Cooking...well the thing about doing stuff yourself is about appreciation. I like coffee and drink copious amounts, usually of very bad coffee. That is because those who brew it do not CARE at all. A simple fare like scrambled eggs can be horrible if done by someone who does not care about it. If the cook appreciates a good plate, i assure you, that whatever it is, it will be decent if not right down delicious.
To those buying organic stuff, well USDA rules for organic are crap plus Monsanto has made it so that most likely even well cared and "organic" food is still contaminated with their crap.
Just try to buy local in season stuff, it may cost a little more at face value but you can usually make a 2 person meal with about $5 of raw ingredients and bit of your time.
The trick is not to see it as a chore and more like your personal moment of zen. Try to cook stuff that you enjoy eating and after a while you won't find anything on the street that can beat your stuff.
My wife hates cooking but due to me living away from home for the work week, she has started cooking. She still likes me to cook but has become rather proficient with stuff that our kids like (no cheesy pasta cuz my kids don’t like it, is rice and beans and other "decent" stuff) She gets by the cooking part by zoning out. She plans it ahead of time and stays in the kitchen just long enough to cook whatever is she decided trying not to think about it.
On the other hand, everyone in my momma’s family cooks. It was (most left for the states or have died but those who still live in Puerto Rico still meet from time to time) traditional to meet over the weekend and cook, eat, drink and play dominos or whatever. So it all rubbed on us children. We love to cook and it is a family and social thing. Is fun and we invent and try to make variations of successful meals all the time.
So all in all, is about learning to appreciate food and liking it. You can get by with fast food if you need to, but it never beats a handmade hamburger at home.
To all those who think that eating out (read at mcds or bbking, etc.) is cheaper or better or faster, a regular combo can hit you around 7$ for a single person. With that I can do rice, beans, chicken and greens meal for my family of four in about 15-20 minutes tops and in the end you know that what you eat will rot if you leave it outside for more than a day, namely it is REAL food meant to be consumed not kept as a museum piece.
Look in YouTube for experiments on McBurgers left to their devices. DAYS pass without signs of spoiling. Nasty
I'll buy this. Whenever i feel down, i get the desire to hide (get behind the monitor for days, read for days, etc. alone without contact with the universe) I’ve learn to detect this and immediately look for something to divert my "frustration/anger/depression” and stop playing soft music.
I usually listen to a enclitic ensemble of stuff; from Heavy Metal to Classical music. When i feel down, i try to move to heavy drum and bass, jungle, aggressive metal like, oh i don't know, the stuff from judgment night sound track, Rammstein, shitte like that. Blast it and do exercise until i can't do no more. Take a shower, a long one and then go to sleep.
If you can go to a concert, get into the mush. I mean it. No fear, nothing held, just mush. The sheer intensity of the experience tagged with the physical exercise of plainly jumping around while feeling (you can't properly listen a concert while mushing real hard) will drain all but the most heavy depressions.
I don't think this will go right up everyone’s alley, but if you think you can handle a real unleashing of anger without killing anyone. Do it. It is one of the most cathartic things that I’ve ever experienced.
All in all, find something you like to do, and fuck-all do it until you forget there is a world out there. Take a showe and get some real sleep.
Indeed we do. Cuba, along with Puerto Rico and La Española (Dominican and Haitian Republics) were "given' (Read, sold to) as war spoils from Spain. Even though Cuba and La Española were in the process of independence from Spain, if not independent already (have to check that one out, memmory fails me; a bit hazy on that one, I admit). Puerto Rico had kick started its independence process also. Already we had gained Autonomous Powers from the Crown, the first step for independence)
I mentioned this because, if you do some research, after the war, congress passed a few laws "allowing" these states to continue their "independence" with a little but important "BUT". That was that the US reserved the right to impose its politics on these territories. Cuba and the La Española became all-included resorts for the US aristocracy and Puerto Rico became their major test field. Agent Orange was tested here in our backyard. Contraceptives were tested here and a whole lot of other stuff that keeps being uncovered all the time.
I am an American citizen by birth (I was born here in Puerto Rico after the US passed a law forcing the citizenship on us so they could legally use the selective service on our people. If you don’t believe me, seek out info on the Infantry Regiment 65 and Puerto Ricans in the US armed forces and the laws that were passed on that subject.) and tend to think of myself as an US American but I cannot deny the atrocities our government has committed in the name of democracy.
I say to hell with it. If a country wants to go fuck itself, we should let them be, IF and this is a BIG IF, the people of a country make an independent attempt to seek our help, then and only then we may try to give them DIPLOMATIC aid. Aside from that we should, as a country, keep our freaking fucking paws of their shit and let them live unhappily ever after. We have so much more pressing problems at home already without trying to solve problems offshore that we have not addressed properly ourselves.
Propaganda indeed. I am afraid that we are not as free and democratic a country as have been led to believe.
BTW, I have it in good faith (Cuban Friends and relatives that have LIVED in Cuba before and after the Castro takeover) that Cuba is not the slice of hell we have been pictured but is also far from paradise as some make it look. If left to market forces, the Cuban government will fall on their own. By placing so much attention to what they do, we only give them a moral stand point to continue baby crying to the UN. Drop the embargo and let the market take over.
I'm sorry, so this man is a terrorist because he send money to a group? Did he KNOW it was a terrorist group? If he knew, then, well that is a different case all around. I hear some of you saying: " well, ignorance does not make you innocent, just stupid..." Hmmm, well, i would be inclined to be for this line of thinking until i remember that one of the suppliers of oil for the US (you know, gasoline in its raw form, among other things) was and still is Venezuela. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Ii rather think the late President and the incumbent idiot down there were, and I’m sure they still are, considered, if not enemies, allied to enemies of the State. Which to the US simply means terrorist these days.
Don't be so hasty to call someone innocent or guilty just because the Government says they are. We took in many war criminals after second world war because they could help us with their science knowledge. And we have killed some whom i might say were not innocent, but at least their crimes were social ones, like fighting for your rights.
America is going down the drain; it has for some time now. We see more clues now because of the ease on information sharing. If our forefathers were alive today they would be all in intensive care due to heart failures brought on by the state of the nation they gave birth to.
