The Jeff and Casy Show, a podcast filled with good humour

I'm not certain anyone appreciated my post on paranormal podcasts that I made last evening. David Biedny and his followers certainly didn't, that is for sure. One of the things going on in the field of the paranormal these days, is that it quickly devolves into a lengthy gossip session about who is, or is not, relevant, worthy, and legitimate. There are a wide range of personalities in this field, with a wide range of belief systems, who mostly spend their time arguing with each other rather than trying to learn anything particularly objective about the reality behind whatever weird it is that may actually be going on.

As I said before, I'm interested in the paranormal because it is, almost by definition, more interesting than the normal. I find anyone who harbors outlandish belief systems a whole lot more interesting than those who are only interested in the mundane.

I experience this on a personal basis all of the time. I can attend a party with strangers and feel completely helpless when trying to make small talk. I can even attend a party with people who are experts in my field, but I typically become exhausted and bored when it comes to talking about work subjects. What is there really to talk about with strangers? The weather, local sports, the school board? I'm not sure, but I don't do a very good job at it.

I will find a place at the party where I can crawl into a corner and watch a sporting event or simply merge into the background noise of the conversation. I listen to what people are talking about, others at the party, who talk and talk and talk and I am simply amazed out how they can talk so much about, what appears to me, to be absolutely nothing. My wife's friends assume that I am quiet, boring, maybe a bit of a geek, or perhaps a loner who is uncomfortable in the company of others.

That is not actually the case. I have just never learned the art, and I assume it must be an art, at idle conversation and chit chat. Put me in that same group of people and start a discussion on religion, philosophy, cosmology, ontology, archaeology, quantum physics, UFOs, or the New Age and suddenly you won't be able to shut me up enough.

There must be a book somewhere on the art of idle chit chat, I'm going to have to buy a copy one of these days and learn this mystical mumbo jumbo.

Today I drove again for a number of hours. Last weekend I found an assisted living center for my Mom and she has been struggling through her first week. All of the change is overwhelming to her. Today my wife and I drove down to visit and also we went to Columbia to drop our son Alex off at engineering camp for a week. This gave me roughly four hours in the car and, after last night, I decided I wasn't going to spend that time listening to more paranormal podcasts.

Instead, before I left, I downloaded a few hours of 'The Jeff and Casey Show'. A podcast recommended to me by my friend John Miles. The funny thing is that I actually know both Jeff and Casey, and have known them for years. I've known Jeff for well over a decade.

Jeff and Casey have learned the art of idle chit chat and have elevated it to the supreme level of performance art. I know both Jeff and Casey as fellow software engineers. They are both brilliant individuals and, like me, harbor strong opinions about life, the Universe, and everything. Where they exceed my mild intellect is that they possess the capacity to spew a stream of consciousness conversation on subjects relating to the ultimate banality of life, society, and culture.

Their dissertation on the topic of all things that are bad and wrong with garage sales is unquestionable comedy gold.

I now look forward to a many hours respite from paranormal podcasts, from paranormal personalities, and instead I am eager to fill my ears with the verbal hijinks of some truly brilliant individuals as they present their very own unique take on world we live in.

I strongly recommend you subscribe to 'The Jeff and Casey Show' and find the sense of humor you may have at some time in the past lost.

A Few Thoughts about Paranormal Podcasts

I am appointing myself the unofficial official psycho therapist for the paranormal community. This is the first of, potentially, a number of blog posts on this topic. Or, maybe it will only be one. Time will tell.

Over the past six months or so I have started listening to paranormal themed podcasts as a form of entertainment. I used to be interested in the paranormal, many years ago, then I became bored with it when I realized that we will never really know anything about it one way or the other. Time passed, and once I got my Iphone I started downloading podcasts to listen to. I first downloaded 'The Paracast' and found that I enjoyed listening to the conversations and discussions about UFOs and how they may, or may not, fit into consensus reality. Next, I discovered 'The Culture of Contact' and became a major fan-boy of Jeremy Vanei.

Listening to these podcasts is a pretty interesting experience. You hear these conversations, arguments, and debates and, often times, want to make your own point of view known as well. Most podcasts also support message forums but I find that I rarely participate in message forums any more. They take a great deal of time, effort, and energy. Heck, I even run my own message forum that I never participate in any more.

Jeremy Vanei is a unique character. He might well be funny enough to be a stand-up comedian. He's certainly funnier than a lot of bad acts I have seen at the comedy club I frequent on a regular basis. He is also humble, self deprecating, and a genuinely interesting and nice guy. When you listen to his podcast he 'brings you in' and makes you feel as though you are having a one on one direct conversation about his most intimate thoughts and feelings.

It is for this reason that, upon listening to Jeremey, I felt compelled to just call him on the telephone. After all, why not, I had just heard his most intimate thoughts and feelings, shouldn't we be able to chat? And, we did. Which only endeared him to me some more.

But, enough about Jeremey. Jeremey is not what is wrong with paranormal podcasts, he is what is right with them. Everyone else, on the other hand, appears to have some issues.

First of all, I must be open, honest, and forthright about where I am coming from. While I am somewhat interested in the subject of paranormal phenomena and how they may, or may not, intersect consensus reality, that really isn't my main motivation.

What fascinates me, what truly drives me mad with curiosity, is why people believe the crazy shit that they do. Earlier in my life, my key fascination was with organized religions. It truly blew me away why people would believe in the dogma of a particular religious faith. I used to spend untold hours arguing with people about it. My bookshelves and personal library was overflowing with books on all of the world religions, not only their spiritual documents but also historical research as well. I would, and probably still could, argue the finer points of the idiosyncratic beliefs of all of the worlds religions.

But, then I decided to join Freemasonry where one of our key tenets is to tolerate the religious beliefs of others. That was a big one for me to swallow. I had spent literally decades honing my rhetorical skills debating Internet zealots on the absurdities of their particular religious beliefs. Nevertheless, I decided to let it go. It has been hard, in some ways, but still I let it go. Today I reserve the right to debate any individual, one on one, about any particular religious belief they might have. However, I no longer intentionally seek out that debate or revel in the joy of instigating ontological shock and awe as I devastate the beliefs of others with a flurry of logic, reason, rhetoric and fact.

Today, I reserve that right for those who believe in the paranormal. It is not, technically speaking, a religion, and therefore I do not violate my vow as a Freemason when I engage in civil, or even uncivil, debate on the topic.

I won't belabor the issue here, but I must be clear where my point of view comes from. Today my perspective on all things paranormal, or reality based in general, stems from reading the writings of Robert Anton Wilson over the years. If you haven't read the writings of RAW, well you are truly doing yourself a disservice.

