Tracking

My wife is looking at jobs in the future, specifically, working with young children. We both have a mutual friend that works at oneof these, so she decided to look at it. My wife was amazed at the way that they track the children that attend and their employees. Apparently, they track these people with handprint recognition. My wife immediately thinks that this is the best thing since sliced bread, because when parents drop off their children, there is a record of where they are at all times.

When I have children, I want to know that the place that I’m sending them is safe, secure, and reliable. But what I wonder is this, do we really need hand recognition to track our children and employees? While this is a great technology, it seems to me that we are jsut ingraining our children with the idea that they will be tracked. Right now, it’s just a hand scanner to get into day care, and the system is linked to a central network. What happens when that system is much larger and uncle sam is allowed to link all of our records with the records from Wal-Mart, BP, and McDonald’s? While the idea that all of these logs will be connected so that our money can be funelled to the correct places *cough* the people that already have the money *cough*. When all of the logs are linked of where we’ve been and where we are going, how will that effect us?

That has a major effect on our everyday life. The government will be able to track our every move, so that every time that we slip up a little bit, we will be caught. When the box stores are able to track our moves, they will be able to target their advertisements, and be able to buy our money.

If you want to have your children told where to go, what to say, and what to do, encourage them to not think about what they are doing. But if you want your children to think critically about what they are really doing when they scan their hand, then tell them to thnk about everything that they see, everything that they hear, and everything that sense. If our children don’t think about what is happening, who will?

SSDD

Do you ever get the feeling that you are just dealing with the same stuff every day? Right now, I am bored with my life. I think that the root of this is my job. I am currently working at a pool store dealing with the same stuff every day. My job is never more exciting than, “How is your PH?”

I sold timeshares for about six months, and it was a blast. I think that I liked that every day when I went into work, I didn’t know who I was going to be; one day, I had a single mother, the next, I was a party animal, the next day, I rode my motorcycle every spare minute that I had. Some people would say that I was lying when I was selling timeshares, but I was just an actor. My job was to get the people that went in there to like me and want to spend time with me. At the job that I have now, I feel like I am doing nothing more than saying, “do you want fries with that?”

My job selling timeshares, was so much more fun that any job that I had before. I had to do little actual work, the work that I did do was fun, and there was something new always happening. I had a product that I was trying to sell, but every day, I was told that my job was to have fun.

Right now, I am so bored with my job, I wish that there was another job that I was just told to have fun.

Guns

This is a blog that I’ve had rolling around inside my head for a while. This is also a thought that I often talk about. If you’ve heard this rant before, feel free to tell your friends about it, but not to read it yourself. Just to warn you, I am blogging about gun control and how it effects you.

Recently, there have been many talks by politicians who are paid a lot to do the job that they do about registering guns and ammunition, which I find fascinating. The first thing that I hate about this proposed bill, is the control that the government is looking to have. I can understand that the government wants to know what their people are doing. Isn’t it us who pays them, though? Last time that I checked, I pay taxes so that the government will do what it needs to do to make this country run. I don’t pay the government so that they can watch over me, and know my every move.

I don’t think that guns should be controlled in the fashion that they are controlled now. I do think that guns need to be controlled, and that there should be a license neccesary for gun carriers, but I also think that license should be less restrictive. If I have a license to own a handgun, I think that I should then be able to carry that gun with me. Instead of this, as the law stands now, I need to get a separate license for to be able to legally carry a gun concealed. This license is not easy to get or inexpensive. It seems as if the lawmakers believe that everybody carries a gun is going to use it to kill somebody in malice.

What if the products we used didn’t suck?

I was listening to the radio about the big GM debacle, and a good point was brought up. Why don’t car companies come out with more durable products. That made me wonder about products in general. Why don’t companies make products that will withstand the test of time. Initially, this isn’t the most fiscally responsible action, but after time, it will go to show that products that stand the test of time are worth the money spent.

Currently, I am in my second season of selling pools. Something that I’ve noticed with pool hardware, pumps, filters, hoses, covers, chlorinators, vacuums, and other products, is that they need to be replaced every few years. Some things go out yearly like clockwork, others fail without warning. What if the large companies that make pool equipment, such as Hayward, Pentair, and Jandy, started to make products that lasted longer, but were more expensive to the consumer. Initially, consumers would be skeptical, but with the right marketing, these products would be great sellers.

Change products that apply to pools, would be applying to a small market, in the grand scheme of things. But what if the products that we used every day, such as all of the small parts in cars that I don’t even know exist, or appliance parts, lasted a lot longer. I’m not saying that this would come without a cost to the consumer or the manufacturer, but in my opinoin, those would be products that would be worth the money that was spent.

The ironic thing about all of this, is the fact that that the people that needed these products more than anybody could not get anywhere near these products. The people that need it, being the middle class and poor. That begs the question, are these products not being produced to created a greater divide between classes than already exists? If these durable products were produced at a price that the consumer had access to them, what would the upper class have over other people?

