As seen in the parking lot at a local gun show this past weekend.  Note the sign in the window and the condition of the vehicle of note.   Folks, you can’t make this stuff up.
P.S. — I would caution my readers against using Jim’s Cash Generator for supplying your main income stream — it doesn’t appear to be working out for Jim very well.
I apologize; I’ve been rather short on time, motivation, and mental capacity to do any serious articles lately, and I feel I’ve let my readership down a bit because of it.  My job is going great, but I arrive home bushed, and by the time I watch my son and get him ready for bed, I’m ready to hit the hay and my mind is nowhere near a philosophy-based blog posting, let alone coherent sentences.
However, I wanted to share these crappy-ass cell phone pictures with you.  Every day my commute to Charles City takes me past the 75-megawatt, 50-turbine wind farm that is being built as we speak just on the edge of CC.  I love the fact that Iowa is getting tons of these farms going up — wind power is a great resource; clean, fairly economic, and plentiful.   Plus, I think the farms look very majestic and are fascinating to watch being built.
I’ve been taking photographs as I go to work with my phone; not the best, but there’s some pretty sunrises and you can at least see some progress. Â Â Enjoy.
This posting is to you, faithful reader. I’ve done some blogging for awhile now, and specifically, I’ve tried to crank out a posting every day this week, just to show what I’m capable of when I’m running at capacity.
Time for you to give me some criticisms! If you feel up to it, please post a comment and say a few words about the following items:
Why all these questions? Well, I like my blog. But that’s me, and this is my blog, and you get used to what you do all the time and how it’s done. But that doesn’t mean it’s either the Right way or the Best way, and I’d like to get some honest opinions from people who read this blog (there are some of you, I see you lurking in the shadows) as to what you really, truly, honestly think of it.
PLEASE be honest. Be brutally honest if you must to get your point across. I will take all commentary as constructive criticisms, not offenses, so feel free to be frank. If you prefer not to comment publicly, you can use the contact form on my main website to send me a private message, which I will keep in confidence.
I’d like to submit my blog to get some more “professional” reviews (such as they are), but would like to know what my readers think, first, before I do so. I will consider every angle presented; whether or not I change is still my prerogative, but I’ll think about it. 
I appreciate it, and you, very much. Thanks tons!
We need a new term for the way many of us communicate these days.
I propose, “Medium Talk”.
It’s not small talk, because it is more than simply about the weather. It certainly isn’t a long, drawn out conversation, either, because we don’t get massively involved. It’s in between and I’ve found myself engaged in this sort of communicative banter more and more often of late.
I think part of it has to do with the ways in which people are becoming more connected with various people in the world through such services as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, IM programs, email, blogs, and so on. I now keep “in contact” with a wide range of people from my life, past and present, through such means, far more than I would have if I didn’t have these resources.
And yet, if you notice, nobody contacts someone via these channels and has long, drawn-out conversations with them. At least, not very often. The most common type of contact is greeting, finding out, “what’s new in your life”, reflecting a bit on those “big” things, and then either deliberately signing off or simply letting the conversation wither and die on its own. They all allow us to digest small snippets of people’s lives every day instead of taking all the details in at once during a real-life meetup. I would almost imagine that, for most people, this is an easier way of managing relationships.
I think it reflects very little on whether or not we care about the person on the other end of the string. I have genuine interest in things that people on my contact lists do every day, although the level of detail necessary can very depending on my mood. While I might not talk to Kim all the time, it is interesting to me to see new pictures of things in her life or notes on what she has done. There’s no need for a conversation; indeed, I’d be hard-pressed to find out anything to talk about should one come up, but getting those little tidbits is enough to sate my curiosity and need for connectivity.
Personally, I’m constantly amused by the human race’s need for contact with each other. We are autonomous beings, capable of enduring massive amounts of trauma, stress, and other difficulties, and yet toss one of us on a deserted island or cut off our means of communication and we all start to climb trees after a bit. One would think after this many years of evolution and adjustment that we would start gaining the ability to be isolated without cracking. But there’s a definite reason that all of these online social tools are booming and becoming so popular — we need them.
I think in some ways, our need for contact derives from our mental craving for affirmation, the feeling that whatever you are doing is “normal” or “correct” and is probably developed from a very young age. As kids, we look to those older to make sure that whatever we have done is the right thing to do — that we drew the picture the “right” way, we made a “good” speech, we behaved properly when meeting the Pope. This doesn’t disappear as we grow older, although we may rebel slightly against it, on the whole we are still looking to each other to offer approval, acceptance, and confirmation of ourselves.
