Love, Purpose and Belief

We have an uncanny way of complicating even the simplest of things. Go into any bookstore and you will find an overwhelming selection of spiritual, psychological and/or philosophical books that each offer their own unique "prescription" on how to achieve happiness in this life. I've read quite of few of them myself. Though I have found many that gave good advice, I think the best I ever received was from a very smart, (and very pretty), lady. She said that there was only three things needed to achieve happiness in this life:

• Something to do
• Something to believe in
• Someone to love

Years later, and several more read books underneath my belt, I realize it's probably the best piece of advice I've ever been given. Oftentimes the best suggestions are the simplest. Ever hear of Occam's Razor?

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Paris In 100

Learn Forex Trading From A Pro

 Wordpress

Taking the advice of a lot of tech savvy people, I finally took the plunge and set up a Wordpress blog. Over the holiday weekend, (while everyone else was drinking beer), I was tweaking this. Not to toot my own horn, but I think all the hard work paid off.  It involved a lot of trial and error. I didn’t know shit about php…and I still don’t, but now I can at least fake it.

Guys, Wordpress is groovy, but so is Google. I’ll not abandon this blog. I won’t forget where I came from. Ciao.

Psychology 101: AKA Common Sense

Common sense is not that common. I guess that is fairly self-evident. We, (myself included), often need to be reminded of certain basic truisms about human behavior. One that I think we all have a tendency to forget at times is the concept of: "you reap what you sow". This is especially true in human relationships. If you are an anal, hyper-critical motherfucker, (excuse my French, but vulgarity is often the only way to adequately express a point), you can pretty much expect to be treated in the same fashion. This is pretty much a no-brainer, right? Yet, it's amazing how many people don't grasp this simple concept. These are the people that are shocked when the tables are turned and the shit that they have doing to people for years is suddenly done to them. What is equally amazing is that these are the very people that whine the most about "injustice". I can cite all kinds of pithy sayings that justify "karma", but it's a concept I don't really believe in. There's way too many assholes in the world for it to be in effect. It's really a lot simpler than that. Try living by the "golden rule".

Have an enlightened day.

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Something To Chew On

Why would you put a person that has "issues" with certain personal attributes in charge of people with those attributes?

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A Small Suggestion

Ethnocentric behavior is wrong irregardless of who is engaging in it. You can't very well expect people to be color/race blind when you are constantly emphasizing the differences.

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Film At 11

I have dabbled in the financial field for about thirty years. I say "dabbled" because I'm not very good at it. I'd be rich if I was. However, along the way I've observed a few interesting things; especially in the "creative financing" arena.

They say that behind every great fortune there is a crime. This is true more often than you think. Let me explain how several fortunes have been made in southern California.

There has always been an easy availability of fake ID's and social security cards in California. Before the DMV stiffened their requirements for obtaining a license, people were walking in with Baptismal certificates and getting them. Notice the increase of identify theft after 1989? Think that's a coincidence? If you can't create you own paper person, then you've got to assume someone's identity, no?

Now, take that little bit of knowledge and add the fact that an I9 form was even instituted until...what 1988? Prior to that an ID and SSN card was not required to prove you had someone on the payroll. I'm sure you see the ramifications of this. This is why, in the eighties, southern California was the credit card fraud capitol of America and why "ghost payrolling" was rampant.

Use your imagination for a minute and think this through. This has been going on for years. Think about what people were getting away with in, let's say, the twenties. Mind-boggling, isn't it? Just to give you a brief idea of what people have gotten away with, let me tell you a personal experience. I once ran a credit report on someone. It had twelve pages of judgments. The person existed only on paper. Trippy, huh?

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WTF?

Congress has just cut off the unemployment benefits for thousands of Americans. The U.S. governement has filed suit against Arizona for enforcing a law that is basically already on the books; a law that would put many of the unemployed to work. The question that begs to be answered here is: just who in the hell are these people working for? The American people? They certainly do not seem to have our best interests in mind.

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Promises

I recently made a promise to myself and to my huge following that I would write something every week. Having recently "reactivated" my Posterous account and configuring it, I can post to about 5 million different places by merely sending an email. How much easier can this get? Any services out there that actually write for you? (Actually, there are voice recognition programs that do...assuming you can talk. There really are no excuses anymore.)

A couple days ago I signed up for Stribe, a Twitter type community that I embedded on my website. It was introduced at Le Web and is now available to everyone. There are different communities you can join. I opted to join the technology circle. (What else would I join?) If you have a website, want to promote it, and join a clique of your choice; I suggest checking it out.

That constitutes "writing". It's time to push the big red button. Let's see if this gets posted to all the places I think it will. Cross your fingers.
 

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Hello!

It seems like the only time I write is when I’m mad about something. Well…something has been bothering me for a long time and it’s time to rant. (Don’t you just love the Internet?) This article will inevitably piss off a lot of people, (I’m really good at that), but at this point I don’t really care. It’s not like I’ve avoided pissing people off in the past. Getting my ass kicked on a semi-regular basis is probably indicative of that.

What’s been really bugging the shit out of me for a long time is the inability for me to like and dislike whomever I please. As a white boy that grew up on the south side of Chicago, (Jim Croce was right. It is the “baddest part of town”), and a subsequent resident of southern California, I know a little about being a “minority”. That in and of itself is no biggie. My problem is the presumption that I “like” everyone; that if you're an asshole and of another race I still have to pretend to worship the ground you walk on. Well…I hate pretending. It makes me feel like a phony and I refuse to do that.