I'm just sorry that we, as nation, continue to elect idiots because they belong to our social clubs (party, church, game group, whatever) instead of choosing them for their potential or accomplishments. We are so used to Mtv, CNN, Fox and all the others to think for us that we do not see that they are pulling the Roman Church/Empire on us. You know? cultivating a nation of well entertained idiots? Too much knowledge is dangerous for the lowly man, thus only us upper classes should be the only ones to learn to read and to think so that we can explain things to you in a simple manner?
It might be that by law records of him do not belong to him, but that is wrong; morally and socially wrong. It may be that he knew and that he is indeed guilty. Sure, is possible if not probable, but let the gUSAtapo show us the money. Let them PROVE they did have reasonable cause to ask for records on him. Otherwise we are letting them start a modern inquisition and a time will come (sooner than later me thinks) that being on the wrong side of an argument with the government will get you a fast one way trip to, at the best of times, your friendly and local prison.
Please. wake. up.
Don't be so hasty to call someone innocent or guilty just because the Government says they are. We took in many war criminals after second world war because they could help us with their science knowledge. And we have killed some whom i might say were not innocent, but at least their crimes were social ones, like fighting for your rights.
America is going down the drain; it has for some time now. We see more clues now because of the ease on information sharing. If our forefathers were alive today they would be all in intesive care due to heart failures brought on by the state of the nation they gave birth to.
I'm just sorry that we, as nation, continue to elect idiots because they belong to out social clubs instead of choosing them for their potential or accomplishments. We are so used to Mtv, CNN, Fox and all the others to think for us that we do not see that they are pulling the Roman Church/Empire on us. You know? cultivating a nation of well entertained idiots? Too much knowledge is dangerous for the lowly man, thus only us upper classes should be the only ones to learn to read and to think so that we can explain things to you in a simple manner?
I'm not a protestant and at all religious for that matter, but they are not. It says so right in the name of the church. The Apostolic, Roman and Catholic Church. There is no reference to Christ there. That they chose the old testament and some newer writings as the base for their book, judiciously filtered by the forming board of directors at the time, to define what it would finally contain is another matter. Romans were many things but wasteful programmers were not. If something was invented, they just took it and Romanize it. They could be said to be the first real object programmers. They loved to reused good and tested stuff instead of spending vast amounts of resources to invent a roman version. There are many historical facts, from their vestments, to the day we celebrate Christmas and what they represented.
So, all in all, they are not Christians at heart, although they do use Christianity's book (a version of it at least) as their holy preaching guide.
My gods yes. They are, even if they will die horrible deaths denying this, of the same peoples. They evolved and lived at the same places and at the same times. No wonder the holiest of cities of all three religions is the one and the same, Jerusalem. Other holy cities cited on their respective prophet diaries are again the same ones. Sheesh, it is so CLEAR they are the same religion lived through the eyes of their favorite writers and not three different religions at all. Islamic, Christian and Judaism zealots make as much sense as looking for someone to help you castrate yourself.
All in all, the three books have good advice and plenty of weird shite to fill a bucket or two. Live long and prosper is all I can say.
Univision could blow up for all i care. I have Mexican friends and i like them well enough, but Univision is a waste of decent engineering. ONLY promotes Mexico as anything Latino. Plus is just bad TMZ like news and soap operas. IT SUCKS, all the way to kingdom come. Nothing of value there, at all. If you want a semi decent show you need something higher up in the food chain, like something out of A&E. See? it sucks when even A&E is better. And when i say better i mean programming that might have one or two neurons behind it.
Telemundo North America, even with NBC behind it, is not a whole lot better. The only one that is just a bit better is MegaTV from Miami and halve the shows i don't get cuz they are too Cuban centered. While most (if not all) shows on USA Cable and over the air TV are very US centered, at the least they are entertaining, with decent to good drama and semi decent to decent scripts. Vme, the sort of Spanish PBS is decent. Lost of shows from Europe and Latin America. Decent ones too and best is that there are NO SOAP OPERAS on Vme. Thanks to the Gods for that one.
Latin America needs to kill all soap operas, except comedy centered Colombians and Brazilians. These last ones, the ones from Colombia are usually like American slapstick with more wit and less absurd and the Brazilians always feel more like a long and in parts movies than a soaps. In any case, i understand in part why they don't do it. They are really ignorant of their audience and commit the ultimate sin, they assume. They assume that everyone understands English, some people talk French in Louisiana and well, the Chinese, those are taking over the world, so might as well include them. Spanish? nah, let them wetbacks sort themselves out. Sheesh, i can just picture it. When all they have to do is, look around, if a place speaks Spanish, send the drones to make sure that those shows continue to support Spanish. NCIS, Sex and the City are but a sample of shows that were translated and sold with those translations in Spanish or at least had captions and then for some unknown reason they stopped supporting it but added French or Chinese or some other language. Absurd. Until they have some sense, i will have to direct my needs to the internet. Even so, less and less do I go looking for them. I watch more European stuff anyways.
See this is where i hit a wall. I'm from Puerto Rico, a wholly owned pawnshop of the United States of America, i mean... a territory or colony as you will. Even after 100+ years of occupation, we still use Spanish as our main language and English as a badly spoken/written second language. I don't pirate as a rule but the media outlets seem to think that EVERYONE here speaks and understands English fluently and that our preferred second and third languages are French and Mandarin. Go figure. What happens when me and my wife wanna watch a movie or a show? To me there is no problem, i sometimes forget what language i am listening to. My wife? she could not do English even if her son's life depended on it. Zilch, zero, nada. So, I'm forced to go out to the internet and get them freaking movies or shows in Spanish, or at least have them with captions.
You know what? I've been a customer of mega upload/video/whatever since last year and use show and movie lists sites (that direct you to uploaded stuff at megaupload/video) to see or download the movies or shows we wanna watch. She could very well learn English, yes, but that is not the point. If they have the translations done for other countries, why wont they make them available for our zone too? What, suddenly there are no Spanish only paying legal customers in the US? Come on, puertorricans living in the one of the fifty states hit the mark of around 4 million people, about half of which do not speak English as a first language and are not required to learn it due to the fact that we were born US citizens and dod not need to take an exam to make the citizenship.
