Jonahan.com

Some Random Friday Thoughts About Life, The Universe and Everything

So. I haven't posted much lately and should change that. Therefore, I'm going to change this into the Seinfeld blog; the blog about nothing!

I'm just going to write and see what happens. Lately, it's been mostly working and working out. Not much writing happening. I have lost some weight, so I'm getting close to my goal of 180 by June. I slipped up over the fall, playing WoW and eating whatever the hell I wanted.

The decision to quit WoW was a good one: I feel much more free and accomplish a lot more. I am conversing/connecting more w/ friends and family and am overall happier. Although there are other reasons for that too, which includes reconnecting with more old friends.

Happy thoughts of good times in WNY have pervaded my consciousness lately. I would love to move back someday - but then again, I've also forged many great friendships here in the Ohio. Perhaps I could someday work at my current job out of the B-lo but come back for a week every month or two? That would be ideal for me. I'd have to come back to see my Mom and the rest of the family anyway.

The story I'm working on has progressed pretty well. It all started from a dream, and I've just gone with it, writing without letting that internal editor stop me. Also writing without a clear idea of where the story is heading. Not regarding the rules is awesome, just tell the story that YOU want to tell and everything else will fall in line, or so it seems so far to me.

Work is great - I've been taking eye breaks more often and at the same time will plan out the next hour or so. Outlining things in my head and how best to manage my time. We have some very interesting projects going on that I can't wait to share.

I am also becoming quite the good guitarist lately, thanks to the electric guitar I got last April and SHREDHED. I'd never been able to grasp those elusive modes and how they work, but SHREDHED's mode chart makes it simple. I've got the Lydian mode pretty well down pat, and the rest appear to be the same finger positions, just transposed further up or down the neck.

Well. That is about it for now. Jomo OUT.

Fri February 20, 2009

An Afternoon In Sidney

So, I attempted to change my oil again today, with no luck. I tried to jack the car up on the gravel driveway, but the jack went sideways and the car fell down, bending the jack a bit. Dumb. I could've moved the car onto a HARD FLAT SURFACE, as advised in the jack's directions, but that hard flat surface had several inches of slush/ice on it. *sigh* Someday I will get that oil changed. THIS I SWEAR TO THE GODS! *shakes fist in the air*

I then made it down to Sidney for a visit with HTML Samurai (I don't think he wants me mentioning his real identity, his enemies will to easily be able to use his family to get to him).

We goofed off, created much mirth and performed some tomfoolery. He showed me his Special Thing, his precious, (not not that, you perv) his iPod touch and I, too, fell in love. An epic battle of Highlander proportions ensued over it, for what seemed like centuries, with neither side able to gain an advantage. Tired and hungry, the two combatants called off the fight to re-energize. They settled on a Mexican joint.

After food was consumed and we set aside our differences, we made it to the Walmart. We had to steel ourselves for the mass of humanity that was to ensue in the car beforehand by telling clever witticisms and biting insight of the people entering and leaving the store.

We sauntered around, not intent on actually buying anything. That tawdry goal was only for the lesser mortals. No, we non-shopped, looking at items and scoffing and/or pointing out hilarious names and/or uses. The puns were so clever, the cultural observations so poignant and cutting that I opined we should record the event next time around so that future generations could learn from it.

The process was repeated at "Odd Lots", to lesser effect.

How could I forget that we celebrated Festivus this day? The "Festivus for the Rest of Us", traditionally observed whenever we damn well feel like it. I got a shirt that reads, "The dice are trying to kill me" and a book from 1930ish on the Constitution (badass). I got him an iPod battery pack.

A platonic and perfunctoral man-hug, followed by the complicated Web Guy handshake capped our affair cordially.

It was good to see the guy, and his little one albeit briefly.

Sat February 7, 2009

JBS Meeting - Indiana Honest Money

Last night at our John Birch Society meeting, we discussed all things constitutional and what is wrong with our great Republic.

Seemed that many people's 401k have dropped a great deal, some guys said 30k, others 50k. And it's happening all over the country. People are taking their money out of 401k's but I guess there's a 4-8 week wait as they get processed, that's how busy they are.

It all comes down to money, and the Fed pumping a steady supply of it into the economy, whenever they want to, however much they want to. I heard inflation is at as much as 800%, and CLIMBING.

