Scientific Speculations

SCIENCE FICTION

admin — Thu, 15 May 2008 21:21:53 +0000

My old bookcase finally toppled over the other night. An East Village Chicago neighborhood directory, magazines, old notebooks, my science fiction and fantasy novels, all those classic literature novels I read back in school all spilled into a huge pile on my living floor and then the bookcase itself came down on top of them. I knew I should have had that thing nailed to the wall to make sure it stayed up there, but I’m renting the place and I’m moving in a few months and I didn’t feel like it. In fact, when I moved in, I should have gotten out the money and gotten a new bookcase. It didn’t have to be brand new, but not so old and sturdier. But that’s the type of thing I always leave to the last minute. And now I just paid for it. I’ll have to pick up all my books and clean up the wreck here and then I’ll have to go and buy a new bookcase anyway. I should just go online and look. Some people give away free furniture when they’re moving because they don’t have room for it and just want to get rid of it. That’s what I should have done with the old bookcase.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

admin — Tue, 13 May 2008 23:43:55 +0000

I’ve been working in the IT department of my company for the last three plus years and I have absolutely loved it. I’m a computer geek by nature, so troubleshooting, networking and programming are things that I can pretty much do with my eyes closed. When my boss called me into his office at the end of last week and informed me that I was going to be the new chairperson of the committee responsible for formulating a plan for disaster recovery, I honestly wasn’t as thrilled as some people probably would have been. I mean – that sounds like an awful lot of work and pressure for a guy who’s pretty much a slacker. I don’t want to be saddled with all of that responsibility and I certainly don’t want to be in charge of something as large and important as the protection of all of the company’s data, that job should go to someone who is diligent, organized and resourceful – all things that I am not. If my boss new my true nature and the fact that barely ten percent of companies that suffer large losses of pertinent data survive, I think that he may reconsider his selection of chairperson. I may be a decent guy to have in the office, but I’m not the guy who you depend on to protect your assets.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

admin — Tue, 13 May 2008 23:43:17 +0000

I’ve been working in the IT department of my company for the last three plus years and I have absolutely loved it.

I’m a computer geek by nature, so troubleshooting, networking and programming are things that I can pretty much do with my eyes closed.

When my boss called me into his office at the end of last week and informed me that I was going to be the new chairperson of the committee responsible for formulating a plan for

disaster recovery,

I honestly wasn’t as thrilled as some people probably would have been.

I mean – that sounds like an awful lot of work and pressure for a guy who’s pretty much a slacker.

I don’t want to be saddled with all of that responsibility and I certainly don’t want to be in charge of something as large and important as the protection of all of the company’s data, that job should go to someone who is diligent, organized and resourceful – all things that I am not.

If my boss new my true nature and the fact that barely ten percent of companies that suffer large losses of pertinent data survive, I think that he may reconsider his selection of chairperson.

I may be a decent guy to have in the office, but I’m not the guy who you depend on to protect your assets.

DRAINAGE SYSTEM

admin — Tue, 13 May 2008 18:49:27 +0000

We had to move our office to another area in our office building. It is because of the heavy rains we had last week. Our boss called and said the owners had called and left a message that the roof had partially caved in from the heavy rains. I bet that means either the drainage systems was not properly installed or the building is not up to code somehow. Good thing we have been looking at data storage solutions for a while now and are trying a new way to access our data files remotely. We are glad that we started that project several months ago. That means most of our data is already backed up off-site. We do have some cleanup to do though and may have to restore some of our paper files. We all had to cut short our long in order to get our office up and functioning again. It was not an easy thing to do, and took up most of the weekend and most of the following week. But we finally made some headway and at least could use our phones and computers again but the next Thursday. The building owners were very helpful in that regard.

HORRIBLE FUMES

admin — Tue, 13 May 2008 18:09:26 +0000

There used to be a retirement community across the street from the high school I attended. As you can probably imagine, teenaged slackers and overly antagonistic retirees did not get along. Being the elderly, they are the ones that actually vote and have nothing to do all day but sit around and complain about the state of the world. Teenagers would take any excuse to duck out of class and mill around in the parking lot smoking cigarettes. Inevitably, the two sides clashed. Often, the school got calls from the retirement community’s residents, complaining that there were students outside smoking and that those horrible fumes were infecting everyone at the home. The dean would sigh and explain that he was aware of the smokers, but he wasn’t able to catch them and some of them were seniors and legally able to smoke. Then the residents would call when they thought the students were driving too fast. Most of the time, we were. In fact, a few times, we even drag-raced each other. Still, if the dean didn’t see it, there wasn’t much he could do but give us all a stern lecture. Sometimes, he’d smirk though. We had all seen those flames painted on the side of his hot rod, the one he drove to school every single day. He also carried around a zippo lighter, though no one ever saw him smoke.

