JamesSavik

Yes. It's fun and it pays well. There is a satisfaction when you plug it all in and it works.

When I go shopping for pleasure, there are two things I look at: books are #1 but tools are a close 2nd. [ My friends tease me by calling me a lesbian. :wacko: ] Yes- I have computer tools but I also have all sorts of other tools. As I do networks, conduits and cable are a big part of networking. For that you need to be able to bend conduit, cut it, drill holes for fastners, attach grounds and cut percise holes in a number of different building materials. I'm not so much a gear-head per see but I seem to know instinctly or quickly figure out how machines work and can fix darn near anything.

Money is good when it brings out the best in some motivating them to use their intelligence and energy to better their condition. It can also have the oppisite effect when greedy people want something for nothing and are willing to do anything to get it. You can only give money the label of neutral. Any good or bad is a matter of personal motives.

I am a neat freak in certian areas. When it comes to my tools, they are always sparkling clean and in just the right place. My computer is the same: always defragged, spyware zapped, swept for viruses, trash removed and temporary files deleted. Way back when when I first started with computers, RAM and hard drive space were tiny and at a premium price so I'm picky about wasting drive space. And NO! ADA, 2 C compilers, Perl and 3 C++ compilers isn't wasted drive space!

>>they used a chemical substance to alter the flies' perception. No. They used a substance that forced a gene to turn on. Big difference. Wake up after beer and you might be hung over. Wake up after having a gene changed and the change is permament.

On my pile at the moment: Smithsonian Earth Pandemic: the New Killer Plagues

I had a neat freak room mate once. As far as I know, the body has never been found.

Happy Pagan Egg Day! May your women be fertile and your corps grow large... or is it may your crops be fertile and your women grow large??

There are different sorts of cravings but the most basic kind tells our mind what our bodies really need to eat. Granted, you don't need carrot cake, but there is a pleasure payoff when you satisfy a craving which is positive reinforcement for getting what your body needs. Other sorts of cravings, like for carrot cake and choclate, may be based in a need and a want- the need: low blood sugar and want: choclate. Odd cravings during pregnancy are definitly hormonal and be careful with them. Giving into odd cravings during pregnancy can make you real sick (as if preganacy wasn't quite enough to handle).

I don't think so. I had a six month relationship with a guy that was intoxicatedly beautiful and horribly bad for me that took me six years to get over. Love is like a fast car: when you're in the groove, it feels real good. When it goes bad you can crash and burn and hurt so bad you wish for death. My advice? Wear a f-ing helmet.

As a good ole boy from the country far be it from me to be critical of getting frisky in the woods. That being said, I must warn beginners that poison ivy, chiggers and skeeters can get in some of the damnedest places.

I am talking to a big contractor who does a lot of work overseas. Here at home my job prospects are OK but not stunning and the contractor is interested in me to run multi-million dollar data and telecommunications projects. If I spent 6 years there with bonuses, I could retire comfortably and live anywhere I want in the US, Canada or Australia a millionaire. Chance of a lifetime or very serious trap? The catch??? The job is in Iraq and Afghanistan building a new national communications infrastructure. You honestly didn't think I'd post an easy one did you???

I think we've gotten fairly glib about the way we throw the word addiction around. Computers are tools- or at least that's the theory. Would we say that a carpenter is addicted to his hammer?

If various issues are handled well, they can be instructional. For instance, on the subject of drugs/addiction, I've heard alot of misunderstanings, projections and oft-repeated lies. Addicts don't start out as addicts. The substances that they use influence their behavior in ways both subtle and gross. It takes years of addiction to get to the point to where they don't care about anything but drugs. Addicts progress (or fall apart) at different rates depending on what they are using and their peers. Example: Speed Freaks aren't your typical junkie. Most of them take speed to perform in school, sports or their job. A typical speed freak might be a high acheiver that started taking speed for exams and decided that he didn't want to give up that edge. He might be a trucker who wants to put another thousand miles behind him. Example: another atypical type addict is the seeker. This is a person who is highly artistic or spiritual and finds that hallucagenic drugs like LSD or mushrooms open up a whole new world to them that they can tap for creativity or inspiration. [Andy Warhol?] (Other junkies call this place cartoon land. ) The problem is one of authenticity. To write about addicts and addiction, you've got to know what you are talking about. There's much more too it than party, party, party. There's the waking up after being high for days at a time. There's trying to sleep and you just can't because you are still too high. There's waking up feeling suicidal because what you took depleted the dopamine in your brain. Research can fill in the gaps but be careful who you take to heart. There are people who are as every bit fanatically anti-drug as there are people who are addicted. Years and years of gov't sponsered propaganda has confused a mental health issue with one of willful criminality.