Now, getting down to business, let us discuss the paranormal podcasts and their problems. The podcast I listen to the most lately is 'Paratopia' by Jeremy Vanei and Jeff Ritzmann. Both Jeremy and Jeff claim to be 'experiencers of high strangeness'. Now, I'm not one to question them about their strange experiences; after all they happened to them, not me, and they never seem to assume that whatever happened to them has anything to do with me, so we are cool on that account.

As I said before, Jeremy is a pretty funny guy, and doesn't take himself too seriously. Jeff seems to take himself a bit more seriously. He often harbours some strong opinions about what is or isn't possible, in some hypothetical consensus reality, and sometimes I feel like he could loosen up a little bit. Both Jeremy and Jeff recently experimented with some consciousness altering compounds in an effort to gain a greater understanding of their own experiences. My hat is off to both of them for conducting this supreme personal scientific experiment. No great knowledge was revealed during that experiment but I still respect them tremendously for making the effort.

The other podcast of significance is 'The Paracast' with Gene Steinberg and David Biedny. If you are interested in the paranormal, or more specifically with UFOs in particular, this is probably the best podcast out there for information on the topic. They have great guests and produce a very professional show.

Unfortunately, unlike Paratopia, the Paracast seems to have lost its sense of humour. On the one hand, the show prides itself on being logical, rational, reasonable, and unwilling to put up with any bullshit. On the other hand, it could lighten up a bit. On a recent episode David Biedny proclaimed that he couldn't understand why anyone could fault him for simply being rational and critical in his interviewing style. The problem is that, apparently, David is unable to distinguish what he is saying with the tone of voice in which he says it with.

Maybe I'm fooling myself? I don't know. I would like to do an experiment. Could I do an interview with someone who was bat shit crazy insane, but do it in a way where I wouldn't have to resort to extreme sarcasm and direct attacks? Maybe? Probably not. I'm not sure. Then again, I regularly spend a lot of time with lovely New Age people (on purpose), lovely New Age people who believe all kinds of bat shit crazy things. I spend time with them because they are lovely people, give me hugs, good vibes, warmth, love, and a relaxing and pleasant evening. It harms me not if they believe ridiculous things without rhyme or reason. The hugs feel just as good either way.

So, my advice to David Biedny, is watch your tone. Feel free to ask critical questions. Repeatedly ask the person you are interviewing why they believe what they believe; what evidence do they have that they can share? Can David interview a wacko nut job and question them at every turn but still maintain a civil tone and sense of decorum?

I don't know for sure, but here is some advice I would give him.

I know David has read Robert Anton Wilson, as have I. One of the most liberating concepts RAW presented is the idea of the 'multi-model agnostic'.

To me, a multi-model agnostic is a person who doesn't technically 'believe' anything. Instead he holds within his mind a great number of models. He is able to try these models on like a set of clothing. He could attend a New Age ceremony, let's say a Reiki share and, the entire time, act as if it was a perfectly natural and correct thing to do. He could suspend disbelief and simply embrace the experience on its own terms. It is no threat to his personal psyche to participate in this ritual and, in fact, the experience ultimately provides individual growth.

In my own past I have attended not only New Age ceremonies but also the rituals of numerous world religions. When trying to understand a particular phenomenon, I can conceptually apply a wide array of models against it; temporarily ignoring any cognitive dissonance that might occur as I explore the range of ideas that arise from the exercise.

As I said before, this is just the first of a number of posts I may make on this topic. Or, perhaps, I will only post this one as the mood strikes me. I would just like to end this first post with a bit of advice for those who follow this subject matter.

(1) You know how dumb the average person is? Well, by definition half the people in the world are dumber than that. I've said this before and I will most likely say it again, because it is terribly true. The reality of the situation is that most people in the world do not apply a tremendous amount of logic, reason, rational thought, or scientific rigor to their belief systems.

Stop getting upset and frustrated about it. Just admit it, and move on.

(2) People in the United States of America have a legal right to believe pretty much any damned thing they want. In fact, I'm pretty sure that so long as they don't voice it in public, or take direct action on their beliefs, they can, in fact, legally believe literally anything they want so long as it harms no others.

Here's a simple case in point. I can believe that ethnogenic compounds should be legal. I can not only believe it, I can even say it, loud and publically. So long as I do not actually consume enthogenic compounds I have broken no laws.

Freedom of speech is pretty broad until it enters into the realm of hate speech or libel. In between that, saying you believe in UFOs, space aliens, reptilians, or wacky conspiracy theories is all still perfectly legal.

The point I am trying to make here is that, at a certain point, you have to realize that your own personal pursuit of truth and understanding need not be deterred by the irrational beliefs of others.

(3) You must come to terms with the fact that you will almost absolutely for certain never know, understand, or have revealed to you any great mysteries of the Universe. The number of people who have gone to their grave never getting any answer to the deep mysteries of life, the Universe, and everything indicates strongly that quite likely, so will you.

You will almost for certain never know what UFOs are, where they come from, what they mean, or why they are here. There is a reason the people who believe they may have been abducted by aliens also believe their memories were erased. These phenomena, the best that we can tell, go to great lengths to make certain that the mystery is maintained.

Admit to yourself that you will almost for certain never get any real answers to any of this. Come to grips with it. Embrace it. That doesn't mean you cannot enjoy the journey or the mystery of trying to expand your understanding and knowledge, but, for Pete's sake, don't let it eat you up or corrupt you.

(4) The US government is not part of the UFO cover-up. The UFO is in control of the UFO cover-up and the sooner you come to terms with that the better.

(5) If somebody really did have access to a sekrit 'free energy' device, chances are good that it is kept sekrit for a reason. First of all, free energy devices are, as far as we know, impossible. For centuries people have been trying to invent free energy devices and they have Universally all been abject failures. Any free energy device would violate the known laws of physics and there is little reason to believe that any such device has ever existed or could exist.

All that said, let's say a free energy device were possible, by tapping into the hypothetical zero point energy field or, say the nocturnal emissions of pink unicorns. Whatever the case, if such a device existed it could just as easily destroy the world as fuel your home. So, maybe it's a good thing somebody is suppressing it?


(6) UFOs are not important. Yep, you heard it here first. They are not important. Are they intellectual interesting? Yes. A curiosity? No doubt. But, are they important? No, not really. The sooner you realize this, the better off you will be.

