1) Get some of the house projects finished. (Trim pieces in the entry way, stairway needs to be redone, etc.) They have a tendency to get started and never quite finished.
2) Do more stuff for my wife. (Even if it is just not leaving socks in random places or the dishes once in a while.)  I think this is something that always can be improved on.  (Working on #1 could accomplish this as well.)
3) Writing. (Write a lot more. A **lot** more.) Blog, finish editing my first novel, work on other writing project, etc. I have a plan to submit a few short stories as well this year. I have one already in the works.
4) Quit Smoking. (I have kind of sort of tried to quit from time to time, but I plan on quitting this year and stay quit. More time to write and do stuff around the house, along with the funds saved to pay for it!)

Some of those things above are going to be challenging, but easy goals aren’t really goals. The writing goals are probably the biggest and most challenging of the year. As I mentioned in my NaNoWriMo post, I learned a few things from participating this year. The biggest being how much I just enjoyed writing. Well in order to continue to progress, and hopefully sell some works, I need to be doing a lot more of it.
Any other good 2010 goals out there?

Post from: Jake's Corner

2010 Goals

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

Why is that interesting?  Well it is interesting to think about what Jefferson was getting at with that comment.  Was it some deep commentary on journalism and ethics of the time?  Was he peeved at the newspapers in relation to something?  (Which being a prominant political figure was certainly possible.)

I like to think what he was getting at here is that people need to think for themselves.  Don’t just soak up what you read in the newspaper.  (Or a blog for that matter.) The net has allowed us to get information from multiple sources.  Use that to your advantage.  The other part of that is, don’t allow someone to control your viewpoint.  Also, augment your viewpoint.  You read something on the war in Iraq, read a book (magazine, blog, website, etc) on Iraq history, Pacifism, WWII, etc.  Expanding on what the background will give you a wider range of knowledge about a subject, allowing for a deeper understanding.

Technorati Tags: Thomas Jefferson, Jake Barnard, Olorinpc, Quotes, Newspapers

Post from: Jake's Corner

Jefferson quote on reading newspapers

Basically the plan seems to be to have weekly YouTube addresses.  I actually like this plan.  I am a little leery of it in light of the Twitter Feed not having been updated since the election.  However, if it is done, perhaps that will be the nudge people need to keep more informed on what their government is doing.  Sure it will probably be partly PR, but that is to be expected.  Yet, if it allows people to stay more connected with what is going on in Washington, perhaps it will also equate to people taking more ownership and responsibility in their government as well.

It is still a government in transition, so we are going to have to wait and see how it pans out in the long term.  I think we can expect though other parties and politicians to finally start taking note on what technology is capable of.  Perhaps even start making use of it.

Technorati Tags: Obama, YouTube, Olorinpc

Post from: Jake's Corner

Obama 2.0 – The YouTube Prez

Rob over at Sayanythingblog has a few exerpts from an article discussing it.  It actually isn’t the first time the world has entered into a period of global cooling.  I think the problem with the whole global warming impact is that a lot of the numbers we see are from a narrow set of variables or a narrow time-frame.

It is an interesting read – so head on over and check it out.

Technorati Tags: Global Warming, Mini Ice Age, olorinpc

Post from: Jake's Corner

Global Warming? Just kidding!

Write a Killer Haiku for the Win

As you might have gleened from the headline, this time we’re going to write Twitter haiku. There’s already a healthy group of people who tweet clever little haiku poems on Twitter due to the constrained size, so it seems a natural for Twitter Writing Contest 2.0.

If your memory is a little rusty on what haiku is, here’s a refresher:

Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry. It consists of 17 syllables broken up into three phrases of 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively.

Here is my entry for the contest:

Reporting is fun / Meaningless data crunching days / solutions discovered daily

https://twitter.com/olorinpc/status/1002296279

Not bad, and it was a fun little distraction to think outside the box on a Twitter post.  Twitter posts being limited to 140 characters already forces one to be a bit more concise and limited in posting, so having to follow the rules to make an actual Haiku was a fun change.

