I blog a body eclectic

You Can’t Trust The Critics

2010-05-10T11:54:00.001-07:00

Saturday I was sitting in a Burger King with my best friend getting an artery hardening treatment and reveling over the kids' meal toys we had each collected in support of Iron Man 2.

Channel 8, Austin's all news channel, was featuring a movie critic who was effectively panning the film. Now, I admit I am no film critic. And I do it proudly, because most of the film critics I have watched recently are ignorant luddites incapable of giving a good review to anything but movies which are so boring they are hard to keep your eyes open to watch.

This guy must have been reviewing a movie poster- because I know the idiot didn't see the movie we just left. Perhaps the critics are just trying to garner ratings with controversial reviews, maybe their panties are too tight, or perhaps they are just mean spirited dirt-wads trolling for newbies.

Well, the weekend started off slow for Iron Man 2. My opinion is that lots of people listened to the movie critics and their so-so reviews of the film until a few brave souls got past the picket lines formed by the lukewarm critics and word of mouth spread that Iron Man really was invincible.

By the time the weekend was over it was the fifth biggest first weekend at the box office in history. By movie critic standards that reduces the movies chances for an Oscar because it was too popular. Unless of course it is about a sinking ship, and a love affair, and is 194 minutes long. At least James Cameron also gave us Terminator and Avatar.

My friend was right… the first ones to go in the upcoming Zombie apocalypse should be parking lot designers and movie critics. Lawyers would be the next obvious target.

Clash of the Titans

2010-04-22T04:41:00.001-07:00

The Church. The State. Big Business. Name your iconoclast here. We need these organizations. But there are inherent problems.

In my last blog I ranted about how political extremism unnerves me. And worse, how I hate to be mail-bombed with everybody’s junk mail on the subject. Before you paint me pink you should know I don’t like mail forwards to begin. I’ll save that for another day right now.

Okay, I bit off a big chunk today. My bad. I once heard a preacher say that one of the things that made sense to him was that the Church and the State had rolled through history correcting each other along the way. The clash between these two titans pulling things into a general balance. Not hard to see.

I have friends who have worked really hard for a lot of years and have been more fortunate than most to have many beautiful things as a result their efforts and good planning. In the current political climate, militant liberals frown on good people who have achieved so much and would love to find ways to whittle away at their nest egg through over-taxation. C’mon people. This is a democracy. I am all for capitalism. You work, you earn. A good thing.

Maybe Frederich Nietzche had something there when he said “Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” or maybe he just proved that if you think about politics, religion, and philosophy too much you will just go insane.

Giving all of our individual power over to any one iconoclastic organization does not seem like a good idea to me. I don’t want any of the aforementioned organizations to be my Big Brother. When big business gets to do what they want unchecked you get Enrons and Bernie Madoffs. When banks go unregulated we now know what happens. At one time whenever Greenspan sneezed the economy shook and went into a different direction. He was one of the guys who pressed for de-regulation, got it, and we all got screwed, blued and, tatooed. It is hard to take the church seriously when it’s various denominations have leaders who engage in immorality, rake in tons of cash, and abuse their authority. On, another note who wants another Pizarro or inquisition?

I went through the majority of the Bush Administration without decent work, despite all my best efforts to have one. Corporations got tax credits for sending jobs oversees. if you ask me- Government interference in the Free Market. Business divisions got sold off to promote stock returns- shrinking job opportunities. So I am skeptical about the Republican party.The mess we are in is not going to be solved by pure Republicanism or pure Democratic Party policy.

Popularity Contest

2010-04-21T18:20:00.001-07:00

“To thine own self be true.” Wow. Easier said than done.

I was raised to be very conservative. Apparently this has given all of the people in my life an open license to e-mail bomb me with radical, alarmist, paranoid, right wing extremist propaganda. I get constant blasts against Obama. Obama-care, and every manner of Tea party support and lauds for the Fox News Network. Let me set the record straight: I DETEST the Fox News Network. It completely operates on the principal of “Trolling for Newbies.” Yeah, Wiki that up. The idea is to say something highly controversial that is a ridiculous exaggeration or at least willfully incorrect to lure people into an argument.

In the hurt and damaged world it is a sad thing to see that people of faith use that faith to exercise intolerance and what amounts to hate to people who do not believe the same as they do. It is a paradox that a religious commitment that is supposed to inspire love for our fellow man fuels wars between countries over religious and philosophical differences. One I cannot reconcile.

