The Happy New Year Philosophy

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Every now and then, I come across something really cool to share. It was attributed to Charles Schulz, but you know how these things are on the internet: chances are it didn't really come from him. So I'm calling it the Happy New Year Philosophy. Here it is:

You don't have to actually answer these six questions. Just ponder on them.

1. Name the five wealthiest people in the world.

2. Name the last five Heisman trophy winners.

3. Name the last five winners of the Miss America pageant.

4 Name ten people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer Prize.

5. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best actor and actress.

6. Name the last decade's worth of World Series winners.

How did you do?

The point is, none of us remember the headliners of yesterday. These are no second-rate achievers. They are the best in their fields. But the applause dies, Awards tarnish, Achievements are forgotten, Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners.

Here are five easier questions. See how you do on this one:

1. List a few teachers who aided your journey through school.

2. Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time.

3. Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile.

4. Think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and special.

5. Think of five people you enjoy spending time with.

Easier?

The lesson: The people who make a difference in your life are not the ones with the most credentials, the most money, or the most awards. They are simply the ones who care the most.

Something to think about.

Happy New Year!

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Other articles you'll find interesting or amusing:
Centennial Celebration
Civilization 5 Got Blasted
Arizona you evil state you

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In my Quest to Offend You

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I can't very well let the year end without offending as many people as possible, so here you go: Merry Christmas!

Apparently it's offensive to wish someone the best. Silly me, I thought only people in southern California were allergic to well-wishing (unless they can make a buck off it), but it's beginning to look a lot like even Santa is going to get censored everywhere he goes. Why? We all know what Santa's two favorite words are, and one of them will soon be struck from our Newspeak lexicon.

Personally, I don't get why we're suddenly on this anti-Christian crusade. (Or is "jihad" the proper term here?) America is an inclusive place. We accept pretty much everybody here. Our Founding Fathers were largely Christian. Our government is built upon Christian values. Each of our states' Constitutions mentions God and thanks Him for existence. Why are so many people trying so hard to hide these facts?

No one is forcing you to believe in God. No one is demanding you go to church. No one is going to make you have a good day if you don't want one. You are not required to accept the gift of our well-wishing. It's downright strange and anti-social, but we have plenty such people in this country, and they like to gather in remote places like Idaho and Utah. I don't recommend you join them, though, because they're liable to call you weird for not believing in God.

Do you know when the last time was I got offended for being wished a Happy Hanukkah? Never! I'd probably get locked up if I did. I don't get offended about being wished a Happy Kwanzaa either. Sure, it's a made-up holiday, but aren't they all? And if someone wants me to have a Happy Ramadan, do you know what I'll do? I'll have one! And I'll be thankful they wanted to give me one.

No one is telling Jews, Africans, and Muslims that they can't celebrate their holidays, so why are we attacking Christians? The modern Christmas is far more of an atheist holiday than a Christain holiday anyway. Who hasn't heard of Santa Claus? Who doesn't think it's weird if a kid doesn't believe in him? What kind of a sicko doesn't get cheery at the idea of spending hours in several stores, looking for the perfect way to spend thousands of dollars on people we hardly ever see in an effort to buy their love for a couple minutes?

Irrational hate of others is one of the central reasons why atheists don't like religious people. After all, it makes no sense to be fighting over who has the better imaginery friend, right? And since atheists have an irrational hatred of religious people, guess what? That makes atheism a religion! How's that for hypocrisy? Next thing you know, they'll be tithing, in the form of a tax on gasoline or something.

If you don't want to be happy, we're fine with that. Just keep your misery over there in the corner. The rest of us want to spend this time with our family and friends and make merriment. Giving gifts beyond love is optional. Here are some ideas, which will keep this site running:
















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Other articles you'll find interesting or humorous:
Centennial Celebration
How to Make More Money
Shh-it's a Secret!
Holiday Greetings

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

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Everlasting Trains

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It's now been 12 years since it was unleashed on the world, and it's still popular enough that there are still a handful of internet places you can go and get your computer-railroading urges satisfied. I'm talking about the best of the railroading games, Railroad Tycoon II.

Not only do I continue to make updates to my own strategy guide now and then, but there are others who keep the flame alive in their own special way.

You may not think 12 years is an especially long time, but computers age even more rapidly than dogs, and computer games age more rapidly still. In computer game years, Railroad Tycoon II is nearing 150 and still kicking, which is quite remarkable when you consider the incredibly high infant mortality rate; few computer games are on the shelves longer than two or three months, and even fewer survive their first calendar year, but Railroad Tycoon 2 is still selling just fine, despite being superceded at least twice. Off the top of my head, the only other game I can think of which has equivalent staying power is Diablo 2, which I'll talk about some other time.

Allow me to introduce you to some of the resources still at your disposal:

Hawk and Badger Railroad: Hawk has a considerable archive of maps and scenarios (which are pretty much synomymous with RT2), plus he has guides! How to play, how to make maps, how to create scenario events, and even a massive RT2 strategy guide, donated by yours truly. Hawk also has stuff for other railroading games.

The Terminal: This is a discussion forum, run by Gwizz, discussing strategies and tips to be a better player. Some of the tips in my strategy guide were gleaned from here. He also has a section about map help. AND, he's also got a butt-ton of maps!! This includes some map fixes.


And, of course, there is as ever my strategy guide, filled with information you won't find in anyone else's. I've got a few other tidbits I use, such as a spreadsheet and a couple scenarios I've tinkered with off and on but haven't released to the general public yet. Maybe some day when I can sit down and polish them up so they look pretty?

While my strategy guide was temporarily down earlier this month, I received a few messages from people trying to reach it, one of which came from a guy who has his own guide on how to make maps! Where was he when I was building my Alaska map from scratch? Well, I took a look at his guide today and made a few suggestions on how to improve it, and hopefully he'll come back with a bang-up document that'll really wow you. When he does, I'll link it up here.

