automaticable

Last night I went grocery shopping and ended up buying seeds for a few different cooking herbs.  It’s something that I’ve been talking about doing for a while, and I finally have the opportunity to do it.  I picked up some chives, oregano, green onion, and sweet basil, as well as a parsley plant that’s already potted.  Since we haven’t quite felt the affects of spring yet, I plan on planting them in pots by a window inside to start.  Once they start to grow and the weather gets nicer, they’ll move to our balcony outside.

This is really my first “gardening” experience on my own, as minor as it might be.  The seed packets have some basic instructions on them that I think will get me through.  But, what other suggestions do people have?  How will I know when they are ready for “harvesting”, and how much can I cut off without killing the plant?  Are there any other herbs that are nice for growing in the kitchen?

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The company I work for, BKV, is sponsoring a new site which just launched, The 60 Second Marketer. This site aims to bring snippets of information in the form of 60 second videos to busy marketing professionals. The site was created in-house, but many of the videos and articles were submitted from marketing professionals around the country. From a semi-official release statement for The 60 Second Marketer:

The site has a video library of short, 60 second tutorials on the latest trends in marketing. It’s perfect for marketers who want to stay on top of things, but don’t have time to read all the trade publications or lengthy white papers.

The site is brand new, so additional videos are being added all the time.
Current titles include “What are the most common search engine mistakes?”, “How consumers think,” and “What are the 10 forbidden words in an e-mail subject line?”

Contributors to the site include marketing directors, authors, Ph.Ds and advertising directors who want to share their expertise with other members of the marketing community.

As mentioned in the release, this is actually still a work in process, so not all of the videos are launched yet.

Let me know what you think of the site. It has a different tone than most sites, and I’d like to hear feedback on what your feelings are on the site overall. Also, if you would like to be featured on the site as a contributor, feel free to email The 60 Second Marketer here.

If the 16+ years of schooling I went through taught me one thing, it was that plagiarism is as close to murder as you can get without becoming a criminal. I don’t think I’ve seen people get riled up about something as easily as a professor who catches a whiff of plagiarism. So why is it that there is such obvious, guiltless plagiarism running through the blog world?

You may not see it if you casually peruse your favorite blogs, but as a semi-addicted stumbleupon user (the first step is admitting I have a problem, I know) I see this all of the time. Every stumble-session I have invariably leads me to a page that has blatantly ripped their content from another source without citation whatsoever. I can almost forgive someone for copying content word for word as long as they give a hat tip (and link) to the original source, but generally this is not the case.

I imagine some people, especially those that repost their favorite photos from other sites, do not realize that they are stealing other people’s work. These people see something cool and just rip it into their own blog without even thinking about it. But most people who blog know exactly what they are doing, and they do it purely out of laziness and/or selfishness. People want to drive traffic to their own blogs and they either don’t want to work for it or they do not know how to come up with their own content. These are the people that infuriate me.

Not only are they stealing someone’s work, but they are creating what I like to call “internet pollution.” This internet pollution is not only morally wrong, but it is ultimately bad for the user as well for a number of reasons:

1. The obvious reason plagiarism is wrong, the original author does not get credit for their own work
2. On social sites such as Stumbleupon, this creates duplicates of content which adds no value (and I would argue, negative value) for the user, and
3. Related to #1, the work loses its original citation, which means the user will never be able to find further work produced by the creator if they find it interesting

Reason #3 is what has personally annoyed me the most. I can’t tell you how many times I have run across a set of amazing photographs, blog articles, or artwork that I wished I could have followed up on.

Because of my continued frustration with the online polluters and moral internet scum (yeah, it’s that bad!), I have come up with a way that I feel I can personally help clean up this mess, even if it is just a tiny bit. I’m hoping that you will use this strategy to help me combat plagiarism and internet pollution online. Here is my strategy:

If you know for a fact (as in, you’ve seen the original work published elsewhere) that the page is plagiarized, make your way down to the comments field. You will always have to put in a login/email to post a comment, but luckily these things aren’t validated. So just type in whatever you want, it doesn’t matter that much. Here comes the good part. It is a little bit rude, but I feel that if my words can drive traffic away from sites that lack common decency online then I have helped out the internet community as a whole. Anyway, I generally say something along the lines of,

I don’t know if you realize this or not, but every bit of your content is ripped from [insert source here]. You have blatantly copied this work with not even a link to the original article. By reposting this work, not only are you plagiarizing the author, but you are helping to pollute the internet with this reposted tripe. Post something original, or at the very least give credit where credit is due.

Ok, that is actually a little nicer than how I usually word it, but go ahead and add your own spin. I give you permission to take creative license with it.

The great thing about this is even if the comment is moderated out, the author will see your words and will hopefully take them to heart. I know that it sounds a bit like a personal crusade, but I am hoping that a few automaticable readers will join me in helping to clean up the clutter that is plaguing the web.

