designed for is spectators.  You cannot sex up or intellectualize laziness.  It all comes down to staying up and waking up that extra minute.

Yeah, or go to a different Chinese joint next time

Obadiah Tom Tate, second row - peering

"Or we can return to the road we once knew and which has served us well: a road where individuals acting freely and with little restraint are able to pursue fortune and prosperity as they see fit, a road where the government's role is not to shape the marketplace but to help prepare its citizens to prosper from it.

In short, we must choose between the straight line promised by the statists and the jagged line of economic freedom. The straight line of gradual and controlled growth is what the statists promise but can never deliver. The jagged line offers no guarantees but has a powerful record of delivering the most prosperity and the most opportunity to the most people. We cannot possibly know in advance what freedom promises for 312 million individuals. But unless we are willing to explore the jagged line of freedom, we will be stuck with the straight line. And the straight line, it turns out, is a flat line."

- Jeb Bush

(from this WSJ article)

Little something for my brothers to watch when given the chance...

my mind used to race...

...now it just hands out the cups of gatorade

Rutland-20111124-00044.jpg

Thanksgiving at the hospital: Sitting, alone, at a large table while complete strangers are the only people I see...top 40 piped in over the speakers and the smell of Pine Sol.

Hearty helping of perspective.

Jesusing

Listen, I like Tim Tebow. In addition to being one heaven of an athlete I really do appreciate the outspoken and joyful profession of his faith - in venues where I'm sure vice and temptation must seem to reign.

But c'mon, kid.

I guess when he is seen praying, as conspicuously as possible, that he is praying for safety? victory? ethiopia?

Is it wrong for some players to mock him for praying? Yes.
Am I surprised considering how easy he made it for them? Not at all.

If the opposing team were to see the opposing quarterback make a public spectacle like Tebow does - wouldn't a good percentage of the players assume that he is praying that they will lose? In order that, what, the glory go to God? And when he's been sacked, I think their response is easily understood. (but not justified)

Tim Tebow is a young, young man who endures pressures that would've broken me in the first week...and he must feel he has to please so many people. He was drafted first round, got a major paycheck, took over the top job on a team in a major media market and, kudos to him, he wants to reassure his brothers and sisters in Christ that he is still on our team. But the way he does it is wrong and it's more about him and the cult of support surrounding him than it is about actually praying for whatever it is he's praying for.

If he's praying for shelter from the pitfalls and temptation(s) that being a star NFL quarterback brings to him - the money, the accolades and fame, the women, the potential injury. Then we need to pray for him to be rescued from his job.
Better to pluck it out.

But as Jesus said in Matthew:

When you pray, you are not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their full reward in full. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close the door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

I like the kid, I really do. But I was more embarrassed by him than offended by others...who gave him his reward in full.

Childrens' Bulletin Art

From The Archives

I must've been sick?

Thank you Tara.

Easily the funniest thing I've seen in quite a while

He was caught with his pants down.
A pilot who accidentally locked himself in the bathroom of his LaGuardia-bound plane caused a terror scare last night when a helpful passenger with an accent tried to come to his rescue by banging on the cockpit door.
The embarrassing comedy of errors began when the captain of a Chatauqua Airlines flight from Asheville, N.C., decided to take a bathroom break before landing.
But when he tried to get out of the men’s room, the door jammed, trapping him in the tight quarters.
Desperate to get out and land the plane — which was in a holding pattern above the airport — he pounded his fists on the door to attract attention.
A well-intentioned passenger sitting in the front row heard his thumping and hurried over to help.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/11/17/pilot-locked-in-bathroom-causes-terror-scare-on-new-york-bound-plane/#ixzz1dyDRfKeK

...

"It may be a sign of our times that everyone seems to be talking openly about sex but we seem embarrassed to talk about love."
- Thomas Sowell
- JBT

When the roads were washed out, and we were without power, I slept on a couch in the main lobby so our stranded guests could hail me if they needed help with anything - not that there was much I could do for any of them except commiserate. That and put on a sleeping-in-discomfort show that Choice Hotels International cared that much about them.

It was late-August hot in that lobby and I woke frequently, stretching my arms into the black vacancy above me and feeling numbly for a Jeep-charged cellphone now run out of power. Sweating. Sweet Moses, the heat.

I walked out one night - 2AMish -, through the lot, past the pool, around the picnic tables and out onto route 4. Just a few sounds...some crickets in the Green Mtn National Forest, Mendon brook below me somewhere - still simmering down, and some plane drifting slowly above me, although I may have imagined its hum.

Down and stretched out my arms - laid my cheek on the cool asphalt. Really, not a care in the world napping in the middle of a highway. Let the constellations have the view for once.

Hobo Removal

My brother Josh's (decidedly better) blog can be reached here!

And away...

..We go
- JBT

Look Ma, I made a video!

Occupie In The Sky

Just one of those short and sweet wikipedia articles that are ultimately pointless but make me feel so illuminated nonetheless.

Mark Steyn writes a very sound article on the Occupy Wall Street abomination.

I often tell people, when they ask me why I'm not on facebook anymore, that if Facebook were a physical location I would never go there - And this manicured mob in Manhattan is, to my mind, a physical manifestation of a facebook fan page. It's a place for rampant and poorly-aimed whining - hoarse, cyclic, aimless argumentation throttled to ever-increasing volume - endless chances for photo-ops and hook-ups - and this constant perpetuation of the facebook cult of "me". Occupy Wall Street is pointless, effete and nauseatingly self-indulgent. It's un-American.

I usually spend these coming weeks dreading the arrival of snow here in the northeast, but oh how I hope it dumps here and soon. "Like".

The unoccupied occupiers.

A parasite in skinny jeans and a $40 haircut complains to its host about its life of limited consequence and considerable largesse...a life lubricated by the economic machine it feverishly seeks to disrupt. Facebook stati* and twitter feeds, tapped out masterfully on an iphone bought for $200 with a new two-year agreement. $115 times 24 = $2760.00 + the $200 for the phone = $3000 (with a peace symbol phone protector and car charger for the vw). Parasite can't afford health insurance, and wants it for free. Couldn't fit any more plastic in its wallet anyhow. Subway sandwich card, gym membership card, mastercard.
Parasites.
Redeem some cans, eat oatmeal, trim the fat and be still - when being busy doesn't benefit you somehow.
I fear for the Republic.
*("statuses" should be shortened to "stati")

A Facebook update resulted in the arrest of a Texas man who allegedly beat up his wife for not "liking" his status.