So there's plenty of stuff out there for your Railroad Tycoon addiction.

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Other articles which may interest or entertain you:
Railroad Tycoon 2 Untold Strategies
Games I Play - Civilization 4
Good Thing these People aren't in Charge of our Economy

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Writing Exercises

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You guys know I'm part of a couple writer's groups, and one of the things such groups like to do is writing exercises. The one I go to at the Daytona Beach library has been doing one where they pick 10 words at random from the dictionary and you have 15 minutes to write a short story out of them. I posted my first such exercise nearly a year ago, and now I'm posting my last one because they've changed the rules.

The words given last month were these: flamboyant, acrid, morale, usher, stonewall, country, ale, discount, reservoir, bile. I'll post what I wrote in the comments section as I did last time.

The exercise we did today was to write a sympathetic character. Writing characters is something everyone tells me I'm good at, and is one of the few compliments I receive which I have no difficulty believing I deserve. Creating believable characters is something I strive for. I know a lot more about the Human condition than most people do and enjoy making my characters real.

This one came to me slowly but surely. Here's what I wrote (keep in mind I didn't get to do any editing):

His name was Benito, but if you called him that, you'd wake up in the middle of next week. To his friends he was Benny, to his business partners he was Ben, and to his enemies, he was a nightmare. Nobody wanted to be on Benito Bellucci's bad side.

Growing up in the wrong part of town, with the wrong kind of people as role models, it was inevitable that Benito's status as a model citizen would be fleeting. It lasted until his 12th birthday, the day he and some friends were caught stealing a bicycle his father couldn't afford to give him. His life progressed into deeper crimes until, aged 21, Benito did something completely unexpected.

A week before his girlfriend gave birth to their son, Benito turned over a new leaf. Choosing to make sure his child never had to live the life he had, Benito, fresh out of a short stint in prison, married his girlfriend, and swore he would do whatever it took to keep his nose clean. He did not want his child to end up like he had.

Benito never got the chance to prove he was in it for the long haul, or guide his son's life. A year after becoming a father, Benito sacrificed himself to save a family he didn't even know from a housefire he happened along. There are those who tried to claim he set the blaze as revenge for getting thrown into prison the year before, and he simply got trapped, but his wife knows he really did change that day, that he really was a good father to his son and a good husband to her. But how to prove it? That's what Louisa Bellucci would have to find out if she wanted her son to have the chance at respectability his father wanted to give him.

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Benito isn't a nice guy, and very well could have set the fire, but he's trying to do right by his son. This piece is just a descriptor, not a story fragment. To start off a story with this level of detail would've taken me a lot longer than 15 minutes to write.

All right, now it's your turn. Pick one of the above exercises, or pick both! Then post your results in the comment section. My 10 word submission appears below.

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Other articles you'll find interesting or humorous:
Watch your Words
"The The Impotence of Proofreading," by TAYLOR MALI
Curse cookies!

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The Problem of Emotional Investment

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Have you ever loved something so much, you couldn't let it go? Perhaps a favorite toy, or a favorite scarf, or even a car. Whatever it was, you held onto it a lot longer than most of your other stuff. Perhaps it's old and needs to be thrown out. Perhaps it doesn't do anything for you any more. Perhaps your significant other wants desperately for you to give it away. You know you should get rid of it, but you can't bring yourself to do it.

Why should we have this problem? Why do we hold on to junk we don't need?

It's called emotional investment, and it affects a lot more than our closet space.

When you get attached to something, it's because you've made an emotional attachment to it. Perhaps someone you love gave you a bean bag chair, which turned out to be a pretty good gift, and now, years later, it's covered with duct tape to keep it in one piece. Normally it would be long gone and forgotten, but you don't throw it out because of who gave it to you. You love that person, and so you love what they gave you.

Another attachment, besides gifts given by someone special, are things you got under special circumstances. Perhaps it was your first and only trip to Hawaii and you took a rock back home with you, which now has a place of pride on the coffee table, but you have no other rocks in your house. Or perhaps Rock Hudson kissed your hand and you haven't washed it since.

And yet another kind of attachment can come from a salesperson, or an advertisement, or feeling like you belong to an elite group. For instance, a large portion of Macintosh owners feel like their computer is inherently superior to all others, even though they cost a lot more and don't run as much software. Still, somehow they've been sold on an idea that their computer company of choice is so much better than what the rest of us use that we're all losers. They feel so strongly that they start fights about it. And then the Windows lovers will exhibit the same zealotry, and neither will be willing to admit that they're coming to blows over a piece of plastic that can't even wash the dishes for them.

It works for more than junk, too. We form emotional attachments to people and ideas all the time. The idea that we're never wrong... or always wrong, as the case may be. The idea that no one knows what we're going through. The idea that Libertarians are inherently not as valuable to our political system as Republicans and Democrats. Or the belief that all political groups are equally worthless and should be disbanded. Somehow, we form an emotional attachment to someone, something, or some idea, and we'll defend it against all rational argument.

For instance, anyone can see that the Earth is flat. Just look around! There's no way we could possibly be living on a ball. It even says in the Bible that the Earth has four corners, so therefore we must be living on a square. But somehow, it's possible to sail around the world. I haven't done it myself, so I don't know if it's true, and I think that weird thing at the top of the Sears Tower which they call the "curvature of the Earth" is just an optical illusion. And the circular shadow cast upon the moon during a lunar eclipse means nothing. The Earth is a flat square resting on the back of a turtle, who is sitting on another turtle. In fact, it's turtles all the way down.

It should be apparent that getting someone to form an emotional attachment to something would be a great way to sell them something. Guess what? It IS! Salesmen and marketers have been doing this since before we decided to start writing this stuff down. I think we started writing stuff down just so we could send ads to each other. But the point is, that thing you just GOTTA BUY, you've formed an emotional attachment to it. They made you believe that you would be cool if you bought their product, or that you HAD TO HAVE IT.