On that note, we had a guest speaker come and talk about how he's spearheading a movement to get a competing currency going. It's called Indiana Honest Money and I guess the idea is to introduce gold and silver as a true payment option, legalized by the state.

There's a lot to it (more than I know), but basically this would prevent inflation because there would be a static amount of wealth.

This is what our founding fathers envisioned for us, but the bankers have slowly taken away from us over the years. A gold standard keeps us free, a fiat money supply keeps us slaves (fiat money is a currency that is worth nothing, every dollar issued is debt that needs to be repaid. All the money you have is worth exactly nothing. It's a difficult concept to grasp, and perhaps the bankers want it that way).

So I guess the Indiana Honest Money movement (IHM) is doing pretty well but we'll see what happens. Other states have picked up the ball and are introducing it to their legislatures as well (Maine, Colorado and Missouri I believe).

I don't know that much about it yet, but it sounds like a Good Thing.

I value our JBS meetings and the people that attend it very much. We don't agree on everything, but we do agree that our Republic is under attack and we need to do everything we can to save it.

Thu February 5, 2009

The Dollar Store: A Slice of American Life

The Dollar Store is an interesting place. If you're ever feeling down or bored it's a great place to go.

My adventure began during lunch at work. I stopped at the dollar store and as I approached the register to check out, the cashier and lady who was checking out were yakking it up. I was in my own little world, looking at candy and thinking about life or some shit. They took forever and she was done checking out, so I calmly and slowly put my stuff on the counter. I truly wasn't in a huge hurry, but didn't want to stand there all day either.

They continued talking for a while as the cashier proceeded to ring me up. The other lady mozied over to the door and eventually left; but the cashier kept talking, switching her focus to me, continuing the story as if I had been listening. (It was something about a school play or some such)

I made no attempt to correct her -or- appear interested. She wrapped up her soliloquy with the fact that she may have to work until 9:00, which was a suitable enough opening for me to say something, "well, I hope it goes fast for you". She was none the wiser and must have thought I listened to the whole story.

Later, I stopped by a different Dollar Store after work. A lady I recognized from the hair salon was talking on her cell phone, at one point standing right next to me and continuing her convo as if I wasn't there.

It was stuff like, "Oh my god this place is laid out so horribly", "yeah I'll be there this weekend, what are we doing?"

I wanted so badly to just start talking to an invisible friend, "So charlie, what are you doing later? Me? Oh I'm shopping at the Dollar Store" and override the volume of her conversation with my own.

She wasn't that loud, but it was for some reason annoying. And do you really need to take your friends shopping with you?

I suppose I might do the same sometime, but then again, I wouldn't walk around the entire store or stand next to someone while talking. I'd most likely go outside or in a corner where no one was. It seems polite.

I would definitely put my convo on hold when I was checking out, that just seems rude.

(Am I wrong? Am I just a cell phone luddite?)

Anyway, as cell-phone girl was checking out, a lady brought a shopping cart in the door and shoved it inside.... but not all the way inside. It stopped about a foot inside the door, so that it might trip up the next person to walk in. (I thought, why not go the extra couple of feet and put the cart away properly so it's not in anyone's way?)

It's not a big deal, just another interesting happening in the fun world of the Dollar Store.

Thu February 5, 2009

The All

In the interest of writing more fiction/oddball stuff and less political/negative/rant-y kind of stuff here a little something...

-----------

You.

Me.

A dog in a tree.

This is the focus of existence. Do not think beyond it. There is nothing else. The All is within each of us.

In a white room with no walls. There is no echo. Time and space are relative, everything is within reach. Great is the limit of your power.

To think a thing is to create it. To hate a thing is to try to break it down. To love a thing is to build it up.

The All is part of us, us part of it. It splintered in the beginning, creating us as an experiment. The goal, for us to be cells in the universal consciousness; to live and learn and love and grow.

Evil is only a turning away from love and The All. Eventually all will come back. Evil cannot win; there is no such thing as "winning", for everything is The All, even those that claim to reject it.

As above, so below. The macro is the micro. Planets are molecules, molecules planets. The universe exists in the DNA of one cell of your body.

The dog is barking.

It calls you back to the material world where you forget most of this for the time being.

Tue February 3, 2009

Just do it

Something I jotted yesterday, inspired by a writing that Pantheon showed me, air and light and time and space

------

Sometimes you can feel the ebb and flow of energy. One day there and "on" and doin' it and rocking and rolling - the next day blah and pfft and meh and wtf and gah and don't feel like doing anything.