What I have determined is that I will never win a popularity contest if I let my friends and family know what I really think.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a Socialist or a Communist. I am not a Tea Partier. Extremists make me queasy.

In my opinion the President is in the toughest popularity contest of all. He needs our prayer and support. I may not agree with everything he stands for, but I am convinced he is a good man and he is doing the best he can.

So, do me a favor… take me off your “Hate on Obama”, Right Wing, or Left Wing e-mail lists. I don’t care about your personal politics. Render unto Caesar and all…

If you insist on believing everything Fox News or CNN feeds you, fine. My opinion is that news networks need ratings and that comes by stirring up a bees nest in order to get viewers, in order to get advertising dollars. Not the best foundation for honest journalism.It also means that some of their shows are opinion reels and not news. Finalluy, for God’s sake people, check your facts before you mail bomb all your friends with sensational or controversial forwards. Anything less just hurts your credibility.

So just keep me out of it or I will put your e-mail address in a twit list (ignore list) so I can live in peace and not let you aggravate me.

If that makes me un-popular, oh well. To mine own self I am true.

Obama Shoot ‘em Up

2010-04-21T06:33:00.001-07:00

From the same people who brought you the Bush Shootout:

I feel dirty

2009-11-06T19:30:00.001-08:00

I feel dirty. I just got done writing (actually re-writing) Lyrics for a song I originally wrote in Los Angeles in 2003. Broke and homeless I scraped up enough money to buy Microsoft Office. I upgraded a Trial Version that came with my Netboodk.Once installed, the banner on the information bar of the software I purchased said “Microsoft ffice- Not for Commercial Use” Wow. I thought I was buying software. Not another trial version.

Don’t get me wrong. I have the highest regard for Bill Gates. For God’s sake… rumor has it he wrote a bootstrap loader for the MS version of BASIC for the IBM PC on the plane flight to Boca Raton. He had the vision to understand the importance of an operating system for the nest level of a personal computer for IBM and the business acumen to see the value of taking computers into every living room in America by adding value to hardware that would otherwise be a footnote in progress of human need. He embraced what every person would need to make a PC their own.

One cannot wonder how much he had to borrow to get to that place. Seriously, allegedly he and his friends used humongous amounts of borrowed computer time to learn their craft. He was accused by one biographer of letting a poor woman’s ice cream to melt in a line while he scrambled through his pockets for enough change to buy his own and has been vilified in parody even by the writers of the Simpsons for crushing small businesses that might have new ideas that his own company could profit from.

Still. I love the guy. When he finally settled down and got married he took the surplus of his wealth to seek solutions for the disadvantaged, the ill, and the underdogs.

I have never been so star-struck that I would write anybody to thank them for what they have done in the course of their stardom that affected me so profoundly. But I have often wished to write Mr. Gates. His efforts have been profound. The rewards he has gained have been filtered back to people who would never understand his accomplishments let alone the valid efforts he has achieved for humanity. Their humanity. I read the articles about the Altair that I am sure he did. Way back then. He seeks out brilliance. He recruits it. He brings it all back home (apologies to Dylan.)

I am a certified project manager. I am a nameless number in an economy that has forgotten me. I refuse to be folded, spindled, or mutilated. I know things. But still I cannot reach one base ten exponent of the complexity that is Bill Gates.

But I still feel guilty. I am just writing lyrics. How can I know if they will ever have commercial value? Or if I will one day be used for commercial use? Are the lawyers from Bic pens ever going to come knock on my door to ask me for the royalties they deserve for the songs I have written with a pen I used on a spiral notebook I bought at Walmart? I doubt it.

As much as I doubt Microsoft will ask me for a chunk of the profits of a song I wrote using Microsoft Office. Even if I should eve get so lucky to be noticed enough to have a single verse that makes a difference. Open Office is FREE.

I will not lie. It is still imposing to my creativity to know I paid for my word processer and am being informed that it is only for non-commercial use. So is a library. So is public computing. For some reason…. I still feel dirty. But I still admire Bill.

Joe’s Generic Guitar Lesson

2009-10-03T17:42:00.001-07:00

If you have never picked up a guitar before or are a beginner player and have a passing interest in guitar I have just the thing for you. It is a free guitar lesson I wrote to teach a small handful of students. The document is in Word format and is located here. I hope you enjoy it. I was going to post it here but it would take way to long to reformat it from it’s simple outline form.

You can visit my web site to download a few songs I wrote. Go to the music page using the menu button. Happy picking! http://www.joseph-d-polizzi.com Just for the record, the guitar lesson is there too! Tell your friends!!!