All of us have formed emotional attachments to our family, right? Mom, Dad, Brother, Sister, etc. We love them, without question. Maybe they did something really cool for us when we were little, maybe they still do cool things for us now that we're bigger. Usually, our acceptance of them allows us to irrationally forgive them almost anything, but sometimes they do something that really hurts. It feels like a betrayal. Extreme emotional attachment can lead to extreme emotional outrage upon betrayal, or even just the belief of betrayal.

When it's a THING we love, often we transfer our emotional attachment to the company which made it, and if they treat us right, we rave about them, and if they treat us wrong, we may rationalize it away, or we may instead feel betrayed. For instance, all the people who thought Apple Computer could do no wrong felt incredibly betrayed when Apple announced they were going to start putting Intel chips into their beloved computers. Many Mac fanatics promised death to Steve Jobs over a decision which no doubt agonized him. Likewise, when Sid Meier's Civilization V was announced, everyone thought it would be the best edition ever, but when it was finally released, many felt betrayed and felt it was a step backwards. And when Marvel Comics broke up Spidermanand Mary Jane, the outrage was unfathomably intense. The fans are STILL up in arms about it.

When a company tells us they're our friend, that they're the best thing ever, or whatever else they can to get us to buy from them or to buy their product, be it a toaster, a Ferrari, or even a celebrity like Steve Jobs or Jessica Simpson, doing so implies a certain level of co-responsibility. They have made implicit promises that they will love us, and if they betray that promise, people get upset. On the surface it seems irrational; it's just a THING, or a person you've never met. How can you fall in love with - or hate - a person you've never met and who has no idea they've wronged you?

It seems ridiculous, until you remember that you were asked to make an emotional investment. Emotional investments carry certain responsibilities, on both sides of the line.

There are plenty of companies, products, celebrities (who are simply products being sold to us), and so on who have sworn they were our best friend, only to end up disappointing us. It happens. It's inevitable. They're going to let us down one day. The problem is that, when it comes to REAL family and friends, we can talk to them, work it out, get an "I'm sorry" out of them, and we'll feel better. You can't get that out of many companies, and good luck getting it out of a celebrity. However, the ones you CAN get it out of - often in the form of a discount on your next purchase - these companies build up VERY loyal customer bases.

For instance, when I buy computer components, I shop almost exclusively at Newegg, and have done so for nearly 10 years. I recommend them to everyone. I've given them a lot of constructive criticism on their website, and now, thanks to me, it's an even better experience now. Why? Because they treated me right to begin with, and if something went wrong, they made it right. They had something called customer service and they realized it was important. In a way, they offered me a piece of ownership in their company, and in a way, I see myself as a part of their family. Now they're just about the biggest computer component seller out there, with perhaps a million happy customers. (Disclosure: I get no kickbacks for touting Newegg.)

Most companies can handle customer service easily, but the story is a little different when it comes to celebrities. For instance, I'm currently small enough that I can answer all my fanmail and make friends out of my fans (and vice versa). In a couple years, I might not be able to. At that point, some celebrities decide they no longer have any responsibility to their fans, and mention us only so we'll stick around; they don't actually care about us or want us to have a satisfactory customer experience. But there are also a few who DO make the effort to keep up. And I plan to be one of them, because I know what it's like to be on the outside looking in. I plan to bring as many of you with me as will follow because I'm thankful for what you've done for me.

So what are you supposed to take home from all this, you ask?

People have been using emotional attachment as a sales technique for eons. We do it all the time to each other without even realizing it. Usually it results in making a new friend. The most effective sales people use it, often as a weapon, and often without understanding their half of the social contract. It's hard NOT to take it personally when your emotions are toyed with.

Next time you discover a product you really want, or a person whose accompaniment you think you really need, stop and think: is that person really going to deliver on their implied promises to be your friend? If they do something that hurts your feelings, but you still like THEM, will they consider your constructive criticism like a real friend would, or will they ignore you because they didn't really care about anything more than your money?

Thank you for your consideration. The groups I lead or am a part have lately been asking my opinion about why they should feel ripped off or taken advantage of by people, or why it appears that customer service is going away. Just remember that most salespeople/celebrities/hotties are unaware of what kind of weapon they're wielding against you, so don't take it personally. Just point them to this article and they'll understand why you took offense.

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More articles to tickle your braincells:
You are What you Consume
Writing is Easy
How to Talk Like a Trucker

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Expose Yourself #3 - Evil Can't Hide from Jim

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In this series of articles, I talk to people who have been successful at taking control of their lives, making a name for themselves, and helping others to do the same. I’m very fortunate to have met them, and very thankful they have agreed to spend a few minutes talking with me to share part of their stories. We’re going to delve into what it took to propel these people from ordinary lives into extraordinary lives. We’ll find out where they’ve been, where they are, and where they’re going as each guest is asked to “Expose Yourself”.

You may recall that I was stationed aboard the USS Bataan, affectionately known as a Gator Freighter because we hauled Marines and their gear around the globe. Today’s guest was never one of the guys who crowded me out of the chow line, but he probably did it to someone else a few years back when he was a Marine.

Nowadays, though, he writes books. He’s already written two: Hidden Evil and Mysterious Lady, and is finishing up the 2009 RPLA award winning Rusty Steele, and he spends his time helping other writers perfect their craft as he heads the Port Orange Scribes. As if that wasn’t keeping him busy enough, he’s also webmaster for two chapters of the FWA, regularly volunteers for Hospice in Daytona Beach, is president and CEO of JollyOne Enterprises, and still finds time to be an avid scuba diver. Let’s give a great big OORAH to J. W. Thompson!

JC: Hey Jim, thanks for stopping by. Glad you’re not wearing your tree disguise; it would’ve brought back too many bad memories of walking through the forest on the ship.*

JW: It’s at the dry cleaners. We’re going out to Ruth Chris Steakhouse later tonight and I need to look my best.

