Neuron Juice

You know who loves jewelry?  My mother.  She loves those things.  You name it and she’s into it.  Princess cut diamond pendant – she likes it.  Emerald cut saphhire ring – she likes that.  Gold watch with encrusted diamonds – she likes that.  Basically if there is a piece of jewelry in the area, she is interested in it.

For a time when I was in college my parents had no kids and no pets and took up the hobby of just going to jewelry stores and buying stuff.  Stuff they had no need for.  Stuff that they could barely wear without feeling ridiculous.  One time my father bought this fancy ring that had diamonds and the such on it and he’d gotten this matching 18 carat watch and wore it out one day.  We harassed him so much that he returned it the next week.  That is to be expected though, my dad isn’t really a jewelry wearer, more of a buyer.  It’s also to be expected that he is going to be harassed when he looks like he’s in the mob.  We had to do it.  For the mob.  He was on the brink of giving them a very poor yet friendly reputation.

Although my dad never got into the mob, my mother has acquired somewhat of a collection, which is a win if you ask her.

Banks do a lot of things to avoid getting robbed. I bet I don’t even know half of the bank supplies they have that prevent robberies. I think they like to keep things like that a secret. If they keep them a secret, then it is harder to get around them when the robbers come. When the robbers come, if they don’t know everything, they have to try and think quickly on the spot, which makes them even more likely to mess up, make a mistake and get caught.

Banks have an extraordinary amount of bank supplies that are designed to prevent theft. For instance, a lot of bank bags have ink pouches in them. When the bag is opened by a thief, the ink goes everywhere and the money is ruined. Well, not ruined, exactly, but the robbers can’t really use the money after that because anywhere they would try and spend it would know that it had been stolen. More than that, any bank where they would try and deposit the money would REALLY know that it had been stolen. That would be bad.

Those bank supplies are a smart idea. That is all I’m saying.

…have you ever heard of them? Did you pick up their latest album? Of course not, because they don’t exist. They wuessed out and called themselves the Plain White T’s instead. Why? Because they didn’t have the kajones to call themselves the Plain White Bra Strap. You’ve got to be Stallone or Norris caliber tough to call yourself the Plain White Bra Straps. Even the Decorative Bra Straps is pretty hardcore.
The truth of the matter is that I don’t really know anything about bra straps. Why? Because I’m a dude, a man, a male, a Non-Female to use a more modern term. I’m glad I’m not a girl. Not because there is anything wrong with being a girl, but because it just looks like a lot of extra effort that I don’t have time for. I spend about 3 getting ready on the average day. You wanna know the main reason that I have a beard? Because it only needs a quick trim once a week, about 3 minutes of maintenance maybe… per week. If I shaved everyday, that’s about 7 times the amount of time per week. If you put bras and makeup and messing with your hair on top of that, I would hate it.

I have never been to Lake Tahoe, but let me tell you, I’m about two seconds from doing a Google search for Lake Tahoe vacation home rentals and heading out. It’s almost Christmas, but for some reason it doesn’t really feel like it to me. It snowed here today for the first time in weeks. Our temperatures here so far have been extremely moderate. Cold, but nothing that a good sweater can’t fix. But even now, most of the snow has melted. This is how winter in the Rockies is: it will snow in the morning and by noon most of it has melted. I don’t think that we will be getting a white Christmas here this year. Without the snow, it doesn’t feel like Christmas at all. I think I need to get away from the taunting of the weather and head to some place that is always sunny. Some place where I can just relax instead of worrying about work and dishes and meals. Oh please, oh please, can’t I just find one of those Lake Tahoe vacation home rentals, pick up my husband and go away? That sounds like the most appealing option I’ve thought of yet. Lake Tahoe, I need your sun!

It’s funny how many different definitions the word “mint” has. I mean, there are several. Merriam-Webster says it only has a one, really, and that is the flavoring that is often put into food (they also list the food that is called “mint”, which is something different, but it’s kind of the same).