Freaking absurd. I am a criminal cuz the basically have forced me to. Yeah, i know, her not knowing English is not their fault but it is their fault that, having the freaking translations already (they translate for Spain and South America), that i need to pirate them to enjoy the show. I can also stop watching the shows, but that wont stop piracy.
There are many who pirate just because, but many more do so because they need to or are left with unacceptable choices. I would love to pay, if i could have use for the product.
One last thought, the USA used to be a nice place to be and live but is turning so fast into another neonazy state that I have renounced all my annexionist views and want now independence for our Island. The US federal government has run amok and is trampling everything the bill of rights and the declaration of independence have stood for these past centuries.
Right fucking on!!! People FAIL to raise their kids properly cuz they don't have time for them. Their jobs, lover, hobbies, FACEBOOK, TWITTER, etc. are far too important to withdraw attention from them to take care of their children. Since they can't raise their kids, they want the state to do it for them. Here comes the Zombied minds of congress (state or federal) a-waving their outstretched undead arms while low-moaning wannnnttrrrmmmoooorrrrlllaaaawwwss, issssbeeettttrrrr fffrrrrruuuurr......and people failing to see that surrendering their parenting (and bunch of other duties/chores) to the government is just like lining up, sheep like, for the zombies to eat their brains. Sheesh.
It says right on the bill of rights: CONGRESS SHALL NOT PASS A LAW.... but people are too comfortable in their couches that they fail to register anything but the latest food adds from or if lady gaga has a new wig with sperm scented hair to fucking care.
The USA used to be the house of the rebels, the inovators, free and forward thinkers, now we are just the pig pen of the lazies.
Neither. I agree. We keep forgetting that we ourselves are immigrants or the sons and daughters of immigrants. We pride ourselves (and when i say we, i mean everyday Janes and Johns born and raised in the continental US, because as an invaded second class citizen - Puerto Rican - we are treated just an inch above illegals. A Republican Congressman of Armenian decent said as much the other day) in our RIGHT to be here. Hell, most of the south west was either French or Mexican/Spanish and we either took by force or advantage of greedy dictators and bought land a dirt cheap prices.
No taxation without Representation is bullshit. You take money from green carders (taxes) and provide none of the benefits. At the very least, they should have some form of representation. With voice and vote. And i ask the same to USA colonies like Puerto Rico, Guam and US VI. We have to stop this double face crap. Either we are citizens with all rights or we are independent nations. Green carders are either exempt from taxes or should have at least some minimal form of representation. On the most part, they come here to work and try to get better lives for themselves and their families. Lets have some integrity please.
As a friend of many a Cuban and cousin, by moms side, to a guy whose dad is Cuban and for my self, an employee of FIBA Americas, I can say that CUBA is a dictatorship where dissent is tolerated to a short extent and selling beer at your place was, until recently, a crime because private enterprise was prohibited. I am not a capitalist buff, in fact I despise many of the more extremes of capitalism, but come on, 10 years in a prison cuz you are selling beer to, mostly, your friends? Sheesh.
Cuba has a lot to its name even after all the bad press and strangulation from our Government (USA) but saying that civil rights are respected, none go to jail without FAIR trail and that they have elections is a bit too much to say with a straight face. Choosing officials whose template is identical is not an election. (Not to say that we, in our democracy, don't suffer from the same thing. Democrats are just fat free Republicans or the other way around, whatever. But we have other choices. That people don't look at them is a different story.)
Yet, it is much better to live in Cuba than, say, Haiti; that is for sure.
I am with you on this, but what I really like about your rant is not even part of it. Your sig. rules. We have become too soft; we need some aggravation to help us grow some balls.
That's funny because my sister in law personally knows three different people who have been on "Obamaployment" for over a year with absolutely no interest in getting a job. Ya, that system is clearly not an utter disaster. Great insight!
Look, a few months for people who are hard on their luck, okay, I'll concede that. But years for a guy who got fired from KFC to get paid more than he did at KFC just to lie about applying at the KFC he got laid off from? That's just plain ridiculous.
You are right and you are wrong. I lost my job a few years ago and was unable to find a job in IT for well over a year. I was actively seeking and banging on all doors, even applying for jobs that i knew i did not have the sufficient know how and for jobs that i was clearly overqualified. In the end i finally got a job at a bank as account claims researcher/auditor and later on was able to return to my field.
All along i was able to survive and continue paying some of my bills with the unemployment benefits. Sure i turned down a couple of jobs that were unfeasible because they paid less than the benefits i was getting at the time. It sucks, cuz many do abuse of these programs, but for many is the only lifeline left until you break the ice again.
Wow. I've been lurking here for long, long time, making a small comment here or there, but mostly reading. In all that time, I have never read of anyone saying this. I whole heartedly agree. People take whatever is said on the internet as lines from the insert-your-favorite-holy-book-name-here. The internet could be used to support any and alll theories you could think of and then some. Weird how learned people say things based on their "research" that contradict so directly with empirical everyday evidence. We, as a nation, have lost the ability to imagine. We have become so meek, so sheep-like, that I , not only, cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel, much less, the tunnel. Our intelligence has become nothing more than rote and parallel patterns that will never meet and thus cannot see relevance or connection between to similar subjects in order to infer a conclusion or to counter an baseless argument. Sad state of affairs
Although I hate D&D since it went to third ed. I have to say that I have played many variants of the fantasy genre rpg's out there and I have yet to find a better set of rules than the core AD&D 2nd ed books along with the first line of supplemental handbooks. No setting as cool as Ravenloft or as challenging as Dark Sun. Some cleric spells and Wizard spells overlapped, true, but mainly if you had a cleric you KNEW you were different from, say, a mage, bard or psionicist. On the subject of psionics, a much debated area, you had a completely Unique and Different kind of character; in many ways more difficult than a mage yet much more versatile. If you had the patience it could grow into a very powerful character. Rogues were supper fun. You were the all around jack of all trades in a party... and fighters, well fighters had distinctions between paladin, ranger and pure fighter. it was the fighter the only one who could actually FIGHT, I mean the proficiencies, the specializations, the improved attacks, the improved attack probability; if you wanted a monster basher, you were not far too wrong by choosing a fighter.