So, I’m playing along with my innate need to feel connected with the rest of the world by updating my places online, writing in a blog for who-knows to read, and sparking short but informative “Middle Talk” conversations with the various people I watch online. I may not have very deep conversations with any of them soon (although I certainly wouldn’t mind it!) but for now I’m happy to stay informed and to follow along with the highs and lows of you all as you follow my antics and doings that I display to you.
I can only hope that the changing environment for staying connected is a beneficial one to more than just the networks that promote and then reap advertising benefits from it. Much of what we do as humans would be better interpreted if we bothered to communicate intention and viewpoints to each other during the process; through these networks, I can rapidly share such information with people, either in detail or in macro format, so they are forewarned or at least know my positioning on things. Perhaps someday this will result in worldwide networks of humans acting in lockstep to do good things and promote a spirit of acceptance simply by being able to see all facets of the crystal at the same time.
I think this will be for the good in the long run, at any rate. And, hey you — shouldn’t we talk sometime?
Welcome to Memorial Day, the American holiday that supposedly celebrates the sacrifices of the men and women who have served our country in the various armed forces. What are you doing to commemorate this day?
You’re enjoying the day off from work, aren’t you? Don’t lie to the screen — the Screen Sees All.
Are you honouring veterans with potato salad and watermelon? Did you light the grill to thank a soldier?
In Weber We Trust
While I do reflect on those who have served our country on this day, I prefer to think of it in levels of honour, not as a blanket thankfulness. Most people classifiy this day (and Veteran’s Day) as a day to thank any serviceperson who has ever been a part of one of the armed organizations. I think this is unfair and, frankly, rude to some of those who have given more than others.
Level 4 – Very Little Honour: These are the folks who voluntarily chose to go into the armed forces as either a career choice or because they “didn’t know what else to do”. The unmotivated, directionless masses of high school graduates that pick the military over sitting in a cardboard box and smoking gutterweed. They serve their four years, do some grunting at boot camp, and basically exit with a bit more discipline, money, and a lot of parenting courtesy of the US government. These people chose to do what they did and don’t deserve more than a curt nod on a day like today. Nothing impressive here, folks.
Level 3 – A bit of Honour: The same as the above, except they get sent into a conflict and fight and perhaps die in action. These folks deserve a bit more than a nod because they actually did something as opposed to just bunking with Uncle Sam for a few years. Good job on that. But at the end of the day, if you got hurt or damaged, you asked for it — you chose this as your career, you accepted the risk. I dislike those people who give these people accolades because they wanted to do this. If you go into the military and hope to have a desk job, good luck on that, in this day and age nothing is guaranteed. If I go into skyscraper building, there’s a chance that I’ll fall and die on the job. If you are a coal miner, you run the chance of being buried alive. If you’re in the military, you might get shot and killed. Tough nails.
Level 2 – Honourable: These are the folks that, in a time of great need for our country, these people volunteered to go fight to defend the country and/or the world. These are people like my great uncle who faked their age to get into the air force in WWII and thousands of others like him that stepped up when the threat was highest. These folks are due a lot of salutes and songs on the day and a fond remembrance by the masses, for they applied themselves when the need was great.
Level 1 – A Great Honour: These are the highest of veterans to honour by us — the ones that went into service involuntarily, the draftees, conscriptors, the ones torn from their lives and family, whether or not they believed in the cause being fought for, they sacrificed their sanity, their health, and quite often their lives. These are the folks I shed tears for at the Vietnam Memorial, the ones I envision when I see the monuments and edifices built to honour them, the ones I think of when the flags march down the street and the rifles fire salute. These are the people who deserve most of our thoughts, gratitude, and applause.
So, on this Memorial Day, I urge you to enjoy yourselves, but think fondly of those that spent their sunny, summer days in a trench because their country forced them to do so, who dodged bullets in the jungle not out of choice, who instead of munching on succulent burgers fresh from a grill choked down dry rations in the cold rain. These folks did what was necessary to ensure that your right to grill, eat sugared tomatoes, and rip corn from a cob on a beautiful day didn’t come to an end.
And we are eternally grateful for that.
