kindproject

hot chicks make you do dumb things

Posted by jonathan - 30/12/07 at 08:12:45 am

Topping off a disappointing year from the yanks, Jim Leyritz killed a bartender he probably knew at the end of a night drinking with this playboy playmate, 16 years his younger. I always liked Leyritz’s balls to the wall mentality, but unknown to me until this story surfaced he was a big drug user as well - hgh and amphetamines.

Having made plenty of mistakes in my teens and twenties I can understand stupidity especially when combined with birthday antics, drinking and hot women. Women who look like this should know what modern day trouble they can cause even a modest man. While this was 100% completely Jim’s fault, every man needs to know his life can change in th matter of seconds, for better or worse.

Mazda3 2008 s Touring 5-Door

Posted by jonathan - 29/12/07 at 10:12:37 pm

mitchell report fallout boy

Posted by jonathan - 28/12/07 at 04:12:49 pm

following up on my post about the mitchell report, I just listened to the clemens youtube denial video. He does not seem to understand the andy pettite offered, bill clinton perfected, I smoked but did not inhale theory for public image maintenance.
I had a hard time when clemens first came over from the sox via toronto back in ‘99, but I warmed up to him over the years. He was always know as a hard worker, a bit gruff, and a guy with a short fuse. All these qualities make it hard to pin the proverbial tail on the donkey here. The roid rage does not really stick and the typical hgh induce blow up bobble-head thing does not really work either as his head always matched his ego. Having been taking steroids for psoriasis and eye problems for ~10 years and having packed 15 pounds on in the last year, who knows what the guy did. He should pay attention to his adopted lefty brother pitcher in arms and admit guilt on a technicality. Americans love a recovering addict exhibit 1, George Bush exhibit 2 Don Imus, Exhibit 3 Britney, Lindsey, Paris, Pete Doherty, Amy Winehouse….

comment spam part II

Posted by jonathan - 27/12/07 at 09:12:32 am

Strange things happen in order to sell crap on the internet. I posted recently about the joys of comment spam combat since picking up the blog habit again. After posting a few items I was flooded with a 100 items of ridiculousness. I had comment moderation turned on but that does not seem democratic enough to me. I turned it off and opted in for a 3p service enabling the Akismet wordpress plug-in and a captcha filter. My buddy, Noam, informed me he could not post so I turned off these features, but for some reason the comment spam has failed to resurface.

Could the timing be related to indexing? Could it be that the spammers target bigger sites and somehow figured out the relative unimportance of my postings? Could the deluge be right around the corner and I’m just sitting here in Johnstown. Not like I’m going to implement anything soon, but I came across these two interesting posts lately.

NyTimes - Spammers Employ Stripper to Crack Security

Ned Batchhelder - Stopping spambots with hashes and honeypots

christmas, chinese food and gingerbreadmen

Posted by jonathan - 26/12/07 at 11:12:11 am

Happy holidays to everyone, whether that means gifts under the tree, your local favorite chinese food or any other excuse to spend some time with friends and family. the kind family project came up with a new tradition this year - decorating gingerbread men! Once again the manhattan twist, makers mark, sweet vermouth and cherry brandy resulted in some colorful snaps which reminded me of the traveling gnome prank.

Mariana’s came out nice while mine seemed to have just come back from battle :0)

mitchell report

Posted by jonathan - 24/12/07 at 09:12:05 am

between trade talks mostly around pitchers my rss feeder blew up when the mitchell report dropped like a sack of hot potatoes. Unlike most people who just comment on the comments, I dug deeper and read the source. Well at least the 40 page executive summary, not the $20 million dollar 409 page war and peace want-a-be. First and foremost the report seems quite skewed towards giving the beat down to ny teams. The naming of names seems to come from the under-belly / illegal immigrant class of workers, the trainers and personal coaches for these superstars who make upwards of a quarter billion dollars. Yeah a quarter billion with a capital B! When theres a shit-load of money to be made I can’t blame people for gaming america’s past time. If valid, the most ingenious part is the see-saw career tactics of players like Roger Clemens, the theory is that the part time status allows for timed cycling of the performance enhancing drugs sinister yet brilliant. Having just listened to a viagra and then a lipitor ad which followed an interesting news piece about the 30,000 people with electrical brain implants for conditions such as parkisons disease. Its about time we get over the fact that our country’s pastime is as much entwined with pill popping quick fixes as it is with a game most people find too slow and long to give two shits about. Large numbers of people did steroids and hgh, big deal. Don’t discredit the hard work and competition.

death and taxes

Posted by jonathan - 23/12/07 at 07:12:54 am

I was poking around on a buddy’s new site, ohmygov, and came across an interesting visual of government spending. The budget graph uses a pictograph to display the relative size of different areas of money that is taken from you and spent by washington. I am always amazed at how people fail to make the connections between gov spending and their daily lives. I quick glance at the graph shows how much of it is dominated by military spending and how little goes to education and health care. This poster is going up at my office and should be a good information radiator as we go into the 2008 presidential throw-down.

hiding behind 35mpgs

Posted by jonathan - 22/12/07 at 12:12:42 pm

Meant to write about this a few days ago, but a not so well informed post over at my buddy foo’s sites, a polish strangely republican guy, which gave general praise to the prez on the recent energy bill sparked my otherwise lazy ass to put my thoughts together. While Yahoo’s headline reads, “Bush signs bill boosting fuel standards”, and the Atlanta Consitution-Journal reads, “Energy bill brightens prospects”. A deeper read and commentary over at renewableenergyaccess.com starts by saying:

Everyone in the renewable energy community tried to put a good face on it, but let’s face it — we have a second recent Energy Bill with little support for renewable energy and energy efficiency.

I continue to lose faith in the Janus faces of our governments and state loud and proud in Google we trust. Not only are they, and hopefully soon to be me, working on rechargeit,

RechargeIT is a Google.org initiative that aims to reduce CO₂ emissions, cut oil use and stabilize the electrical grid by accelerating the adoption of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and vehicle-to-grid technology.

but I recently found out they are also working on RE < C

Clean and affordable energy is a growing need for our company, so we’re excited about launching RE < C , a strategic initiative whose mission is to develop electricity from renewable sources cheaper than electricity produced from coal. Initially, this project to create renewable energy cheaper than coal will focus on advanced solar thermal power, wind power technologies, and enhanced geothermal systems – but we’ll explore other potential breakthrough technologies too.

mexico: the ugly side of micro-loans

Posted by jonathan - 20/12/07 at 04:12:27 am

My wife and most of our DC friends cut their business teeth working in international development. The field is a great place to learn as I knew many early twenty-somethings who managed global workforces, developed contract and procurement skills while managing multi-million dollar budgets their business counter-parts are only given the responsibility for in their thirties. Many of our conversations center on themes of charity vs greed, but business week hit another interesting one this week with their article, Mexico: The ugly side of micro-loans. It was an interesting note that this market in particular is very good at paying their debt because of social pressure. I wonder what will happens Mexican and American values merge in the 21st century.

on language

Posted by jonathan - 16/12/07 at 01:12:15 pm

William Saffire’s on language series, a mix of cultural observation with obscure tidbit oriented history, has become one of my favorite Sunday reads. Today’s subject body wash has been on my mind for sometime, but I’ll let the master of language get into the details…

In our retronymic age, the stand-alone noun soap is washed up. It now needs a modifier, producing bar soap to distinguish it from body wash.

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