INTERNET RESOURCES FOR GUITAR PLAYERS AND MUSICIANS

About.com has AWESOME guitar lessons FREE. You can go to http://guitar.about.com/ but I suggest you start here: http://guitar.about.com/library/weekly/aa071200a.htm
Use http://wikipedia.com/ to research scales, chords, or how to read music. e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar_Lessons
Billion Chords- Shareware chord builder. Cheap but good. I use this. http://www.chordeditor.com/ Free trial version.
Want to dig deeper? Here is a music theory site for guitarists: http://www.essentialguitar.com/
Fun animated shred show. For the rockers! http://www.guitarshredshow.com/
Lessons. Guitar Heroes. Practice tips. The web-based vehicle for one of Guitar’s most popular magazines: http://www.guitarplayertv.com/
Another guitar lesson site. FREE http://www.guitarlessonworld.com/lessons/index.htm
Find out how to make any chord online FREE and how it sounds! http://www.chordbook.com/guitarchords.php
A free recording studio package. You can record multiple tracks and play along with yourself or a drum loop. How cool is that? Audacity for the PC. Mac/Linux versions available too! http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/windows
Incredible Midi software to help you get started with your own free backup bands! One of my favorite FREE software packages. http://www.anvilstudio.com/upgraden.htm
Another good online chord speller: http://sologuitarist.net/chord_speller/chord_speller.html
Advanced tools for learning real Music Theory and how it applies to the guitar! http://chrisjuergensen.com.hosting.domaindirect.com/lessons.htm
Riffster- mentioned earlier. Slow down solos from MP3 without changing the pitch so you can learn them by ear! http://www.novadsp.com/riffster_lite.htm
Two Great word processors for guitarist’s to write lyrics with chord boxes over them- Chordwriter: http://www.appcabin.com/ Lyricist: (30 day trial- but great software) http://www.virtualstudiosystems.com/content.php?pg=l_features
I strongly urge you to download and install these fonts: http://simplythebest.net/fonts/fonts/frets.html The reason you will want to do this is so you can see the guitar chords in Word documents.

My advice is: don’t get discouraged; if it is hard to make a chord- don’t worry- come back to it later. It is like conquering levels in a video game. It is hard to get Crash Bandicoot to do what you want the first time and it takes lots of tries. Guitar playing takes practice. Just keep picking and grinning and don’t give up. It will all sink in- in due time.

In a New World of Time

2009-09-10T10:49:00.001-07:00

Technologies jerk and and whirl. Even for a technical guy like me I am frequently surprised with the things I discover at my fingertips that have been here all along and that I just haven't used. Take the blogging feature built right into Word. Granted, I was a very slow adopter of Office 2007. Mostly because I don't like the new ribbon feature and some of the other dumbed-down interface changes that tend to clutter up the screen and obscure familiar features I use often. That aside… here is my first blog created in Word 7. I miss Gene Eugene and Adam Again… but all these years later I still find myself in a new world of time.

Game Day!

2009-09-05T09:06:00.001-07:00

Football season is finally here. The UT kickoff is at 6pm. I’ll be at Darrel K. Royal Stadium at 2pm for Usher check in. Let’s see what Colt and the boys are gonna do this year. Since last year’s BCS rip-off chances are they are going to be playing extra hard.

So my lunch is packed (no food coupons this year) and I am ready for my assignment.

When I got to the stadium my assignment changed to the 200 Horns Club. This club has special seating for the University's top 200 contributors and has a full bar and buffet. The Longhorns won 59-20 over ULM. Too tired to recount much but glad football is back!

It's a small world after all.

2008-04-27T13:27:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time in a refrigerated building far, far away there was an ENIAC. It was friggin' huge. By the time computers became a daily part of my life it was a Zorba “luggable” with a 5.25 floppy disk drive. On a single disk I had my trusted WordStar “word processor”, a series of DOS apps (including a neat speech synthesizer to read text files), a few text adventure games (“What do you want to do now, Hamarabi?”), and a database application. All in less than 320k!

Then came Windows. Word processors hungrily gobbled up mass quantities of space and DOS and CP/m became dinosaurs. By necessity computers needed more power and resources to comply with the new WYSIWYG (pronounced: wiz-ee-wig) empire.