I think that "new" characters in a story have to "fit" or they may seem contrived. By "fitting" into the story, this is very, very subjective. Friends or X'es popping up out of nowhere have to be handled with care. There has to be enough common ground for them to be friends and lovers but the old maxim opposites attract also applies. The back-story and the relationship has to make sense. eg. David is a neat freak but his friend Frank is a slob. They were room mates for a while but couldn't stand living together. Now they are close friends who share a fanatical devotion to the Chicago Bears and the scene on the South side. Here we have opposites (neat freak/slob) with common ground (da Bears and da South Side). [not that i've ever been to Chicago] eg. Cam and Jerry are X'es. They met at college where they both majored in biology with an eye toward med school later on. Problem is that Cam is out and Jerry ain't. Jerry can't come out- his Mormon family would freak out. They'll turn a blind eye as long as the party line is that Cam and Jerry are best friends. Cam feels alienated and came out in the first place because he was tired of lying. In this example we see how the couple came together and the issue that broke them up. People aren't aliens. They may behave strangely but there is usually some method to everyones madness. Even the acts of crazy people make sense to themselves and might make sense to you too if you heard the same voices and saw the same hallucinations. It is up to the author to give the reader as little or as much information to figure that out. Some characters may exist on the periphery of the story at at some point play a more important role. eg. Frank and Mikie are on the same soccer team as Jack, John, Tommy and Kevin. Any one of the four could become more important at some point later in the story. Frank and Mikie are best friends and know all of the others. At some point in the story Kevin gets hit by a car and becomes a more important role in the story as his friends support his recovery. In my own long story Broken, the character Brian isn't known at the beginning of the story but he is introduced, and becomes more and more important as the story progresses. He may have been a "new" character but his position was established and we got to know him through activities, actions and dialogue. My 2 cents on the subject which may be worth about face value. :wacko:

What if he says I love you... I'm shocked I wonder about this persons taste I wonder what the hidden agenda is I think I'm about to be scammed I say, "look, is that Elvis at the KFC?" *Runs away like hellfire is on his heels*

I love animals... with A-1 sauce. Granted: some people are cruel to animals raised for food like cows and chickens. Some people are cruel to dogs and cats. There is a humane way to raise, care for and dare I say slaughter food animals and if the farmers can't be bothered or are sick-o enough to get off on the pain inflicted, they need to be out of the business and on a shrinks sofa. People who would do that to animals, their next stop is people.

I usually pore honey all over them and stake them out for the fire ants.

sir

I hate texting with a phone. It's very difficult to say anything.

These meds can be a problem, even in trace amounts, because medications are engineered to bind themselves to receptor sites on human cells or microorganisms. At the micro level only a single molecule is necessary to establish a chemical binding on a receptor site. This binding always results in something unwanted or unnecessary to happen. In most cases this results in cell death. An antibiotics action on microorganism in the wild is even worse. In the same way that we can be vacinated against some diseases by a very low dose or exposure to disease organisms, some bacteria become immune to entire classes of antibiotics. They pass this immunity own to their progeny. If this bacteria is pathogenic, the human victim and his doctors are in for a big surprise when they try standard antibiotic therepies for illnesses and infections like strep throat that have responded to penecillian series antibiotics for generations.

What was left out of this article: The reason that antibiotics in the environment is a big problem is that it causes drug resistence in some strains of bacteria- typically the ones that can become a problem like strep or staph. Hormones in food and the water supply can cause petty adolescence in children- the onset of adolescence years in advance of its natural onset. One of the most common ways for disposing of drugs is to flush them down the toilet: please don't. Chemicals like antibiotics are nearly impossible to completely filter out of water short of making it into a vapor and then recondensing it. Another way is through waste from people who are taking them. Anti-biotics are not only found in drugs but household cleaning supplies. While these are different from perscription drugs, they serve the same purpose. Whether we believe in evolution or not, it chugs along quite oblivious to anyones opinions. In the realm of microorganisms, generations occur in a matter of hours and evolution/mutation works much faster than any other sphere of biology. Please dispose of anti-biotics with care. Treat it like a hazardous chemical.

Tristan- This is a real tricky fine line. There are a lot of men who really enjoy having sex with other men but they do not consider themselves gay. They marry, have kids and all the hetero trimmings but they have a hobby: they like to have sex with other men. To get to this place some real twisted psycological stuff is going on. Typically they are acting out of religious, strong family pressure/expectations or fear of social consequences. With some fraction of these people they can love the sex and hate themselves at the same time. Having gay sex and accepting your sexuality are two competely different things. The guy that only has or wants gay sex when he is drunk is a classic case. By being drunk he rationalizes that since he was drunk and out of control, he isn't REALLY gay. I know it sounds stupid and shallow but the head games that closet cases play with themselves are like this.

The NFL Network is airing a special about Brett Farve's career called Farve 5-ever

Religion, Does it matter? I don't care as you don't try it on me.