Said no one in Maryland tonight….

Hey, have you heard the news? Someone thought we didn’t have enough taxes… so now there is an impending Maryland rain tax of doom! “The rate is expected to start at $100 a year for most homeowners, although that could rise” — some other website (screw em). I was immediately annoyed/frustrated/infuriated/befuddled by news of this tax, and was quick to anger, as I’m sure the rest of the state was. Then I took a minute to cool off, and asked myself… why are they doing this… and why the hell don’t any of these articles go in to detail about how to find relief from this tax? So here’s my attempt….
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Today, Apple will be rolling out OSX Mountain Lion (10.8 baby!). They are touting that this update has 200+ features, which is pretty nice for the price tag of $20. Out of the 200 or so new features, some are impressive, and some less than impressive, but it’s an update either way. Here is a list of 10 features that caught my eye:

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Oh this is so wonderful… EVERYONE needs to see this at some point in their lives.

Thank you Dr. Rance Quest Magnum for your wisdom, guidance, and insanity! Hosana! Check out http://www.WeHateVideoGames.com/ for more amazing videos!

Recently I was sent a link to an article about the holographic principle, which is a theory that attempts to explain how our universe is actually a 3D holographic projection of a 2D surface. It seems to somewhat line up with some of the nonsense I have in my head, and I found the article interesting, though lacking some detail, it did job of explaining everything on a level that is relatively easy to comprehend (OR… I completely misinterpreted the entire thing… but let’s pretend I’m awesome instead).

Somewhere muddled in the comments, was a link to this page, where a user named “photo guy” took the time to type up exactly what I thought about the concept of “time”. It’s almost like the guy reached in to my head grabbed my wiggly brain thoughts, googled them for some better vocabulary and quotes, and then typed them up. So below is a straight up copy and paste of his post: Read more

ATTENTION ALL Maryland BG&E CUSTOMERS!!!! If you are anything like me, you are too lazy/scared/confused/uninterested in your energy to actually do anything about it. You agree that green is good, and you’d just love to go green if only (insert absolute horse shit excuse here). Of course you know damn well that you haven’t even done so much as do a simple google search on the topic (clicking links that someone sent you doesn’t count, especially if you only skimmed the article), and are just content to drift about listlessly in the energy wasteland, just going with whatever your power company gives you without a second thought. There’s more important stuff to worry about, like which way to load the new roll of toilet paper, clockwise or counter clockwise?

Well congrats everyone! You managed to click a link that took you to my website, and I’m going to make switching to green power a little easier for you. I know, I know, you thought there’d be something way more awesome to look at on my site, and you’re right, it’s here. I was recently sent off on a grand adventure, (I got bored and clicked some links in an article I was reading somewhere) and have found a very simple solution that even the lazy can enjoy! That’s right! I didn’t lose a single pound while switching! So here’s the deal, you can keep BG&E, but switch your power supply to Constellation Energy in about 5 minutes. You will be keeping BG&E as the folks who deliver the power, just as they do now. All you will be changing, is where BG&E is delivering power from! I just switched to Constellation and chose to go with 100% green power from their wind farm that was recently built, saving about 5% on my power bill! You can choose from their other power offering which will save you an additional 5% when compared to BG&E, but I figured a 5% savings is enough if it’s going to be switching to 100% green power. Check it out, and remember to tell them I sent you with my referral code of 0830Q, or click on my referral link to get a $25 gift card when you sign up (I’ll get one too! awesome!).

SIGN UP NOW!

I plan on posting updates about how my experience is going, and also writing up another post about my adventure with solar panels soon. I believe that the estimated install time for solar is going to be somewhere in the range of 6 months to a year, so it’ll be a bit before I can post my complete findings, but I will try to post whatever data I have so far.

Update 5/7/2012:

Someone asked where the 100% green power option is listed on Constellation’s site. I recorded a quick video of how to get there in case you need a quick pointer:

http://screencast.com/t/RjWEhsbZ9MsG

Communication is a very deep and complicated process. Check out amazon.com and you will find hundreds of books devoted to the subject. It’s something we do every day and more and more of us are doing it poorly. With text messages, IM’s, e-mail, rap music, and Facespace too many of us are forgetting that how we say something speaks volumes about ourselves. So what are we missing?

1. Communication happens in layers:

This is never more true then when you are speaking face to face. When I speak my body language is unconsciously adding emphasis. When I type the punctuation takes over most this role. My cadence communicates the strength of the emotion behind my words. Dramatic pauses intentional or otherwise will show the listener how much thought is behind those words. The very words I choose will show my bias or where I am coming from. It’s all a clever dance that evolution has hardwired into us through years of people who can’t spot a liar dieing for no good reason and it goes much further then that short list of examples.

2. You need to control your message and your audience:

When I say that “I hate football” that is not the only thing a person listening will hear. There are some natural assumptions that come with that sort of statement and worse those assumptions are completely different depending on your audience. Some would assume that I hate all sports, others that I hate America, people from outside the states are going to spend a few minutes trying to figure out if I mean soccer.  This is a problem because none of those things are related to my point in my own mind. Suddenly I have lost control of my message and the audience is off wondering if I was picked on in high school rather then listening to my otherwise excellent points on over-commercialization. Instead I would have done better to lead into my point by mentioning that I think football is run by sellouts and if I really must, closing the argument with the useless statement about my emotions.

3. Communication has levels:

That’s right layers AND levels. You have probably said or at least heard someone say “they were talking above my head” or “that subject is beneath me”. It’s fairly easy to empathize with those statements. I think Sponge Bob Squarepants is brilliant and others think it is the stupidest show in a line up of stupid shows. That’s my level, which appears to be K-12. When putting words to your own opinion you should be speaking about something you understand, that being said it’s far too easy to forget to explain things that appear to be common knowledge and you can quickly lose your audience if you are wrong about the commonness of said knowledge.

4. Jargon is only a time saver in the right company:

An excellent example of this is acronyms. Acronyms are a form of jargon and jargon is a sin in the wrong company. Your grandmother might not know what a LOL is and she is probably not going to “google it” on her “smartphone”. When you use language that your listener is not familiar with not only do you make them feel stupid but you present them with a distraction that de-rails what you were trying to say. Now Nanny is too busy trying to figure out what a LOL looks like and if it is a carnivore or herbivore to read what you say next, by the time she is back on task she’s probably forgotten that she even said something funny.

5. Words have meanings:

Synergize is a real word, it’s not some non-sense that means “communication in real time” and yet that is how you will hear it used most of the time. Synergize means to cooperate, usually in the context of solving a problem. It’s a useful word but it has been overused to the point where it means nothing to most listeners. It gets worse then that, some words have multiple meanings and there are some things that can be said using a variety of words but only one that fits exactly. Even better, most people do not have a large vocabulary and do not know some of the words you keep in your toolbelt. If you are out to dazzle someone with bullshit this is a great tactic but if you are trying to communicate you will probably do more harm then good using awesome words like defenestration.

6. People have no attention span:

And that is why we will talk about this more later. I have probably lost a few of you already in my so far 825 word rant. For those of you who stuck around, thank you. Feel free to comment below and if you bring up a great point I will address it in the comments or in the next part where we talk about how technology is trying to turn these rules on their head, and only making us look like idiots in the process.