slamboard

People often make the assertion that government and big business are in bed together. I was thinking about that expression and thinking about environmental issues this morning. It dawned on me that everyone on the planet is also in a proverbial bed with the politicians and the multinational corporations.

When I was a young child, I slept at night in a king-sized bed with my older brother and my younger brother. It was inevitable that my younger brother would pee the bed, at least occasionally. My big brother defensively pushed his two younger brothers over to an area that was less than half the bed. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

Please note: The sites that I have linked to in this post have not been thoroughly examined and may not be objectively critical or entirely accurate.

I would love to catch an episode of Gossip Girl on The CW. The series is based on a popular series of novels written by Cecily von Ziegesar for teens. The TV show comes from the guys that brought us the OC. Neither of these shows are aimed straight at my demographic, but Gossip Girl intrigues me for one particular reason. The main character and narrator is a BLOGGER. Having watched my share of television in the past, I can assume that almost everyone reads this blog and that almost no one knows who is writing it.

Anonymity is not that hard to maintain on the Internet. I know that people have done it in different ways and to different degrees. It is always a mistake, however, to use the shield of anonymity on the Internet as an aid to making baseless claims about other people.

I also have to assume that the main character in Gossip Girl tends to tell dramatically damaging truths. The gossip on the TV show centers around the high school and the community in a posh area of Manhattan. There are cliques and outsiders and lots of conflict. The Internet gossip probably has far reaching consequences.

And that is all that I have to say about that.

Facebook seems to have joined the list of social websites that I join and then eventually abandon. I am sure that a large portion of the people who joined are very enthusiastic and check in multiple times daily. I go for weeks without thinking about it.

The simple explanation would be ‘Martin is an introvert.’

I don’t think it is that simple. I am generally an active member of one forum or another and I have been for a few years. I saw one board through from start to finish and mourned its passing. I think I just do not value social activity for its own sake. Maybe I am selfish.

Just so people don’t think I am bashing Facebook, I think MySpace is boring too.

I think the Internet Consulting business has changed a lot over the years. I have only become tangentially involved with web development very recently and I hear about a wide range of customers in terms of expectations and programming and design knowledge. It must have been easier in some ways a decade ago when a web designer could safely assume that their customer knew nothing and that they would be amazed by whatever rudimentary functions could be installed on a site back then. Nowadays, many customers have actually built a website or two all by themselves. These customers know that a full blown eCommerce site with all the modern bells and whistles is beyond their own capabilities, but they also know how to look at code and they are not impressed easily.

The Internet Consulting firm that you can find at http://www.teraeon.com is flexible enough to jump in and help a client with one small aspect of a development project or they can tackle the creation of an eStore or any other type of site from scratch. The list of coding languages that they work with is impressive and exhaustive. ASP.Net, ASP, PHP, JSP, C#, Java, Visual Basic, Perl, XML, DHTML, Javascript … that seems like just about all of the useful languages for web development. I am proud to say that I have heard of every one of them and I would even recognize two or three of them if they fell on me.

I was browsing through their portfolio and I found a really cool Interactive Workstation Design Tool™ on an office furniture website. I do not know if Teraeon created this application. Even if they did not, it is still a case where an eCommerce site has been outfitted with a cool application that no doubt separates the business from its competition. I guess I can also mention that this application caught my attention and drew me in to this site. I had to stop writing this post and email the link to a friend.

The first thing I want to get out of the way is a quick comment about the term Tipping Point. My source for the news about Amazon selling MP3s without any digital rights management software attached used the phrase Tipping Point, but apologized for its overuse. I think the use of the term Tipping Point has reached a Tipping Point.

I was just contemplating making my first ever portable MP3 player purchase and this news sounds really encouraging. We can expect lower prices for legally purchased songs as a price war ensues.

I have only ever purchased music online once or twice from small record companies. I mostly get free stuff from small record companies or simply listen to music on YouTube. If buying popular new releases becomes very inexpensive, the demand might increase to a surprising degree. The hard part will be changing the habits of people who are happily stealing music.

You can read this entire post before you make up your mind about AnchorBayTile.com, or you can just go look at pictures of really stunning kitchens and baths finished in glass tile, ceramic tile and other types of tile.

My present residence has tile floors throughout and ceramic tile in the kitchen and the bathroom. I love it. Tile is attractive and easy to clean. They are cool to the touch, which it great all summer. In the winter, we wear slippers. The counter tops in our kitchen are tile as well. Ceramic tile is not easily damaged by something like the bottom of a hot baking pan. I remember my mother’s counter tops telling a long family history of minor accidents. I don’t know what you call the material that were on her counters. I call it ‘That 70’s Composite Material.’

I have a neighbor that renovated and he installed an in-floor heating system under a beautiful tile floor. That has to be one of the most comfy homes that I have visited in ages. I always mention the option of in-floor heating to people who are planning new construction and tile is a great compliment to this home feature.

AnchorBayTile.com has a great variety of glass and ceramic tile and they provide flat rate shipping to 50 States. One unique offering that they feature is solid pewter accent tiles. The 2″ tiles come in over 130 different patterns.

You may not know that many companies that are household names make use of prison labor in the United States. The cliche is prisoners making license plates for the state, or doing road work.

Corporations are pretty quiet about the contracts they have with UNICOR and other companies that operate prisons. There is just no way to put a pretty face on the practice. There is a chance that when you call customer service the person answering the phone will be a convict. My source indicated that there were prison call centers in almost every state in America.

The biggest critics of these programs are, not surprisingly, the competition. Defenders say that the prisons are competing with outsourcing not domestic call centers.

My biggest concern is that a people who profit from the prison system are not going to be motivated to curb the growth of the prison population through positive social change. One sad aspect of this is that prisoners who are indirectly working for big corporations have no hope of getting the same kind of work for that employer on the outside. That is just wrong.

Mexico is part of North America. I dealt with lots of truckers in some of my past employment. I had a basic understanding of the rules and regulations for trucking between Canada and the US. I didn’t realize until just recently how much stricter things were on the Southern border of the US. I found out because I read the news that things were changing.

I think the changes will be good for business in general and it might create some different opportunities for experienced Mexico heavy hauling companies like LGI. LGIInc.com is your link to Vans, flatbeds, stepdecks, double drop, removable gooseneck and even specialized heavy haul trucking. They are a member of the Specialized Carriers and Rigging Association. They can provide solutions for people that need to move heavy construction components or factory equipment and at the other end of things they handle your ‘less than truckload’ cargo as well. I don’t remember whether they were involved with trucking the ridiculously heavy 20 foot high piece of equipment that my boss purchased, but they may have. Our ceiling was 19′ 8 ” by the way.

I learned two things about the relationship between exercise and body fat. The first thing I learned is that the report that medical scientists write for each other are way too complicated to for me to fully grasp much less paraphrase in a blog post.

Luckily I was able to learn something worthwhile from a press release crafted by the same scientists.

Studies are showing that when people eat a high fat meal and then exercise, fats get oxidized and broken down into healthier molecules. This happens in the skeletal muscle tissue. The press release is actually pretty good reading.

Calling the membership with MaternitySavings.com Pregnant Insurance is a bit of an over simplification. Basically the MaternityCard has a monthly membership fee and it entitled you to a comprehensive maternity program. All aspects of your maternity care is covered.

What you are essentially doing is joining a group of health care consumers that are represented by the Maternity Savings company. You benefit from their buying power, industry relationships and oversight. they guarantee that they will save you money.

You will save at least the cost of the yearly membership or they will pay you the difference and $200. They also extend the benefits for twelve more months free of charge. Keep in mind that they are also working to assure the highest quality of care.