I remember shopping at the SF ComputerWare store (before it went out of business) for an iBook and it was a totally pleasant experience... helpful people, no strings attached, all my questions answered and no hard sell. I liked shopping there. Was sad to hear that store was closed. I have no experience with the Elite Computers version.
Compare this with my recent trip to the Palo Alto store to buy a new iMac. Great store, great look, great browsing experience, but watch out if you actually want to buy a computer. The sales guy pulled out every add-on in the book, MS Office, AppleCare, an iSub, a printer,.Mac, sheez. I must have said "no, I just want the comptuer" five or six times.
I know times are hard in retail but that sure left a bad taste in my mouth. I still go to the Apple Store to browse but from now on, I'm buying my hardware online. No more pesky retail clerks to deal with.
Here's my 2 cents worth of amateur philosophy on this subject.
I think multiple universes is highly likely because each time people have thought our existence is "special" or "one of a kind" we've been proven wrong. For example, the earth is NOT the center of the universe. Neither is the sun the center of the galaxy, neither is our galaxy the center of the universe etc. etc. There are a multitude of other planets, stars and galaxies in the universe. It is no hard leap to see that our universe is likely not special in any particular way and is not likely the only universe.
I also do not buy into these recent claims that the universe, life on earth or anything on it in particular smacks of some "design" or pre-meditated intent by some creator. One good example is the huge amount of distances between stars and planets. Space travel from here to some other star will likely not happen for thousands of years, not only due to the distance but that speed of light thing. So, I really think if this universe was created for the intent of life, things would be moving along quite a bit quicker (not on the order of trillions of years) and any life would be spaced a bit closer together. What we have here seems to be a really, really, really dull version of the SIMS where your neighbors are trillions of miles away, and your SIMS take millions of years to step outside. If there's a god out there, he's a really boring guy.
So the only explanation I have for life is that with an infinite amount of universes and planets, the odds are SOMETHING will happen on one infitesimally tiny part of one of them. That something in the larger scheme of things has about the significance of a blip of nothing in nothingness. And that blip is us. That doesn't sound like divine intervention to me.
Yeah I was just thinking that. I think games that negatively impact productivity would also include ones that are totally immersive that require your full attention (any twich and shoot, or WarCraft III , or most console games). The ideal workplace distraction is something you can pause and return to inbetween times of work that takes a few seconds. For example, I alternately work and surf the web all day. While a process is running on the work computer I switch to browsing. I don't feel this impacts my work at all (although some might disagree).
Using this logic, the best types of workplace games would be turn based ones, like Go, Chess or some strategy games.
I would say without a doubt obsessive game playing reduces productivity. Every time I get hooked on some new game there's the terrible tendecy to jack in and play for oh, 24 hours straight, during that time, NOTHING gets done. I can't imagine how these people that get hooked on Everquest and TheSims manage to have lives, especially if they're working all day (yeah, I know someone will toss in the inevitable "they have no lives" comment).
One of the saddest aspects of my college life was meeting these people who were involved in MUDS who literally spent all their time online, in their dorm rooms or holed up in the library sleeping on cots. They would LIVE online, have relationships with people online, and let's just say their "real world" lives suffered. And this was over text-only virtual worlds. I can't imagine what these people do today with realistic games. Probably a one way ticket to the insane asylum.
Conversly, I think though, used in moderation, games can stimulate productivity. Especaially if you use it to blow off some steam, or get into game creation, hence improving your skills in the real world. But, anything in moderation can be good. I don't think most people have the tendency to get obsessed over games, and if it wasn't a game, it'd be alcohol, heroin or donuts.
And lastly... unless you're going into game programming I have yet to find any good reason for putting "Reached level 88 Amazon in Diablo II" on your resume. Gaming has little worth in the real world. I'd go so far as to say it has a negative stigma attached to it... for anybody over 30.
Make technology so great that nobody has to leave their home. Ever. Why do we leave home as it is?
1. To go to work. Well, let's get net applications and vpns better so more people can telecommute.
2. For entertainment. DVD home theater packages prove that people will choose to stay home if the technology is good enough. So, we need holodecks at home so nobody will need to leave their home for any entertainment.
