Month: February 2005

Today, our new Barnsonian, Bryan, wrote something funny. He noted that if it were a category in High School, I would have been voted “Most Likely To Be Matt Barnson”. I’d be mad if it weren’t really true (and if you thought I was bad the year you were there with me, you should have seen the Train wreck of the years after.. I was to Matt what Bizarro was to Superman.. same idea, but wacked)

So, sparked by that, and by the redesign of the site, I thought it might be appropriate to reintroduce, the bloggers here.. and how they came to the site. I don’t know whatever happened to Bryan, nor does he to me.. I don’t know exactly Curtis’s relation to Matt, nor do I know really where Weed came from. Ante up again.. who are you?

Here are some funny quotes that my wife forwarded to me today. I have them posted on Brusco.org, but since i don’t get alot of traffic there I figured i would post them here as well.

I hope that they bring a smile to your face as they did to mine. Birds of a feather flock together and crap on your car.

——————————————————————————– When I’m feeling down, I like to whistle. It makes the neighbor’s dog run to the end of his chain and gag himself.

——————————————————————————– If you can’t be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.

——————————————————————————– Don’t assume malice for what stupidity can explain.

——————————————————————————– A penny saved is a government oversight.

——————————————————————————– The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right time, but also to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

——————————————————————————– The older you get, the tougher it is to lose weight, because by then your body and your fat have gotten to be really good friends.

——————————————————————————– The easiest way to find something lost around the house is to buy a replacement.

——————————————————————————– He who hesitates is probably right .

——————————————————————————– Did you ever notice:

The Roman Numerals for forty (40) are ” XL.”

——————————————————————————– If you think there is good in everybody, you haven’t met everybody.

——————————————————————————– If you can smile when things go wrong, you have someone in mind to blame.

——————————————————————————– The sole purpose of a child’s middle name is so he can tell when he’s really in trouble.

——————————————————————————– There’s always a lot to be thankful for if you take time to look for it. For example I am sitting here thinking how nice it is that wrinkles don’t hurt.

——————————————————————————– Did you ever notice:

When you put the 2 words “The” and “IRS” together it spells “Theirs.”

Have a good Day,

JB

For the many who attempted to visit this morning, I apologize. It turns out there was a cross-site scripting vulnerability in the weblogging software in use here at barnson.org. I upgraded to the latest version.

Known-broken stuff:

• Private messages aren’t working. Note: Fixed this, working now.
• The “theme”, or look-and-feel, of the site isn’t what it used to be. It turns out that the theme I slaved over to get just the way I wanted it isn’t working (yet) with the new codebase. I’ll be doing some programming over the coming days to get this back the way I want it. After some effort, and remembering little hacks I’d done two years ago, I got it looking mostly like it’s the same website again, with the exception of the missing avatars (which were totally changed for this version, it will take time to fix). Still some spacing tweaks to be done, but overall I’m pleased that the look and feel is similar. Now it’s time to plan my next site redesign around the same color scheme, but an improved layout…
• The photo album is gone. I think I’m going to actually leave it permanently gone from its old location, and instead begin using the new photo functionality within Drupal. So long, Gallery. This also means I’ll have to go back and fix some links for pictures, though…
• But on the plus side, the MP3’s are all working!

Let me know if you run into any weird issues not mentioned above; I’ll update this page when maintenance is fully complete. In the meantime, post all you like!

You know the scenario. You are walking down a long hallway. Someone else is walking the opposite way. You’re going to be walking toward each other for at least the next twenty seconds, yet neither of you know each other.

What do you do?

I’m playing this game with myself today: trying to act in a (very slightly) unconventional manner when in a public area. The traditional response, when approaching a person down a long hallway with nobody else in sight, seems to be to find something interesting to look at along the sides of the hallway until within speaking distance of the other person, then quickly look at them, give a brief nod, small gesture, or “hello”, then move onward. This situation changes if there are other people in the hallway; people stare at their feet, sometimes speed up to be walking near the other person whom they apparently know if they don’t know you, etc. If people are carrying papers on that long approach, they’ll tend to shuffle or straighten them with great interest, rather than make prolonged eye contact on that long approach.

I found this morning that simply watching them as they walk towards you definitely creeps them out 🙂 I was playing my little game, and decided to watch this guy as we approached each other. He desparately looked left, right, up, and down, seemingly finding interesting things to look at during our very long approach down a very long hallway, with frequent glances in my direction to see if I was still staring at him.