Look, I've rambled along enough here, I'm just trying to say that studying the paranormal is an interesting topic. As I have said before, almost by definition, 'the paranormal' is a lot more interesting than the 'normal'. To the skeptics in the world, if you haven't figured out yet that to a substantial percentage of the human population, from time to time, 'weird shit happens', then you are not part of the same reality we are dealing with here.

If you want to find a better way to deal with and cope with these complex topics, again, I cannot recommend reading the collected work of Robert Anton Wilson enough; in my personal opinion the greatest philosopher of the past century.

And, to the people out there in podcast land getting all upset about this stuff, I implore you to follow the path of young Jeremy Vanei. Maintain a great sense of humour and don't take yourself too seriously.

A new post to make the old post scroll further down the hopper; speaking of the hopper let me introduce Jeremy Vaeni

I feel really self conscious about the rambling and highly personal blog post I made last night so, this evening, I decided that I would invade the privacy of someone else by posting their own personal crap. If you check the time of this post you will see that it is 3am. Suffering from insomnia I was cruising Facebook and cyberstalking my favorite alien abductee, woops, pardon me, I mean experiencer of high strangeness.

Jeremy was tagged with one of those grade school quizzes that used to get passed around. As always, Jeremy's thoughtful commentary is as insightful as it is amusing.

Please enjoy...

Vaenology

***********FOODOLOGY***************

1. What is your salad dressing of choice?

Blue Cheese or Green Goddess. But what's a salad?

2. What is your favorite sit-down restaurant?

Uno's. Really, anywhere with free refills.

3. What food could you eat every day for two weeks and not get sick of?

I went a week on New England clam chowder...I'll bet I could go two.

4. What are your pizza toppings of choice?

White Pizza and Hawaiian

5. What do you like to put on your toast?

Butter. Anything else is a sin. I'm looking at you, orange marmalade.

***********TECHNOLOGY***************

1. How many televisions are in your house?

One.

2.the color of your cell phone?

Black, cracka.

3. How long would it take you to look up who invented the Rubber Band?

I don't need to. It was Gumby.

4. Have any idea how many Megahertz your computer has?

Yes.

***************BIOLOGY******************

1. Are you right-handed or left-handed?

Mainly right; sometimes both.

2. Have you ever had anything removed from your body?

Wisdom teeth. Splinters. An eyeball. My immortal soul.

3. What is the last heavy item you lifted?

Me.

4. Have you ever been knocked unconscious?

Yes, for a couple of seconds. Never dive into the shallow end of a swimming pool, folks. But you probably already knew that.

************BULLCRAPOLOGY**************

1. If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die?

It doesn't matter.

2. If you could change your name, what would you change it to?

Namie Namerton.

3. Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1000?

Of course. I've drank worse for less.

************DUMBOLOGY******************,

1. How many pairs of flip flops do you own?

Zero.

2. Last time you had a run-in with the cops?

On the way home from the X-Conference this year. Although technically, I didn't have the run-in....

3. Last person you talked to?

Melissa.

4. Last person you hugged?

Liz or Mike.

**************FAVORITOLOGY****************

1. Season?

Christmas!

2. Holiday?

Christmas!

3. Day of the week?

Christmas!

4. Month?

Christmas!


***********CURRENTOLOGY*****************

1. Missing someone?

Unconsciously.

2. Mood?

Joyful. Like a little kid at... Christmas!

3. What are you listening to?

Some machine collant outside buzzing. A truck passing by. My keyboard typing.

4. Watching

These fabulous words. And later, "Supernatural," my latest TV-on-DVD addiction.

***************RANDOMOLOGY*****************

1. First place you went this morning?

The hopper.

2. What's the last movie you saw?

"Public Enemies."

3. Do you smile often?

Yes. Like a dope. And I sometimes don't know it until people on the street--you know, street people?--smile back.

4. Sleeping Alone Tonight?

Technically, yes. But if my window is open, anyone within snoring distance is screwed. They might as well come over.

***************OTHER-OLOGY*****************

1. Do you always answer your phone?

Not if it's you.

2. Its four in the morning and you get a text message, who is it?

Some asshole who doesn't know I don't have texing capabilities and so has just cost me 20 cents. It builds up, people. Believe me.

3. If you could change your eye color what would it be?

Emerald green.

4. Do you own a digital camera?

Just a video camera.

5. Have you ever had a pet fish?

Yes. Delicious.

6. Favorite Christmas song(s)?

The one with Rum-pa-pum-pum.

7. What's on your wish list for your birthday

That the Kogi and the Lakota gather privately with some key people at Harvard and then hold a monumental press conference (or public event that inspires one) that will change the world.

8. Can you do push ups?

An push-up.

9. Can you do a chin up?

No. I am built like bull but strong like calf.

10. Does the future make you more nervous or excited?

Time is a belief system.

11. Do you have any saved texts?

Probably the last one.

12. Ever been in a car wreck?

Not a huge wreck but some fender benders.

13. Do you have an accent?

Nope.

14. What is the last song to make you cry?

Throw a dart at a Michael Jackson tune.

15. Plans tonight?

Never.

16. Have you ever felt like you hit rock bottom?

Of course. The beauty is, you never do. it's a bottomless pit. Make peace with it and fly. (Somebody, quick! Sell that to Deepak!)

17. Name 3 things you bought yesterday.

Lunch, maybe? Or was that Saturday? I dunno. That would be it.

18. Have you ever been given roses?

Yep.

19. Current worry?

Ask Bill Birnes. No, don't! Stop bothering him! He's got work to do.

20. Current hate right now?

My own pettiness.

21. Met someone who changed your life?

Many, many people.

22. How will you bring in the New Year?

What? What month are we in?

23. What song represents you?

"Rubber Ducky."

24. Name three people who might complete this?

Britt, Regan, Travis.

25. Would you go back in time if you were given the chance?

Yeah. And just sit there.

27. Do you have any tattoos/piercings?

Nope.

28. Will you be in a relationship 4 months from now?

I will find that irrelevant four months from now.

29. Does anyone love you?

I make Baby Jesus smile.

30. Ever had someone sing to you?

Yes!

31. When did you last cry?
Last night.

32. Do you like to cuddle?

Yes! Why? You wanna cuddle?

33. Have you held hands with anyone today?

Sort of. But then her mom called her back to the swings and I had to disappear myself before the sirens came.

34. What kind of music did you listen to in elementary school?

Michael Jackson, Duran Duran, Van Halen, Stevie Wonder, Twisted Sister. Stay Hungry, y'all.

35. Are most of the friends in your life new or old?

Newish.

36. Do you like pulpy orange juice?

Yes.