3rd edition left all that out. Yes you could customize more, I can understand the urge to make the uber-i-can-bake-bread-kill-dragons-talk-to-gods-and-zapp-your-arse-with-my-eye-emitted-death-ray-lighting-bolt-while-hidding-in-shadows-and-reading-your-mind kind of character with almost the same effort you could just make a giga-unbeatable-all-weapon-wielder-and-enemy-of-all-monsters-basher. I have played many muds too, yet I have found that the more playable kinds are those that force you to act in concert with others. Giving a character access to other skills and powers, although much more versatile, will make to a less challenging game. Multiclassing was a bitch, but controlled those characters with such needs/wants. A 15th level fighter, in a well designed and played situation, have much better chances at defeating a 15 level wizard than a 6/6/6 level fighter/mage/thief had. We tried and the chances always came to around 6 out of 10 for the purist versus the 4-5 to 10 for the multiclass.
I hate uberchars, not because I can't handle them (since I am THE GOD of the world, I can do as I want) but because players get too fearless. It takes much of the fun out of the game. If there is no challenge, well, what is the point?
As to wanting my RPG to look and feel more like an online or computer game, well that is what I have a computer for. In a world where you cannot argue with the DM and most of the highbies are 10 year olders with absolutely no sense of etiquette (since they have never been in the playground or are constantly bullied there), you want to be able to make uber characters so that you can defend yourself from the bullies.
I hate over complications, which is why I ignored or modified must of the stupid AD&D 2nd Ed. rules and I hate oversimplifications like 3rd ed. rules which are the equivalent of the no child left behind strategy of our glorious president. It just lowers the bar of excellence so much that you could do away with the heavy books and just write simple pamphlet up on how to shake your hand and throw dice, choose a template and follow these three simple game rules:
Choose uber template
Customize with the 100 freebie points
Rule the game by killing all with your uber 2-handed-+10-avenger-sword-of-shaprness!
I don't see the need to buy/have a set of books that make stuff the way YOU wanted the game to run like in the first place. Be a man (sorry, I forgot politically correct, be a PERSON) and be a DM, take what you like from a working system and the rest is up to you... sheesh... I swear that GMs these days are just like VB programmers...
Having worked at a couple of big pharma processing plants here in Puerto Rico, i can only say that they take their quality assurance seriously. That said, like everywhere else we suffer from the bee complex. Once in, then you must be allowed to be in and no one takes much notice. So, a couple of blokes, who could care less, are hired to redo the paint jobs for the plant splattering paint about and no one notices until one of the Q&A guys takes his shifts sample. Most likely, as profit oriented companies usually do, his superiors won't hold the days shipments because he found some tainted pills. They wont dump the shipment based on "they might be tainted" grounds and just cross their fingers hoping nothing bad happens and if it does, well that's why we have lawyers on the payroll, no? I saw something like that happen once. It wasn't pills, but still it was supposed to be sterile non-surgical stuff. The dudes doing some cleaning job were outside hired help and did not know/cared for the stations rules, so they were going about carelessly and splattered dirty water / soap water near an unbagged, unfinished load. The Q&A people found out later that day when they took their required samples. The whole thing was shipped even when the Q&A team asked permission to trash the mornings load. The Q&A team leader and the production manager had quite a spit over the issue. To my knowledge, that was the only time something like that had happened there.
As a local i can tell you that our local government is more likely to keep a burger king chain alive than Arecibo's Observatory. It is sad but our government here is a pale shadow of what the U.S. Federal Government is (to which, by the way, we belong to). Idiocity is rampant and what really matters is public image, free stuff for the leeches of society and ways to escape taxes for the rich, which leaves the middle class so entrenched in surviving day to day that few have the energy to look past their noses. Education is down the drain and, if we had an army, we would invade something every so often just to have a reason to issue bonds for more cash. Idiots. So all in all, no, the PR Government will throw a wobbler over this and will make demands to the federal government to keep it running. Ha, yeah right, they will listen.
Saludos,
Alberto Ortiz Hernandez US Citizen by birth, puertorrican at heart, and enemy of idiots (which are most of my fellow country men - both countries)
I am blown away that with all of our current problems -- homelessness and crime on the home front, war fighting and terrorism abroad -- our government is seriously going to spend this much money on upgrading peoples' televisions."
I am hardly blown away by this. It just confirms the main agenda and intention of our government, to control. Just as the romans had the Coliseum to entertain the mob and keep their little piggy heads occupied in things other than what the government was doing.
We don't have a Coliseum, although Jerry Springer's comes close, but we have TV. Reading provokes uneeded thinking; keep the people glued to the moron box and they will vote for you and your stupid ideals, so yes, i expected something like this.
Nostradamus would have profited from having the guys who make the game as advisors for his prophecies. There is a timeline there that foretells the great United States of America becoming a totalitarian state, ruled by corporations and the street monsters. I for one, hail our NSA masters... NOT!:P
I know this is somewhat off topic, but since it affecting my life directly here goes:
Do you think your legislators are retards? Take a look at this,this, and,this. Is in spanish mind you so just babel it to get it in "readable" english. But if you are not feeling like is worth the trouble here is the gist: Due to really bad administration that neither of the 2 (out of three available) parties that take turns at the bat ever did anything to fix, our little island (Puerto Rico, U.S. Territory and Commonwelth for those who need to know) is facing "bankruptcy" Our actual governor, faced with the inaction of a shared government, has decided to put an end to all. He has shut down the government (outside from the legislative and judiacry branches). This means that the biggest employer in our 4 million person piece of paradise has essentially sent everyone packing until the legislative branch does something to fix the budget and finds money to pay public officials. The links above are just the newest three items in this rather elignthening drama. They keep playing politics whilest close to 100k people risk loosing their houses, cars, etc. due to the fact the they will have no source of income to cover those expenses. Private sector in response, to this excellent attitude from our government has decided to cry foul, run and hide. Meaning, they have laid off many more. Most big companies here enjoy tax exemptions because the US government a long time ago(altho that policy did change recently) an industrial heaven. So to put an end to this rather long out of topic rant, we are really between a rock and a hard place. In reference to the real topic discussed here, i wish i had some one to write to in the US Government, but since we are anly allowed a non-participant delegate to Congress there is really nothing i can do.
but I am begining to believe that to slap this idiots in the face to wake them we, as a community, should start blocking them for a while. What? 35-45% server side share in the world and the most powerfull browser is not able to read a simple page that a lame piece of software like can easily digest... Just a thought.