3. Food and shopping. Revive WebVan. Amazonify everything else. Deliver everything to people's homes.
4. Social reasons. Improve web video so people can interact via their computers. Less need to go out.
Do these four things. People will still need to go out every once in a while for something tangible (visit the dentist, see Yosemite for real) but you'd severely reduce traffic. And, as people got more overweight from lack of physical activity and eating all the home delivery food, they'd be physically unable to leave the home, reducing traffic further.
If I remember correctly, a lot of this is because of bone head voters. For instance, the BART has had trouble getting extended down the penninsula through San Mateo to San Jose because voters in every little town along the way (Burlingame, San Mateo, Belmot, Palo Alto), etc. have to approve it. And in each town, there's some people who claim that by having a BART station in their town, it'll allow bums and degenerates from other areas easy access to their area and lower property values. So part of the reason has to fall back on the voters.
Americans love their cars. The idea of a carless city, however noble, ethical and good, simply is going to be a hard sell for the majority of Americans. For whatever reason, be it advertising, social structures, etc. having a car is a BIG DEAL that so many of us would be loathe to give up.
Having a car for so many people is about control. They drive to and from work in a little isolated bubble, playing the music they want to hear, sipping their coffee. It's addicting. I've talked to so many people who admit they should ride the bus or ride mass transit but they don't, because they always are scared of some bum knifing them or listening to some kid blasting his boom box. Second, people get pissed off when having to deal with bus schedules. They want to go where they want when the want, not wait around for some bus to pick 'em up. It's all about selfish control in this instant gratification society.
Second there's a huge social stigma associated with cars. I've heard people say, they don't want to ride the bus with "those people". "Those people" meaning, the people too poor to afford a nice car. I've lived in LA where people ask you "what kind of car do you drive?", as if it was more important than anything else. It's as if, you don't have a car, you're in another social group. You have to work hard to come up with some excuse as to "why not" that isn't because you can't afford it. But you have to have a reason!
Lastly, the layout of cities is another big deal. If you don't have a car, due to the crappy nature of mass transit in this nation, you're stuck in the neighboor hood you live or work, and are missing out on so many things... because no city... save SF or NYC, has everything you need within a walking radius. Seriously. You either have to get on a bus or drive in order to get access to some basic things... shopping, groceries, entertainment. And so if you don't have a car, the pressure is so great to get one.
I didn't have a car for the longest time but eventually succumbed to the pressure. You simply cannot expect to live one's whole life in this country without a car. And that's sad.
I don't think people really have the choice to live near work anymore. Why? Because cities are not designed with this idea in mind. In America, most cities have their places of work and the places where people live in totally separate areas. The suburbs as opposed to downtown. You literally HAVE to own a car if you want to work. It's a feedback loop: since more people have to drive to work, more cities are built around cars, and people who don't want to get a car lose out. And even if you live in an area where there is the possibility of work, what's the odds you'll get the job? I have never been at an interview where it mattered that I lived oh, say, within a mile. They always ask if you have a car! People are willing to drive 30 miles to work, and so nobody thinks anything of it. My point is: The systems pretty screwed up and I don't think the people have control in this instance. A lot of people conclude they HAVE to have a car because they need to eat, and the city is already laid out for cars. It's easier to just suck it up and buy a car than go about changing the layout of a city or moving closer to work.
I know this wouldn't be a popular idea, since cars are so damned ingrained in American's lives, but what do you do with "bad" things to discourage people from using them in this society: tax the crap out of them. Slap a gas tax more comporable to Europe, rising the cost of gas to $5 a gallon, raise registration fees, raise licencing fees, raise insurance, etc. AT THE SAME TIME as providing people mass transit opportunities, and watch people abandon their cars (while raising hell in the process, but hey... it's for the good of us all). Take the example of London charging a fee to drive in downtown during business hours. I don't think it will be done, but it's one solution.