37. Do you believe angels walk among us?

I believe I was abducted by them. No, wait... that's George Noory.

Random Thought Blog Post

F

I may, or may not, post this blog post. If you are reading this message, it is because I clicked on the button marked 'Publish Post'.

I haven't made a blog post in quite some time. Or, at least, not a blog post of any significance.

I have a lot of random thoughts flitting through my mind and if I post this post at all it will be a post that is random, incoherent, disorienting, and fueled by a six pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. I'm not sure if this is a good start to things....

So, some random thoughts. Sara Palin is an idiot. If she thought she could concentrate on her political career by resigning from her political position, well, she is a fool. She is dead; over; and remains nothing more than a joke for late night comedians. She has entered the realm of the late career Michael Jackson and all that is left is her bizarre eulogy to come.

I have been listening to a lot of paranormal podcasts lately. Some of them have been entertaining, some of them have been frustrating, and some simply boring.

Sometimes I just want to scream, like my own personal Rodney King, 'Can't we all just get along?'

I feel like I need to give some advice, some therapy, to all of the people I listen to in paranormal land.

Some might ask, why am I interested in the paranormal? To those people, I ask, why aren't you? The normal can get pretty boring after all. It's the paranormal where things get interesting; especially whenever and wherever the paranormal intersects with consensus reality.

Now, don't get me started on consensus reality. We will have a long night if I get going there...

If you are new to things, I strongly recommend you read the collective writings of Robert Anton Wilson. If you haven't read his work, well, really, how can we even begin this discussion together?

Digressing further....

Have I ever told this blog about my first true love?

Apparently I have not...

I suppose it is because I play a cat and mouse game with my blog; trying to to keep it personal while at the same time realizing that a diverse audience of disinterested people may, or may not, read it. Nevertheless, I do realize that it injects itself into the bloodstream of the Google search engine and leads a life of its own over time.

Anyway, who really cares?

Well, I will tell this personal story in short form.

When I was young...and were we not all young once? When I was young, when I first left home and went away to college, I formed a romantic relationship with an 'older woman'. Just how much older was this older woman? Not that much older really, maybe like two whole years. However, at that time in my life, given her life experience (she was far more exotic and sophisticated than myself. She had traveled the world, was born in another country, and spoke at least two languages) she seemed much older indeed. As well, she was attractive, brilliant, and complex.

We formed a very brief, and intense, romantic relationship that did not last for very long. Of course it made quite an impression on me, since it was my first, but in the end it did not last long at all. This relationship, over time, transformed into one that transcended its origin and ultimately formed what I felt was a deeply spiritual and profound relationship. This friendship continued for a number of years until, through time and transition, it was lost.

It actually wasn't entirely 'lost' it was snuffed out. I met a woman and I was married. It's not entirely unusual, unexpected, or unreasonable, that the woman I married felt a little bit jealous of a former female friendship that I was still trying to maintain. I made a choice, a poor choice in retrospect, and ended my phone conversations and continued contact with this dear friend from my past.

Years passed. Many years passed. And I found that, this woman I had married, became the woman I divorced. Once I was divorced I began to reexamine my life, and try to rediscover who and what I was as a human being. In the past I was an artist, a fool, and a great explorer but I had given all of that up for something false. I tried to regain those qualities in my life. Over time I met a new woman in my life, a woman I today call my 'permanent wife'. I told her about some of the things which I had lost over the years, and that story included the loss of my friendship with my first significant female friend.

Instead of jealousy, or resentment, she encouraged me to try to reconnect with this long lost friend. I tried a variety of search techniques but, realize that this was the pre-Internet days, I met with utter failure. I even went so far as to hire a personal search firm who guaranteed that they could find any long lost friend you might hope to connect with. I paid my fee and waited. As weeks went by they failed to provide any information, just excuses. I began to feel as though I had been ripped off by a scam artist. I can't recall how this all transpired but I even ended up having the local news send out an investigative reporter to cover my story to expose the fraud. Then things got nasty. The personal search firm threatened everyone with litigation, including the news station and they dropped the story. Needing no more grief in my life, and considering the fact that I was about to leave on my Honeymoon with my new, lemon freshened, and most permanent wife, I dropped the entire thing.

As I pause, at this point in my story, I remember an important detail that I forgot to mention. Obviously I wasn't trying to reconnect with my old friend to rekindle some sort of unrequited love, nor was I trying to satisfy idle curiosity. Over the course of many years I had recurring dreams in which this friend had passed away and, in those dreams, I felt the most intense regret at never having been able to explain to her why I had lost contact. These dreams haunted me to no end and all I wanted to know was that she was alive, well, and happy in her life.

Years passed. Many more years. Over time the Internet grew and I would try to do searches on her name, but with no results. Then, one day, an idea occurred to me that was brilliant in its simplicity. We had both attended college together, that was where we had met, and the University managed to continue to send me catalogs and requests for donations. Perhaps, the University had her contact information as well??

I sent a rather odd letter to the alumni association of the University and, to my surprise, I received a positive response. They did have a record of my friend, but could not give me her personal information.

However, they said the would forward a letter if I sent it to them. After many years of waiting this was one of my greatest nagging hopes realized. I wrote a letter that explained my basic concerns, asking the question, was she well, apologized for losing contact, and sent it off.

Weeks later I received a personal reply. My hopes were high. Could we rekindle a friendship which, at one time, had been intense and deeply personal (almost spiritual in its intensity) that had encompassed lengthy phone conversations and shared experiences? The note was short and to the point. Yes, she was alive. And, yes, she was well. However, in her case, rather than remembering the years of deep friendship we had fostered she also remembered some things she best wished to forget. I was a memory in her life that she would best leave as part of her past and would I please honor her wishes and not contact her again.

I tried my best to respect this. (We are now talking going back over 14 years ago.) I did not write her after that. The good news was that the bad dreams went away and it was, has been, and continues to be a great relief to know that she is well and happy in her life.

Nevertheless, I always wondered....how can you be entirely invisible over the Internet? Over the course of 14 years I would, occasionally, do a search on her name. I found out, once I received that one letter, that she had changed her name and this was why I had such great difficulty ever locating her in the first place. For years she was invisible in all of cyberspace. No email, no facebook, no myspace page, no forum postings, nothing.

A few years ago I finally found a lonely link on the Internet that referenced her in an article. And, then, just a few months ago, I found out that she finally started a blog. And, just today, I posted a comment reply to a post on her blog, which she approved.

What a long, strange, bizarre trip it has been trying to slowly reconnect with someone who, at one time, was the most important person in my life.............................

