DO WHAT YOU DON'T WANT TO DO

Self-control and self-discipline are important. In this age filled with constant attention grabbers and distractions along with pop culture's constant commercial thrust to indulge our every passion, you have to be able to ...

DO WHAT YOU DON'T WANT TO DO

If we slept whenever we felt, ate anything that tasted good at the moment, said whatever popped into our minds, indulged every sensual and sexual titillation, we waste our lives in trivial satisfactions that soon undermines our whole existence and the joy that can be found in being fully human.

If we turned our heads every time a TV in a room said, "Look at me!" or a billboard on a highway said, "Look here!" or the phone rings, or the clock says the time is.... (on and on)--then we are no more functioning human beings than Pavlov's dog that salivates at the ring of a bell.

If our lives are directed by the wants and the demands that thrust upon us either from our external environment or our internal passions, then in the irony of seeking the freedom to do what we want, we instead do what we are genetically or culturally TRAINED to do!

FREEDOM IS LOST.

AND INSTEAD OF FINDING THAT WE HAVE LIVED OUR LIVES, WE FIND THAT IT HAS BEEN LIVED FOR US.

Mitch Sanders
April 16, 2002

From Paper to Reality

Amazing how you can design a house just on paper and then actually construct it based on that.

Foundation work on a House

Mohcu-Lar - the Seer of Souls

(The following story came to me while sleeping and I was pondering the source of an interpretive power that some seem to have.)

Long ago when the world was covered in white lived a mammoth hunter. This hunter had a special gift of being able to read the souls of the animals he hunted. When stalking a herd he could pick the most vulnerable animal to pursue. When facing a predator of men he could read the intensity of heart in the lion or tiger. He called himself Moh and was alone among men of his kind, for he ran with another race of ape-like men, but his skills in soul reading set him apart from the race of ape-men that soon died out as a race altogether.

A few hundred generations later, after the world had thawed but before the time of chiefs, lived a woman in the great prairies of land who had descended from Moh, the first man. She also had the gift of soul reading. This was the time and place when horses first learned to be ridden on those great steppes in Europe. Sheep and goat were also tamed and fed upon for meat. These humans were few and far between but would sometimes find and capture other humans and would bring them to this woman who would then read their souls to determine if those captured should be killed or brought into the wandering tribes. Some captured were healthy and flexible so that their souls could be trusted by all. Some captured were compliant on the outside, but bitter and venomous deeper within such that only the soul reader woman could tell for sure. This woman had twelve male children who all had her same gift. In her old age she had a thirteenth male child that was stronger in this gift than all who had come before him. His name was Moh-Cur.

Moh-Cur's gift for soul reading was so great it was said that he could touch a man and know when he would die and tell if his death would be glorious or sorrowful. When looking into the eyes of a man, Moh-Cur could see the very depths of a soul and see the ancestors souls that had come before. Moh-Cur was greatly feared by his brothers. These twelve brothers plus Moh-Cur tamed horses and had generations of children and children's children, such that they populated an entire continent. This was back in the time where all men spoke one language before the pyramids and before the great river valley civilizations in what is now known as the Middle-East, India and Egypt.

It was during the Babylonian empire that a sorcerer arose with the same powers of strength of soul reading of Moh-Cur, a distant ancestor from back in the days before men grew their own food. This sorcerer was the grand priest of the people and bowed only to the king himself. The king consulted him in all matters of mysteries concerning men known and unknown both dead and living. It is said that this man bore three sons and a daughter through  a particular priestess name Wo-Moh that in some distant past had descended from Moh like all known peoples at the time. The sorcerer's name was Mohcu-Lar.

Mohcu-Lar eventually died at a very old age. His three sons were instructed by there priestess mother in the proper way to inherit Mohcu-Lar's powers. After laying him on the burning pier, the oldest son sliced into the chest cavity of the father and after breaking away one rib they were able to gain access to his heart whereby they removed it. Once removed they were each instructed to consume the equal sections of the heart.

