fredlet

but I kept thinking of different ways to say nasty things and how certain thing disappointed me, though the last quarter of this years has VASTLY improved my outlook…

So I am officially skipping the 2004 wrap up as well as the New Year’s resolution. I already have a To Do list that waxes and wanes like the moon. A year-long list would bore me. My things are either life changes or something that needs to be done in the next week.
Curiously there isn’t a lot of in-between.

But, to amuse you, here is (another) BlogThing… because it IS a sickness.

Your New Years Resolution Should Be: Stop waking up in strange places

Your personal mantra is “What’s your name again?” It’s not that you’re slutty – more like carefree (In that whole free love sort of way.) And if you’re not careful, you’ll end up a permanent fixture at the free clinic!

What Should Your New Year’s Resolution Be?

As the year begins, you may feel torn between putting in more time at work and giving yourself some quality time alone. You can find the right balance if you manage your time wisely, and if you remember to ‘measure twice and cut once.’ Do it right the first time. During February, your primary relationship will keep you busy. If you’re not attached as the season begins, get yourself out there and look around. The new Moon of the 8th could bring someone along who’s just different and unusual enough to keep you interested.

During spring, an urge to learn something new will tempt you into taking classes or taking off for parts unknown with your partner. A proposal or a lovely invitation could come your way after the 23rd of May, too. Be prepared to make some changes for nothing but the most delightful of reasons.

Summer will be a fun, sociable season for you — but expect some delays while traveling or attempting to keep your appointments between July 23rd and August 16th, when communicative, travel-loving Mercury will throw his engine into reverse — in your own sign. During this time, always have a Plan B ready to go, and expect everything to take longer than you’d anticipated. This doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy yourself. In fact, you’ll probably meet someone you never would have crossed paths with if you’d been where you were supposed to be.

Your natural talent for charming chitchat will be even more lethal during October. You may even be able to have a positive impact on a tough family situation. Take advantage of the good, warm feelings the holiday season inspires, and see if you can’t remind loved ones of the importance of staying close. You may have some extra work heaped on your plate during mid-November, but it’s nothing you can’t handle. Travel plans will come together nicely during December, so make your arrangements and rest assured that all will be well.

What are the secrets of your personality? Discover yourself — and make the most of your year — with a free Personal Profile Reading! Content provided by Astrology.com© Astrology.com 1996 – 2005 What Does 2005 Have In Store For You? Get Life, Love, and Career Horoscopes – for Free!

You Are a Visionary Soul

You are a curious person, always in a state of awareness. Connected to all things spiritual, you are very connect to your soul. You are wise and bright: able to reason and be reasonable. Occasionally, you get quite depressed and have dark feelings. You have great vision and can be very insightful. In fact, you are often profound in a way that surprises yourself.
Visionary souls like you can be the best type of friend. You are intuitive, understanding, sympathetic, and a good healer.
Souls you are most compatible with: Old Soul and Peacemaker Soul

Leo: Saying ‘no’ is not as difficult as you think. All it takes is a little practice.
Yahoo! Astrology.

It started to get to me last night actually.
After a full day of cramming XML trivia in my head to fulfill training requirements I have (I’m in the middle of training right now still, but I needed a break) I came home to the hot water being turned off in my apartment. the cold water was still in action (and when you live in hundred year old buildings, you take it all with a grain of salt.) I really wasn’t all that worried about it, but I got the impression that it wasn’t going to be fixed by morning either.
So, going anywhere today was pretty much out of the question… not that I wanted to. I wanted to stay home in my house in the quiet.
There are some leaks in my entryway as well. It pretty much drips when it rains, but I have that mostly under control as well, so I just made sure that the ever useful IKEA bags covered the little things that live in the entryway and that buckets were under the spots it was ‘raining’.
It started to really get annoying when I declined some invites to New Year’s Eve stuff that I am not in the mood for and they just wouldn’t let up and wouldn’t let me be nice about it.
Then, there was the chunk of ceiling that fell down (nothing really damaged, just kind of ugly now) and I couldn’t really clean up because it was wet and it would have just left smears here and there.
Today I tried to let it all go because I worked around some issues and finally was able to clean a bit (the rain is light and stopping occasionally, though I know that its going to keep raining all weekend, so its still bucket time in the entryway.) got some laundry done as well.
I hate passive aggressive cowards.
Anyway, its quiet now, the hot water is back and I’ve figured out a way to do my job (on my day off) in spite of them, so I’m going to finish learning about XML entities and try NOT to dream about getting presents of XML files with the DTD’s already built in so I don’t have to write it myself.

Dear Friend,

I’m sure you heard about the earthquake and resulting tsunamis that have devastated Asia.

I just gave to Oxfam – a respected non-profit that is working to help survivors of this horrible disaster.

If you’d like to give as well, you can do so quickly and easily online. Just click on the link below:

https://secure.ga3.org/02/asia_earthquake04/step1/rp1S0z391I7dv

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Bloglines user fredlet has sent this item to you.

then you are going to have to give up your religion.
These religions are based on having faith, if you question it, then you do not have faith.
…or conversely, if you question it, then you are on the road to choosing a different religion.
Follow your particular religion or stop lying about it. You can’t have both.
I’m not denigrating any particular religion (and I certainly feel horribly that this happened), but this kind of hypocrisy (even during a supremely crappy time period) irritates the fuck out of me.