No, I am not currently looking for another job, but thanks for asking

One of the more odd sights of the week, a hooka smoking Hungarian software engineer; i.e. my friend Adam


Phillip


Chris and Sasha


Simon





Dilip


Isha and the belly dancer


Our lovely entertainment for the evening




George and Ashu


Isha getting his groove on




Jean


Adam


Simon

The bizarre sandwich shop we visited, which consisted of a nice lady, several slabs of meat, a slab of cheese, and bread.


Ashu


Simon in good spirits



I just got back from Zurich, Switzerland where I spent the past week. I recently changed jobs and I am now working for Nvidia Corporation as a senior software engineer. Right now my work is more or less evenly divided between supporting the PhysX SDK and acting as a technical support engineer integrating our technologies into various game engines.

I'm pretty excited about the position and I hope it turns out to be something I can really grow into over the next several years. I recently underwent a job search and I still have recruiters contacting me several times a week. For now, I'm off the market. It's funny how much a job search is like dating. Well, so far, Nvidia is looking pretty good and I hope to stick it out for the long haul. I updated my online curriculum vitae to reflect the change and, while I'm happy to be in the rolodex of any number of recruiters, I don't plan to be entertaining new offers any time soon.

The new job offers me the opportunity to do a fair amount of business travel, something I am looking forward to.

E-Trade Baby

I just can't resist the E-trade babies. I rarely watch commercials anymore since I have my dual-tuner DVR. However, the E-trade baby commercials are so funny that I actually stop my DVR and rewind just to catch them.

A couple of weeks ago I opened an Etrade account and it actually took almost two full weeks before I could access the funds I had transferred. I have decided that I want to learn how to do stock trading. In the past I have always deferred to financial 'experts' but, these experts, have done nothing in over ten years but lose my money. Hell, I figure I am more than qualified to lose my own money myself.

My initial 'strategy' if you can call it that, is simply to buy some stocks and hold them for a year or so. I'm going to subscribe to some financial magazines and, from time to time, manage some of my own money. I am thinking about rolling one of my 401k accounts into my Etrade account and manage that money for the next year or so. Like I said, I would be hard pressed to do any worse than the results I have gotten from the highly rated funds that my financial advisor put me into with the bulk of my 401k.

I like to gamble a little bit, but only with as much money as I'm willing to lose. This money I am managing it purely for educational purposes.

My initial stocks are as follows:

100 shares of Nvidia stock. I figure since I'm going to work for the company I might as well bet on their success.

50 shares of Intel stock, just in case I was wrong about the Nvidia stock.

3 shares of Microsoft stock, just so I can say I own some.

and finally 2 shares of Apple stock.

My basket is now filled, let's wait 12 months and see just how much money I lost from my $2,000 investment.

Life recorder

F
My friend, artist Tracy Butler. Please check out her website and buy her book; she is crazy talented and her graphic novel is extraordinary.

In my lifetime, assuming I don't die anytime soon, I entirely predict that we will have life recorders. What is a 'life recorder' you ask? Well, there was actually a not entirely entertaining movie starring Robin Williams titled 'The Final Cut' that incorporated the concept into the story line.

For now, the closest thing I have to a life recorder is my Iphone. My iphone is with me at all times and I use the piece of shit camera built into it as a visual method of 'note taking'. Later this post includes some photographs I found embedded onto my Iphone when I synced this evening. Surprisingly some of them are even actually pretty good.

There is really not much we are missing in the way of technology to make a life recorder possible.

It requires:

* A tiny camera. No problem.

* A tiny microphone, again no problem.

* Extremely lightweight, tiny, almost invisible, and with you at all times. If the mechanism could be embedded into a pair of glasses, and you happen to wear glasses, that would be a near perfect form factor. There are probably some technical challenges related to getting the form factor down small enough, and power would definitely be an issue.

* Extremely powerful and extraordinarily tiny microprocessor. Some technical challenges here, but not insurmountable.

* Voice control. No real technical problems here, just need to make sure that the interface is done correctly.

* Massive data storage in a minuscule device. This is, of course, the biggest technical challenge.

The way I think of the problem, we really don't need to record everything we see and hear 24 hours a day seven days a week for our entire life. What we do want is to record interesting conversations, interesting visuals, and moments of stress and excitement. That's where I think the voice control really comes in, so you can easily verbalize commands to indicate when to start and stop recording. Perhaps, like a DVR, it can always be recording the last hour or so of everything you see and hear, and you can archive that data with voice commands.

It could also be set up to auto-record events based on heart rate and respiration.

There are probably some legal issues involved, but I'm not entirely certain on that point. People are constantly being recorded all of the time already by CCTV cameras all around the world.

What kind of surprises me is that no one has come out with a device using existing technology. Maybe I should make a business plan and start working on such a device. I know there is definitely a market for it.

To explore this idea, here are some links to articles on the topic.

Life loggers on Wikipedia
Slashdot article.
Saving your life on a hard drive
Momenta black box for your life (nice form factor)
A black box for your life

So, speaking of life logging, a few things have been going on in my life. A few weeks ago I went out to Red 5 Studios for a job interview. It went very well, or so I think it did, and I was seriously considering moving to California for a new position.

However, a couple of a weeks ago I got a job offer from Nvidia which I decided to accept. I worked for three years at a startup company called Ageia Technologies which developed hardware and software physics for games. I left when their future was a little bit uncertain. Well, it turns out, that they were bought out by Nvidia and now the PhysX SDK is a key strategic product for Nvidia and their CUDA platform.

Starting on May 18th I will be working on the PhysX SDK again, but this time getting a paycheck from a big corporation instead of a startup. I'm hopeful this was a good life decision, and time will tell. I'm also hopeful that my new position will involve a certain amount of international travel, something I am really looking forward to. Even though Nvidia has an office here in St. Louis the bulk of the software development on the PhysX SDK actually is done out of Zurich, Switzerland by friends of mine. I may even shift my work hours around so I am more in sync with my colleagues in Zurich.

Other things that are going on... My friend David Whatley decided to try developing an Iphone game over this past Christmas. He kept bugging me to try developing Iphone games too, but I was very skeptical. There are tens of thousands of applications for the Iphone and only the top one hundred or so really make any money. That didn't sound like good odds to me. But, I'll be damned, if David's game didn't do very well and he has been in the top fifty games for the past couple of months and his sales continue to go strongly.

I suppose the odds are still iffy that your Iphone game will be a big hit but, then again, the odds are a hell of a lot better than, say, buying a lottery ticket. And, really the only investment in an Iphone game is a thousand dollars or so and your time.