JC: Awesome! Let’s get right into this: Where are you in your life, or your career, or the pursuit of your goals?

JW: Right now I have two books out, "Hidden Evil" and "Mysterious Lady," selling in quite respectable numbers. I have two more in different stages of editing, one of which is a romance novel. And I’ve just started rewriting a new series about a tough as nails CIA agent named Rusty Steele, which won an RPLA award last year. So I’d say I’m well on my way to being a novelist.

JC: Wow! Sounds to me like you’re gonna give Stephen King some competition for prolificness. How did you get started?

JW: I’ve enjoyed writing since I was a child. Until recently, I wrote only for my own eyes and never dared to dream of becoming a published author.

JC: Really? How recently are we talking?

JW: Five years ago, my wife and friends urged me to seek publication.

JC: How did you get where you are?

JW: The encouragement of family and friends who believed in me and the help of other writers are responsible for where I am. Joining the Florida Writers Association was the best thing I could have done. Writers helping Writers is their slogan, and they mean it.

JC: Where are you going next?

JW: My goal now is to make it to the bestseller list and bring as many writers as I can with me.

JC: That sounds excellent! What are you doing to get there?

JW: I try to improve my writing every day. I have a vast network of friends and fans on the internet and I try to help every writer with encouragement and by passing along the knowledge that I have picked up along my journey.

JC: Ah yes, I noticed that you run several different webpages I wanted to ask you about. You've got a page on Facebook, another one on Myspace, even a video on YouTube, all jam packed with fans from all over the world. How important are these sites to your success?

JW: It's all about the fans, not the sites. The fans are the life and inspiration for me to continue writing. They are also the secret to my success in marketing my books.

JC: Is it a lot of work to keep them updated?

JW: It requires from two to four hours a day.

JC: That's a lot of work. It sounds to me like you’ve got a lot going on and we can continue to expect great things from you. Any last words? Anything to put on your tombstone?

JW: Never give up your dreams.

* Note: To let you in on the joke, when aboard an amphibious ship like Bataan, the Marines usually dress in their cammies for comfort. We often pretend they're invisible (because they're camouflaged), or refer to them as trees. A group of them would therefore be a forest. Most squids think the Marines are too dumb to think of a good comeback, but really they just immensely enjoy knowing we're jealous of them.

Note2: After I coerced this poor woman into taking pictures of us, Jim coerced her into buying his books.
















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Other articles you'll find interesting or helpful:

"Expose Yourself" Articles List

Solar System - Earth
You Might not Know how to Drive
Joan Jett - 1999

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Genre Sales Trends

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Starting last Tuesday (Nov 30) and running through to (probably) this Friday, Eric over at Pimp My Novel has tallied a list of eight different genres and how their sales numbers are doing. If you're writing a book, you might want to take a quick peek at his series of articles. This is his first one. As some of you know, Eric is in the sales department of a major publishing house, so he's got a finger on the pulse of publishing that few of the agent blogs I follow have.

Good luck on your book, and stay tuned, I've got something else to say today too!

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Watch your Words

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In my writer's meeting yesterday, one of my friends asked me, "How many different meanings can you ascribe to the phrase, 'He eats shoots and leaves'?"

I wondered for a moment where he was going with this, and then he continued, "You could say, 'The hunter eats, shoots, and leaves,' to say that he ate something, shot something, and left. Or you could say, 'The panda eats shoots and leaves,' which describes the panda's diet of shoots and leaves. It all depends on where you put the commas."

At which point, I said, "How about, 'He eats shoots, and leaves,' to say that he ate some shoots, and then departed?"

"Ah, but are we talking about the hunter or the panda?"

That discussion, of course, was about people's comma usage, or lack thereof. It's one of the things we plan on teaching a little more about in the near future. Not everyone remembers learning this stuff back in grade school, or middle school, or high school, or college, or from reading anything professionally published, but if you want to be a writer, it's pretty important to know how to use commas to convey the proper meaning.

Likewise, word choice is important. "I arm-wrestled a grizzly bare," has an entirely different meaning from, "I arm-wrestled a grizzly bear," even though they sound the same when spoken.

"I heard a commode from the bathroom," versus, "I heard a commotion from the bathroom." Don't laugh, there are people who make mistakes like that, meaning to write one thing but writing the other instead. Even if they get the spelling right, it's still a mistake.

Often we see people confusing "accept" and "except", "there, their, and they're", and so on, but I'm talking about things that you shouldn't be able to confuse.

"As we got to the drawbridge, the engine stalled." Uhhhhh... The car? The boat? The drawbridge? Which engine stalled makes a difference in how you imagine what's going on. It's one thing to create a mystery to be solved, but it's another to leave them wondering what the heck you're talking about. When you do that, you turn them off and they stop reading.

Even the title I use for this site illustrates this. Am I advocating More in Sanity, or More Insanity? Or am I doing both?

Pay just a little bit of attention to the words you use, the way you use them, and the commas you use to seperate them. There's a ton of difference between, "Susan Boyle, the singer," and "Susan, boil the singer."
















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Other articles you'll find interesting or entertaining:
You Might not Know how to Write in the English Language
Webster's Rejects
What you should Know about the Military before you Join

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Loud TV commercials to be CALMed

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Fresh from the excitement of having reached 100 articles, I discovered that Congress has finally decided to give us Americans something we've been asking for for decades: normal volume commercials!

Dubbed the CALM Act, for Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation, it finally answers about 60 years of complaints to the FCC about commercials blaring into the silence of a regular TV program. And who says government doesn't work?

Of course, in the year in which the advertisers finally have to get their act together, I can't help wondering: is it even relavant?

On the one hand, a considerable number of people have figured out that there's really not much on TV worth watching (besides Burn Notice, NCIS, and just about anything with Michio Kaku in it). Almost every day, I hear someone proudly proclaiming they don't watch TV anymore, they don't even have a TV, or they have no idea what a cable bill is. (Yeah, sometimes it's me.)