Yahoo! News – Faiths Ask of Quake: ‘Why Did You Do This, God?’:
“‘Why did you do this to us, God?’ she wailed. ‘What did we do to upset you?’ “

…and then there’s the idea that its not personal.
Sometimes things need to be done to restore balance and, unfortunately, there was a serious loss of human life associated with it.
Your god didn’t do it to you, per se. You just happened to be there when it all went down.
Sort of a cosmic ’shit happens’….and you can’t do a damn thing to prevent it in the future.
Of course, that in itself goes against that whole human cause and effect thing we want to believe. If we are nicer, or if we follow our made up religion more closely it will all be ok. It was someone who was being bad’s fault that the tectonic plates finally shifted violently creating a tsunami.
And what about places that tsunamis don’t exist, are they not capable of being bad?
Don’t ask for a cause and effect with religion. You are just setting yourself up for a disappointment.

” It is a question that clergy have to deal with nearly every day, not just at times of great catastrophe but when providing consolation for the daily sorrows of life, said U.S. Rabbi Daniel Isaak, of Congregation Neveh Shalom, in Portland, Oregon.
“It is really difficult to believe in a God that not only creates a tsunami that kills 50 or 60 thousand people, but that puts birth defects in children,” he said. “Often the first question people ask on an individual basis is that question that that Indian woman asked. Why is God doing this to me?”
In one modern view, he said, God does not interfere in the affairs of his creation. Disasters like the tsunami occur for the natural reasons scientists say they do.
“This is not something that God has done. God hasn’t picked out a certain group of people in a certain area of the world and said: ‘I am going to punish them,”‘ he said.
“The world has certain imperfections built into the natural order, and we have to live with them. The issue isn’t ‘Why did God do this to us?’ but ‘How do we human beings care for one another?”‘
Greek Orthodox Theologian Costas Kyriakides in Cyprus expressed a similar view.
“I personally don’t attach any theological significance to this — I listen to what the scientists say,” he said. “God is always the fall guy. We incriminate Him completely unjustly.”

Of course they could always argue that their god did this to test the humans on their responses.
But that would make their god sound like a real piece of work and so they will just blame the plates to avoid the whole idea that their god is a ‘hands off’ kinda manager.

Did I mention I got one of these?
I have a few vacations planned this year… this little thing will help fund the aforementioned trips.

Contributions are warmly welcomed (though frankly, you should be giving to the tsunami relief effort)

and you wait until the very last minute on the day before a holiday to tell me (and this shite has been happening for over a week) and ALL the engineers are on vacation…
I can’t do anything.
Nor do I care because obviously if it really was a problem, you would have called me last week.

C’mon, I was in tech support, you know I’m heartless.
Don’t try to play the sympathy card with me, girlfriend. It won’t work…
(especially after going above my head the day before and calling my BOSS because I told you ‘no’ about something. Kinda burns your ass when he tells you ‘no’ as well and that I am right about everything I suggested. Makes me not inclined to go that extra little bit to help you. You are officially on your own.)

Chaos hinders delivery of aid to victims / INDONESIA FAULTED: Food, water stuck at airport; Sri Lanka reports first cases of disease; 3,500 foreigners unaccounted for:

Chaos hinders delivery of aid to victims
INDONESIA FAULTED: Food, water stuck at airport
“With concerns that disease could kill tens of thousands, the speed of the effort was crucial, especially the need to provide clean drinking water. In Sri Lanka, health authorities reported cases of measles and diarrhea, and people in many areas were prone to the threat of cholera, malaria and dehydration. “

is the start the public smackdown of people who say:
“The above item”
when it should be
“The item above”

I’ll be a giant pain in the arse, but I am going to start calling
people on it… at work, in customer service emails and EVERYWHERE I see it.

I don’t know how they can possibly compare trimming hair and making sure your fingernails are clean with having to wear foundation, blush, mascara and lip color… not to mention the associated costs of those items, the removal time and expense of makeup remover.
My skin would rebel.
I would look like shit and then the casino would fire me for looking like hell when their inequal policy was was started the whole thing.

Casino’s makeup rule upheld / Court says fired woman didn’t prove sex discrimination: “Jespersen argued that cosmetics are expensive and take time to apply. But she presented no evidence of the cost of complying with Harrah’s makeup requirements, or how they exceeded men’s burdens in following the company’s short-hair and clean-fingernails standards, said Judge A. Wallace Tashima.
Thomas, in dissent, said a jury should be allowed to decide whether putting on makeup is more expensive and time-consuming than not putting it on, and also whether the policy imposed intangible burdens on women.”

LILEKS (James) :: The Bleat: “I tossed some money to the American Red Cross tonight (Amazon makes it very easy) and did so with a small amount of self-disgust. At least now I know the death toll that gets me to open up the wallet. From now on my guidelines will be “earlier” and “more.” It’s not for the dead we send the money, of course – it’s for those whose lives have been scoured down to the bone, but you can’t help but think that your contribution somehow mitigates the awful numbers. It doesn’t. And if your money makes its way to a small village, and ends up as a box of clean underwear and toothpaste and batteries and aspirin dropped in the lap of a man who watched his entire family scraped off the face of the earth and swallowed by the brutal, implacable and mindless hand of nature, well, know that it probably won’t make much difference. It can’t. But someone has to get him clean underwear and aspirin. You there, with the drawers full of Jockeys and Bayer: cough up.
…
It’s always instructive to see what people revert back to after a tragedy, and how long it takes. But in this case it would be churlish to close the purse. There’s the government, and then there’s the people. No need here to punish the latter for the idiocy of the former. “

Kreskin is a bit late on this… I wondered this a while ago…

New York Post Online Edition: gossip: “Kreskin also claims that Tom Hanks will successfully run for political office.”