So why am I telling you all this? I am using the portable version of Open Office Writer that is packed with a bunch of other cool tiny software off of the thumb drive that lives on my key chain. I admit I am a geek. But I do not haul a laptop everywhere I go and I never know when I will need that essential piece of software, a resume, or just might want to check my mail with one button click. Mind you, these clever little apps are not limited for use on thumb drives. I have several friends who have cheap “old school” under resourced machines with jut a few gigs of drive space. Portable applications are a great solution for that old Dell you never upgraded.

Let's explore a few of the applications in this cool thumb drive microverse. The flagship Mozilla products: Thunderbird and Firefox come in portable versions. As a bonus, most of their better plug-ins work as well.

Thunderbird is an open source replacement for Outlook that does a better job of managing your personal mail accounts and RSS feeds. The portable version supports the Lightening plug-in which gives multiple calendar support and to-do list functionality. I have all of my e-mail accounts set up on my thumb drive so I can retrieve all my e-mail from any machine connected to the Internet without leaving even the tiniest footprint on the PC I used.

Firefox is my browser of choice and it is nice to have it on my key chain configured with all of my favorite bookmarks the way I would use it at home.

Open Office is hands down the best suite of free office productivity software on the planet. This exceptional office package is mature and capable. It reads and writes all native Microsoft Word, Power Point, Excel (etcetera, etcetera) formats and will even export your hand crafted documents into PDF format if you like. So now you can create professional documents from your key chain without crudding up your registry. Isn't that nice?

Other apps worth mentioning are: Pidgin – a universal Internet Messenger application that lets you use all of your IMs from one client. Texas Hold'em, Minesweeper, Joolbeam, Sudoku, GnuCash- finance manager, KeePass- password management software, and lots more.

As Steve Martin was once famous for saying: “let's get small.” Here is the link: http://www.portableapps.com .

You don't have to write alone.

2008-03-27T13:06:00.000-07:00

I am using buzzword to write this blog. Pretty cool really. This started out as a note to a friend on how we can share writing efforts on collaborative web content. Only the people you invite have access to your documents and they can be retrieved from any computer connected to the net without downloading any software. The final docs can be saved locally to your maichine in Rich Text or Word doc formats or copy and pasted into a blog- like I did here.

It is similar in concept to Writely (Now Google Docs) or Zoho Writer, both of which share the same type of features. Zoho has more in the way of features for bloggers to automatically publish to their blog site of choice and the ability to write offline and later sync to the web version. I haven't compared all the features of each but I like the clean simplicity of this one. Google Docs has a few other cool features. For example, you can send a note from your mail and it is automatically converted to a Google Doc. In the world of Web 2.0 you will be seeing tons of stuff like this out there. I would be interested to hear of the things you have already stumbled upon.

Dark Room is a worthy contender for a collaborative online web word processor. Did I mention it is pretty? The flash functionality doesn't seem to allow you to move graphics around easily- so forget about using it as a cheap layout tool. But it will work for collaborating on web content, blogs, or just about anything else. And it includes the ability to add the all-important "link luv" that make blogs and web content so appealing. Links make pages come alive and make it easier for search engines to love you.

On the other end of the spectrum... if you are looking for a simple, unobstructed writing environment for the PC, check out Dark Room. Or q10. They are clones of a Mac app and are simple full screen black background text editors, so there are no obvious menus and nothing to get you off the track of pumping out verbiage. Everything is filed as a simple text document. This is minimalism at it's finest. There are shortcut keys - cntrl-s for save, cntrl-q for quit. Both offer a limited amount of customization. q10 has a spell check- it also appears a little faster.

I picked up a great way to use this at LifeHacker using an auto hotkey to quickly cut and paste things I find in cyber-space (like job search stuff) for later review. Of course you could just use the default text editor as well. The important thing is to be creative. Now stop staring at your computer screen and write!

Paul is not dead. Apple is alive.

2008-03-27T09:51:00.000-07:00

SXSW is still fresh on my mind so pardon me while I rant. In the shifting world of music delivery mechanisms, artists are still looking for a label... but what does "label" really mean these days? Branding is one of the most important issues. The renaissance produced artists without record labels. Not all of them starved or died penniless. Word of mouth filled the concert halls and wherever else they played. This is where I can go on another rant about Ticket Master and their dubious practices to extort money from artists and fans through a monopoly in the ticket sales space. I will hand it to Paul Allen for seeing the future on that one.

