Stormbringer's Thunder

We get the frequent message that perseverance is the highest virtue. "Never give up! Persist until you achieve your goal!" I disagree. Sometimes, we do have to quit. And I'm not talking about smoking or boozing, either. Let me over-simplify an illustration. Lucy never played fair, and Charlie Brown never kicked the football. Any sane person would have said, "This situation never changes. I'm tired of playing the fool. Instead, I'll prop up my football and kick it. You can watch." But it depends on your investment. Let me quote from Dee Lauderdale regarding your Return On Investment: "When you’re about to buy something, try to determine it’s potential ROI for your life. The return isn’t always financial but try to determine if this item or service will add value to your life. Will this purchase make your life easier, more fulfilled, or less stressful? Will it give you long-term happiness? Then only buy stuff that has a high ROI....

Buona sera. I haven't been thundering here much lately, and now it's time to make up for it. Pay attention, willya? This is important, and I don't care what your political leanings are, we can sort that out later. I was sent a virus today. A virus will stop all of your uncluttering and productivity efforts right in their tracks. This one arrived at one of my throw-away accounts. That got my attention because I do not use that account for anything serious. My main indication that this was something to be on guard against was that Thunderbird 3 told me, "Hey, this looks like spam!" Click on the picture to see it enlarged ( better yet, use Firefox, right-click, open link in new tab ). Also, it had a Zipped file attachment (bottom left). Alarm bells are going off in my head. Now, I understand that most of my readers are careful, but some things are worth saying over and over anyway: Never open an attachment from a stranger! The attachment is the virus. That's wha...

Here's a great song for a bad day at work. The video is eighteen seconds long. But you probably can't watch it due to workplace firewalls, so save the link and come back here when you get home. After that, I put the original (running at a whopping minute and a half) and its link as well. kthxbai http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg7X5_K7LhE And now the very cool, soulful original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKW-uFxUAyU

Buona sera. This will be an odd lesson in personal productivity, I guarantee it. Yours truly took a while to "come down" after some "discussions" in a forum with some arrogant atheists. (It wasn't even a forum that is set up for religious debates; they kept interjecting their snide remarks in the other discussions.) Flames were shooting out of my eyes when I was done. Readers of this Weblog know that I have written up my problems with their "logic" and their antagonistic attitudes. You should also remember that I really do not care what someone believes as long as they do not attempt to destroy the faith of others. These people who try to destroy the faith of others are the same ones who cry, "Stop cramming your religion down my throat!" A Christian is offering their message of hope because they are motivated out of concern for where the other person is going to spend eternity. By the way, do you know what the atheist offers? To strip away...

All the time that's lost, what's the final cost? "A Light in the Black" by Blackmore's Rainbow Buon giorno. Have you ever had the experience of reading or hearing something that made an impression on you several weeks earlier, and then have it continue to come back to you? Sure you have. I'm going to share my latest. Unfortunately, I do not have the source material. It was a link from a link, one of those things that you chase down. And this thing made me feel better. This is a bit difficult to set up, so I hope you'll bear with me. I was remembering (lamenting, in a way) all the time that I have lost on projects and interests that I did not complete. (In fact, I have Soviet Union badges and other memorabilia in storage even now from when I was deeply involved in studying their history. I want to be rid of them. Any takers?) Time spent, and also money spent. My interests changed, and I felt foolish for having spent time and money chasing those interests. ...

Today, I'm going to give political stuff a rest and keep to the overall topic of this Weblog, which is: Anything I feel like writing about. This time, I want to partially repeat myself about being blackmailed in e-mail . This comes from people that I think are well-intentioned, but do not bother to get rid of the conditions that are contained within the e-mails. Every once in a while, I get mail that invokes an angel, the Virgin Mary, some obscur e religious figure like "Saint Schnitzel" — or even Jesus himself. These sentimental pieces are telling me that the sender cares about me, is glad I am a friend and so forth. But then, they get weird. They often have religious pictures and prayers in them. OK... If I forward the mail to fifteen people in the next five minutes, I will have good luck within the next week. I can see by your expression that you've had these things as well. Hey, do you get them with another condition attached, that if you do not forward them,...

Buona sera. Yours truly is a bit wound up about a different approach to posting. I believe that I will be posting more often, but with less text; I want to become more efficient with my thoughts and words. Sure, the occasional lengthy treatises and rants will appear, however. "I gotta be me", as the song goes. Things may change. After all, everything is a work in progress (to use another saying). But to use one of my own sayings around the office, "We'll see what happens". Unfortunately for people who want short messages, this is not going to be one of them. It's my usual length. But it's very good, keep reading, it'll take you about two or three minutes. To the right is an example of extreme clutter . Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy those are who already possess it. —Francois de La Rochefoucauld, French author & moralist (1613 - 1680) When Hal the Hacker gets on a project for me, he has all kinds of stu...