Babies

A lot of people have been asking me lately whether or not I’m going to have a baby any time soon. In my job, it frequently comes up that I got married a little more than 2 months ago to an african american woman. I love her, but a baby isn’t in the cards for us right now. Sometime in the future, and when I say future, I mean flying cars future.

Personally, I think that everybody that is expecting a baby should have to pass a test. First, a pregnant woman should have to pass an IQ test. I’m not expecting every mother to be a rocket scientist or have a degree in physics, but I just think that you should have an IQ of at least 85 to raise a child. With 100 being the mean result of the test, 85 isn’t too much too ask, in my opinion. The second test that you should have to pass is income. If you have a mortgage, two car loans, thousands of dollars in credit card debt, and you’re still wearing Abercrombie & Fitch clothes, you probably shouldn’t have a child. While this may go back to the IQ test, but if you don’t have the money to raise a child, you should not have a child. At my heart, I have some socialist tendencies. I think that people that are down on their luck should be helped out, but people that are doing nothing to get back on their feet should not get more free money from the people. Talking about our welfare program is for a different blog. The third and final test that you should have to pass is the motherly instinct test. This test could be wrapped into the first test with the IQ test, but there needs to be a test for motherly instinct. If a mother doesn’t know how to bathe a baby, a baby shouldn’t be her metaphorical guinea pig on how to raise one. Maybe as an expectant mother goes through her lamaze class, or even with all of those books on how to raise a baby properly, there should be an electronic baby similar to the robots that are give to high school students to take care of.

With my rules in place, natural selection would be reinstated. For those of you that don’t know, natural selection is the process by which only the strong survive. If we want to have a proverbial melting pot for the gene pool, we should continue with what we are doing. If we want to start to weed out the weak, we need to institute a method to prevent everybody from procreating, spreading their genes and their STD’s.

Life

Since the last time that I posted a blog, a lot has happened in my life: I dropped out of school, I got a job selling timeshares, and among other things, I got married.

I dropped out of school, because the program that I was in was a joke. As far as the school goes, it was great, but the program that I was in was a horrid program. The teachers that I had for my classes, especially the ones for my major, knew less than me about what they were supposed to be experts at. Most of the teachers that I had were teaching because they couldn’t get a job doing anything else. I don’t look down on people when they do something between jobs, but if you’re teaching, you should be knowledgable about the subject that you are teaching on. In one of my classes, it was called Fundamentals of Color, the teacher had no prior training in what she was teaching. It was a learning experience for everybody there, especially my teacher.

I got a new job, selling timeshares, that is awesome. I am paid to make friends with people. A lot of people have this idea in their head of a timeshare being a bad thing. The people that I deal with often think that they are going to get robbed or they are not going to get their gifts. The thing that gets people drive up to three hours to go to a town of less than a thousand called Norway, IL, is the chance to win $49,000 and a free trip. When I talk to people, a lot of them don’t believe that it is possible to win that money or that they will get that free trip. But they get their chance to win $49,000, a $1,500 shopping spree, $500 cash or a romantic island holiday. My job is to make friends with these people and get them interested in a product that sells itself.

I got married, it was the best day of my life. I’ve been happily married for a little over a month now. It’s really cool, I would strongly reccomend it. Two thumbs up.

Dear Mr. Bush:

Dear Mr. Bush:

I want to thank you for running the country for the past eight years. While I may not agree with everything that you have done, I wouldn’t have wanted to be in your shoes. A lot has happened during your presidency. There have been fluctuations in markets, wars have begun, youtube and myspace were created.  But what have you done for the people? You are paid by the people, and you should be accountable to us, the people.

The first thing that most people think of when they think about what you’ve done for us, is the war that you have put us in. Some people say that the war is illegal, and others say that the war is strictly for oil. I don’t know the exact reasons that we’re at war, but what I do know is that you were put into a tough position. If you didn’t got to war, half of the country would hate you, but if you did go to war, the other half of the country would hate you. I personally wouldn’t want that kind of weight on my shoulders.

Another thing that you have done for us is give us something to laugh about. You told us when it was okay to laugh after the massacre on September 11, 2001, and you have given us something to laugh about ever since. With the words that you made up, and the phrases that you said in such a way that could be taken out of context, and make America laugh the next day. If we had another president for the past eight years, society might have taken him seriously.

The final thing that you did was ensure the Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton would become the next president. While I don’t agree with Barrack Obama, I think that you had a lot to do with him becoming president elect. If people wouldn’t have though that you royally screwed up, they might have voted for John McCain and Sarah Palin. We’re going to have our first African American president now, thanks to you.

I’m glad that I got that off of my chest. If you or anybody in your party happen to read this, you know how to contact me.

Yours Truly,

JAKE

Social Networking Part 2

Social networking concerns me. Towards the end of the essay, I started thinking about what social networking has done for us, as people. We have become so depending on social networking, could we bounce back if these websites stopped working? I used to be a “myspace whore” adding as many friends as I could. Now, I use Facebook as a secondary and sometimes primary form of communication with some of my friends. What would happen to my generation if these websites stopped working, and we had to communicate with only the people in our physical community? Would we be able to cope? Or would we as a generation drop into a depression, that the people older than us wouldn’t know why it was happening, and the people younger than us noticing something big going on, but not knowing what.