I'm hard pressed to find anybody who still believes that, or if they used to, they're being quiet about it. That idea was something bandied about by WIRED or by.com companies trying to get investors to open their wallets. As with so many other forms of mass media, it might have had a tiny window of opportunity to be something enlightening during it's inception, but as soon as it's opened to the masses, it gets dumbed down to where we're at now, which is most of the information is blogs, webcams, ads, games, music and pr0n. Oh well, but I'm sure if you looked at other mass media the ratios are similar (take a look at magazines, video tapes, television, films). This is not a bad thing, just how things ARE. Yes I would agree, if you thought the web was going to somehow make the world a better place and spread freedom, you're disappointed, but I'd say you should never have believed that in the first place.
Good point. Now that you mention it, my snail mail junk mail to real mail ratio is about the same as email. We get 1-2 credit card offers in the mail DAILY, plus assorted useless coupons, cable pitches, offers to change phone providers etc.
I do have a spam filter set up so I don't actually SEE all 20 to 1, but every once in a while I peek in the trash folder, and there's a lot in there. I don't post my address everywhere, but I've had this one email address in particular for over 5 years now, and the amount of spam just gets exponentially worse every year. As for browser pop ups, thank goodness for pop up killers at the browser level via Phoenix and Safari. But my points were more for the average user, not necesarrialy you or I. I do know, my grandma recently got a computer and within a month she was getting spam of the adult nature. That kind of stuff, luckilly, was funny to grandma but conversely I could see some people getting P/O.
I think the internet as we know it is dying. Namely, being overrun by advertising and being taken over by large corporations. Spam is choking email. I think my spam to intentional email ratio is 20 to 1. Pop up ads are killing websurfing. And lastly, more and more information is being monopolized by Yahoo, MSN, AOL, or some other big corporation. It's harder and harder to get to the smaller, independent sites.
None of the above should be a big surprise to anyone. But I think there are always ways out. I see glimmers of hope in programs that completely bypass the browser model, for example Watson... why bother logging into MSN when you can get everything you need via a simpler user interface? Or RSS news feed browsers. Or the Apple music store. By having a specific program you get what you want, instead of having a generic browser looking at everything and leaving you to sort through it. Second, it's another layer above individual websites that the big companies can't compete with (yet). So I have hope.
The web need not be limited to a web browser (as we know it) or web sites. Maybe it's time we break these metaphors. The web site can just serve up the info, formatting left to the user, programs interchangeable. Go XML.
Definitely an orgasm cake... because she went to bathroom, and the Merovingian went a bit later, to get his blow job. That's why he makes the cakes, and that's a reason why Persephone betrayed him.
Why? Because it's the day after the movie preimire and so many people have already come to this conclusion. I really don't think the W. Brothers would have settled on something so easy for people to figure out...
I think this is a step in the right direction. I think there is something very significant to Smith coming into the real world, and how he claims he got a part of Neo. I don't think the "real world" is another level of the matrix either. Maybe this Smith / Neo thing will point towards a way out of war: maybe a merging of Man and Machine that doesn't require the Matrix.
First off, I allowed myself one week of nothing, then I would get to schedule and do the job search and all that. I had severance to tide me over for a few weeks anyhow. So I made a short list which mainly consited of seeing all the sights in the city I hadn't had time to do, seeing movies during the day, running all the errands I never got around to, cleaning house, etc.
After the week was up it was hardcore job hunting time, but not so hard core I burned out. I did find the most important thing to do was not fall into a funk and sleep til noon. Get up, do your job hunt, take a shower... basic stuff. I didn't want to fall into the pattern of waking up at noon, not taking a shower til 3 and realizing the day was over, so not going out, basically becoming a total hermit / night owl, playing video games all night. It was actually hard to resist this... after all, when you're unemployed, you have no place to "be".
The next important thing for me was to cut expenses immediately. Seems like many people assume they'll get a job in a month and proceed to blow their severance on a trip to Thailand or something. Resist it! You should act as if you're not getting a job for months. Cut cable, cancel magazine subscriptions, stop eating out, etc. I think the only liberty I allowed myself was to keep the broadband going as it would aid my job search.
Once you find a job, that's when you get to slack off. The two weeks or so after you've signed the offer letter and you KNOW you just need to show up at work are the best two weeks known to humankind. That's when you sleep til noon and slack off, with not a care in the world because you know you got it made. I wish there were more times like that in a lifetime.