Sometimes in order to break out of it you just have to DO something. Get up. Go out. DO. Don't think, just do it. Nike was onto something here.

Don't sit and not write because you're "not feeling it". That's bullshit. If you never wrote until you were feeling 100%, you'd never write. A journey of a thousand miles begins with just one small step. Attack the corners, the samurai said, and soon you'd take down what appeared at first an instoppable opponent.

Work through it.

Mon February 2, 2009

Jquery External Link Disclaimer Alert (a.k.a. JELDA!?)

We ran into a situation where a website needed to have a disclaimer for external links. That is, if they're on the site and there's a link for Apple.com, an alert would popup with a disclaimer saying something like "Hey there Senor bitchy-pants, this here link is offsite and it could be filled with any crazy sort of content imaginable, like a monkey washing a dog or really hairy guys dressed as Wonder Woman." and then let them hit OK or cancel.

This proved to be something that no one else was able to do, or at least they didn't post about it.

Thanks to my cow-orker, Pfrilling, we came up with a simple and elegant jquery-based solution.

Here's the jquery code:

 
if(Drupal.jsEnabled) {
  $(document).ready(function() {
 
	  $('a').filter(function() {
	    return this.hostname && this.hostname !== location.hostname;
	  })
	  .click(function () { 
		  var x=window.confirm('You are about to proceed to an offsite link.  Auglaize County has no control over the content of this site.  Click OK to proceed.');
			var val = false;
			if (x)
				val = true;
			else
				val = false;
			return val;
 
        });
  });
}

Now let's break it down.

First, the script targets all links and checks to see the link is external or not.
Then it says when you click a link that is external, pop up a dialog box.
If they click 'cancel', do nothing at all.
If they click "OK", proceed with the link they clicked.

Kapeesh, home-doggies?

We used it inside a Drupal site, but it can work anywhere. Very neat that basic javascript can be used inside of Jquery!

Here's hoping it's useful to someone out there.

Fri January 30, 2009

2 comments

Whatsup with teh Jomo

I'm going to attempt to write moar (sic) on this here blog without getting political, preachy or grumpy. It might be tough for me, but that's the goal. The other purpose of it is just to exercise those writing muscles, to prime the pump as it were. I have several story ideas, but rarely have the energy/desire to put them into action.

I suppose a tertiary goal would be to keep friends and family informed on what's going on in 'ole Jonahan's life and brain.

So at the risk of exposing too much information about me and my arch-nemesis finding this blog, here goes.

Lately I've been alternating between getting a lot done on some days and sleeping for 10 hours the next. The other night I think I slept for 12 hours! But then again, I've been getting a shit ton of exercise and have changed the diet up a bit. Throw in the fact that we have very little sunlight lately and I don't think it's too worrying.

Besides, like I said, getting a lot done. I've been paying off debt and have (hopefully) just one more car payent. After that, it's just $2500 on one credit card. Listening to lots of Dave Ramsey, that's for sure.

Also, getting my survival geek on. I have the goods to make a container for a garden. I've got my bug-out bag all set in my car, so I'm prepared for the worst. Been doing some work on my car and need to change the brakes and oil soon. Need to get AAA - just in case! (at $100 a year, it seems to be a bargain, if you ever think you might need a tow or a jump.) It follows the Dave Ramsey theory that the more you prepare, the less you'll hear from Murphy. A membership with AAA will hopefully be even more Murphy-repellant.

I've vowed to connect more with friends and family in 2009 - I've definitely been lagging on that end! Perhaps stating my goals here will help me out with that.

I think I may write some random fiction/goofy stuff and slap it up here as well. It should help get those writing gears a bit more lubricated at the very least. Fiction is something I'm just getting into and I definitely need the practice.

Alright, I suppose I'll wrap this up. This felt like a "Dear Diary" entry, and not sure if that's a good thing. I guess that's what's blogs are for though, eh? (The Canadian in me is showing through there, eh? )

Time for noms.

(* nom nom nom nom *)

Thu January 29, 2009

All About Bus Stops

I drive to work on a long stretch of 2 lane highway in the country. This morning I was behind a bus and several other cars. The bus pulls up and a kid saunters ever so slowly up to the bus. He had been halfway to his house when he started walking so it took a while.

The bus picks the kid up and takes off, but stops about 15 yards down the road where a kid gets out of a car and slowly saunters to the bus.