I’ve seen this “race card” used entirely too many times. It has enabled certain people to do practically whatever they want. When common decency suffers because of the fear of being labeled a “racist”, it is time to put all the BS aside and get to what’s real.

This is America. People are free to like and dislike whatever or whomever they wish. Sorry to hurt your feelings, but it’s time to get over it.

Have a great day.

 

ADD, OCD, and the Internet

I’ve recently added 1938media to my Greader subscription list. One of the contributors, Adam Daniel Mezei, posts video blogs on a range of subjects. In a recent item he equated creativity with having VD. It is a rather strange comparison, but he did make a couple of interesting observations. The prime one being that one needs to exercise their craft on a daily basis. I don’t know about you, but I fail miserably in that department. It seems that everything else in the universe becomes more important than putting words together in some sort of coherent order. With that thought, let me conveniently dive into the subject of this article.

The Internet is a great resource; perhaps too great. Practically anything can be found if one knows how to search properly, but that is a con as well as a pro. With 25 tabs open, each with links to more pages, it’s easy to get diverted miles away from where you originally started. It starts off innocent enough.

Dude! I’ve got to try this new piece of software, but first I’ve got to watch the features video, read the documentation, download the other software that makes this piece work even better, read the forum, (which has suggestions about another programs that do the same thing…only better), and then I may unzip it and look at it tomorrow..along with the other PDFs and shit I downloaded.

Now, while I’ve done that, my Greader and Twitter accounts have both increased their entry count tenfold. I imagine you can see where this heads. When the OCD and the ADD kicks in, it’s time to walk away and reevaluate for a minute…before you go stark raving fuckin’ mad.

Happy surfin’

A Short Rant

From previous blog posts, I think it’s been established that I’m an alcoholic. (It’s a real bitch. “Let’s meet for drinks” is synonymous with: “Hey, mind if I shoot you in the head”.) It’s not like it’s been a really big secret anyway. Passing out in strange places will give people the impression that you just might have a small drinking problem. Anyway, this is not true confession time. I writing this post to point out something I’ve noticed. 

I’ve observed a tendency in certain people to attribute all of an alcoholic’s problems as a result of their drinking. This is a convenient excuse for nefarious mother******s to sabotage and screw over people. I’ve seen it happen and I hate it. Mean-spiritedness is one of my biggest pet peeves.

USDA Inspected Verbiage

I’m no tough guy, but there’s not a lot of stuff that truly frightens me. There has been way too much water under the bridge for that. There is, however, one thing that truly scares me and that is a blank computer screen… well, not totally blank of course. I mean a totally blank document in either Word or Live Writer that screams: “Feed me! I’m undernourished and need a high caloric intake of adjectives, adverbs, and nouns. No filler or fluff. I want pure, Grade A, USDA inspected verbiage.” This, for me, is more intimidating than facing a 300 pound angry drunk in a dark alley or starting a project with a new piece of graphics software. I guess that’s pretty self-evident when viewing the number of my recent blog entries.

Well, since I do have Live Writer open and am writing, I’m now obligated to express something of value to you, my illustrious audience.  Cover me. I’m going in.

Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time on the internet. Everyday I am astounded at the new technologies that are emerging and the things that people are doing with the existing ones. The science fiction of our grandparents is the reality of today. Just stop and think about this for a minute. You can type a few lines of code; mere words and symbols; and like magic a video appears that can be seen by anyone in the world with an internet connection. How in the hell would you have explained that to your great-grandmother? Arthur C. Clarke was right when he said: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” 

In the early eighties I studied computer hardware. I look back on the stuff we were working on and laugh. Hell, we learned to fix card readers for Christ sakes. (Remember those IBM cards?) A disk drive was huge. The actual disk was approximately the size of a record album (You do remember records, right?) and the reader was the size of a Volkswagen. Tape drives were huge versions of the reel to reel decks that audiophiles were using to record Tangerine Dream in the seventies. The CPUs were the size of a ‘58 Chrysler 300…just not quite as pretty. It’s been thirty years, (and a couple years of partying), so my memory is fuzzy on some things. If I remember right we were working on machines that ran IBM 386 assembler code. (Hey guys, help me out. Does that sound right?) I don’t remember the processing speed or the amount of RAM, but I’m pretty sure that this five year old, relatively cheap laptop has more processing ability than that monster did. The 16g flashdrive that I carry on my key ring probably has more memory than that beast had.

We’ve come a long way in thirty years. Can you imagine what’s coming in the next thirty? Perhaps this:"What your phone will do in the near future" is a good indication. In the immortal words of Dennis Hopper: “The future is a trip”.

A Walk In SB

A Walk In Downtown SB from John Bielecki on Vimeo.

Excuses

Ok, so I haven’t written anything on this blog for months…shoot me. I’ve been getting all these mysterious cyber-prompts to get off my ass and do something. I guess that’s expected when you follow several writers on Twitter and subscribe to creative-type RSS feeds.

Well, as excuses go, I’ve been busy. My website:Pier51.com, is my new toy and I’ve been…toying with it. A year ago I knew very little about constructing a site, but with the advice of a few friends and the incredible resources available on the net, I’ve been able to pass something off that resembles a viable web presence. Imagine that! A bonehead from the south side of Chicago with a webpage…miracles do exist. 

I will make a concerted effort from now on to write something on this thing at least once a week. Hopefully, it’s not mindless drivel.