If anyone has a Twitter account, feel free to visit my page and follow me.  Also – sign up for the contest and come up with your own Haiku!  Might not win the MacBook Air, but it is fun to try!  ThatEdeGuy gets the credit for finding this contest and pointing it out to me.

Ede’s entry:

Win a MacBook Air / A Catastrophe for me / For I’m a PC

http://twitter.com/thatedeguy/status/1002262444 (Seems to be a delay in Twitter showing this post, but it is there.)

Technorati Tags: twitter, olorinpc, copyblogger, twitter contest, contest

Post from: Jake's Corner

Twitter Writing Contest 2.0

Regardless – remember to go out and vote folks.  (For my US based readers of course.)

People have many reasons they don’t get out and vote.  Too busy, don’t know enough about the issues, don’t like any of the main canidates, don’t want vote for a canidate who won’t win, etc.  Well, there is merit to all of those I suppose.  However, if your schedule is so busy that you can’t make it to the polls on election day – vote early.  It is quite easy and then it is taken care of.  If you don’t know enough about the issues, there are a zillion online quiz sites, blogs, fact sheets (some believable, some not, from both sides).

As far as the not caring, not winning, etc… that is a little harder to answer.  The best way to put it is that many, many, candidates have lost because not enough of their supporters turned out.  That is where the “every vote counts” really means something.  Example: 3rd party voters, many seem to vote for a main Rep/Dem canidate because “they won’t win.”  Well if just a few people voted their belief anyways, what is the snowball effect of that?  Hard to say, but it illustrates the point.

Plus it is our civic duty to vote.  It is called the “Patriotic thing to do” because patriots helped ensure that we can have this right.  Anyways, the point is take advantage of that freedom.

Go vote.

Technorati Tags: 2008 Election, North Dakota, Jamestown, Jake Barnard, Olorinpc

Post from: Jake's Corner

Election Day Special

You see, normally, I get home and make lunch.  While eating lunch I write about whatever topic I came up with during the morning or the night before.  Today when I got home for lunch, I had just pulled out the leftovers from the refrigerator – and my pager goes off.

Grass fire 4 miles north of Buchanan, west side of Hwy 281.  So I flip on the blue light, head down to the station, pull up just as the first truck is rolling out of the door.  Another guy and myself take the third truck out (207, the tanker) and head on up that way.  Now the tanker is around 2000 gallons of water if I recall right, 208 (White Cloud) is the 3000 gallon one, so it doesn’t move the fastest.  Plus, the location is 16 miles from the station.

See the location by clicking on the link:
View Larger Map

Well the rest of the story goes – get there and it is a controlled burn.  Everything is ok.  So just as we pull up in the tanker, we get word to go home.  So get turned around and head the 16 miles back to the station, put gear away, and head home to try and finish lunch and get back to work.

So I will try to have a better lunch break post tomorrow   I have a feeling it will have something to do with the election that you might have heard a thing or two about.

Technorati Tags: olorinpc, firecall, jamestown, buchanan, north dakota, jrfd

Post from: Jake's Corner

Lunch Break with Jake: 11/03/08 (Missed it)

Well I think it is time for a followup on my “Tyranny of the Majority” piece.  I have gotten pinged with a few questions on why I so highly doubt the whole “We have to save the little guy from the rich” crap.

It basically boils down to, no matter what the definition of “rich” is now, we know darn well that bar is going to get lower and lower till anyone making anything above the bare minimum is “rich” and needs to be taxed more.  What was getting thrown out for a while in the campaign was $250,000… that bar has already been dropped.

Click here to view Rob’s Post on this issue.

Obama’s been lowering the bar on his tax plan.  Where he once claimed that only Americans making over $250,000 would see tax increases, he’s now down as far as $200,000 and maybe even $150,000 if his running mate Senator Foot-In-His-Mouth is to be believed.

But one aspect of Obama’s tax plans have been ignored.  See, Obama and his comrades are also promising to let the Bush tax cuts expire.  If that happens, we’d see massive tax increases for Americans making as little as $50,000/year.

So how does Obama get away with claiming that nobody under $250,000, $200,000, $150,000/year?  Because Obama and the Democrats don’t consider letting the Bush tax cuts expire a tax hike.

Despite the fact that if they expire people making as little as $50,000/year would see a tax increase of about $1,512/year.