All I'm saying, is, as far as I'm concerned, everyone who claims to "Christian" be they Mormon, Protestant, what have you, believe that Christ was a very important person and what he said is worth believing in. That's all. Tell me how this line of logic is wrong. Do you not believe Christ was a good person? The son of god? Everything else you write about Catholic, Orthodox, personal relationship makes no difference to me. I don't think believeing whether or not Christ is the son of god or if he rose from the dead is important. That's just a niggling detail as far as I'm concerned (and most agnostics would agree, I hate to tell you).
And I do take issue with your last paragraph. I do think a Canadian might be offended if he were called an American, but only if he holds this fact: He does not think highly of Americans. So if a Catholic gets offended if a Mormon is called a Christian, then it's because he doesn't think very highly of Mormons. And THAT superiority complex is something that bugs me to no end.
I think that's the big reason. If you read the Bible literally there's a lot of dry stuff. Insane family trees, people living till 400, who's being flogged, who begat whom, where you can spill your seed etc. There isn't a whole lot of Britney Spears, Playstation 2 or NBA going on in there. So it seems so much of Christianity today is trying to prove (and sometimes grasping at straws) as to why this story from hundreds of years ago has any relevance to today. Or, why people should be spending their Sundays in Church instead of rushing out to see the Matrix for the fifth time.
From the Mormon website:
Question:
Are you Christians?
Answer:
Gordon B. Hinckley, President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said:
"We are Christians in a very real sense and that is coming to be more and more widely recognized. Once upon a time people everywhere said we are not Christians. They have come to recognize that we are, and that we have a very vital and dynamic religion based on the teachings of Jesus Christ.
So y'know, who's right, you or the Mormons? Pardon me while I get out of the way...
Yknow, I'm half serious about this, but take a look at paxil or prozac. Maybe someone can make a mood enhancer drug that gives you the capacity to be okay with life in the absence of God.
And no, I'm not talking about a red or blue pill... or am I?
Slashdot Mirror
I remember shopping at the SF ComputerWare store (before it went out of business) for an iBook and it was a totally pleasant experience ... helpful people, no strings attached, all my questions answered and no hard sell. I liked shopping there. Was sad to hear that store was closed. I have no experience with the Elite Computers version.
Compare this with my recent trip to the Palo Alto store to buy a new iMac. Great store, great look, great browsing experience, but watch out if you actually want to buy a computer. The sales guy pulled out every add-on in the book, MS Office, AppleCare, an iSub, a printer, .Mac, sheez. I must have said "no, I just want the comptuer" five or six times.
I know times are hard in retail but that sure left a bad taste in my mouth. I still go to the Apple Store to browse but from now on, I'm buying my hardware online. No more pesky retail clerks to deal with.
I'm not the one who believes in God.
Here's my 2 cents worth of amateur philosophy on this subject.
I think multiple universes is highly likely because each time people have thought our existence is "special" or "one of a kind" we've been proven wrong. For example, the earth is NOT the center of the universe. Neither is the sun the center of the galaxy, neither is our galaxy the center of the universe etc. etc. There are a multitude of other planets, stars and galaxies in the universe. It is no hard leap to see that our universe is likely not special in any particular way and is not likely the only universe.
I also do not buy into these recent claims that the universe, life on earth or anything on it in particular smacks of some "design" or pre-meditated intent by some creator. One good example is the huge amount of distances between stars and planets. Space travel from here to some other star will likely not happen for thousands of years, not only due to the distance but that speed of light thing. So, I really think if this universe was created for the intent of life, things would be moving along quite a bit quicker (not on the order of trillions of years) and any life would be spaced a bit closer together. What we have here seems to be a really, really, really dull version of the SIMS where your neighbors are trillions of miles away, and your SIMS take millions of years to step outside. If there's a god out there, he's a really boring guy.
So the only explanation I have for life is that with an infinite amount of universes and planets, the odds are SOMETHING will happen on one infitesimally tiny part of one of them. That something in the larger scheme of things has about the significance of a blip of nothing in nothingness. And that blip is us. That doesn't sound like divine intervention to me.