I'm now working on my Iphone game and am hopeful that it will be a good investment for my time. Even if it turns out not to be a financial success, I am having fun writing a small game again. When I started in the game industry one programmer could write a game in their basement, ideally in their pajama's, and make a decent amount of money. Not millions of dollars, not even necessarily hundreds of thousands of dollars, but still enough to make it worth your while.

Today games have budgets which rival those of a Hollywood block buster movie, involve teams of sometimes hundreds of people, and must sell millions of copies to be considered a 'success'.

Screw that. How about writing a small game, by yourself, with an artist to contribute content, and make say ten or twenty thousand dollars. That's more my cup of tea.

Right now I'm not going to discuss my Iphone game publicly since I don't want anyone to 'steal' my idea. It's coming along though, and I hope to have something I can show in a few weeks if I can find the time to work on it.

Next week I will be in Seattle for the LOGIN conference. I am supposed to give a one hour lecture on Tuesday, though I haven't even started working on it yet. Right now I plan to spend all day Thursday, Friday, and Saturday working on my presentation and I am hopeful it will come together nicely. My topic is on issues related to running server based artificial intelligence, including path finding and path generation, for massively multiplayer online games.

I am also on the advisory board for the LOGIN conference so, after my presentation, I plan to make myself available in whatever capacity I can to help. Since I am actually 'between jobs' (my last day at Simutronics is tomorrow and my first day at Nvidia is on May 18th) I will, technically speaking, be unemployed for the next week. In whatever spare time I have available I hope to make progress on my Iphone game.

I'm looking forward to spending time with my friend John Miles while I am in Seattle and I would also like to meet Charles Bloom, who I have known 'virtually' over the years but never met in person.

In other news, my son Alex received his official announcement today that he has been accepted to the Missouri Academy. Even though Alex is just now a Sophomore in High School, he will be attending Northwest Missouri State starting this fall in an engineering and computer science program. This is a special program that only accepts 200 students a year. When Alex's friends will be graduating from High School in 2011 he will be receiving an associate of arts degree and 100% of his credits will transfer to any other state university. Quite likely he will attend UMR on a full scholarship. Or, maybe he will get into MIT or Stanford, time will tell. Alex has been excelling academically and the past two quarters has brought home straight A's even though he is mostly advanced honors courses. Alex was also selected for two other programs where he will attend classes at University of Missouri Columbia this summer.

Meanwhile, my daughter Lauren, received both an academic and art scholarship to the Savannah College of Art and Design where she will be attending this fall.

Needless to say, Terry and I are quite proud of them both. This also means that we will be 'empty nesters' two years earlier than we had expected. Without having kids at home anymore I am looking forward, as I said before, to more international travel and exotic vacations in the next couple of years.

If only I had a life recorder to capture it all.......




A shot of the Chicago skyline right outside Lauren's dorm rooms.



The theatre where we saw the Joffrey Ballet this weekend.



Lauren's roommate Erica. Check out those stunning earrings!




Lauren



Some random flowers on the Chicago streets


The lobby ceiling in the Palmer House Hotel


My friend Jay


Spring sprung in our front yard


A surpisingly nice photograph considering it came off of my Iphone


On my way back from my last business trip in California I had a layover in the Las Vegas airport. Since I had time to kill I decided to piss away some money on a slot machine. On the third time I pulled the handle on a quarter slot, I hit the jackpot winning $70. I figured that was a good sign, I pocketed my winnings, and promptly decided to become a big tipper to help spread my good karma around the terminal.


While I was in Los Angeles I stopped at a sports bar and ordered a beer. The waitress asked me if I wanted a large, which I considered a rhetorical question. To my pleasant surprise the large beer of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale turned out to be 32 ounces, the size of a small pitcher. I had to take a photograph to record this momentous event.


Alex in Cancun


Mmmmm......Cancun....


More Cancun from our boat road


A Myan pyramid which convinced me the world is coming to an end shortly. Man, I got stuff to do...


Nice right angles, horizontals, and perpendiculars. Man, these Myans might have been Masons.


Relaxing


Decent Iphone photos

Bliggity, blogity, blog blog blog

I just got back from a long weekend trip. My daughter Lauren is coming home from school next weekend. My wife and I took the truck up to Chicago on Saturday to help pack her stuff and bring it home. We stayed at the lovely Palmer House hotel and I made a point to drink a $7 beer while my wife enjoyed a lovely $12 glass of wine which helped wash down our elegant $13 mini-hamburger appetizer. Having spent almost $40 for two drinks and a snack, and fondling my $51 overnight parking pass, I knew, finally, I was truly in the lap of luxury.

Lauren found this incredible website which offers theater tickets at a 50% discount if you buy them on the same day of an event. For the low, low, price of only $50 a ticket we were able to sit in the orchestra section last evening and experience the incredible Joffrey Ballet.

There are things in life you imagine are quite elegant and full of culture to experience, like the symphony for example. I find that, often times, I would just as well listen to the symphony on my headphones in the luxury of my own home. That isn't always the case, of course, and hearing Beethoven's 9th live, or any kind of music which can impact you physically, is always going to be so much more impressive in person than at home.

The art form that has surprised me just how much I am affected by it is dance. The first piece (Los Noches) performed last evening by the Joffrey Ballet was something absolutely and truly remarkable. It was so powerful as it engaged the entire company in a cascade of motion that I only wish I could recollect more clearly after the fact.

So, I had one great cultural experience to compensate for roughly 12 hours of driving in the truck there and back again.

Along the way I devoted the time to listening to numerous podcasts of Paratopia and the Paracast. I enjoy both shows, but I by far prefer Paratopia. Jeremy Vaeni and Jeff Ritzmann, both 'experiencers or high strangeness (TM)' have been running this show for the past few months.

Each episode is about two hours long, with the first hour devoted to interviewing a guest and the second hour is a one on one personal discussion as they try to dissect the meaning behind the topics being explored.

Jeremy is extremely humorous and self deprecating while Jeff, who definitely has a sense of humor as well, is more thoughtful and exact as he dissects the strange topics they explore.

This weekend my daughter Lauren, clearly in a moment of frustration, asked me why I keep following this UFO topic and these UFO people. I think she is just mystified why I waste my time with such nonsense. My answer was simple and succinct. It is because people who are being abducted by aliens are much more interesting than people who are not.

Let's face it. If you are at a garden party and must strike up conversation amongst a group of strangers, and the topics range from the weather to local sports teams, just how much more interesting is it going to be when you find a party guest who, honest to God, gets abducted by aliens on a regular basis!?