Slashdot Mirror
Cooking...well the thing about doing stuff yourself is about appreciation. I like coffee and drink copious amounts, usually of very bad coffee. That is because those who brew it do not CARE at all. A simple fare like scrambled eggs can be horrible if done by someone who does not care about it. If the cook appreciates a good plate, i assure you, that whatever it is, it will be decent if not right down delicious.
To those buying organic stuff, well USDA rules for organic are crap plus Monsanto has made it so that most likely even well cared and "organic" food is still contaminated with their crap.
Just try to buy local in season stuff, it may cost a little more at face value but you can usually make a 2 person meal with about $5 of raw ingredients and bit of your time.
The trick is not to see it as a chore and more like your personal moment of zen. Try to cook stuff that you enjoy eating and after a while you won't find anything on the street that can beat your stuff.
My wife hates cooking but due to me living away from home for the work week, she has started cooking. She still likes me to cook but has become rather proficient with stuff that our kids like (no cheesy pasta cuz my kids don’t like it, is rice and beans and other "decent" stuff) She gets by the cooking part by zoning out. She plans it ahead of time and stays in the kitchen just long enough to cook whatever is she decided trying not to think about it.
On the other hand, everyone in my momma’s family cooks. It was (most left for the states or have died but those who still live in Puerto Rico still meet from time to time) traditional to meet over the weekend and cook, eat, drink and play dominos or whatever. So it all rubbed on us children. We love to cook and it is a family and social thing. Is fun and we invent and try to make variations of successful meals all the time.
So all in all, is about learning to appreciate food and liking it. You can get by with fast food if you need to, but it never beats a handmade hamburger at home.
To all those who think that eating out (read at mcds or bbking, etc.) is cheaper or better or faster, a regular combo can hit you around 7$ for a single person. With that I can do rice, beans, chicken and greens meal for my family of four in about 15-20 minutes tops and in the end you know that what you eat will rot if you leave it outside for more than a day, namely it is REAL food meant to be consumed not kept as a museum piece.
Look in YouTube for experiments on McBurgers left to their devices. DAYS pass without signs of spoiling. Nasty
Saludos,
Albert
I'll buy this. Whenever i feel down, i get the desire to hide (get behind the monitor for days, read for days, etc. alone without contact with the universe) I’ve learn to detect this and immediately look for something to divert my "frustration/anger/depression” and stop playing soft music.
I usually listen to a enclitic ensemble of stuff; from Heavy Metal to Classical music. When i feel down, i try to move to heavy drum and bass, jungle, aggressive metal like, oh i don't know, the stuff from judgment night sound track, Rammstein, shitte like that. Blast it and do exercise until i can't do no more. Take a shower, a long one and then go to sleep.
If you can go to a concert, get into the mush. I mean it. No fear, nothing held, just mush. The sheer intensity of the experience tagged with the physical exercise of plainly jumping around while feeling (you can't properly listen a concert while mushing real hard) will drain all but the most heavy depressions.
I don't think this will go right up everyone’s alley, but if you think you can handle a real unleashing of anger without killing anyone. Do it. It is one of the most cathartic things that I’ve ever experienced.
All in all, find something you like to do, and fuck-all do it until you forget there is a world out there. Take a showe and get some real sleep.
Indeed we do. Cuba, along with Puerto Rico and La Española (Dominican and Haitian Republics) were "given' (Read, sold to) as war spoils from Spain. Even though Cuba and La Española were in the process of independence from Spain, if not independent already (have to check that one out, memmory fails me; a bit hazy on that one, I admit). Puerto Rico had kick started its independence process also. Already we had gained Autonomous Powers from the Crown, the first step for independence)
I mentioned this because, if you do some research, after the war, congress passed a few laws "allowing" these states to continue their "independence" with a little but important "BUT". That was that the US reserved the right to impose its politics on these territories. Cuba and the La Española became all-included resorts for the US aristocracy and Puerto Rico became their major test field. Agent Orange was tested here in our backyard. Contraceptives were tested here and a whole lot of other stuff that keeps being uncovered all the time.
I am an American citizen by birth (I was born here in Puerto Rico after the US passed a law forcing the citizenship on us so they could legally use the selective service on our people. If you don’t believe me, seek out info on the Infantry Regiment 65 and Puerto Ricans in the US armed forces and the laws that were passed on that subject.) and tend to think of myself as an US American but I cannot deny the atrocities our government has committed in the name of democracy.
I say to hell with it. If a country wants to go fuck itself, we should let them be, IF and this is a BIG IF, the people of a country make an independent attempt to seek our help, then and only then we may try to give them DIPLOMATIC aid. Aside from that we should, as a country, keep our freaking fucking paws of their shit and let them live unhappily ever after. We have so much more pressing problems at home already without trying to solve problems offshore that we have not addressed properly ourselves.
Propaganda indeed. I am afraid that we are not as free and democratic a country as have been led to believe.
BTW, I have it in good faith (Cuban Friends and relatives that have LIVED in Cuba before and after the Castro takeover) that Cuba is not the slice of hell we have been pictured but is also far from paradise as some make it look. If left to market forces, the Cuban government will fall on their own. By placing so much attention to what they do, we only give them a moral stand point to continue baby crying to the UN. Drop the embargo and let the market take over.
I'm sorry, so this man is a terrorist because he send money to a group? Did he KNOW it was a terrorist group? If he knew, then, well that is a different case all around. I hear some of you saying: " well, ignorance does not make you innocent, just stupid..." Hmmm, well, i would be inclined to be for this line of thinking until i remember that one of the suppliers of oil for the US (you know, gasoline in its raw form, among other things) was and still is Venezuela. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Ii rather think the late President and the incumbent idiot down there were, and I’m sure they still are, considered, if not enemies, allied to enemies of the State. Which to the US simply means terrorist these days.