Legend has it that the first son-- who was a proud and wicked man-- after his consumption stood tall, stiffened, and immediately fell backwards dead. The middle son, after his consumption, immediately began chattering  his teeth while his eyeballs rolled to and fro, and his tongue started twitching side to side. He lived the rest of his days as a priest in constant chatter coupled with stutterings such that none could stand to be in his presence for more than a moment or two. The third son, for fear of the maladies inflicted upon his brothers, refused to eat his father's heart and died a shriveled old man many years later and soon forgotten.

It was the daughter that partook of the heart that the last brother did not eat. It was said her eyes lit up like fire, her hair turned permanently red and she seemed to levitate when she walked the rest of her life.

It was the sorcerer Mohcu-Lar that came to me in a dream and showed me his story and the story to follow.

(There is more, but this was all the story I typed up when I arose from my bed that morning.)

A New HR Program for Employees Career Goals

A "friend" of mine works for a company that recently published a new program designed for the "employees" to lay out there "goals" for a career. The employees were asked to fill in their career job goals with dates and expectations to help them achieve these career goals (i.e. different jobs within the complany.) I think this was all in response to employee complaints of being stagnant in their careers. (Like HR cares, huh?)

This was his email reply back to his team.

I like how he describes the double-bind of "If your career doesn't advance, it's your own damn fault" from HR. I like how he back-peddles at the end too.
**********

Team,

I must say … that to honesty come up with and fill out “start dates” and “due dates” with hope while weighting the progress on specific career choices is something more in the realm of angst-delivered assignments given from our old high school counselors.

In reality, I believe the greatly logical Spock himself couldn’t fill this out with any self-scrutinized integrity. J

Don’t get me wrong. I mean it looks good in theory.

And obviously HR spent lots of money on this goal-tracking program—for their “human resources”.

So if it fails…. I know it will be my own fault.

I’ve seen these kinds of formulaic solutions to complex issues though many times and have doubts if reality-checks are thoroughly applied.

I’ve yet to see careers actually develop this way.

Then again , maybe that’s not the true purpose of such a program.

Maybe it is to only give the illusion that a mechanism is now in place and only losers will not be able to make it work for them.

If your career doesn’t develop, then you obviously didn’t fill out the forms right.

Maybe I’m completely wrong.

Oh, I hope so. A mechanical process to develop my human career! How wonderful!

Here’s to fun and light-hearted enjoyment with my fellow workers!

(Come to think of it….. that’s all I ever really wanted in a job I think anyway!)

(Please, don’t take me too serious, otherwise HR will get mad at me. And you know how bad that can be for a career.)

J

Classical Programmers are both Scientists and Artists

Team,

 

There is a difference between a senior level programmer that takes pride in his work and whoever the junior hack is that gets away with writing this kind of spaghetti code. Unfortunately the spaghetti coder continually gets away with it, probably getting recognition for “getting it done”, and the “bloat-ware” left in the wake gets ingrained in the systems—awaiting to be undone, reinterpreted, and corrected—taking 2-3x or more the time and the money. All the while the bloat code sits there running however well it runs most likely frustrating customers and anyone who looks at it in vain hopes of trouble-shooting or updating.

 

The first breed are classically trained and know how computers like to think. They relish slicing to the bone the most direct and most elegant route for bits to travel. They are artists and scientists.

 

The second breed are those that pass themselves as “programmers” and have learned to cut n’ paste, experiment, and piece code together till somehow it seems to work and they get their paycheck never looking back.

 

Much to the pride of this team, Ian Laird is one of the few masters from this first breed.

 

To me, he exemplifies the standard of this ideal for the whole industry.

 

(End of toast…. You may shed a tear, applaud and bring out the statuette.) J

 

Seriously though,

Mitch

 

Gas them Protesters.... and Watch the Birds

Man... Twitter really is the new news media. And they're gassing the "Occupiers" in Oakland now. Nice. Let's see if FOX covers it tonight on the news.

And on the brighter side of life, nature is still rolling on. Here's photo I took of a Painted Bunting in my bird bath.