Yeah I was just thinking that. I think games that negatively impact productivity would also include ones that are totally immersive that require your full attention (any twich and shoot, or WarCraft III , or most console games). The ideal workplace distraction is something you can pause and return to inbetween times of work that takes a few seconds. For example, I alternately work and surf the web all day. While a process is running on the work computer I switch to browsing. I don't feel this impacts my work at all (although some might disagree).
Using this logic, the best types of workplace games would be turn based ones, like Go, Chess or some strategy games.
I would say without a doubt obsessive game playing reduces productivity. Every time I get hooked on some new game there's the terrible tendecy to jack in and play for oh, 24 hours straight, during that time, NOTHING gets done. I can't imagine how these people that get hooked on Everquest and TheSims manage to have lives, especially if they're working all day (yeah, I know someone will toss in the inevitable "they have no lives" comment).
One of the saddest aspects of my college life was meeting these people who were involved in MUDS who literally spent all their time online, in their dorm rooms or holed up in the library sleeping on cots. They would LIVE online, have relationships with people online, and let's just say their "real world" lives suffered. And this was over text-only virtual worlds. I can't imagine what these people do today with realistic games. Probably a one way ticket to the insane asylum.
Conversly, I think though, used in moderation, games can stimulate productivity. Especaially if you use it to blow off some steam, or get into game creation, hence improving your skills in the real world. But, anything in moderation can be good. I don't think most people have the tendency to get obsessed over games, and if it wasn't a game, it'd be alcohol, heroin or donuts.
And lastly ... unless you're going into game programming I have yet to find any good reason for putting "Reached level 88 Amazon in Diablo II" on your resume. Gaming has little worth in the real world. I'd go so far as to say it has a negative stigma attached to it ... for anybody over 30.
Make technology so great that nobody has to leave their home. Ever. Why do we leave home as it is?
1. To go to work. Well, let's get net applications and vpns better so more people can telecommute.
2. For entertainment. DVD home theater packages prove that people will choose to stay home if the technology is good enough. So, we need holodecks at home so nobody will need to leave their home for any entertainment.
3. Food and shopping. Revive WebVan. Amazonify everything else. Deliver everything to people's homes.
4. Social reasons. Improve web video so people can interact via their computers. Less need to go out.
Do these four things. People will still need to go out every once in a while for something tangible (visit the dentist, see Yosemite for real) but you'd severely reduce traffic. And, as people got more overweight from lack of physical activity and eating all the home delivery food, they'd be physically unable to leave the home, reducing traffic further.
Uh, that's what I said. No city, save SF or NYC.
If I remember correctly, a lot of this is because of bone head voters. For instance, the BART has had trouble getting extended down the penninsula through San Mateo to San Jose because voters in every little town along the way (Burlingame, San Mateo, Belmot, Palo Alto), etc. have to approve it. And in each town, there's some people who claim that by having a BART station in their town, it'll allow bums and degenerates from other areas easy access to their area and lower property values. So part of the reason has to fall back on the voters.
Americans love their cars. The idea of a carless city, however noble, ethical and good, simply is going to be a hard sell for the majority of Americans. For whatever reason, be it advertising, social structures, etc. having a car is a BIG DEAL that so many of us would be loathe to give up.
Having a car for so many people is about control. They drive to and from work in a little isolated bubble, playing the music they want to hear, sipping their coffee. It's addicting. I've talked to so many people who admit they should ride the bus or ride mass transit but they don't, because they always are scared of some bum knifing them or listening to some kid blasting his boom box. Second, people get pissed off when having to deal with bus schedules. They want to go where they want when the want, not wait around for some bus to pick 'em up. It's all about selfish control in this instant gratification society.
Second there's a huge social stigma associated with cars. I've heard people say, they don't want to ride the bus with "those people". "Those people" meaning, the people too poor to afford a nice car. I've lived in LA where people ask you "what kind of car do you drive?", as if it was more important than anything else. It's as if, you don't have a car, you're in another social group. You have to work hard to come up with some excuse as to "why not" that isn't because you can't afford it. But you have to have a reason!