On the other hand, who bothers to watch live TV anymore when you've got DVRs to tape your shows and save about 20 minutes of your life per hour skipping over commercials?

On the gripping hand, if you wanna watch Family Guy or ( : gag : ) Survivor, you can probably download them off the internet or go get the DVD at Walmart and forgo commercials (almost) entirely. Buying them takes the middle man out of the equation entirely... at least, until Congress legislates them back in a la the whole music industry (but I won't go into that right now).

With all the options available, and with all the other problems that are a little more pressing, like, you know, all the corporations robbing us blind and the national debt spiraling out of control, not only is this too little too late, it was a huge waste of valuable time. We pay these guys over 93 million dollars a year to work only about half as much as the rest of us do, and this is how they spend that?

Here, buy one of these very popular things from Amazon in protest.

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Other articles you'll find interesting or amazing:
The 'Israelification' of airports: High security, little bother
Nicholas Marks - 2010
What we mean when we say we will never forget

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Centennial Celebration

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This here post is my 100th since moving the site to Blogger.com, barely 14 months ago, and we've come a long way, baby! A lot has changed, in front of the scenes and behind them. To celebrate this, and our next 100, and because I've gotten several questions about this lately, I'm going to tell you a little about the story behind the story.

In 1995, I joined the Navy. It was great for a while, but things slowly got out of hand, and it was starting to get hard to maintain a sense of humor about everything. Finally in 2000, the powers that be finally had enough sense to put me in the computer repair department, which was where I was supposed to have been put in the first place. By then, though, I was pretty sick of everything - I wasn't nearly the positive person back then as I am now and didn't fully appreciate all the good stuff I had going for me - and needed to blow off a little steam. What better idea than to register a really cool domain name?

So I cranked up the internet, which was still pretty new back then, and found register.com. There was only one name I wanted to register. It was a name that was cool, that I'd been using for some time on the internet elsewhere. So I tried to register theds.com.

Unfortunately, it was already taken.

I had checked it out, and taken a few days to think about whether I wanted to go through with it or not, but when I came back to do the deed, the name was taken. Who would take a name like theds.com? No, Nintendo was still many years away from creating their DS gaming device. Rather, it was a for-pay cracking group known as The Damned Souls. I don't have any problem with people unlocking my games for me so that I don't need no stinkn' CD in the drive to play; I've really got better things to do than carry my CD collection with me everywhere I go. But those guys didn't do it for the love of the work, they did it for money. Worse, they sold copies of the games they cracked, an act that until recently was considered downright despicable.

Crushed, I had to think of another name to register.

What to use? What would say "squid"? What would allow me to rag on the bad times I had in the Navy, or celebrate the good times if I wanted? What described my experience best?

It was then I hit on mopjockey.com.

Immediately I had grand dreams to fulfill. I'd created several parodies about the Navy and the Bataan and my time there, and was itching to post them up for my friends to enjoy. However, in my desire to do things perfectly, I never got around to getting my stuff posted. I just had some piddly three-page thingamabob barely one step above "Hello World". For the first several years, the site was pretty well neglected. I probably got 100 hits that weren't mine in the first four years.

A few years later, I got sold some web space and decided to revamp the site. I posted up a lot of cool stuff about myself and my knowledge about computers and everything else I'm good at. I had about 10 pages of interesting information, and over the course of the next four years, I had accumulated about 1500 hits other than mine. I also introduced a forum and had a few people use it now and then. Clearly I was doing something right to have so much more interest.

In early 2009, as I was getting started with driving for my last trucking company, I started getting much more serious about the site because I had a lot of good ideas to post. I revamped the site again and put up about 30 pages of cool information about the Navy, trucks, some of my favorite computer games, and a handful of opinion pieces.

But then, a few months later, just before I visited the Stonehouse, my webhost suddenly went belly-up. For about three months afterward, I had no site. Since I was on the road, and my computer also died during that time, I had no time or ability to look for another one. I briefly tried to make use of Godaddy's free host, but like Register's free host, it had a spammy banner ad on it that messed up the site, so I was forced to park it there with minimal content.

Luckily, by now, the state of the internet had progressed significantly, and so in late 2009, I discovered that Google had bought Blogger.com and was offering free blogs. Before this time, I didn't pay blogs any attention, but one of my cousins whom I visited in September pointed me to Nathan Bransford, who then pointed me to several others, and when I saw how pretty those were, I knew it was a Sign From Above.

Articles were easy to post, pictures were easy to add, and no need for a seperate forum - people can comment directly on the articles, and they don't even have to register if they don't want to! Plus, I've got followers! Yay! But most importantly, I've got great stuff to write and I've gotten tons of praise for it. That's how you know you're doing good, when people you barely know are telling other people you barely know how awesome you are without prompting them to.

Back in June, Google started offering site metrics for free, and in the intervening six months, I've gotten a considerable amount of traffic, far more than I realized.

Today, Mopjockey.com is in transition. It started out as a bunch of jokes about the Navy, jokes which never got published (but still might one day). In the future, it will be a respected place, a place where people go to read (or watch) all kinds of fun, useful stuff. For now, though, it's a testbed. I'm trying out different things. I've started doing interviews with famous people, I'm lining up guest authors, I've given speeches, and I've got several different series in the works. One was about health, another about the solar system. And I irregularly comment about the craziness that goes on around the world or around Daytona Beach.

We're finding ourselves. And it's not going to take 14 months to make another 100 posts. Several have joined us already. You can too. Welcome to Mopjockey.com, where we offer More in Sanity. I'm your host, Jaycee Adams, and I promise the next 10 years will be a lot more exciting than the last 10.
















