PEBCAC

Like the title says:

wrote ’bout this before

Vending Machines of Japan

still want moobella

——+++++——

Check out the kid in the toddler vending machine

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to money lately. This isn’t ususual for anyone of course.

Nonetheless, Steph and I are thinking about buying a home and starting a family…in addition to still looking for business properties and developing an online retail site for her family….and reflection on money has become more of an issue.

Money, in addition to its value for obtaining goods and services, is used to barter in ’status’/respect or reputation. In this regard money has value to even those who don’t really value it. Independent of your thought about money, it’s important due to public perception. It’s can’t be escaped, it alters, some might says warps, perception. This manipulation of money, in order to manilpulate perception is more valuable than the currency itself.
I like to think that I’ve reached a point in my life where I value money less. I’ve managed to convince myself of this as evidenced by my change in careers. In a former life I was in executive management inside of human resources and Information Tech. for several Fortune 100 companies, occasionally in research.  The income, particularly during the internet boom, was very very good.

My current work in non-profit, while having some of the secondary fiscal benefits of executive management, is still on the very low end of the salary curve. The concern is have I deluded myself too much? Trying to obtain enlightenment at the expense of perception…which I could argue — is somewhat of a necessity for enlightenment. More importantly, does the fiscal status of my position (which is actually pretty good for non-profits in this area) inhibit my ability to perform my job. ie Does a lack of positive perception, due to fiscal perceptions (if it exists), make me less respected and thus, less able to do my job? Does it inhibit others?

I’m not sure how to rectify this, I think it means I need to get more money…and still try to have a strong moral compass. I’m not entirely how possible this is. It may be another quixotic quest….windmill Ho!!!!!

psst… 

Wanna buy a kidney?

It’s not very often there’s a ‘geek themed’ song that is actually good. Yes, I admit, I kinda liked Weird Al’s - ‘It’s all About the Pentiums’…but it didn’t have much artistic merit.

However, listening to TWIT, they played a fun little song called “Code Monkey” that does have artistic merit. Fun Stuff, very They Might Be Giants. I posted the lyrics below. This is the first song I’ve bought in years online. There’s no DRM and it was easy to find…see, if you make it easy, people will buy. If you make it difficult.

Well, here’s the lyrics…and having been a code monkey–they ring very true. I don’t want to link to MP3 I purchased…simply because my site does have ads…no real money…but still. Check it out, buy a copy. It makes me happy.

Play the song

Buy the song

Code Monkey- Lyrics

Code Monkey get up get coffee
Code Monkey go to job
Code Monkey have boring meeting
With boring manager Rob
Rob say Code Monkey very dilligent
But his output stink
His code not “functional” or “elegant”
What do Code Monkey think?
Code Monkey think maybe manager want to write god damned login page himself
Code Monkey not say it out loud
Code Monkey not crazy, just proud

Code Monkey like Fritos
Code Monkey like Tab and Mountain Dew
Code Monkey very simple man
With big warm fuzzy secret heart:
Code Monkey like you

Code Monkey hang around at front desk
Tell you sweater look nice
Code Monkey offer buy you soda
Bring you cup, bring you ice
You say no thank you for the soda cause
Soda make you fat
Anyway you busy with the telephone
No time for chat
Code Monkey have long walk back to cubicle he sit down pretend to work
Code Monkey not thinking so straight
Code Monkey not feeling so great

Code Monkey like Fritos
Code Monkey like Tab and Mountain Dew
Code Monkey very simple man
With big warm fuzzy secret heart:
Code Monkey like you
Code Monkey like you a lot

Code Monkey have every reason
To get out this place
Code Monkey just keep on working
See your soft pretty face
Much rather wake up, eat a coffee cake
Take bath, take nap
This job “fulfilling in creative way”
Such a load of crap
Code Monkey think someday he have everything even pretty girl like you
Code Monkey just waiting for now
Code Monkey say someday, somehow

Code Monkey like Fritos
Code Monkey like Tab and Mountain Dew
Code Monkey very simple man
With big warm fuzzy secret heart:
Code Monkey like you

youtube and other video sharing sites seem to be becoming the most important human and civil rights tools we have. It’s still arguable if the ‘big brotherism’ is worth it though–long term. For now we have control over some of the tools used to capture and distribute this media, but for how long will that last? The same tools, with DRM, image recognition and data mining…could quickly be used against us.
from digg:
A photojournalist who goes by the name RaginginMiami was on assignment shooting Biscayne Blvd in Miami and was shooting a police action from a public street. The police asked him not to photograph them and he continued, resulting in a forceful arrest and his being charged with multiple infractions over the incident.

read more | digg story

Okay, it’s foolish retro nostalgia…but joysitq, is reporting a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle port of the coin-op classic will be on Xbox Live. I spent many quarters on this sucker… Here’s the article:

This pair of images might indicate that Konami’s coin-op classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is currently up on PartnerNet, Xbox Live Arcade’s beta testing network. But let’s not confuse our burning desire with reality. The Turtle rights are now in Ubisoft’s hands, so re-releasing this arcade romp is gonna take some finessing. It’s not improbable, but without an official announcement joining these screens, TMNT isn’t confirmed for XBLA either. Besides, Konami’s already got six other arcade ports clogged in the pipeline.