Man, I live for this kind of shit.

If the world were filled with far more people who get abducted by aliens on a regular basis, it would be a far more interesting place. Now, that said, my baseball team is currently in first place and I am hopeful they will stay that way well into September of this year, nevertheless if an alien abductee has something to share with me I'm probably going to turn off the game. After all, it's a long season and you may only get to hear this story once.

I really enjoy listening to Jeremy and Jeff on Paratopia. I do get a little frustrated at times, while listening, that I can't chime into the conversation and answer their aching questions. On my way back today something I heard on the podcast so amazed me I just had to talk to them about it. Since I was in the car at the time, I decided that the best thing that I could do was ping them on Facebook. Texting while I drove, almost for certain a felony crime in the state I was driving in (even though it is legal to drive a motorcycle there without a helmet) I asked either Jeff or Jeremy to give me a call.

Just about an hour later, into a six hour drive, Jeremy called me on my cell phone and I filled his mind with so many strange ideas that it is my only hope that I was able to introduce just a little bit of ontological shock. That's what I live for. To mess with the minds of alien adbuctees and podcast personalities. It's really rather redundant to say you are going to 'mess with the mind' of someone who's mind is already being messed with by the greatest mind f***kers in the world; the trickster archetype that is hell bent on reprogramming the psycho-social construct we exist in.

Thankfully the trip finally ended and I was able to luxuriate in my very own home, consuming several delicious beers of relaxation at low, low, non-Palmer house prices. I sent a follow up email to Jeremy and Jeff which was not received nearly as well, I think, as my telephone conversation was.

This all got me thinking about how we are communicating as a species of late. I quite like this whole blogging thing, even though I haven't been feeding this particular beast nearly enough as of late. I like blogging because it lives on as a record over time. It does not fade away like a twitter, or tweat, or whatever the f**k that twatesque fad is supposed to be.

This week I explored the twitter experience and promptly found it lacking. It is not thoughtful like a blog. No one is writing intelligent or thoughtful dialogue. At it's best it is a way to share links, which is not in and of itself an evil thing.

After rapidly following, cyerstalking if you will, over a thousand twats I found that, in a matter of only 48 hours I had over 300 people willing to follow me; yes complete strangers willing to hang on every word (up to a 140 character limit) that I might have to say.

I've tried to figure out just where Twittering fits into my life as a form of communication.

Well, let's see. I subscribe to the daily newspaper which, coincidentally enough, I read every single day as I have done so since I was 14 years old. I subscribe to numerous magazines, Entertainment Weekly, Discover, Scientific American, and New Scientist among others. Heck, I even subscribe to UFO Magazine which arrives sporadically and with a renewal notice about a week after I mailed my first check in.

I have the set of blogs that I read, now mostly via a newsreader. I check out the major news sites and, of course, I watch 'The Daily Show' and 'The Colbert Report' every day.

With all of that media consumption I think I have finally figured out just about where the Twitterscape fits into the grand scheme of things.

After I have read my last magazine, after I have read my last news feed, after I have caught up on email, snail mail, text messages, and reviewed week old grocery store receipts in my wallet, and when I find that I have had to spend an extended period of time in the bathroom waiting for a particularly stubborn dump to dump, I can resort to reading my twitter feed to find out who ate corn flakes for breakfast this morning. It's especially exciting for me when a celebrity reports that they are taking a dump at the same time that I am. It's like my very own ouroborus forming a perfect little circle of life.

Quotes I might be famous for

Over the years I have collected my own personal set of 'quotations' that I feel encapsulate powerful ideas in compact form. Since joining Twitter I have noticed that many people are proud of their own little quotes, or the ones they borrow from others. The other night, late at night, I tweated a couple of my quotes into the twittersphere at random and without context. Like all content in that domain it was lost like foam rolling onto the shore from the sea.

Here, on my blog, my quotes can live on in perpetuity with attribution and exposition. So, here they are along with an explanation for each.

Quote #1 : "My definition for the world 'faith' : Believing in that which you know not to be true."

So what do I mean by this statement? This particular definition of the word 'faith' arises from the fact that it is inevitably the answer to any question when they have no proof. It is a poor excuse for someone to justify their personal belief even when they have no evidence, proof, facts, logic, or reason to support them. Since the person has no evidence, proof, facts, logic, or reason to justify their belief but, rather, rely on the tepid and weak excuse of 'faith', what they are admitting to is simply that they know that their belief really isn't true.

If they had facts, logic, evidence, and reason to support their belief, well then it wouldn't be 'faith' and they could justify their belief to another. It annoys me that in our society and culture the word 'faith' is treated as something which is supposed to be valued but, I ask, how can you value a concept which literally means to believe something without any rational thought? Isn't that just a form of self-delusion?

Quote #2 : "For God so loved the world he created the quantum uncertainty principle."

This quote is a simply play on words to the famous bible verse John 3:16. As a pantheist I believe that God is the Universe itself. What the quantum uncertainty principle suggests is that free will appears to be embedded in the very fabric of the Universe itself. With 'free will' both the Universe and ourselves are 'saved' (i.e. given freedom for an infinite range of creativity.)

Quote #3 : "I would burn in hell before I would believe in a God so vain, petty and insecure that he would send me to hell for the crime of failing to believe in him."

This is without question my favorite personal quote. I love that it is a defiant response to the infamous 'Pascal's Wager' argument. Pascal's Wager says, "why not believe in God, because if God doesn't exist, no harm is done, and if he does it's better to be safe."

To my way of thinking this ignores something very fundamental. Is it moral to believe in an immoral God? First of all, the mere idea that someone could be sent to eternal hell and punishment for the crime of failing to worship God (several of the top ten commandments) is insane. Only a petty, insecure, vain, and jealous God could possibly care whether or not any human 'believed' in him. It's absolutely absurd. It assumes that God is a brutal, savage, tyrant that would condemn the vast majority of the population of the planet earth for the mere crime of not being born in a culture that brainwashed their children into a fearful relationship of an ancient tribal desert God.

There are those who say I am misinterpreting the situation but, I assure you, I am not. The Christian 'faith' is built upon a single unyielding principle. The idea that you must be 'saved' by Jesus Christ or all is lost. This begs the question, saved from what? And, sure enough, even if you don't hear hellfire and brimstone preached in your Church every Sunday any more, that threat, and it is a threat, is built into the core of this religious belief system.