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Other articles you'll find interesting or fun:
How to Make More Money
Dear Mel Gibson
Ron Riekki - 2010
Flash Fiction is all the Rage

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You are What you Consume

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Over on Arstechica, where I used to hang out quite a bit, they have an article about how the California Supreme Court was hearing  Oral arguments in violent game case focus on nature of violence. (Okay, yucky English skills; I blame them for making the headline so poorly.) The thing is, states keep trying to single out video games as the root of all evil and that they must be legislated against. This is California's laughable attempt. Why laughable?

Because like every other state that's tried to impinge on Free Speech so far, they haven't done anything remotely in the public's interest, unless you count spending millions of taxpayer dollars to draft such poorly defined garbage, or PROPOSING to spend many MORE millions of taxpayer dollars to conduct kangaroo court cases. Really, guys, it's not that hard to define exactly what you want and then draft a law that says just that, and is still fair. A law that's unclear isn't a law.

The problem, of course, is that it's illegal to do what they're trying to do because some stupid piece of paper called the Constitution is in the way. Nuts!

All right, let me dial down the rhetoric-o-meter a little bit and give you the straight dope before you mistakenly believe my particular stance is what you think it is.

For some time, there has been a fervor about exposing kids to sex and violence. (And child labor. And personal responsibility. But we won't get into those right now.) The Nanny State is being created to protect us from everything except itself. It's the modern equivalent to the Bread and Circuses that killed off Rome. And right now there are a lot of people wanting the State to protect their kids from violent or sexual material. Hence, we have ratings on movies and music and video games. However, it's not ILLEGAL for kids to have access to those things. Because there have been a handful of high-profile cases lately about sex and/or violence in video games, a number of states have tried passing laws against them, and every single time, the Constitution protects Free Speech, and every single time, the people who wasted all that money to make a law they knew wouldn't pass muster aren't held accountable for the money they just wasted trying to break the law.

There are some heated passions on either side of the debate, and you'll see a handful of them if you check out the comments on the Ars article. Some say all this has no deleterious effect, some say "it didn't hurt us" (usually angrily and with insults, HA!), and some say it's worse than child rape. We went through all this with movies, do we really have to go through it again with video games?

I'm going to take a different route here.

We've all heard, "You are what you eat," right? It means that if you eat the right stuff, your body will be strong and healthy and able to fight off diseases, but if you put junk food in your body, your body will become all mushy and tired and ugly. When you eat right, you feel good. When you eat crap, you feel bad. I'm going to extend this idea a little bit to say, "You are what you CONSUME."

When you sit in front of a brain-deadening TV show, your brain turns to mush. One need only watch an installment of "Jaywalking" to find out we're getting dumber by the second. When you're exposed to lots of inappropriate behavior, without proper supervision, you never learn that those are BAD things.

For instance, watch the movie Unforgiven. Early in it, Clint Eastwood's character leaves his two kids, who are not even 10 years old, in charge of the farm while he goes out for a few weeks. Those kids were allowed to kill a few chickens if they needed to. Nowadays, if you leave your kid alone in a car for 2 minutes, you'll get arrested! What changed between back then and now? Parental supervision. As in, there's none of it now, and so kids have no idea what good behavior is.

If you're a parent, you have to raise your kids, right? That means spending time with them, teaching them right from wrong. That means spending their formative years being sure they are kept away from things they shouldn't be exposed to, like violence and sex and alcohol and foul language and all that other garbage. But when they ARE exposed to it, which they will inevitably be, you don't terrorize them with it. Explain to your kids, without scandalizing things, what's going on, why something is bad, and why you're not going to let them do that.

What damages kids is not sex and violence, what damages them is the way you react to those things and the way you raise them to treat them. Sex and violence are a part of who we are; applying them in a proper way accomplishes important, constructive goals, while applying them in the wrong way creates adults who have no idea why they can't get a date.

The most important thing you can have as a parent is the trust of your child, and when you tell that child something that turns out not to be true, they question everything else you tell them. Eventually kids look for their own answers, and when they do, if they find out you've been lying to them or overreacting to something, you've just driven them to seek more forbidden fruit.

I've got one more point to make: Just as you are what you consume, so too are you what you expose yourself to and spend your time thinking about. These are simply different types of mental consumption. If you're worried about losing your job, you're going to get nervous around the boss, act suspiciously, and then the boss if going to look at you when something goes wrong and think you did it and fire you. And if you spend all your time fighting monsters, eventually you become one. It's well known.

You remember those Chilean miners who were trapped for a few months? Imagine being one of them. Imagine having no way to see your family, no way to spend the day at the park, no way to enjoy the sunshine, no way to tuck your kids in at night, no way to hang out with your friends. All the little things that aggravated them - paying bills, taking baths, dodging political phone calls, walking the dog, taking out the trash - when they got out of that mine, I bet they were really glad to be able to do those things again.

If you instead focus on the good things in your life, how great it is to be alive, and how much freedom and control you have over your destiny, things will come together for you and opportunity will lean on your doorbell the same way temptation does now. Clear out the garbage, and fill your life with good. And teach your kids the same, and they won't even be interested in dangerous and destructive things because those won't be as fulfilling as the lives they can create for themselves.

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Other articles you'll find interesting or amusing:
The War on Cleanliness and Privacy 
Holiday greetings
Solar System - Mars 

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The 'Israelification' of airports: High security, little bother

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I don't know about you, but I'm sick and tired of all the crap involved in flying somewhere, and I don't even fly! The long waits, the unnecessarily invasive body searches and scans (which are getting leaked), the reliance on shaky technologies and people who don't follow procedures... it's enough to keep my feet on the ground.

Enter Israel.

Israel is a tiny country that you'd think would take about 5 minutes to drive through, much less invade. Surrounded by enemies who cravenly and hypocritically send their followers to suicide, you'd think it would be impossible for Israel's airports to do business at all. And yet, they're the very model of efficiency, with an extremely effective, non-invasive security.