Social Networking Part 1

I wrote an essay for my English class, I’m going to post it here, and on my next blog, I’m going to comment on it.

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Computers have had a great impact on society in the past few decades. One of the most popular applications that computers have is social networking. A social network is a group of people with like interests. Social networking websites are websites that try to get people of like interest in contact with each other, a few examples of this are: myspace.com, facebook.com, and dig.com. These websites have become very popular in the past ten years, but are these websites good for community and networking? Social networking has caused people to be more connected with like-minded people, it has caused less face to face communication with people, and it has caused great community among individuals that see each other almost daily.

Social Networking has caused people to be more connected with like-minded people. What these websites, such as myspace.com and facebook.com, have search functions that can allow people to find people that they may know, or people of like interests. This can very much aid with smaller business looking for connections in their field, or a film maker looking for fellow film makers to make a movie. Social networking was originally started for business people to communicate with other people in the same business. It was not until websites, such as myspace.com, became popular, that most people knew what social networking was. These social networking websites can be used in many ways. With them being on the Internet, these websites can bring people together from across the world. There are many websites that have popped up with the idea that people can find love easier, because of the use of a social networking website. These “dating sites” can often be accessed for free, but require a fee in order to fully utilize all of the functions on the website. These “dating sites” have impacted people, because they are able to meet people that they wouldn’t have had an opportunity to meet if they weren’t using that website. The Internet has decreased the gap between nations, and has limited communication with people only by access to a computer with an Internet connection. Social networking has expanded into something that people often check multiple times a day, in order to see whether or not their friends have tried to communicate with them.

Social networking websites have caused an increase in interaction between people. With people able to contact more people, via the Internet, there are more people having more communication with each other. With so many people using a website, such as myspace.com or facebook.com, using a website can sometimes be the easiest and fastest way to contact somebody. How people communicate with each other has changed over the past few years, because they can contact more people, faster than they have ever been able to before. As humans, at first, we didn’t know how to handle all of the communication that was being thrown at us by so many different sources. Most people have learned to deal with this deluge of messages being thrown at them; in fact, some people have made social networking websites their primary means of communication with other people. With the rise of social networking websites more people are using them as a viable means of communication, with direct messages, instant messages or messages to a group of people; contacting somebody using a social networking website can often be a very good way to communicate with somebody.

With increased communication via online means, there is less face to face communication with peers and friends. It is easier today than ever before to not have physical contact with people. With the advent of social networking, and the many things on the Internet, people were able to go longer without seeing anybody else. This can cause people to become more anti-social than they would be without the advent of the Internet. Because of the ease of contacting people via a website, this has become some people’s primary form of communication with their peers and loved ones. Much like text messaging with cell phones, though, it cannot replace the face to face conversation. When people talk face to face, they are able to understand more of what their counterpart is talking about. With face to face communication, there are physical signs that people can make and read in order to easier understand what the other person is really trying to say. Things, such as sarcasm, jokes and angry remarks, are often misinterpreted into something else with online communications.

Social networking has impacted the world greatly. Social networking has opened the whole world up to meet other people of like interests, who can be twenty feet away or thousands of miles away, which can be good for networking and meeting people with similar goals. Social networking has also made it easier for some people to communicate. As it becomes easier to communicate, people have fewer face to face conversations, which can cause people to be less like the people they are and more like the people that they have become. When somebody meets somebody else on a social networking website, such as mypsace.com, anybody can lie about who they are, what they do, where they are from. With the increased communication between people,, people have become something different than human, they have become communication machines. Where does this put us as a race? What if the Internet stops working and we are forced to communicate strictly with the small community within walking distance? Where will be as a race if these websites stop functioning for some reason? We, as a race, have become so dependent on these websites, that we wouldn’t be able to adapt to what would happen if the Internet crashed.

Who Am I???

At the beginning of every class that I take online, I am asked a few questions. But the one that I have gotten every time is Who are you?

How should I respond to that? What is the answer that is being looked for? is it my name, what I do, where I come from, who my parents are, how much money I have, what color my car is, whether I’m Republican or Democrat? Asking who somebody is, can be almost condescending. Asking who somebody is, implies that they can be summed up in a few paragraphs, but wouldn’t we need volumes to describe who we really are?

This question really begs another question. What is Who are you a function of. Saying who somebody is, can actually be said in different words.  Most often, when somebody asks who somebody is, they really want what they do, where they’re from, what they look like, or the like. Looking at the definition of “who,” I realized that “who” is actually a pronoun for a person. This gives a clearer definition of “who are you” to me. It can be restated to say “you are…”; from that, you can go on and say whatever you want. You can say that you are a basketball player, figure skater, bungie jumper, coffee drinker, Mac user, wearer of black, or whatever you want. Most people would prefer to get a truthful answer when you ask that, but I’ll give you permission to lie to them.