Lastly, the layout of cities is another big deal. If you don't have a car, due to the crappy nature of mass transit in this nation, you're stuck in the neighboor hood you live or work, and are missing out on so many things ... because no city ... save SF or NYC, has everything you need within a walking radius. Seriously. You either have to get on a bus or drive in order to get access to some basic things ... shopping, groceries, entertainment. And so if you don't have a car, the pressure is so great to get one.
I didn't have a car for the longest time but eventually succumbed to the pressure. You simply cannot expect to live one's whole life in this country without a car. And that's sad.
I don't think people really have the choice to live near work anymore. Why? Because cities are not designed with this idea in mind. In America, most cities have their places of work and the places where people live in totally separate areas. The suburbs as opposed to downtown. You literally HAVE to own a car if you want to work. It's a feedback loop: since more people have to drive to work, more cities are built around cars, and people who don't want to get a car lose out. And even if you live in an area where there is the possibility of work, what's the odds you'll get the job? I have never been at an interview where it mattered that I lived oh, say, within a mile. They always ask if you have a car! People are willing to drive 30 miles to work, and so nobody thinks anything of it. My point is: The systems pretty screwed up and I don't think the people have control in this instance. A lot of people conclude they HAVE to have a car because they need to eat, and the city is already laid out for cars. It's easier to just suck it up and buy a car than go about changing the layout of a city or moving closer to work.
I know this wouldn't be a popular idea, since cars are so damned ingrained in American's lives, but what do you do with "bad" things to discourage people from using them in this society: tax the crap out of them. Slap a gas tax more comporable to Europe, rising the cost of gas to $5 a gallon, raise registration fees, raise licencing fees, raise insurance, etc. AT THE SAME TIME as providing people mass transit opportunities, and watch people abandon their cars (while raising hell in the process, but hey ... it's for the good of us all). Take the example of London charging a fee to drive in downtown during business hours. I don't think it will be done, but it's one solution.
I'm hard pressed to find anybody who still believes that, or if they used to, they're being quiet about it. That idea was something bandied about by WIRED or by .com companies trying to get investors to open their wallets. As with so many other forms of mass media, it might have had a tiny window of opportunity to be something enlightening during it's inception, but as soon as it's opened to the masses, it gets dumbed down to where we're at now, which is most of the information is blogs, webcams, ads, games, music and pr0n. Oh well, but I'm sure if you looked at other mass media the ratios are similar (take a look at magazines, video tapes, television, films). This is not a bad thing, just how things ARE. Yes I would agree, if you thought the web was going to somehow make the world a better place and spread freedom, you're disappointed, but I'd say you should never have believed that in the first place.
Good point. Now that you mention it, my snail mail junk mail to real mail ratio is about the same as email. We get 1-2 credit card offers in the mail DAILY, plus assorted useless coupons, cable pitches, offers to change phone providers etc.
I do have a spam filter set up so I don't actually SEE all 20 to 1, but every once in a while I peek in the trash folder, and there's a lot in there. I don't post my address everywhere, but I've had this one email address in particular for over 5 years now, and the amount of spam just gets exponentially worse every year. As for browser pop ups, thank goodness for pop up killers at the browser level via Phoenix and Safari. But my points were more for the average user, not necesarrialy you or I. I do know, my grandma recently got a computer and within a month she was getting spam of the adult nature. That kind of stuff, luckilly, was funny to grandma but conversely I could see some people getting P/O.
Have you looked at Google News?
I think the internet as we know it is dying. Namely, being overrun by advertising and being taken over by large corporations. Spam is choking email. I think my spam to intentional email ratio is 20 to 1. Pop up ads are killing websurfing. And lastly, more and more information is being monopolized by Yahoo, MSN, AOL, or some other big corporation. It's harder and harder to get to the smaller, independent sites.
None of the above should be a big surprise to anyone. But I think there are always ways out. I see glimmers of hope in programs that completely bypass the browser model, for example Watson ... why bother logging into MSN when you can get everything you need via a simpler user interface? Or RSS news feed browsers. Or the Apple music store. By having a specific program you get what you want, instead of having a generic browser looking at everything and leaving you to sort through it. Second, it's another layer above individual websites that the big companies can't compete with (yet). So I have hope.
The web need not be limited to a web browser (as we know it) or web sites. Maybe it's time we break these metaphors. The web site can just serve up the info, formatting left to the user, programs interchangeable. Go XML.