Shared computing was the way that most computing started. Anybody remember terminals? With the advent of faster bandwidth and Web 2.0 the circle is complete and sharing remote resources is back with lots of cool bells and whistles. For the artists, live performances still seem like the best revenue stream. The Internet is still the best word of mouth there ever was. Savvy artists can use this. The music industry is still alive and well. It is just morphing into new ways to deliver the artist's crafts... and to generate income. The jury is still out. For now... I'm going to go sync my iPod to iTunes.

SXSW '08

2008-03-24T22:07:00.000-07:00

"There are no record deals. The record industry has become non-existant." Change brings... well, change. "The next level will be free music financed by ad revenues." The quotes are from a record company rep I am going to keep anonymous. But it drives home a problem with content delivery that has existed for many years now. The RIAA initially recoiled in fear at the advent of MP3 and other digital content and took a very passive course of action hoping to wait and see if somebody else could come up with a solution they could jump on the band-wagon of. It has been said that 1 out of 10 people pay for the music they listen to. I don't know if that statistic is true or not but it sounds like that can't favor artists.

Digital Rights Management is a huge failure. Digital media is not as tangible; like a hard copy of a CD that you can put on your shelf and use whenever you want. It is frustrating "purchasing" music online and not being able to keep it. Personally, I purchased a bunch of albums using Napster a ways back. A few operating system crashes and forced upgrades later and I didn't "own" my songs any more. I still have the songs on a backup but Windows Media Player won't let me play them. I can say with certainty- that model doesn't work for me.

On the flip side... once upon a time there was not record industry and there were still professionals musicians. The difference was they did not have the Internet to promote their careers. With the current cost of concert tickets somebody is making money somehow.

Back to the issue at hand... new delivery systems for music media. As an outsider, the RIAA looks like a bunch of shoe-makers trying to build Sky-Net. The good news is they are successfully retarding the arrival of the Singularity. Live shows, video games, and the film industry are solid vehicles for artists to continue getting paid. Alternate delivery models of music are popping up all over the Internet. I would love to hear other peoples ideas that would benefit music listeners and artists.

Free your mind and the rest will follow...

2007-12-03T11:48:00.000-08:00

My coolest software of the year recommendation goes to FreeMind. If you take a few minutes to look at it, you might agree. There are millions of things you can do with it. Click on the link and check it out. I have been using it to organize my job hunt, as a contact manager, brainstorming tool, outline for my writing, project management, a free-form database, and just about everything else. It is FREE and does not have any adware. If you want to get organized this is the best thing out there, in my opinion.

FreeMind is not a contact management package, per se. But it will give you all the tools you need to do extremely effective contact management better and a lot easier than most of the contact management stuff out there. The cost is FREE. No spyware or adware and fully supported.

It is a part of a family of software called “mind mapping software” There are essentially two versions- following is more information about the software and links to how it works and how sample data files showing how other people are using it:

The beta works just fine. It has a lot more features and I have found it to be very reliable. The bugs are minor and the benefits of the new version outweigh them. I have also found that my data files work under both versions.

Review the links to see what it really does. I am using it for brainstorming, information management, contact management, and just about everything else. The principal is simple. You start with a Root “node” and create branches. Each branch can be formatted to different colors, contain a quick search able HTML (in the beta version) text note (which appears on the bottom of the page), a calendar alarm (also only in the beta), links to web pages, email, or local files. Nodes can be encrypted with a password (for sensitive info like passwords, etc.) So basically, it is a “build it the way YOUR brain works” free form database and information mapping tool that you can use any way you want. The nodes fold and unfold as needed.

You will also see how the free-form structure of the application will force you to think through things… identifying problems and solutions in addition to sorting information the way you think. Like an Ishakowa diagram on steroids!

FreeMind has already made me tons more productive because it puts everything at my fingertips and lets me see the big picture the way I think.

The Complete Idiots Guide to Project Management Using MS Project 2003

2007-11-16T15:29:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading The Complete Idiots Guide to Project Management Using MS Project 2003 by Ron Black. Most books you will find on project management are oriented towards passing the certification exam. This book is primarily a step-by-step "how to" guide exercising project management "the PMI way", using Microsoft Project. Whether you are a seasoned pro, or a facilitator considering a life as a PM, this book is a great tutorial and refresher course on the subject of project management. As a bonus you can find some cool tricks to use with MS Project!

Ron has some very simple suggestions on how to brainstorm a good WBS, how to outline it in MS Project, step by step methods for doing accurate task estimates, managing managers and employees, and common sense checklists for every step of your project to make sure you are not missing anything. All this (and more) is wrapped around a tutorial on how to use MS Project that is fun and easy to read. The book is so chock full of really practical project management help you completely forget you are learning a software package. It's a great refresher, a quick read, and will put real wheels on all of the theoretical books you have been reading.