If you have any success or similar frustrations, let me know in the comments.

A friend and I were talking the other day and she started telling me about a trip her and some friends took to a haunted house. Not the kind on Halloween, but the tourist attraction type. While they were in the house, one of the people there started talking about how they could feel the presence of the spirits and that she may have physically been touched by something while she was in there. My friend commented about how ridiculous that was and how silly her friend was for saying anything like that. At that point an interesting sequence of thoughts ran through my head, in this order:

1. Why was this ridiculous? It is just someone’s thoughts and feelings about the paranormal. They could be just as real as anything else, we just don’t know.
2. Wait, my friend thinks this is ridiculous because her religious beliefs tell her it is ridiculous. For ghosts and spirits to exist that can physically touch you, Christianity would have to be false, and therefore any beliefs in the paranormal are obviously ridiculous.
3. Doesn’t she realize that non-believers consider her devout faith in God, Jesus, and the Bible equally ridiculous, since it is based on the same amount of fact as ghosts and other paranormal beings?
4. How would I be treated if I laughed about my close friends who have faith in Christianity and called them ridiculous in public. Why is it OK for people to mock minority belief systems, but it is blasphemous (and nearly criminal in the South) to do the same about Christianity?

I don’t think I would necessarily call my friend’s judgements (which aren’t isolated to just her) hypocrisies, I think of it more as ignorance. Although ignorance has a negative connotation, what else do you call it when someone doesn’t realize their own shortcomings? Anyway, moving past that, this actually helped me realize something about myself. Because I am 1) non-religious, and 2) socially liberal, I feel like I have fostered a highly non-judgmental character, and am very proud of that. My first instinct when I hear about someone’s beliefs is not to ridicule or stereotype them, but to accept their beliefs as just another facet of their character. While Christianity (and most other religions) preach about acceptance of others, I am much happier actually living that acceptance instead of merely preaching it.

FreeRice is a non-profit website that will donate 20 grains for each vocabulary question answered correctly.  From their about page:

FreeRice has two goals:

1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

When you enter the site, you are presented with a fairly difficult vocabulary question, with a multiple choice answer.  For each one you get right, 20 grains are donated.  You can keep answering questions for as long as you like.  The questions seem to get harder based on your “vocabulary level.”  The donations are funded by a small advertising banner on the bottom of the page.

This seems like a really good test prep for anyone taking a standardized test this spring, especially the GRE.  And, you’re doing a good deed at the same time– what could be better?  I first came across the page from a blog article from SpreadFirefox.  In February, Firefox broke the 500 million download mark.  To celebrate, they made it their goal to donate 500,000,000 grains of rice through this website.  Cool stuff.

BillShrink is a new startup that allows you to enter information about how much you use your cell phone, and compares plans from carriers in your area to find the best price.  You can enter in details like how many minutes you use, the number of phone lines you require, and even your most frequently called numbers, to take advantage of free mobile-to-mobile.  The best part is that you can simply upload your cell phone bill, and it’ll fill in all the details for you.

This seems like a really cool service to me.  I also appreciate that it ranks plans not only based on price, but the service coverage in your area.  We’ve posted ways to save money with online services before, but this is the best one I’ve seen for the cell phone service market.  I’m stuck in a 2-year contract now, but I’ll be sure to check this out next time I’m looking to change my cell plan.

[ via Techcrunch ]

We ran out of coffee here at the house, and my roommate picked up some Folgers French Vanilla to replace it. I’m generally not picky about my coffee; our last batch was store-brand French roast (I do like French roast though). So the point is, that this new coffee is pretty amazing. Actually, it tastes only slightly above-average to me, but it smells like candy when you brew it. Every day around 8 AM, our house smells like sweet deliciousness. Perhaps I’m one step closer to having productive mornings.

What kind of coffee do you drink? Are you picky? Do you load it up with sugar and cream, or take it straight-up black?

Over the last few days I have seen multiple stories run about this new “invention,” Beamz. See the video of it here, but it is basically a synthesizer that, instead of hitting keyboard keys and picking notes, you wave your hands through laser beams (or beamz!) and it will choose what notes make the most sense. From what I’ve seen there is mixed reaction to this new toy. Some people say it takes no creativity or musical skill, but some think it may be a pretty interesting. Personally, the first thing that I thought of was how closely it resembles the marrying of a synthesizer and a super rare and unique electrical instrument, the theramin. Below is a video of an artist (I wish I knew his name!) who took Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” and made it his own, playing it beautifully on his theramin accompanied by a drum machine, keyboard, bass guitar, and plenty of digital effects. It is pretty amazing and will embed this catchy tune back into your head after you thought (and maybe wished) you would never hear it again.