Read this to find out why. Then push your lame-ass Congresscritter to put aside his bribes from the people who are co-opting him or her into ruining this country and SERVE his constituents for a few minutes. Saving the airline industry by using common sense security procedures is a much more effective and much cheaper way to create new jobs.

Mine, John Mica, seems to have this issue in order, but I'm still probably going to write him and tell him what I think. Though we must complain when something is wrong, we must also compliment when something is right. It's called feedback, and our leaders need it to lead effectively. If the only voices they hear are from special interest groups bent on world domination, who do you think is going to benefit most from policy decisions?

While you're telling your Congresscritter exactly how best to represent your interests, tell them to stop exempting themselves from laws and stop ripping us off.

Did you know Congress has their own health care plan? They don't have to worry about Obamacare.

Did you know that Congress can vote themselves a raise any time?

Did you know that you need only serve ONE TERM to get retirement pay for the rest of your life? Even the military makes you serve 20 years, and they pretty well control your life that whole time. Try finding that anywhere else.

Did you know Congress can adjust the boundaries of the voting districts to make it easier to get re-elected? It's called Gerrymandering, and it's cheating us out of our right to have new representation when the old representation stops representing us.

Did you know Congress loves to tack on extra crap to important bills to get things passed that no one actually wants passed? They take an important bill, like one designed to provide paychecks to the military, and tack on some weasel rider about funding a study on whether rats can fart in a microwave oven. Because the President can't line-item veto, he looks bad if he vetos the whole bill, so we spend millions of dollars to find out if a rat can fart while being microwaved.

Our governmental leaders - not just Congressmen, but also governors, mayors, and other elected officials - have got WAY too much power to vote themselves bread and circuses. They've got WAY too much power to break laws, even drunken driving and manslaughter, as Ted Kennedy and Sonny Perdue can tell you.

If Congress can pass laws that affect us, WE need to be able to have a say in laws they pass which affect them. I propose that if Congress has or wishes to acquire a power that we the people don't have, then WE THE PEOPLE should be allowed to vote on whether they get it or not.

Want a salary hike for being a lame-duck? We the people will decide. Want immunity to drunken driving laws? We the people will decide. Want to collect a pension after only 2 years of "service"? We the people will decide. Want to be exempted from a health care plan that will DESTROY America? We the people will decide.

These people NEED to be held accountable for their actions or they'll run rampant... like they are now. These people are supposed to be there to keep us from voting bread and circuses for ourselves, but the closest thing we have to the ability to keep them honest is the threat of electing someone else in a few years... who then will do the exact same thing. I think it's time we realized that, despite George Washington's best wishes, even the educated, professional politicians are corruptable and we should start imposing proper limits on them while there's still a country left to live in.

This is simple accountability, folks. Impose it. Expect it. It's your right. It's your responsibility. It won't happen unless you make it happen.

And if you think you can ignore this by avoiding airplanes, public safety can be compromised anywhere, not just on an airplane.

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Can't Hardly Stop

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Man, I've just been so freakin' busy lately! I'm now in about 15 different groups on a regular basis (at least once a month), ranging from being a better writer to starting up your own business to improving your love life to regular exercise and healthiness to social outing groups. I spend a lot of time studying up on these topics, and I've been working on a book or two about them, plus writing out instructionals to help others pursuing these areas, and I've started a new public speaking career, with several events under my belt already and several more on the way.

And I update this site once in a while with interesting stories, particularly the Expose Yourself series. And I spend a lot of time thinking up new ideas to promote the site and myself and the people I want to see succeed. And I visit other websites to leave links back to me. It's all a full-time job now, and the pay is pretty lousy, but in time it will get better. Meanwhile, it's a lot of fun!

Thanks for your support! Without you guys out there checking me out and telling your friends about me, it wouldn't be nearly so rewarding. Please, keep spreading the word, and I'll keep being so gosh-darn helpful and entertaining!

Now I'm off to do my semi-daily five mile walk.

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Other articles you'll find interesting or helpful:

Breaking personal records is fun!

Profiling: Is It Good or Bad?

To Your Health - Part 1

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How to Make More Money

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Yesterday evening I spoke to the Port Orange Scribes about self-promotion and blogging. I've also got other speaking engagements and training sessions lined up with groups that aren't writers, and last Sunday I led a discussion for a group I started about modern relationships. It was pretty exciting to do!

Though my speech last night dealt mostly with how to get your writing career jumpstarted through blogging, the precepts apply to any creative endeavor, be it singing, acting, painting, interpretive dancing, and so on. In fact, many of the precepts translate well into ANY kind of business.

As an interesting aside, I made the news! Here is a link to a bunch of Port Orange news stories, and they've got one about me! (It will probably only be there for another few days, so look quick!) When I found it this morning, it was most of the way down the page. Just search for my name and you'll see it (if it's still there.)

This is what I said to the Scribes:

Hi, I'm Jaycee Adams, and I'm a writer. I'm a teacher. I'm a speaker. I'm a promoter. And I'm a blogger. Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you about one of my passions.

You want to make a career out of writing. What are the most important elements to accomplishing this, the elements that are absolutely important?

• Write something good enough that people want it
• Get the word out to as many people as possible

To be good at something, what are some of the important things we must do?

• Study others' writings on how to be better
• Practice your craft constantly
• Learn from others' direct teachings

What are some of the tools at our disposal to be better writers?

• Reading blogs written by agents, publishers, and other writers, of which I have several I follow (check out my profile)
• Readng books like the one you want to write
• Joining writing and critiquing groups who will help you find errors in your book
• Entering writing contests
• Our computers, or a notepad and pencil to write with

All of these require that you WRITE something.

To get famous, what are some of the things we must do?

• Put yourself out there; you can't stay home
• Be newsworthy; do something that gets attention
• Make connections; you can't reach everyone yourself, so you need friends

What are some of the tools at our disposal to get more famous?