A few quotes from the book:
"When given responsibility without authority, project managers must take action." (pg 43) "To keep your career on track, identify the criteria you will be held responsible for." (pg 47) To build a good goal statement, use the SMART approach: *S*pecific, *M*easurable, *A*greed on, *R*ealistic, and *T*ime-bound." (pg 47)

You can find out more about the book as well as find some useful tools for working project managers at: http://www.thementorgroup.com/Resources.htm/

The Silver Age, Project Management and You

2007-03-06T16:12:00.000-08:00

According to Wikipedia, "The original Silver Age was one of the five "Ages of Man" described by the ancient poet Hesiod." To the rest of the children of the last half a century it represents a wonderful period of comic book history traditionally marked from the early 1950s to the early 1970s. This period of comic book publication birthed Spider-Man, The X-Men, Iron Man, Hulk, Daredevil, Justice League, the modern Flash, and Green Lantern to name a few of the more well known heroes in the Marvel and DC stables. Ah, what a great time for heroes.

As life goes on many of us are approaching our own "silver age," and are faced with shifts in the economy and late in life career re-structuring. There is no more rewarding job than helping others, especially as your own boss. Project Management Mentors is now offering curriculum to help you become a project management instructor to help others get their Project Management Institute PMP™ certification. Of course, you will need to be certified yourself. The Project Management Mentor's PMI® Exam Prep Kit is available to instructors for the first time ever. The kit includes the most up-to-date information to pass the certification, a complete slide set, a four disc cd set with two audio cds and two data cds including a test simulator that emulates the official certification test.

Somebody out there needs a hero to help ramp up their career - so go to your secret hideout, twist a few dials and check out http://www.pmmentors.com or send questions to info@pmmentors.com for more information. Be a hero. Become a mentor.

Life in the chat lane... surely make you lose your mind.

2007-01-31T20:23:00.000-08:00

Hmmm. Chat groups have changed a lot in the last 10 years. It used to be when you entered a topic related chat group- the topic is the thing that was discussed. And you could make new, real friends who did not ask for a method of payment.

Last night I took a little ride down the internet highway through the chat lanes and this was my experience... I went to a 40's age group with 40 or so people in the group. Three were guys and the rest were 20ish-year-old women nagging everybody to come look at their web cams. "20 year-old woman looking for 40 year-old guys...." Even the only self proclaimed 40 year old women in the group was promoting her business. This is disturbing to me. It felt like I was in a ghetto. Most of the group were robots.

On to the local chat group. It would be nice to meet a few folks in town. After all, I haven't been back in Austin for that long. More of the same. And NONE of the folks in the group were FROM the area. The median age was 20. The median user name was provocative. More neon lights in another red light district. There is nothing to say. There is no conversation starter that is appropriate and so much commerce going on there is no point to start one. Exit to the faith chats.

Oh, this was really gruelling. The type of faith displayed in the groups I visited is the kind that fuels wars and violence. That is sad to me. The hallmark of true faith is it's expression in love. Not a bunch of bickering, self important know-it-alls talking over one another. There were a lot of colorful words floating around in these groups. Oddly, it seems that atheists love to hang out in Christian chat groups for some reason. If I were an atheist I think I would spend more time watching TV. I mentioned I worship at a Messianic congregation. Big mistake. Somebody who doesn't even know me jumped in and called me a "fake Jew" and started a whole tirade. Even if I were a "fake Jew", that is just rude. (For the record I am Italian... there is some German Jew on my mom's side.) I still like where I fellowship and there is no reason to throw stones. I did make the acquantance of a pastor in India. We had a nice chat and it was the only meaningful discussion for the time spent in the chat lane. For my Christian/Messianic brothers and sisters in those groups - I wish you peace and love.

Forget about finding anybody to chat with about business or professional topics. Prime target for the cam-girls. I wanted to discuss Project Management with some folks. Right now, I am working on my certification through PM Mentors in Austin (http://www.pmmentors.com) If anyone knows of any live chats where I can do this... let me know.

So, on the internet... making new friends is all about commerce and useful discussions are a thing of the past. Bummer. I would like to think people are cooler than that. I don't want any pay-as-you-go friends. Call me old-fashioned. Any ideas about where I can meet new friends on the net without being bludgeoned by girls with cameras or that require a credit card? I'm all ears.