Don't be so hasty to call someone innocent or guilty just because the Government says they are. We took in many war criminals after second world war because they could help us with their science knowledge. And we have killed some whom i might say were not innocent, but at least their crimes were social ones, like fighting for your rights.
America is going down the drain; it has for some time now. We see more clues now because of the ease on information sharing. If our forefathers were alive today they would be all in intensive care due to heart failures brought on by the state of the nation they gave birth to.
I'm just sorry that we, as nation, continue to elect idiots because they belong to our social clubs (party, church, game group, whatever) instead of choosing them for their potential or accomplishments. We are so used to Mtv, CNN, Fox and all the others to think for us that we do not see that they are pulling the Roman Church/Empire on us. You know? cultivating a nation of well entertained idiots? Too much knowledge is dangerous for the lowly man, thus only us upper classes should be the only ones to learn to read and to think so that we can explain things to you in a simple manner?
It might be that by law records of him do not belong to him, but that is wrong; morally and socially wrong. It may be that he knew and that he is indeed guilty. Sure, is possible if not probable, but let the gUSAtapo show us the money. Let them PROVE they did have reasonable cause to ask for records on him. Otherwise we are letting them start a modern inquisition and a time will come (sooner than later me thinks) that being on the wrong side of an argument with the government will get you a fast one way trip to, at the best of times, your friendly and local prison.
Please. wake. up.
Don't be so hasty to call someone innocent or guilty just because the Government says they are. We took in many war criminals after second world war because they could help us with their science knowledge. And we have killed some whom i might say were not innocent, but at least their crimes were social ones, like fighting for your rights.
America is going down the drain; it has for some time now. We see more clues now because of the ease on information sharing. If our forefathers were alive today they would be all in intesive care due to heart failures brought on by the state of the nation they gave birth to.
I'm just sorry that we, as nation, continue to elect idiots because they belong to out social clubs instead of choosing them for their potential or accomplishments. We are so used to Mtv, CNN, Fox and all the others to think for us that we do not see that they are pulling the Roman Church/Empire on us. You know? cultivating a nation of well entertained idiots? Too much knowledge is dangerous for the lowly man, thus only us upper classes should be the only ones to learn to read and to think so that we can explain things to you in a simple manner?
Please. wake. up.
So freaking true is not even funny.
Puerto Rico.
I'm not a protestant and at all religious for that matter, but they are not. It says so right in the name of the church. The Apostolic, Roman and Catholic Church. There is no reference to Christ there. That they chose the old testament and some newer writings as the base for their book, judiciously filtered by the forming board of directors at the time, to define what it would finally contain is another matter. Romans were many things but wasteful programmers were not. If something was invented, they just took it and Romanize it. They could be said to be the first real object programmers. They loved to reused good and tested stuff instead of spending vast amounts of resources to invent a roman version. There are many historical facts, from their vestments, to the day we celebrate Christmas and what they represented.
So, all in all, they are not Christians at heart, although they do use Christianity's book (a version of it at least) as their holy preaching guide.
Saludos,
Alhiem
My gods yes. They are, even if they will die horrible deaths denying this, of the same peoples. They evolved and lived at the same places and at the same times. No wonder the holiest of cities of all three religions is the one and the same, Jerusalem. Other holy cities cited on their respective prophet diaries are again the same ones. Sheesh, it is so CLEAR they are the same religion lived through the eyes of their favorite writers and not three different religions at all. Islamic, Christian and Judaism zealots make as much sense as looking for someone to help you castrate yourself.
All in all, the three books have good advice and plenty of weird shite to fill a bucket or two. Live long and prosper is all I can say.
Univision could blow up for all i care. I have Mexican friends and i like them well enough, but Univision is a waste of decent engineering. ONLY promotes Mexico as anything Latino. Plus is just bad TMZ like news and soap operas. IT SUCKS, all the way to kingdom come. Nothing of value there, at all. If you want a semi decent show you need something higher up in the food chain, like something out of A&E. See? it sucks when even A&E is better. And when i say better i mean programming that might have one or two neurons behind it.
Telemundo North America, even with NBC behind it, is not a whole lot better. The only one that is just a bit better is MegaTV from Miami and halve the shows i don't get cuz they are too Cuban centered. While most (if not all) shows on USA Cable and over the air TV are very US centered, at the least they are entertaining, with decent to good drama and semi decent to decent scripts. Vme, the sort of Spanish PBS is decent. Lost of shows from Europe and Latin America. Decent ones too and best is that there are NO SOAP OPERAS on Vme. Thanks to the Gods for that one.
Latin America needs to kill all soap operas, except comedy centered Colombians and Brazilians. These last ones, the ones from Colombia are usually like American slapstick with more wit and less absurd and the Brazilians always feel more like a long and in parts movies than a soaps. In any case, i understand in part why they don't do it. They are really ignorant of their audience and commit the ultimate sin, they assume. They assume that everyone understands English, some people talk French in Louisiana and well, the Chinese, those are taking over the world, so might as well include them. Spanish? nah, let them wetbacks sort themselves out. Sheesh, i can just picture it. When all they have to do is, look around, if a place speaks Spanish, send the drones to make sure that those shows continue to support Spanish. NCIS, Sex and the City are but a sample of shows that were translated and sold with those translations in Spanish or at least had captions and then for some unknown reason they stopped supporting it but added French or Chinese or some other language. Absurd. Until they have some sense, i will have to direct my needs to the internet. Even so, less and less do I go looking for them. I watch more European stuff anyways.
See this is where i hit a wall. I'm from Puerto Rico, a wholly owned pawnshop of the United States of America, i mean ... a territory or colony as you will. Even after 100+ years of occupation, we still use Spanish as our main language and English as a badly spoken/written second language. I don't pirate as a rule but the media outlets seem to think that EVERYONE here speaks and understands English fluently and that our preferred second and third languages are French and Mandarin. Go figure. What happens when me and my wife wanna watch a movie or a show? To me there is no problem, i sometimes forget what language i am listening to. My wife? she could not do English even if her son's life depended on it. Zilch, zero, nada. So, I'm forced to go out to the internet and get them freaking movies or shows in Spanish, or at least have them with captions.