The Navy developed an elaborate plan to avoid public awareness of its operations to detain enemy combatants at its brig near Charleston, S.C., including withdrawing information from websites and redacting public documents.

read more | digg story

Found a cool site at www.fabprefab.com

We have a new puppy. A little Chinese Crested named Fernando.

More Pics here 

Updates to the page at: 

Enemies List
Friends List
Media list

new myspace page here. Pictures of the new dog, Fernando, are to follow.

I need to go take a shower…I updated my myspace page. I feel dirty, but there is some kind of necessity in having one. I actually opened it over a year ago, but just decided to play this evening…mainly to help my little brother with his. The interface is abysmal. The pages look and sound like something from 1996….and well it’s just a corporate disaster. But, the kids seem to like it.

(CNN) — Warlords are forcing children in conflicts around the world to become killing machines — nothing more than what one child advocate calls “cannon fodder.”

Some children are kidnapped from their schools or their beds, some are recruited after seeing their parents slaughtered, some may even choose to join the militias as their best hope for survival in war-torn countries from Colombia, and across Africa and the Middle East, to south Asia.

Once recruited, many are brainwashed, trained, given drugs and then sent into battle with orders to kill.

There is no escape for what the United Nations and human rights groups estimate are 250,000 child soldiers today. These children, some as young as 8, become fighters, sex slaves, spies and even human shields.

Sometimes their guns are taller than they are. But the child soldiers can be frighteningly cold and effective, according to CNN Africa correspondent Jeff Koinange. (Audio Slide Show: Koinange describes coming face to face with gun-wielding children)

He said they take macho noms de guerre like “Col. Rambo” and “Brig. Chop Them Up.”

“The saddest part is we, as adults, had to address them as such,” he added. “Otherwise you just never knew what would happen.” (Read: Koinange recalls how child soldiers killed his friend)

The children’s very vulnerability makes them attractive to the men leading militias, according to Jo Becker, who has interviewed former child soldiers in Sri Lanka, Nepal, Uganda and Myanmar for Human Rights Watch.

They are easy to manipulate and will do the unspeakable without question or protest, partly because their morals and value systems are not yet fully formed, she said. In some cultures, child soldiers — 40 percent of whom can be girls — are considered expendable “cannon fodder,” she said.

One girl, Angela, 12, told Human Rights Watch she was told to shoot a friend when she joined Colombia’s FARC guerrillas. (Watch children drilled for war in the mud )

“I closed my eyes and fired the gun, but I didn’t hit her. So I shot again,” she said. “I had to bury her and put dirt on top of her. The commander said, ‘You’ll have to do this many more times, and you’ll have to learn not to cry.’ ”

An indictment against Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga Dyilo asserts that one of his commanders threatened to shoot a 13-year-old girl unless she tied the testicles of a prisoner with wire. She complied and the captive died.

In Myanmar — formerly known as Burma — a boy who was 11 when he was recruited to the national army, had to watch as older soldiers gunned down mothers and then killed their babies. “They swung them by their legs and smashed them against a rock. I saw it,” Kim Muang Than told Human Rights Watch.

Officials with the United Nations, UNICEF and human rights groups said they are seeing promising signs, 20 years after the United Nations first addressed the issue. (Watch children flee the horror of militia kidnappers )

Child soldiers were on the agenda for a U.N. Security Council working committee Friday. The committee discussed how rebel groups in Nepal and Sri Lanka use children to fight. Action against militias in the Ivory Coast and the Democratic Republic of Congo was also considered.

Last week, 58 countries and nongovernmental agencies signed a treaty to do more to free current and potential child soldiers from peril. And, on January 29, the International Criminal Court forged ahead with its first war crimes prosecution, targeting Lubanga on charges of recruiting child soldiers The act was declared a war crime when the ICC was established in 2002.

“In the past there haven’t been consequences against the commanders,” said Becker, of Human Rights Watch. “This sends a signal to the groups that the world is paying attention now, you can be jailed for life and your assets can be frozen.”