So – with the Bush tax cuts probably going away, (this is for certain under Obama) and that bar dropping lower and lower, we have plenty of reason to be afraid of this “Spread the Wealth” mentality.  The way to get more taxes to support all of these big government plans is to increase the tax base.  The way to increase the tax base is to broaden the definition.  Government by nature will not voluntarily reduce it’s size.

Think for a little bit before saying “Well I don’t make $250k a year so it won’t matter.”

Technorati Tags: olorinpc, Sayanythingblog, Taxes, Elections, Obama, Tax Hike

Post from: Jake's Corner

Lunch Break with Jake: 10/30/08

The short answer is – I read. A lot.  I use Google Reader to subscribe to many different blogs/websites/newspapers/etc.  Last count I have 109 subscriptions.  So the follow up question to that would be – “Dude, how can you read that many sites in a day?  Don’t you have to work sometimes?”  Well of course I actually have to work.  If I didn’t get my work done, I wouldn’t have a job, and if I didn’t have a job, I wouldn’t have money to pay for the internet to read stuff.  Many of the sites aren’t quite that frequent in their updates… though I would say an average daily level for me is hovering around 250 items per day.

There are a few useful techniques that I use to get through higher volumes (some Mondays it gets more towards 500 unread) posts.  The main one I use is (again with reader) sharing and starring items.  I scroll through and note the ones that sound interesting, mark them, and review them later when I have the time.

I also know there are some sources (like a couple of the newspapers) that flood me with items that I quickly scroll past.  So 10,437 items sounds like a lot, and it is, however the time spent on the bulk of those really isn’t.  That shared number really just says that there are (using an average) a little over 20 posts a day that make me pause.  That being said, I think anyone who really makes use of RSS feeds and reader can attest… some days you get buried and it takes a bit to catch back up.

So that is how it works.  Other side of the coin is making posts myself.  I am doing a similar process on that end.  (Batch processing.)  I write up 2-3 posts at a time and set the date/time I want them to show up on the web.

Technorati Tags: olorinpc, Jake Barnard, Google Reader, Blogging, RSS Feeds

Post from: Jake's Corner

Lunch Break with Jake: 10/28/08

Remember.

I have been pondering for a day or two what I wanted to write. ThatEdeGuy had a good post on it this morning as well. I had a feeling this post was going to wander a bit, but at least wanted to have a point. Something people could bring away from this post. What does 9/11 mean? This year, today, one word. Remember.

What do I remember?

I remember, quite vividly, that morning. I was a sophomore attending Jamestown College. My roommate woke me up saying something about towers and shit blowing up. Thinking he was pulling my leg, I rolled back over for a minute before realizing I could hear CNN in the living room. “What the hell is going on” crossed my mind. I remember my eyes glued to CNN with my roommates while also on the phone/computer canceling Student Senate that morning with the rest of the exec board. (No one was going to show up at that point.) Calling home, asking how everyone was there. Talking the rest of the day with my roommates on how messed up it all was, what was going to happen from there, who could have done this and how.

I remember the next couple of years with flags flying high everywhere. Never before had such patriotism and love for our country been displayed.

I remember that slowly fading as people moved on, got distracted by other things, disgruntled with the wars and government.

I remember having always wanted to be a fireman. A year and a half ago I got that opportunity. Two guys from the Rural department were being deployed over to Iraq. I figured a year would be enough time to discover if I would like it and help cover for those guys while they were fighting for our freedom. Being a part of that is a great experience. Today we will be taking part in a 9/11 remembrance ceremony. It will be my first as a uniformed firefighter. This ceremony is going to be an opportunity to honor those who fell that day. The firefighters, Policemen, and many civilians. Also, the soldiers who have fought for the freedoms we hold dear. We need to remember this to gain strength from it. I wouldn’t say that 9/11 is the reason I joined the fire department, but it certainly had an influence on it. 9/11 changed us all, and as long as we remember it, it can become something to change us for the better.

Remember.

Technorati Tags: 9/11, remember, olorinpc, thatedeguy, firefighters, police, national guard, jamestown

Post from: Jake's Corner

Remember