You know what? I've been a customer of mega upload/video/whatever since last year and use show and movie lists sites (that direct you to uploaded stuff at megaupload/video) to see or download the movies or shows we wanna watch. She could very well learn English, yes, but that is not the point. If they have the translations done for other countries, why wont they make them available for our zone too? What, suddenly there are no Spanish only paying legal customers in the US? Come on, puertorricans living in the one of the fifty states hit the mark of around 4 million people, about half of which do not speak English as a first language and are not required to learn it due to the fact that we were born US citizens and dod not need to take an exam to make the citizenship.
Freaking absurd. I am a criminal cuz the basically have forced me to. Yeah, i know, her not knowing English is not their fault but it is their fault that, having the freaking translations already (they translate for Spain and South America), that i need to pirate them to enjoy the show. I can also stop watching the shows, but that wont stop piracy.
There are many who pirate just because, but many more do so because they need to or are left with unacceptable choices. I would love to pay, if i could have use for the product.
One last thought, the USA used to be a nice place to be and live but is turning so fast into another neonazy state that I have renounced all my annexionist views and want now independence for our Island. The US federal government has run amok and is trampling everything the bill of rights and the declaration of independence have stood for these past centuries.
Right fucking on!!! People FAIL to raise their kids properly cuz they don't have time for them. Their jobs, lover, hobbies, FACEBOOK, TWITTER, etc. are far too important to withdraw attention from them to take care of their children. Since they can't raise their kids, they want the state to do it for them. Here comes the Zombied minds of congress (state or federal) a-waving their outstretched undead arms while low-moaning wannnnttrrrmmmoooorrrrlllaaaawwwss, issssbeeettttrrrr fffrrrrruuuurr......and people failing to see that surrendering their parenting (and bunch of other duties/chores) to the government is just like lining up, sheep like, for the zombies to eat their brains. Sheesh.
It says right on the bill of rights: CONGRESS SHALL NOT PASS A LAW.... but people are too comfortable in their couches that they fail to register anything but the latest food adds from or if lady gaga has a new wig with sperm scented hair to fucking care.
The USA used to be the house of the rebels, the inovators, free and forward thinkers, now we are just the pig pen of the lazies.
Albert
Neither. I agree. We keep forgetting that we ourselves are immigrants or the sons and daughters of immigrants. We pride ourselves (and when i say we, i mean everyday Janes and Johns born and raised in the continental US, because as an invaded second class citizen - Puerto Rican - we are treated just an inch above illegals. A Republican Congressman of Armenian decent said as much the other day) in our RIGHT to be here. Hell, most of the south west was either French or Mexican/Spanish and we either took by force or advantage of greedy dictators and bought land a dirt cheap prices.
No taxation without Representation is bullshit. You take money from green carders (taxes) and provide none of the benefits. At the very least, they should have some form of representation. With voice and vote. And i ask the same to USA colonies like Puerto Rico, Guam and US VI. We have to stop this double face crap. Either we are citizens with all rights or we are independent nations. Green carders are either exempt from taxes or should have at least some minimal form of representation. On the most part, they come here to work and try to get better lives for themselves and their families. Lets have some integrity please.
As a friend of many a Cuban and cousin, by moms side, to a guy whose dad is Cuban and for my self, an employee of FIBA Americas, I can say that CUBA is a dictatorship where dissent is tolerated to a short extent and selling beer at your place was, until recently, a crime because private enterprise was prohibited. I am not a capitalist buff, in fact I despise many of the more extremes of capitalism, but come on, 10 years in a prison cuz you are selling beer to, mostly, your friends? Sheesh.
Cuba has a lot to its name even after all the bad press and strangulation from our Government (USA) but saying that civil rights are respected, none go to jail without FAIR trail and that they have elections is a bit too much to say with a straight face. Choosing officials whose template is identical is not an election. (Not to say that we, in our democracy, don't suffer from the same thing. Democrats are just fat free Republicans or the other way around, whatever. But we have other choices. That people don't look at them is a different story.)
Yet, it is much better to live in Cuba than, say, Haiti; that is for sure.
I am with you on this, but what I really like about your rant is not even part of it. Your sig. rules. We have become too soft; we need some aggravation to help us grow some balls.
That's funny because my sister in law personally knows three different people who have been on "Obamaployment" for over a year with absolutely no interest in getting a job. Ya, that system is clearly not an utter disaster. Great insight!
Look, a few months for people who are hard on their luck, okay, I'll concede that. But years for a guy who got fired from KFC to get paid more than he did at KFC just to lie about applying at the KFC he got laid off from? That's just plain ridiculous.
You are right and you are wrong. I lost my job a few years ago and was unable to find a job in IT for well over a year. I was actively seeking and banging on all doors, even applying for jobs that i knew i did not have the sufficient know how and for jobs that i was clearly overqualified. In the end i finally got a job at a bank as account claims researcher/auditor and later on was able to return to my field.
All along i was able to survive and continue paying some of my bills with the unemployment benefits. Sure i turned down a couple of jobs that were unfeasible because they paid less than the benefits i was getting at the time. It sucks, cuz many do abuse of these programs, but for many is the only lifeline left until you break the ice again.
Wow. I've been lurking here for long, long time, making a small comment here or there, but mostly reading. In all that time, I have never read of anyone saying this. I whole heartedly agree. People take whatever is said on the internet as lines from the insert-your-favorite-holy-book-name-here.
The internet could be used to support any and alll theories you could think of and then some. Weird how learned people say things based on their "research" that contradict so directly with empirical everyday evidence.
