The more energy independant we become, the less motivated the arab nations (whom we are putting out of the oil selling business) will be to buy our Tbills and prop up our fading currency (we are exploiting to reach said independance). So in a sense, our financial security rests on the continued dependancy on foreign oil.

Just when you thought the unscrupulous banking practices couldn’t get any lower, someone comes along and does what America does best….skirt personal responsibility by blaming a problem on an entity. In this case the drug companies.

Did Anti-Depressants Cause the Mortgage Crisis?
by Adam Hanft

“…There are many who argue that anti-depressants got to #1 status because Big Pharma has spent hundreds of millions to create a nation of psychological hypochondriacs using canny marketing to blur the difference between serious depressive states and merely painful, Billie Holiday-like blues.

But what exactly would turn psychotropic drugs like Prozac and Paxil and Zoloft into a subplot in the subprime mess? It’s the biochemistry. Those drugs are SSRIs—serotonin uptake inhibitors—and they spin their mood magic by elevating levels of serotonin in the brain. And serotonin is a neurotransmitter associated with behaviors that might contribute to the temptation of borrowing $501,000 on a $500,000 house…”

DISGUSTING!!

Well I just got back from my first MSFT company meeting. It was quite an affair. Demos of so many cool things (I can’t talk about), pyrotechnics, celeb MCs, and of course lots of swag. It was quite overwhelming, but at the same time it was the first time in my career since working at a startup that I felt fired up to be part of something important. Ballmer, love him or hate him, is an excellent speaker and does know how to get people motivated and fired up. The management are true nerds in every sense of the word (and I love that). They eat, drink and sleep their products and it shows. I think this keeps them real in the sense that they remember what it was like to develop software and therefore personal contributions are appreciated and rewarded. This does, of course, make them quite ackward at being slick or selling fish to a fisherman. That’s where Apple shines.

MSFT is one crazy machine and even with 25k people filling half of Safeco field for the meeting, they still manage to make people’s contribution feel valuable. This is very odd since the outsider’s view of the company is that you are some cog in a machine locked in an office lost among thousands of others. I would argue the opposite in my short tenure, but ask me again in a few years.

Oh, and the new ads are quite cool…
Download
I’m a PC…can’t believe I’m excited to say that.

I’ve read both Engadget and Gizmodo via Google Reader for several years now, but the duplication is just killing me. Since Google doesn’t seem to want to add any de-duping filters to the Reader product I was faced with a choice. Sorry Engadget, it wasn’t personal, but your content just didn’t seem to compare when placed back to back with the Giz

Now that we officially live in “the boonies” (according to most people), it is a bit of a haul to the closest grocery mega-mart. Additionally, its becoming quite difficult, with two kids, a prego wife and a new house to unpack, to find time to actually go to the store. So we decided to try Safeway delivery service. With the MSFT Prime card, the delivery ends up costing $4 or less, so we filled up our virtual cart and tried it out. Seamless service was the result. The produce was great, and they had all the dry goods we wanted, at a better price than our local market. Thumbs up for Safeway.com.

Next thing to try is spud.com. They are an organic and local crop food delivery service. What caught my eye was their “harvest basket” which delivers fruits and veggies of your favor (determined by taking a small preference selection test) priced at various amounts. For example a $35 Harvest Basket gets you 2-4 quantity of about 12 diff fruits or veggies delivered to your door for free when you spend over $35. Oh yeah, and 10% all orders with the MSFT Prime card.
You can also select that you want the fruits and veggies to come from less than 500 miles away, which is cool for supporting your local economy and staying away from imported fruit and associated pesticides.

I gouged the heck out of my knuckle yesterday which creates a problem with respect to bandages.I decided to go with some super glue to seal the wound quickly and prevent it reopening. I’m happy to say that this morning everything is still sealed up tight after a shower and a motorcycle ride into the office.

Super glue has some good advantages in this area. First, its an alcohol based product giving some antiseptic properties on the wound. Also, superglue is “digestable” by the human body and therefore has no long term effect for scarring, etc. In fact surgeons are now using the adhesive for sealing up surgical scars, as the healing is quicker and scarring is diminished as compared to soochers.

I suggest you keep some in your fridge and throw a tube in your first aid kit.

NY Times Article

I’ve never seen a place where there are so many people who are dressed like they are going on a mountain expedition right this second. The irony is most of them haven’t ever left the NW.

As of last Thursday, I currently am unemployed. Its a bit freeing to not have any OWA mail to check or anything to worry about to begin next week. I guess this is what it must feel like to be independently wealthy.

What does the future hold…

Aruba next week.

Words of wisdom ala Molvar:
Quantity of personal fireworks set off and income level are an inverse relationship