He gave an audible sigh after I passed and gave a cheerful “howdy!”, moving on.

What interesting body language have you run into? I’m trying to pay more attention to people’s body language these days (a language that, really, still feels like a foreign language to me), and it’s kind of fun figuring out the unspoken social graces which grease the cogs of society.

So this morning I was listening to the radio, and the topic of discussion was labor unions. In particular, labor unions and Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart’s union history is long and checkered. Employees have repeatedly attempted to form unions, and been met with impressive stonewalling tactics, from shutting down stores where employees were organizing, to firing employees involved in organizing a union, or refusing to hire employees who had previously belonged to a union. The Wal-Mart management handbook states that managers should be “constantly alert to any signs your associates are interested in a union… Wal-Mart is opposed to unionization. You, as a manager, are expected to support the company’s position.

They include an aggressive anti-union video as part of their indoctrination process, and weekly meetings which frequently discuss labor issues in an attempt to prevent workers from supporting unionization.

Some estimates suggest nearly 40% of Wal-Mart’s 1.3 million workers rely on welfare (your tax dollars) to pay for their health insurance due to Wal-Mart’s cost-cutting practices: 28-to-32-hour work weeks, low pay, and extremely high health insurance costs. Workers have provided compelling evidence that Wal-Mart went to great lengths to educate workers on how to apply for public assistance in lieu of company-provided health insurance.

Yet on the other side of the coin, the company is known for hiring disabled people and the elderly as door greeters, being a cheerful place to work, and that for most employees, it does not represent their primary income-earning outlet. There’s a case to be made that the case against Wal-Mart is overblown. The language of Wal-Mart opponents, such as “third-world slave-labor camps” lends itself to easily discounting their opinions as biased. And heck, my family shops there.

Wal-Mart brings in more cash than all but the six largest nations in the world (by GDP). Unionizing Wal-Mart: Good, or bad, for America?

So today I was yukking it up with Jenny Gagne over ICQ. The conversation went like this:

 (12:25:16) Me: That's a good story! You should blog it! (12:26:13) Jen Gagne: Heh. :) (12:26:41) Jen Gagne: My favorite story I ever blogged was my 9/11 shark bite story. Did I show you that one? (12:26:56) Me: URI? (12:27:49) Jen Gagne: http://www.livejournal.com/users/jengagne/19760.html (12:29:57) Me: Reading :) (12:30:12) Jen Gagne: Think you'll love it. :D (12:31:30) Me: I'm gonna have to blog about your blog, you know. (12:31:42) Jen Gagne:  Sure. It's all about recursion. 

So in case you aren’t good at cutting-and-pasting, click here to read her funny (and somewhat macabre) sharkbite story. Doing my part for the recursive recursing society…

So when I was in high school, one of my friends (was it Justin, or someone else?) used to say, “Wow, vuja de. I have the most incredible feeling that I’ve never been here before.”

If said aloud, you’ll realize it’s “deja vu” spelled sideways.

Anyway, so today, I finally learned that there’s a real term to describe the phenomenon, called “Jamais vu”, or “the experience of being unfamiliar with a person or situation that is actually very familiar”. Not exactly the same thing, but close enough for government work.

Last Thursday in the mail we received some local ads. Even though we’re between jobs, my brain said, “I can’t miss out on a deal, I’d better glance through and see what’s going on in town.” So I’m flipping through nonchalantly and didn’t find anything in particular. On my way back through, I noticed a $100 off coupon from a butcher. HMMMM.

As I’m reading through their sale flier I thought, “I’ve always wanted to buy a cow.” So I called up my good friend, Emily and asked her if she might like to split a cow with me. She discussed it with her husband and said yes. I made the appointment for yesterday and got real excited.

While on the phone with my mom over the weekend, I mention that I’m buying a cow this week. She says, “So who’s going to milk it for you?” I about fell off my chair laughing. She laughed, too, as I explained that we’re buying the cow from a butcher and splitting it. I figure if we’re out of work for awhile, we’ll have plenty to eat between the meat and the other food storage I’ve been building! Mom was thrilled and said she’s enjoyed the half a beef they bought awhile back.

