The end has come....

I have now completely severed my ties with BankNorth. With the shredding of my very first credit card, the money snorffing detritus feeding BankNorth has lost its unyielding rule of tyranny over my soul. Faithful citizens flood the streets in delirious celebration. Like the book burnings of old, green logo laden bank statements are sent to the heavens riding waves of flame sent out from furious fires on every street corner. BankNorth loyal bankers are dragged from their homes and out from behind reinforced banking counters by deleterious hordes armed with bundles of overpriced check books paired with reams of check registers with which to pummel their heartless victims. In days the fires will die down leaving only a precious few remaining copies of the unspeakable BankNorth's logo displayed, under heavy armed guard, in the main building of the Ministry of Truth. So that all might remember the horrible malignant corporation known best by its heretical use of Islamic green. No more fooling faithful followers into the whorish pseudo-oasis like waiting rooms. BankNorth...your rule is OVER.


Funny thing is. When I called to cancel I was ready for knock-out drag-out fight with the customer rep. All she said was, "O, may ask the reason? That's fine, I hope we can be of service to you in the future. " Sigh, no rebuttals, no pestering counter offers, no "inconvenienced" customer reps and no transferring to more diligent managers just...sorry, have a nice day. Talk about wind right out of the ol' proverbial sails on that one.

Ramblings of a De-Population Manager #1

so good. Here we are. The US just passed 300 million people a week or so ago. The rate for the US population growth sits at something like one baby every 45 seconds. The world now sits at ~ 6.5 billion people with a growth rate of ~1.14%. Now stop and think a second. With this growth rate the doubling time for human population on the earth is 61 years. Just about the time I'm read to swap gears and start hanging out with lots of other old boys on each other's porches and chat about the world and whatever else the world's population would have doubled. DOUBLED. 9000 human beings are being added to the planet every hour!

There are way too many people now! Current human consumption of natural resources exceeds available productive land by 30%. We are over our safe margin my 30%!! Global consumptions are larger than global carrying capacity by 1/3. We are way into ecological overshot territory. Humans have blown past the sustainable limit and we are now living off the equity in our house. Living off the future, taking another mortgage assuming we can pay it off…living on borrowed time at the expense of those who come after us. We need to start looking for Atlantis or researching plate tectonics so we can start pushing out new continents or we're in trouble. Interestingly, the US isn't the country popping kids out of motion sensor doors the fastest. In fact, US fertility rates are dropping toward our replenishing rate while fertility rates in many third world countries are exploding. Europe's fertility/ population growth rates are, in contrast, dropping. Germany's native growth rate is actually negative. If it was not for immigration from eastern Europe and the middle east, Germany would be shrinking. It is interesting to see how population growth rotates around the globe while as a whole continuously contributing to global population growth. It is a very dynamic growth pattern...albeit severely depressing...interesting.

Another thought:

Half of the people in developing nations and 10-15% of people in developed nations are classified as poor; poor being the inability to afford food, shelter and clothing. Kind of makes that $80 dollar pair of designer jeans seem a little…itchy.

All of this just goes to prove the importance of my position as de-population manager. I will start first by instituting the following form of birthcontrol in all restrooms around the US, China, Japan, and India.

goin' nowhere...

IT goofs

So today my favorite network admins went to install a new peice of hardware onto the gordon college system. It was some sort of storage hot swap drive I think. Well, brian came over and picked up the drive from the cet at about 10:10, at about 10:20 every network storage drive the campus has was smoking. Our total network storage is now currently at 1.44mb, the size of the floppy disk chris just went bombing over to mac with in his hand. Every day I'm just amazed by the absolute proficiency of our network admins. They just burned thousands of dollars of equipment and managed to bring down both the campus and public web sites in the process. They just created hours of work for me as I get to tell every person on campus that yes...there are indeed issues. Sigh...let's give a big round of applaus for our gordon college network admins.

The EMT Class Traumatized

So, I'm in this EMT class and we're finally doing trauma after weeks and weeks of medical. Today we did upper extremity splinting. This poor individual here (one of the house mates) has just been subjected to my incredibly amazing splinting/slinging skills immobilizing a wrist break {no actual house mates were harmed in this activity}. It was actually a pretty good class. I am really enjoying the hands on work. I get easily distracted sitting in classrooms for hours upon end. When I can get out and practice the skills that I'm actually going to be using I can focus and learn much better. I wish all the rest of my classes where this way. From the look on this guy's face, I think we're going to be the medics making stops very similar to this ALS crew I saw yesterday. I hope that when I grow up to be a medic that I get to make frequent...umm...stops during my shifts. Who knows...maybe they give discounts to medics. That would be amazing.

November Life

Gordon College is amazing. In the span of one year we have somehow managed to be blocked by major online companies at various points of time; Newegg, Hotmail, eBay, Yahoo and Comcast. How does no one see this as a problem? My goodness...someone please save me from mike binns and his cronies. Why why why do I work here?

I had to turn down a request to give a friend a jump today because my favorite boss wouldn't let me leave work for 20 min...sigh. First time ever turning down a jump call. I'm turning into a horrible friend...GAAA!!!