OIL CHANGES

admin — Tue, 13 May 2008 17:39:49 +0000

When looking at my car nowadays, you would never believe that it’s barely even a year old. I own the thing and can barely tell. It’d take a power washing Illinois Colorado to even see that the car is red and not some kind of brown color. You’d need some kind of huge hose and just spray it down for hours and hours with it. Add some soap and you might actually be able to tell that there’s a Saturn Ion 2007 somewhere beneath all that and that it’s also a pretty nice looking car. It’s a comfortable ride, has a lot of space, the air conditioning works great, and the trunk’s big. I’ve even heard some people swear they’d never buy any other car but a Saturn because they’re just so efficient. But there are a few things you have to do to take care of a car. It takes more than just putting gas into it to make it run properly. You need oil changes every 3,000 miles and you should get your tires rotated at least every 6,000 as well. Every year or so, you should get a tune up. You shouldn’t just wait for something to go wrong with your car. You need to be ready and take care of it.

OUTSIDE SOLICITATION

admin — Mon, 12 May 2008 21:51:49 +0000

There has been quite a bit of outside soliciting at work lately. I definitely have to wonder what exactly is the policy on people soliciting in the store, usually it is no soliciting allowed but no one seems to say anything. To me it is very aggravating to get to my car and find some Washington DC Bankruptcy flier slapped on my windshield. Especially when it is raining and I do not notice it before I get in my car. Then I have to get back out in the rain to get it off the windshield. Then there are the kids that stand outside the door and ask people to give them money for their basketball team. It is actually really annoying to be honest. Every time I step out of the door I get mobbed by about four kids at once asking if I want to pay five dollars for candy bars or M&M’s that I can get for fifty cents across the street. Even just last Saturday a guy came in with a bag of fliers for his pizza pace and just started walking through the departments and handing them out to everybody. It was completely random to say the least, but I guess we cannot turn away anybody.

HOME TOWN HERO

admin — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:59:39 +0000

Here I was, after years of working like a dog, and I'm filing in Flint Bankruptcy. It is a hard thing for your ego to endure. Especially because I had worked so hard not to ever be in this kind of position. I had gone to school and studied, I had made investments, I had worked long and hard a job that I tolerated, and to end up this way takes a lot out of me. I could blame others, or the economy, but the fact is, I did this myself. I wasn't on guard enough, not careful enough. I had not been watching the signs in the economy, like I had when I was younger. I had gotten sloppy. I had purchased a number of houses, and rented them and then started rehabbing other ones. Plus I worked at my job. I had the world by the tail. I was going places. I was set — so I thought. Suddenly I couldn't find renters for the houses, and got behind in the loans. Then I couldn't sell the houses I was rehabbing. I was robbing Peter to pay Paul, but I was managing to keep afloat, until I lost my job. I had criticized the local advertising campaign for the hotel, which featured a kind of home town hero, Michael Moore. We had catered mostly to business visitors a the hotel, but with the auto industry and after market industry doing poorly, we had to branch out to vacationers.

ROCKET SCIENCE

admin — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:30:03 +0000

It’s not rocket science. I am a good babysitter. Parents talk among themselves and now I am a popular babysitter too. I have more job offers than I can handle. The phone rings off the hook especially on Fridays when I get home from school. By the time I get there, there are messages on the message board by the phone, and they are mostly for me. I think I like doing this. I don’t think I will enjoy working at the indoor golf house as much. I wonder if I would get distracted by my friends if I worked there. I am a very sociable person and might get sidetracked in my job and then I might get yelled at by my boss. Marty is always talking to a friend, but she seems to be able to work and not just stop and talk. She does not talk long to anyone either. I noticed that when I went to see her and she told me she had to get back to work and she would talk later. I think she was too tired though, and she had to go home and finish her homework that she had started earlier.

TARGETED TRAFFIC

admin — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:28:05 +0000

There is one factor that holds strong at being the main key to any webpage and the services or products the page offers. This key is site traffic. It is an opportunity to sell your product or get your message heard to whom you want to hear it. That being said it is crucial that a site receive targeted traffic to maximize conversions. To understand this, one must also understand what targeted traffic is. It is website visitors that are interested in the content and what services/products the site offers. As an example, a site selling surfboards will ideally attract targeted traffic such as consumers interested in purchasing or surfboard. Unfortunately this is not always the case. If the site is not well known, not many people will find the site unless they know the specific URL. This is where SEO comes in. A website can attract targeted traffic in many ways. They provide content on their page with keywords that are popular among those who are interested in purchasing a surfboard. This will help the site achieve a high listing on the search engines. They may also advertise on sites with traffic that they want to visit their site. The most reliable way to receive targeted traffic is by borrowing or recycling traffic. At this point purchasing traffic is the quickest way to receive targeted traffic. This is done through search engines like Google, Yahoo, or MSN. The surfboard company would purchase an advertisement from the aforementioned search engines. The ad will appear anywhere between fifteen minutes or three days.