So Tuesday rolls around and Emily and I drove to American Fork (an hour south) to the butcher. We took the back roads, and as we passed a cow farm, we were making jokes about our cow. Of course now none of them seem all that funny, but for Emily and I this was big adventure!

Once we find the butcher, the haggling starts. Those of you that know me, know that I’m cheap and I want it on sale, so I was a little nervous about the price of the beef being what was on the ad. So the guy sits down with Emily and I at a table to discuss what cuts of meat we’re wanting to buy. He says most people come in and buy $1500+ of beef at a time and I’m sure he saw my eyes about fall out of my head. So after telling him I don’t want to spend $7 lb. on meat he says he wants to make me a deal and am I interested. Suddenly I’m feeling like I’m at a high pressure sales car dealership.

So he goes to the back room and pulls out several hunks of beef and takes us back to show us what we’d be getting and tells us what kind of cuts they would be. I started to think about this and realized I didn’t have to buy any set amount of anything, he’d sell me whatever cuts I want. So I told him to put back the expensive cuts and bring out more of the middle grade cuts and tell me what $$ we’d be looking at. Then he tells me, if we’re that close we might as well add a little more so that we can get some extra free groceries. Doing this and including the “free” foods into the initial cost of the beef brought our price under $3lb. which I decided was just fine considering steak is typically so expensive.

I felt like I haggled him down well, discussed with Emily how she felt about the new deal, and we began to cut. YEAH! We’re buying a cow, or the same parts of several cows. Anyway, people appeared out of the woodwork, big machines turned on and they put Emily and I at the end of the table to stamp our packages so that we would know what was in each package. It became very exciting as many different types of steaks as well as roasts, london broil and ground beef were individually wrapped, taped closed and stamped, and put into grocery bags that were waiting in grocery carts. They filled up fast.

So, in the end we purched 160 lbs. of beef and received 50 lbs. of other free foods: sirloin steaks, chicken, bacon, hot dogs and veggies of our choice. Yahoo! I bought my first cow and so far, those sirloin steaks were delicious! My freezers are clean and full of food and we will eat like kings while we’re in search of the next job opportunity!

So for those of you who are foreign to this type of shopping, here’s a song that our family loves!

Cows with Guns

A momentous step in the growth of Accompany Publising. Two weeks ago I moved into an office. For the first time since starting the business two years ago, I am no longer operating Accompany on a cell phone and 100 sq. feet in a dark basement.

The decision to not secure a dedicated office space was simple. My feeling was that until the business generated revenues and customer traction it should not leave the comfort of a rent-free location. Minimizing overhead was key.

For anyone out there interested in launching their own business venture, I will now offer that incurring startup overhead in the form of an office can offset the productivity loss brewed by sitting around your basement. I can’t tell you how despairing it can get working out of your own home. No matter your level of discipline, and earnest, you will have to overcome separation from people. There is a feeling that I was missing out on what was happening in the world.

I remember a time during my Nashville stint when I got hit with a nasty virus. I didn’t leave the Vanderbilt apartment for 4 days straight. Slept and read, trying to lick the bug. After I turned the corner, and could stand up, I walked outtside. I remember the awkward, feeling of leaving this little apartment and moving into this big world. That’s an allegory to the mental state of working from home.

The other thing about getting an office is that people start to look at the business differently. Before it was: “how’s your little project coming?” Garnering an office creates a different external perception of the enterprise as an actual business. People treat you differently. I don’t have to take meetings at coffee shops anymore.

Of course, my commute is now longer than ten seconds.

Anyway, the office itself is fantastic. My business associate found a commercial leasing company that caters to small businesses. For a cheap monthly rent, Accompany not only enjoys a spacious modern office, 1 mile from downtown, but also receives, included with rent, telephone, high-speed internet, fax, copier, elevator, doored-office, mailbox, security, electricity and immediate facility support. The owner/manager works three floors below me, and is emotionally committed to making the building concept succeed. I moved in on a Sunday night and this guy is sweeping the stairwell.

Now, about selling some product and making rent payments…

So the job hunt is finally over, I start in two weeks as a Personal Staffer up on the hill.

And so begins a new chapter in my life, no more Marine Corps, to the Hill I go. Why does that sound like the end of a fairy tale.

Bottom line… I got a phat job with money benefits and I’m gonna be all kinds of importnat ‘n stuff.

Sweet.

(thanks guys for the advice, I removed all the “juicy stuffy”)