• Local news outlets and blogs looking for a story (TV, radio, paper, blog, etc)
• Attending public events, like book signings, but also charities, volunteer work, festivals; get out there and meet people
• Making new friends and networking connections
• Asking your friends and networking connections to talk about you to their friends and networking connections
• Posting links on places you frequent: forums, emails signatures, blogs, facebook pages
• Other forms of traditional advertising
• Get really lucky and have someone discover you

All of these require that the right person notices you, likes you, and gets his 5 million friends to like you too. Luck does not control THAT you get discovered, it only controls WHEN. Even then, the faster you build your fame, the sooner you become famous.

I'm here, of course, to focus on one of the most powerful tools at your disposal and how to use it effectively: sleeping with Angelina Jolie. Whether you like her or not, it is a fact that anyone who sleeps with Angelina Jolie is newsworthy.

But if you can't swing that, start up a blog. Why?

A blog accomplishes a number of things all at once.

• It's WRITING, so it counts as practice.
• It's a centralized location so people looking for you can find you.
• It's a networking hub so you can meet other people and get them to help you.
• It's an advertising tool, and it lets you say anything you want.

If you owned Walmart, you wouldn't dream of forgoing a website that told everyone where you were, what you have, and how they can buy stuff from you, would you? Name any large company, name any reasonably famous person, place, or thing, and there's a website about it for people to find out more about it. ALL businesses that expect to graduate beyond the home office NEED a website. It's the new Yellow Pages and then some.

A blog takes this website idea one step further with up-to-date information about you, AND it shows people what you have to offer, AND it allows them to interact with you and get to know and like you. It can be hard to sell your product, so instead you have to sell yourself. Hollywood has known this for ages, and that's why they spend so much effort on making actors seem likeable.

Angelina Jolie is so likeable that people go to see movies just because she's in them. Even if it's a bit part, they'll still go to see her because they like her. If she endorses something, people buy it because they like her. Luckily, Angelina is also talented. People know she's going to deliver. They trust her to play roles they like and to be in movies that are worth watching. If you want to tap into that power, you have to be a good writer and you have to get out there and be known. You have to sell yourself. YOU are your real product, whether you're a writer, singer, seamstress, architect, or bonsai sculptor.

You're a writer, and blogs need written material constantly. What better way to give out free samples of your work to show people what you've got, get them interested in you, and like you?

Being able to reach people has always been key to getting a message out. Whether you're standing on a stump, on the TV news, or blogging, it doesn't matter. The tools have gotten more powerful and cheaper, and right now, the tool with the most bang for the buck is a blog.

Unfortunately, a lot of people don't really "get" blogging, or they don't know how to make the most of it. Some don't "get" the internet at all. Some don't even "get" self-promotion. I'm here to help you out with that a little.

I've covered why you should HAVE a blog. Before I discuss how to use it, I'm going to tell you how to GET one.

There are a bunch of blogging tools out there. Wordpress, Yahoo*, MSN*, even Facebook and Twitter are using blogging techniques. The blogging tool I use is called Blogger.com, and it's run by Google. The reasons I prefer it are:

• It's very easy to use
• It's capable of doing almost anything you can imagine
• Virtually all the professional blogs from which I learned about publishing and writing use it
• For the money, you get a lot of picture and video storage space; you're not likely to run out, unless you're posting large porn videos, and then you can start another one.

How much does it cost?

It costs one gmail account.

All you have to have is a gmail account - no money - and then you can start creating your own blog, networking with others' blogs, and getting the word out about how fantastic you are!

Here are a few of the tools available to you with Blogger.com. 

• Your main page is continuous - it has several stories available and you control how many show up at a time
• Your secondary pages are just static information pages. We all need at least one of these to tell people the stuff that doesn't change often.
• You can insert a BREAK so you don't have HUGE articles gobbling up your main page
• Easy to put pictures in and move them and get thumbnails
• Easy to add hyperlinks
• Easy to handle reader comments
• Easy to adjust settings, letting you decide how much or how little you want on your site
• Easy to design the look and feel
• Widgets - there's tons of them
• Ads - you control how many, or if there even are any. You can get income when people click on them
• Sharing links is very easy
• Adding a real domain name is very easy
• You can set it up to post in the future, so tht one day you feel like writing 10 articles can be spread out to cover the next 9 days when you want to take a break
• Free statistics to tell you which articles are getting the hits and where your readers are coming from!
• Tied in to Picassa, which is an online picture repository

What should your blog be about? What should you write about?

Write about whatever you want! You can see that on my site, I have a LOT of topics. I find that anything to do with celebrity gossip, horoscopes, and popular topics draws attention, so you can talk about that, but you should focus on what it is that your books are going to be about. Being an everything blog is too diluting for your audience - it makes it hard to grab and keep an audience - but if you focus on a niche and serve it well, you will become very popular in that niche. It's not limiting yourself, it's becoming an authority on a topic, and it's simply the best way to go about it.

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 I then gave a short demo on how to get signed up and started up, and then challenged them to create an article, post it on my site, and get their friends to read and comment it so they could see for themselves how easy it is to do.

Statistically speaking, there's a 60% chance that ONE of the people I talked to will actually follow through and take up my challenge. It's sad, but most people are not actually serious enough about themselves or their writing to put even the most cursory amount of work into it. They come to a writer's group and think that's progress. Sure, it's a step in the right direction, but it doesn't mean you've made it to Tahiti. To accomplish something, you've got to DO something. If you can't even motivate yourself to handle your own best interests, how do you expect to motivate others to help you?

We'll find out how many people are serious about getting published in the coming days. Even if no one participates, it's not going to stop my public speaking and teaching. I've already got several speaking/teaching engagements coming up, if you know where to look.

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Other articles you'll find interesting or useful:
Dear Mel Gibson
Expose Yourself #2 - Straight to the T.O.P.
Shh-it's a Secret!

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