“I think we’ve come a long way,” said Radhika Coomaraswamy, the United Nations’ envoy for children and armed conflict. “Ten years ago this was an invisible issue.”

Since last summer, groups in Burundi, Ivory Coast, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan and Somalia have been referred to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.

But there are many, many more. Child soldiers have been used in the past decade in more than 30 countries, according to the United Nations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, which said young fighters were active in at least 19 countries last year. (Map: Where children are forced to fight)

Coomaraswamy sees the Middle East, Sudan’s Darfur and eastern Chad as the new trouble spots. (Read about Iraq’s child soldiers)

There are also concerns in Asia, with Human Rights Watch posting reports in January alleging violations by Maoist forces in Nepal and an offshoot of the Tamil Tigers rebel group in Sri Lanka.

“We’re no longer just pointing fingers at rebel groups or government armies,” said Human Rights Watch’s Becker. “Now we’re holding individual commanders accountable for their crimes.”

U.N. envoy Coomaraswamy is taking an optimistic long view. “I think this is a little bit like the campaign against slavery in the late 19th century,” she said. “There’s such an abhorrence of it on an international level.”

But much remains to be done, she cautioned. Funds must be found and steps taken to restore some sense of normal life for children numbed and hardened by their war experiences. In many cases, she said, their families don’t want them and they are shunned by villagers.

Abandoned, they find little to eat, have nothing to do and scant hope for the future, Coomaraswamy said.

Without intervention, they could grow up to become a lost generation of migrant professional killers.

SAN DIEGO - Dozens of dolphins and sea lions trained to detect and apprehend waterborne attackers could be sent on a mission to patrol a military base in Washington state, the U.S. Navy said Monday. In a notice published in this week’s Federal Register, the Navy said it needs to bolster security at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, located on the Puget Sound close to Seattle. The base is home to submarines, ships and laboratories and is potentially vulnerable to attack by terrorist swimmers and scuba divers, the notice states.

Several options are under consideration, but the preferred plan would be to send as many as 30 California sea lions and Atlantic Bottlenose dolphins from the Navy’s Marine Mammal Program, based in San Diego.

“These animals have the capabilities for what needs to be done for this particular mission,” said Tom Lapuzza, a spokesman for the Marine Mammal Program. The Navy is seeking public comment for an Environmental Impact Statement it’s preparing on the proposal.

Lapuzza said because of their astonishing sonar abilities, dolphins are excellent at patrolling for swimmers and divers. When it detects a person in the water, a Navy dolphin drops a beacon. This tells a human interception team where to find the suspicious swimmer.

Dolphins also are trained to detect underwater mines; they were sent to do this in the Iraqi harbor of Umm Qasr in 2003. The last time the animals were used operationally in San Diego was in 1996 when they patrolled the bay during a Republican convention.

The military has been working with dolphins since 1959; the project was de-classified in the 1970s.

Sea lions can carry in their mouths special cuffs attached to long ropes. If the animal finds a rogue swimmer, it can clamp the cuff around the person’s leg. The individual can then be reeled in for questioning.

The Navy wanted to deploy marine animals to the Northwest in 1989, Lapuzza said, but a federal judge sided with animal-rights activists concerned about the effects of cooler water, as well as how the creatures would affect the environment. Water in the Puget Sound is about 10 degrees cooler than in San Diego Harbor, which has an average temperature of about 58 degrees, Lapuzza said.

Since then, the Navy has taken the dolphins and sea lions to cold-water places like Alaska and Scandinavia to see how they coped.

“They did very well,” Lapuzza said. If the animals are sent to Washington, the dolphins would be housed in heated enclosures and would only patrol the bay for periods of about two hours.

Stephanie Boyles, a marine biologist and spokeswoman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said sea mammals do not provide a reliable defense system, and they should not be kept in small enclosures.

“We believe the United States’ citizens deserve the very best defense possible and this just isn’t it,” Boyles said, adding that dolphins are easily distracted once in open water. “They don’t understand the consequences of what will happen if they don’t carry out the mission.”

Among the other options the Navy is considering for the Kitsap-Bangor base are the use of human interception teams and remote-controlled machines.

The Navy has been training marine mammals since the 1960s, and currently keeps about 100 dolphins and sea lions. Most of these are in San Diego, but about 20 are deployed at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, Ga.

Dolphins live for up to 30 years. Lapuzza said the Navy occasionally gives its retired animals to marine parks but generally keeps them until they die of old age.

The Navy hopes eventually to downsize its marine mammal program and replace the animals with machines.