Lately I have been having a difficult time falling asleep. It takes me anywhere from 1-3 hours to actually fall asleep and I cannot figure out how to force myself to sleep any sooner. This has been going on consistently for about a month now, maybe more. Because of this I have had plenty of time to test different solutions I’ve read online, but to no avail. Some of the techniques I have tried are:

• Opening the windows. Apparently being a bit cold is supposed to trigger sleep functions in our brain. I always sleep with the windows open, so this didn’t help.
• Work out sooner/later than normal. Some people say you shouldn’t work out right before bed, some think it wears you out so you sleep better. I find neither to be helpful.
• While laying in bed, tense up the muscles in your body. Tensing the muscles releases something that is supposed to physically calm you. Again, no luck here.
• Count sheep. It isn’t a rare occasion when 1000+ sheep have jumped over my fence. Actually, most of the time I get to about 100 and then my mind wanders elsewhere so I have to start all over. Hrm.
• Think about relaxing different parts of your body, one at a time. This sometimes helps a bit, but only after I’ve been laying in bed for at least an hour, so I don’t consider this a solution.
• Take time before you go to sleep to think about everything on your mind so you do not stress over it while you are trying to fall asleep. What I think about while trying to fall asleep is the most random string of thoughts imaginable. It seems impossible to clear my mind.

The list is longer, but I think you get the idea. I’m not sure what to do here, and my lack of good sleep is starting to add up. I am against the idea of taking any kind of sleeping pills or putting any other kind of relaxants (see: alcohol) into my body to help me sleep. Even if they aren’t physically habit-forming, I know I will not be able to sleep without them if I feel they are my only solution.

So, helpful readers of automaticable, do you have any suggestions for me? Have you had sleeping problems that you were able to solve? What are your creative ways of calming your mind and body so you can sleep during the nights?

The trash on the ground, the gum under the desk, the empty toilet paper roll in the bathroom, and the smudges on the windows of the doors all are cleaned up or taken care of by type of person in public areas: the Janitor.  When you think of a Janitor, do you think of the guy with the raggity old clothing that has a faded name patch on the side?  Maybe the loveable gray cart with the yellow trash bag on the back?  There’s many things that come to mind when you think of a janitor, but the sad thing is, none of it is positive.  When ever someone thinks of a janitor they always think of them as a nothing, not a person.  People don’t realize that they are people too, just like you and me.  Most of the people in this position are NOT high school drop outs that took that sort of job because they have nothing going for them, or ever will.  Some of them have graduated from either a two year or four year technical school or university with a major in engineering or something of that sort, and decided that an easier job like this best sooted their needs.  Then there’s also the younger kids and young adults you see doing this job.  Most parents look at these kids as worthless individuals who wasted away their lives and have to resort to doing shit jobs because they can’t make anything of their lives.  This is false.  I currently hold position where some of my duties require me to take care of custodial tasks, and I haven’t wasted away my life, I’m not going nowhere, I haven’t dropped out of school.  I’m working my way up from the very bottom in hopes to make it to the very top, so that way I can see what it really takes to run a business where all the employees are happy and treated equally.

The workplace is no different.  You would think your fellow employees would treat you with more respect because they work with you and know how bad of a job it is, but this is entirely false.  I receive radio call after radio call from people at the front desk for the smallest little tasks that we have 5 different people on staff that could do the job, but they always call me because no one else wants to do it.  The most ridiculous call I ever got was someone had dropped a piece of paper on the floor and they wanted me to come pick it up.  Now, let me just set the scene here.  It was a Saturday afternoon, so there was a Building Supervisor, two Open Gym Supervisors, a person running Registration, a Fit Desk worker, and me working that day.  I was busy downstairs cleaning a fitness studio when I get this call, and when I go upstairs to find this piece of paper, I find it on the opposite side of the desk where the Registration lady sits, and behind the desk are the Open Gym Supervisors, and the Building supervisor, all talking, doing nothing. One of them is actually on the computer checking their facebook.  Even though these people were sitting right there, doing nothing, the registration lady thought it would be best to pull me from what I was busy doing to come pick up this piece of paper for her.

This is the type of ignorance that I’m talking about. The simple tasks that they can take two seconds out of their time to do themselves, they decide to just pawn it off onto someone else, they pawn it off to someone else, until finally it gets down to the lowest guy on the food chain who has no one to pawn it off to, so he has to do it himself.  I have multiple examples of this sort of stuff but it’d just turn into me ranting about how people become so much lazier once there’s a janitor employed at their workplace.

I want to change the stereotype of janitors, especially the ones that are younger individuals like myself.  They’re not worthless individuals, and they shouldn’t be looked over.  These people work hard and are good at what they do.  They’re the reason why when you walk into a building and you think “Wow, this place looks awesome!”  They’re the ones that make it look awesome.  Next time you see a janitor, young or old, take a look around and realize that the place they’re in charge of looks the way it does because of the hard work and commitment they put into their job.  Don’t overlook them, appreciate them.