Definitely an orgasm cake ... because she went to bathroom, and the Merovingian went a bit later, to get his blow job. That's why he makes the cakes, and that's a reason why Persephone betrayed him.
Why? Because it's the day after the movie preimire and so many people have already come to this conclusion. I really don't think the W. Brothers would have settled on something so easy for people to figure out ...
Yes, every single one of those monitors was another matrix running in parrallel. All of them simultaneously in another theater.
I think this is a step in the right direction. I think there is something very significant to Smith coming into the real world, and how he claims he got a part of Neo. I don't think the "real world" is another level of the matrix either. Maybe this Smith / Neo thing will point towards a way out of war: maybe a merging of Man and Machine that doesn't require the Matrix.
About two years ago I went through this.
First off, I allowed myself one week of nothing, then I would get to schedule and do the job search and all that. I had severance to tide me over for a few weeks anyhow. So I made a short list which mainly consited of seeing all the sights in the city I hadn't had time to do, seeing movies during the day, running all the errands I never got around to, cleaning house, etc.
After the week was up it was hardcore job hunting time, but not so hard core I burned out. I did find the most important thing to do was not fall into a funk and sleep til noon. Get up, do your job hunt, take a shower ... basic stuff. I didn't want to fall into the pattern of waking up at noon, not taking a shower til 3 and realizing the day was over, so not going out, basically becoming a total hermit / night owl, playing video games all night. It was actually hard to resist this ... after all, when you're unemployed, you have no place to "be".
The next important thing for me was to cut expenses immediately. Seems like many people assume they'll get a job in a month and proceed to blow their severance on a trip to Thailand or something. Resist it! You should act as if you're not getting a job for months. Cut cable, cancel magazine subscriptions, stop eating out, etc. I think the only liberty I allowed myself was to keep the broadband going as it would aid my job search.
Once you find a job, that's when you get to slack off. The two weeks or so after you've signed the offer letter and you KNOW you just need to show up at work are the best two weeks known to humankind. That's when you sleep til noon and slack off, with not a care in the world because you know you got it made. I wish there were more times like that in a lifetime.
All I'm saying, is, as far as I'm concerned, everyone who claims to "Christian" be they Mormon, Protestant, what have you, believe that Christ was a very important person and what he said is worth believing in. That's all. Tell me how this line of logic is wrong. Do you not believe Christ was a good person? The son of god? Everything else you write about Catholic, Orthodox, personal relationship makes no difference to me. I don't think believeing whether or not Christ is the son of god or if he rose from the dead is important. That's just a niggling detail as far as I'm concerned (and most agnostics would agree, I hate to tell you).
And I do take issue with your last paragraph. I do think a Canadian might be offended if he were called an American, but only if he holds this fact: He does not think highly of Americans. So if a Catholic gets offended if a Mormon is called a Christian, then it's because he doesn't think very highly of Mormons. And THAT superiority complex is something that bugs me to no end.
I think that's the big reason. If you read the Bible literally there's a lot of dry stuff. Insane family trees, people living till 400, who's being flogged, who begat whom, where you can spill your seed etc. There isn't a whole lot of Britney Spears, Playstation 2 or NBA going on in there. So it seems so much of Christianity today is trying to prove (and sometimes grasping at straws) as to why this story from hundreds of years ago has any relevance to today. Or, why people should be spending their Sundays in Church instead of rushing out to see the Matrix for the fifth time.
From the Mormon website: Question: Are you Christians? Answer: Gordon B. Hinckley, President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said: "We are Christians in a very real sense and that is coming to be more and more widely recognized. Once upon a time people everywhere said we are not Christians. They have come to recognize that we are, and that we have a very vital and dynamic religion based on the teachings of Jesus Christ. So y'know, who's right, you or the Mormons? Pardon me while I get out of the way ...
... if they see themselves as Christians or not. I'm sure the answer will amuse you.
Yknow, I'm half serious about this, but take a look at paxil or prozac. Maybe someone can make a mood enhancer drug that gives you the capacity to be okay with life in the absence of God.
And no, I'm not talking about a red or blue pill ... or am I?