Been trying to find a solution to my video card problem. I bought a new one a year ago hoping that it would last me for 4 years or so...I got exactly a year out of it. I've found several cards that should give me the versatility needed for the desktop for at least another 3 or 4 years but that's a lot of money. I'm not doing a lot of gaming so spending this much on a card seems kind of pointless. Despite the fact that right now I sort of need a computer to do what I need to do I'm kind of in a bind. I've thought about selling the desktop and just swapping for a laptop. I would get the simplicity and versatility I want. I guess I still have the softspot in my heart for my machine. Let's give it another month and see then. So, I don't have 130 bucks to spend on anything computery. So many more useful things I would like to spend money on if I had any. Like a new internal frame pack, artic bag, or whisper stove. Dang it...why don't I have money? Why do I feel like I have to spend money? I don't want to buy things. I hate buying things. Spending anything over 10 bucks on myself feels wrong and twitches something deep down. Drives me nuts. Spending money on other people I can do, but for some reason I loathe doing it on me; even if it is something legitimate and useful. I hate it...even if it's stuff I need or would be able to put to good use. Sigh... For now I'll just keep spending money on food, gas and books. I'll figure the rest out as I go along. For now I'm gonna risk the 12 bucks to ship this back to powercolor and hope they'll give me a new one.

I was an idiot and forgot to request an absentee ballot soon enough. For some reason it takes longer than a week to mail a ballot from home. In essence, I've just completely overlooked one of my most precious responsibilities as a citizen of this country. I've pretty much toyed all day with driving home tonight, voting, taking a quick nap, then driving back here for my emt class at 18:30. I almost did. Here I sit. A sucky citizen.

I wish it wasn't illegal to shoot condescending people. I just happen to know a few.

I'm done with dunkin donuts and coke. They kill kids.

Napalm sticks to kids -Jn . My new favorite phrase.

Been looking at dragons. Hopefully, this saturday I'm going to head up to Springfield and chat with the owner. The only question is...do I get one dragon...or two:) I want to grow mine big enough to eat cats. Speaking of cats...I rocked one out my bedroom window with the airsoft G18c today. It was amazing. It was something I've never done before Put 4 rds into a cat whilist standing in my room talking to an overtly persistent Indian credit card salesman suffering from a cold. Something new everyday...

Here's to wishing I was anywhere but this house, but this shore....

Good ol' Maine

Maine State Constitution Article I, Section 16

Every citizen has a right to keep and bear arms and this right shall never be questioned.

That's it. That's all it takes. Simple. Sweet. Effective. I like Maine.

Into the fire with you dunderhead.

Here I am sitting in a class, knowing that maybe I should actually want to pay attention. I mean...its environmental science. It's a really interesting subject! So many things you could do with it. Anywhere from learning about environment impact and how North Americans are pretty much retarded to learning about how to live off the land with minimal impact. Despite the potential...we're not really learning what I want. We're talking about over population right now. I already have my solution to this problem...most people don't like my solution but o well. By golly I'm not depopulation manager for nothing. I feel like this is a problem, but it isn't something I can do anything about right now. I want to learn about practical things that I can help get moving to make a difference. Stop telling me how bad things are all over the place. Tell me how to make a difference, how to build a mindset that is constantly aware of the natural world around me. Teach me how to farm without the need of chemicals. Teach me how to build a diesel engine converstion kit to biodiesel. Teach me how to train farmers how to care for their land and not farm it into nothing. This frustration, leads to me being discouraged...then I get bored....and wind up here typing on the blog looking up random things of interest [which is where the lobster and mushroom came from]. This just happens to be a theme I'm afraid. At the moment, I have so much work to do, so much that I really have to struggle to understand in my classes that if I were to ever get this all done I need a semi-solid or at least an understood environment. Yup...pretty much don't have that so I'm under fire from both sides. On top of that I'm making some changes in my head...and that throws any other aspect of stability I might have all out the window. My friends, who I would look to for stability, are going through changes themselves and interaction is sporadic and most of the time confusing. To wrap it all up I'm getting sick. We'll see how this semester goes. I have learned a ton about myself though. I can completely exist and function (albeit at a minimal level) out of my car without any real base. I never realized just how much work matters. Not homework mind you but job work. I'm not making nearly enough money to pay all the bills, but it gives me something that I'm actually good at. I realized yesterday that the CET is actually the only thing keeping me alive and here. Kind of a frightening realization if you ask me. That one thing could keep you standing. I'm rediscovering that I really need minutes where I can sit down, be outside, kick back, and enjoy life. I don't do constantly busy environments. I can handle lots of work, but not places where people aren't happy with themselves and running running running. I need environments where they test me physically, where I see the problem, address it, and cut through it. Only problem is I can't do that when I can't see the problem. These are still thoughts in my head and I'm not even sure they mean anything.

Anyhow:
friends are coming tomorrow
mom left for Guatemala today {she beat me out of the county...wtf}
tons of p-chem due this week
registration was yesterday
no idea what I'm doing with my life
just spent a ton of money I don't have getting ready for this winter