What my quote is really trying to get at, is that I won't accept Pascal's Wager simply because I won't be party to supporting such an immoral ideology. Yes, I would gladly burn in hell for all of eternity if my only crime is failing to believe the ancient mythologies of a primitive tribe from thousand of years ago.

What can I say, I'm funny that way....

Quote #4 : "If you really, honestly, believed there was a secret society that controlled the world, wouldn't you want to join?"

People think I'm joking when I say this, but, seriously, I am not. Now, I am not myself a conspiracy theorist. When I became interested in the Freemasons I did extensive research and, yes, that research led me to all of the anti-Freemason websites and conspiracy minded hysteria. I studied all of the material on the subject as carefully and objectively as I could and it just didn't hold up for me. Of course, once I actually joined the Freemasons I soon found out that there is really nothing too it. We are an amateur theater group that performs some ancient plays. That's it. Sorry, that's all there is to it.

But, of course, you don't believe..you don't believe. You know that the real lessons are only made available to the advanced high level degrees of Masonry. We hear people discuss in ominous tones those who are 32nd degree masons; those who are part of the inner sanctum. Then I found out that you can become a 32nd degree Mason in an afternoon, by watching some of your friends put on a few plays.

Aha..but what about those high uppity ups in the grand loge? The ones with the fancy jewelry, and collars, and aprons. But, what I found out, is those guys are just my friends who had stuck around the lodge long enough that they got their chance to move up the line.

But, what about those super duper secret 33rd degree Masons? Well, it turns out that didn't amount to anything either. My closest friend in Masonry and my mentor is a 33rd degree Mason and he is one of the most generous, honorable, and honest men I have ever met in my life.

Now, as I said, I am not pre-disposed to conspiracy theories. That's not to say I don't believe in conspiracies since, obviously, conspiracies and and do exist. I just require that there be actual evidence to support them. And that, my friend, is the problem with conspiracy theory. It is the bizarre 'logic' that says the less evidence you have to prove a conspiracy exists the more you become convinced it is true as you judge the lack of evidence as evidence itself!?? Seriously, I can't make this shit up.

Twit, twat, twort, tweat, twatter, twitter

So, yesterday, I decided to try to figure out just what the heck 'Twitter' is and I think I understand it now.

In short, Twitter is the CB Radio of the new millennium. For those of you who are too young to remember this, back in the 1970's a fad started up with something called a CB radio. This happened when the airwaves were opened up to the general public so they could talk back and forth to each other over small radios. Some of those radios were actually not quite so small. People who got really obsessed with it, like my father, bought massive antennas and very powerful broadcasting stations so they could talk with complete strangers sometimes hundreds of miles away.

The CB radio is still alive today but it is primarily used by over the road truckers. Back then, when it was a fad, whole families would put CB radios in their cars and gave each other 'handles' as nicknames that they would use to chat together. Not entirely unlike modern cell phone use the family would use a CB radio to chat with their family as they went to the store and back.

The main use of the CB radio was to exchange pleasantries with absolute strangers using short messages. Eventually this fad died out when people realized how relatively boring it can be to exchange pleasantries with complete strangers.

I see an awful lot in common with what's happening today with Twitter and the previous fad of the CB radio.

When I first signed up for Twitter I didn't 'get it'. I signed up, had no followers and no one followed me. Over the course of having an account for several months, I checked it a handful of times to little effect.

To me Twitter seemed quite redundant, because I already have a Facebook account where I can get status updates from virtual 'friends' online.

Still, I kept hearing about Twitter in the media and I knew I must be missing something, and, yesterday, I think I figured it out.

I decided in the morning that the reason I wasn't 'getting' Twitter is because I wasn't 'following' enough people. So, first I found someone I figured was probably interesting and began 'following' every person that they were 'following'. As soon as I did this, I started getting a better stream of updates or 'tweats' if you will.

Since I still had more time to kill, I decided to take it to the next level. I now kind of figured that the point of Twitter, like the CB radio, was not to interact with friends you already know, but rather random strangers for casual chit-chat. If that was the case, shouldn't I be 'following' a massive population?

Over the course of the day I clicked and clicked and clicked, until I was following almost 1,000 people. I tried to select people who might have shared interests, concentrating heavily in the paranormal and UFO community. I also wondered if I might contact any relatives and, since I don't have an extremely common last name, I went ahead and 'followed' the roughly 200 people with the last name of 'Ratcliff' who are registered with Twitter.

Once I did this my Twitter log was overwhelmed and overflowing with constant updates. I soon learned that many of the people I had chosen to 'follow' were actually just trying to sell something and were spamming advertisements. I quickly began unfollowing them.

Next, I noticed certain annoying people who tweat constant updates that are so banal that it is literally like static on the airwaves. I began unfollowing them as well.

In fact, now I think my current strategy is to follow random strangers to see if they are interesting and, when they are not, unfollow them with a quick release. Just like fishing, throw back the little ones, keep the big catch.

So how is Twitter different than Facebook updates? Well, the key difference, of course, is that you can pretty much 'follow' anyone on Twitter whereas, on Facebook, you must be approved as a true and legitimate 'friend'. I make it a habit, in general, to only invite as 'friends' on Facebook people I actually know in real-life or have had a pre-existing relationship with via the Internet (message forums and such). I don't ask to be friends of someone I have simply met but have not had any real interaction with.

Twitter, on the other hand, is all about the voyeuristic experience of cyber stalking absolute strangers to see if they are Interesting enough to pursue further.

So what are these twits tweating about that is so interesting?

I would say, probably the greatest service of Twitter, are those tweaters who post interesting links to YouTube videos or news stories. I can appreciate that, and it is a pleasant diversion.

There are those who tweat the trivia of their life and, to be frank, unless it's one of my children, why would I really give a shit?

Now, I want to make a distinction between trivia and content. If you tweat you just had corn flakes for breakfast, well who the f**k cares? But, if instead, you tweat that you are going on a vacation, or business trip, or a conference, that's not so bad. Real significant events in your life might form the basis of shared interests and entertaining anecdotes.

As I have already mentioned, there are those who tweat for personal gain, pimping their product, or website, or whatever bottle of snake oil they are peddling. I recommend you simply 'un-follow' these twits but, hey, it's your choice.

There are those who feel compelled to write pithy observations, inspirational quotes, and other forms of narrative in the highly restrictive 140 character limit of the tweat.

These folks can range anywhere from annoying and pretentious to interesting and inspirational.

If you are bored with your newsreader content and are looking for a new way to interact online with new people, I suppose there are worse things than Twitter out there.

Give it a try if you like, 10-4 good buddy...