“The technology just isn’t there yet,” Lapuzza said. “The value of the marine mammals is we’ve been doing this for 35 years and we’ve ironed out all the kinks.”

Pictures of Strange Houses Around The World

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Whether it’s an office bully, team slacker or a chronic pessimist, a single employee can seriously damage an entire company, according to William Felps and Terence Mitchell of the University of Washington Business School.

read more | digg story

Things have been too busy than to do much more than eat and attempt to sleep.

Nonetheless, I’m working on a bunch of projects at work…each more important and urgent than the last. If the Observer-Reporter ever gets things on their website fixed, I’ll post some of the local press.

When the insomnia has been kicking in, I’ve been playing VivaPinata. I bought this for my wife since it’s a little ’softer gamer’… I’ve been hogging the 360 time. The game is amazing. It’s a little gem of a game that has occupied a couple hours too many of my time. The ability to form an emotional connection and inspire creativity is amazing…all with little pinata avatars.

I’ve also been playing Gears of War which is amazing in both its visuals and gameplay. If I ever get better, I’m loooking forward to playing online. There are plenty of reviews, so I’m not going to bother. It still sounds odd, but I’m resolving to play more video games… I really don’t allow myself ‘down’ time and have an incessant need to always be doing something ‘productive’. Video games are the antithesis of this.
Steph and I continue to save money and look at housing options. She continues to look for property to start a business and we’re looking for a new contractor for her families e-commerence website for ‘Pet Supply Warehouse’.

On more important news, my sister found out today she is having a little girl. She’s due in June.

My brother is returning from an interview in Arizona, recently graduated college and passed his boards with high honors.

Our rescue dog, Q-bert, founds a better home with a wonderful gentleman from around pennstate.

My mother continues to give hell to…and teach, the fine children of South Carolina, as a teacher. My father terrorizes them as well.

There still aren’t enough hours in the day. We could all use more health and money. But life, for what it is, is good.

Oh yeah, there’s some more updates to the site:

Enemies List
Friends List
Media list

found this on newscientist.com. very interesting.
Snakes eat poisonous toads and steal their venom

22:00 29 January 2007

NewScientist.com news service

Rowan Hooper

Toads on the Japanese island of Ishima seem to be losing their evolutionary battle with snakes. Most snakes, and indeed most other animals, avoid eating toads because of the toxins in their skin. Rhabdophis tigrinus snakes, however, not only tolerate the toxins, they store the chemicals for their own defensive arsenal.

Deborah Hutchinson at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, US, and colleagues, found that snakes on Ishima had bufadienolide compounds – toad toxins – in their neck glands, while those snakes living on the toad-free island of Kinkazan had none.

The snakes are unable to synthesise their own toxins, so they can only have derived bufadienolide compounds from their diet. Hutchinson’s team confirmed this by feeding snake hatchlings either a toad-rich or a toad-free diet. Toad-fed snakes accumulated toad-toxins in the nuchal glands on the back of the neck; snakes on a toad-free diet did not.

“Rhabdophis tigrinus is the first species known to use these dietary toxins for its own defence,” says Hutchinson.

Fight or flight

What is more, when attacked, snakes on different islands react differently. On Ishima, snakes stand their ground and rely on the toxins in their nuchal glands to repel the predator. On Kinkazan, the snakes flee.

“Snakes on Kinkazan have evolved to use their nuchal glands in defence less often than other populations of snakes, presumably due to their lack of defensive compounds,” says Hutchinson.

Moreover, baby snakes benefit too. The team showed that snake mothers with high toxin levels pass on the compounds to their offspring. Snake hatchlings thus also enjoy the toad-derived protection.

Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas0610785104)

from digg:
Help the poor guy out — will ya? | “Troy was unable to find any buyers interested in mass producing what was projected to be a $2,000 piece of equipment — reportedly leaving him broke and facing eviction… So far there hasn’t been a single offer on the badass Trojan, and with a starting bid of only $1,000.”

read more | digg story

It’s only in Europe at the moment, but coming to the US soon. For €25k you can have a living cube with sleek minimalist design with a tiny footprint. I can imagine all sorts of uses for these - a cabin in the woods, student housing, how about putting one on a Manhattan rooftop?

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More PreFab goodness from Wired.

I’m not sure who over there has a vested interest in highend prefabs, but they’ve been a wonderful source of information.

Also came across this pretty sweet blog with design and prefab info.

Michelle Kaufmann Designs also updated their/her website.

and finally, more domehomes.

file under obvious:
Suspicious items in Boston appear to be guerrilla ads for Adult Swim’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

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