The bus travels another 15 yards and stops again, where 2 kids get out of a car and walk casually and slowly up to the bus.

I have many problems with this.

Three bus stops within about 40 yards of each other? What happened to grouping up stops? Do we seriously have to wait for three stops within talking distance of each other?

Then there's the fact that the kids obviously KNOW the bus about to pick them up, but they wait until the bus arrives at thier stop and comes to a complete stop before moving an inch and leaving the warmth of their vehicles.

Plus the kids showed no sign of hurrying up to get on the bus despite the fact that 20+ cars were waiting.

When I was a kid, our bus stop consisted of a group of 5-10 kids from around the block. These kids would walk from 5, 10, maybe even as much as (*gasp*) 15 houses away to get to this bus stop. Then we would stand outside, even in the cold Buffalo snow, waiting for the bus. Sometimes it was late, so we waited longer. We wore jackets, snowcaps and gloves so as to stay warm. When the bus was arriving we formed a line so as to expedite the bus boarding procedure. If you weren't there on time, the bus left. If you were within shouting distance, you might be able to make it if you ran.

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't in a hurry this morning. I watched this all with a sort of detached bemusement, like I was a visitor from another planet watching how this civilization lives. I'm not mad at anyone, just don't understand it.

Is this a country thing, where people just move slower and don't care who they cause to move slow? As you move further south does this increase? Does this only happen in the winter - is it because parents sit in their cars with their kids? Are the kids told to cross the street ever so slowly (perhaps it's a safety thing)?

I just don't get it.

Andy Rooney signing off.

P.S. It occurred to me that in New York you would most likely catch a lot of flak if you were taking your time getting on the bus, either from the bus driver, other bus drivers, or the kids. In rural Ohio, this is not the case. Just a thought.

Tue January 27, 2009

Obama - could he be another Kennedy?

There's a lot of positivity out there with the new president. It seems that the majority believe things will turn around, that our new direction is going to set things right. There's a general consensus that Bush was a dipshit and the problems of the last 8 years were mainly his fault.

Well I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but those people are living in a fantasy world. Obama is bringing the same things that the last several presidents have. More taxes, expanding federal government, a growing deficit, increasing the power of the military-industrial complex, restricting our freedoms.

Obama could turn it around. He could follow through with all the big change he's promised and bring us back to being a great country. Do I believe it's going to happen? No.

Too many politicians have gone back on their campaign promises for me to think that Obama could be another Lincoln, another Kennedy. He's too connected to the same people that want one world government. Most of his cabinet are CFR members - these are people who don't want a great and free America, they want the world under their control.

Obama could buck the trend and do whatever he wants. He's a smart man with some good ideas, and he is the President! No one can prevent him from doing what he want, right? Well, let's look at the past presidents that have strayed from the path and tried to disrupt the cartel of bankers that truly controls our country:

• Lincoln needed to fund the Civil War but the banks were charging an outrageous interest rate (some say because they wanted the Union to fail). So Lincoln issued his own government-controlled money called "Greenbacks". This was a total end-around the banks, who didn't like it very much. Lincoln was assasinated shortly thereafter.

(More info:

http://www.orwelltoday.com/readerlincolnmoney.shtml

http://www.theconspiracy.us/vol11/cn11-34.html)

• Kennedy did the same thing - he created a bill that let the U.S. print it's own debt-free and interest-free money*, among other things that would upset those in control of the money supply. Five months later, Kennedy was assassinated.

So even if Obama wanted to go rogue and not listen to the globalists around him, history shows that he would most likely be "dealt with" in a very messy manner.

Could he be another Kennedy? Could he be a great man like Lincoln? I sure hope so. Am I betting on it? Hell no.

---------

*On June 4th, 1963, President Kennedy signed a presidential document, called Executive Order 11110, which further amended Executive order 10289 of September 19th, 1951. This gave Kennedy, as President of the United States, legal clearance to create his own money to run the country, money that would belong to the people, an interest and debt-free money. He had printed United States Notes, completely ignoring the Federal Reserve Notes from the private banks of the Federal Reserve. (http://www.prolognet.qc.ca/clyde/pres.htm)

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P.S. - Just in case any of the above be misconstrued, I wish the best to President Obama and his staff. Godspeed to him and to all around the world who are working in the cause of freedom. Long live the Republic!

Mon January 26, 2009