We, as a nation, have lost the ability to imagine. We have become so meek, so sheep-like, that I , not only, cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel, much less, the tunnel. Our intelligence has become nothing more than rote and parallel patterns that will never meet and thus cannot see relevance or connection between to similar subjects in order to infer a conclusion or to counter an baseless argument. Sad state of affairs
3rd edition left all that out. Yes you could customize more, I can understand the urge to make the uber-i-can-bake-bread-kill-dragons-talk-to-gods-and-zapp-your-arse-with-my-eye-emitted-death-ray-lighting-bolt-while-hidding-in-shadows-and-reading-your-mind kind of character with almost the same effort you could just make a giga-unbeatable-all-weapon-wielder-and-enemy-of-all-monsters-basher. I have played many muds too, yet I have found that the more playable kinds are those that force you to act in concert with others. Giving a character access to other skills and powers, although much more versatile, will make to a less challenging game. Multiclassing was a bitch, but controlled those characters with such needs/wants. A 15th level fighter, in a well designed and played situation, have much better chances at defeating a 15 level wizard than a 6/6/6 level fighter/mage/thief had. We tried and the chances always came to around 6 out of 10 for the purist versus the 4-5 to 10 for the multiclass.
I hate uberchars, not because I can't handle them (since I am THE GOD of the world, I can do as I want) but because players get too fearless. It takes much of the fun out of the game. If there is no challenge, well, what is the point?
As to wanting my RPG to look and feel more like an online or computer game, well that is what I have a computer for. In a world where you cannot argue with the DM and most of the highbies are 10 year olders with absolutely no sense of etiquette (since they have never been in the playground or are constantly bullied there), you want to be able to make uber characters so that you can defend yourself from the bullies.
I hate over complications, which is why I ignored or modified must of the stupid AD&D 2nd Ed. rules and I hate oversimplifications like 3rd ed. rules which are the equivalent of the no child left behind strategy of our glorious president. It just lowers the bar of excellence so much that you could do away with the heavy books and just write simple pamphlet up on how to shake your hand and throw dice, choose a template and follow these three simple game rules:
I don't see the need to buy/have a set of books that make stuff the way YOU wanted the game to run like in the first place. Be a man (sorry, I forgot politically correct, be a PERSON) and be a DM, take what you like from a working system and the rest is up to you... sheesh... I swear that GMs these days are just like VB programmers...
Saludos,
Albert (35 and DM since I was 17)
Having worked at a couple of big pharma processing plants here in Puerto Rico, i can only say that they take their quality assurance seriously. That said, like everywhere else we suffer from the bee complex. Once in, then you must be allowed to be in and no one takes much notice. So, a couple of blokes, who could care less, are hired to redo the paint jobs for the plant splattering paint about and no one notices until one of the Q&A guys takes his shifts sample. Most likely, as profit oriented companies usually do, his superiors won't hold the days shipments because he found some tainted pills. They wont dump the shipment based on "they might be tainted" grounds and just cross their fingers hoping nothing bad happens and if it does, well that's why we have lawyers on the payroll, no? I saw something like that happen once. It wasn't pills, but still it was supposed to be sterile non-surgical stuff. The dudes doing some cleaning job were outside hired help and did not know/cared for the stations rules, so they were going about carelessly and splattered dirty water / soap water near an unbagged, unfinished load. The Q&A people found out later that day when they took their required samples. The whole thing was shipped even when the Q&A team asked permission to trash the mornings load. The Q&A team leader and the production manager had quite a spit over the issue. To my knowledge, that was the only time something like that had happened there.
Hellooooo Suuuueee!
As a local i can tell you that our local government is more likely to keep a burger king chain alive than Arecibo's Observatory. It is sad but our government here is a pale shadow of what the U.S. Federal Government is (to which, by the way, we belong to). Idiocity is rampant and what really matters is public image, free stuff for the leeches of society and ways to escape taxes for the rich, which leaves the middle class so entrenched in surviving day to day that few have the energy to look past their noses. Education is down the drain and, if we had an army, we would invade something every so often just to have a reason to issue bonds for more cash. Idiots. So all in all, no, the PR Government will throw a wobbler over this and will make demands to the federal government to keep it running. Ha, yeah right, they will listen.
Saludos,
Alberto Ortiz Hernandez
US Citizen by birth, puertorrican at heart, and enemy of idiots (which are most of my fellow country men - both countries)
You can, but they will eventually fire you for some lame ass excuse. I know, it happened to me.
cheers
albert
I am hardly blown away by this. It just confirms the main agenda and intention of our government, to control. Just as the romans had the Coliseum to entertain the mob and keep their little piggy heads occupied in things other than what the government was doing.
We don't have a Coliseum, although Jerry Springer's comes close, but we have TV. Reading provokes uneeded thinking; keep the people glued to the moron box and they will vote for you and your stupid ideals, so yes, i expected something like this.
Mod me to kingdome come, but it is the truth.
Nostradamus would have profited from having the guys who make the game as advisors for his prophecies. There is a timeline there that foretells the great United States of America becoming a totalitarian state, ruled by corporations and the street monsters. I for one, hail our NSA masters... NOT!:P
I know this is somewhat off topic, but since it affecting my life directly here goes:
Do you think your legislators are retards? Take a look at this,this, and,this. Is in spanish mind you so just babel it to get it in "readable" english. But if you are not feeling like is worth the trouble here is the gist: Due to really bad administration that neither of the 2 (out of three available) parties that take turns at the bat ever did anything to fix, our little island (Puerto Rico, U.S. Territory and Commonwelth for those who need to know) is facing "bankruptcy" Our actual governor, faced with the inaction of a shared government, has decided to put an end to all. He has shut down the government (outside from the legislative and judiacry branches). This means that the biggest employer in our 4 million person piece of paradise has essentially sent everyone packing until the legislative branch does something to fix the budget and finds money to pay public officials. The links above are just the newest three items in this rather elignthening drama. They keep playing politics whilest close to 100k people risk loosing their houses, cars, etc. due to the fact the they will have no source of income to cover those expenses. Private sector in response, to this excellent attitude from our government has decided to cry foul, run and hide. Meaning, they have laid off many more. Most big companies here enjoy tax exemptions because the US government a long time ago(altho that policy did change recently) an industrial heaven. So to put an end to this rather long out of topic rant, we are really between a rock and a hard place. In reference to the real topic discussed here, i wish i had some one to write to in the US Government, but since we are anly allowed a non-participant delegate to Congress there is really nothing i can do.
Saludos,
but I am begining to believe that to slap this idiots in the face to wake them we, as a community, should start blocking them for a while. What? 35-45% server side share in the world and the most powerfull browser is not able to read a simple page that a lame piece of software like can easily digest... Just a thought.