But there is also the U.S. Mint, which creates money and has nothing to do with food. It’s the creating of something metal, I believe, but I don’t know how to really describe it. I think that the terminology of a group of things created out of metal is fairly accurate, though.

But I wasn’t thinking about things made out of metal when I came across the page for Franklin mint cars. I was just thinking about the food when I saw the page. And then I was very confused. The Franklin mint cars are not food. They are not a type of food flavored like with a plant from the Labiatae family. They are cars, cast into metal. They are pretty cool cars.

But they are not food. I just thought that I should make the distinction in case there are other people out there that were confused. Now we know.

Do you ever wonder what inventors are going to come up with next? There are a lot of things out there that are truly impressive. Who knew that one day, we would be able to watch week-old TV sitcoms from our computers? Or be able to call people using the internet and our computer? Who knew?

But in this day and age, the technology is going even further and I’m beginning to feel like I’ve stepped into some sort of futuristic world. Did you know that there are actually parts (what they are for, I’m not 100% sure) that are named things like statek, rectron and supercapacitor?

The supercapacitor sounds both like something that someone in the mid 1970s made up and also like something that I might actually be able to understand it’s usage if I concentrate very hard. It would take a lot of concentration, though. I’m just waiting, though, for the guy that orders the supercapacitor to yell, “Beam me up, Scotty!” and then vanish into space.

I have to admit, though, that this does give me hope for the future. With all the supercapacitor and statek and rectron out there, I’m really hoping that next they will invent a teleportation device.

I can dream, can’t I?

Businesses are complicated.  You know where they really get complicated?  When you have physical products and you have them being moved around.  Take a shoe company for example.  Lets say that the shoe company has a store in New York.  And they manufacture in China.  Well you are all of a sudden dealing with a dozen factors.  Think about all the parts involved in you just traveling from China to America, there are a dozen steps right?  And that is at the minimum:

You have to book a flight, get the best price, get to the airport, get through security, get to your gate, get to your seat, deplane, get out of the airport, get to your home, and unpack.

Well, that is also happening when a package comes over to America, not with the exact same details but similar steps and just like EVERYTHING, every step costs money.  Are you getting each step at the right cost?  Can you consolidate?  Can you optimize.  These are the questions that spur creations like supply chain management software.  Supply chains can make or break companies.  They can save millions of dollars a year if done right, and lose it if done wrong.

How much money do you lose every year due to mis-management?  Don’t know?  I don’t think there’s software for that so, you may be out of luck.

Some things in life escape me, and no matter how hard I try, I cannot figure them out. Some of these things are like the gold standard, and how people transferred to the silver standard. My teacher in high school tried to explain this to me so so many times and I seriously could never figure it out. It was hard enough to figure out the other things he told me, but gold standard? It just never clicked.

How people can not get grossed out when they see blood. Seriously, how can anyone like being a surgeon? Or how can anyone go through medical school and find that kind of thing interesting? I like learning how the brain works, the body however is just weird to me.

I don’t understand how anyone can become a lawyer. Lawyers have to read tons of legal documents and then write a ton of legal stuff. I love to read and write, but I love to read and write about literature, and about things that interest me.

I don’t understand what anyone would not have a site map. Why do you think anyone invented a xml sitemap generator? Seriously, especially because a site map generator is so easy to come by these days.

There are days where my sympathy level for the older generations spikes to an all time high.  So many things have changed over the past hundred years.  We have automated equipment and computers that record massive amounts of information in record time.  People can converse without an operator’s assistance and web tools make it possible to not only speak with a person, but see them halfway around the world at the same time.

The changes have brought a lot of benefits as well as a whole plethora of new jargon to learn.  Now when grandparents ask their grandchildren what they want for Christmas, they are likely going to hear strange abbreviations like ipod, mp3, imac, 4G, and WiFi.  If you haven’t kept up on the language changes, it sounds a lot like Greek.  Even the advertising methods have changed.

Instead of having massive billboards produced or printing thousands of pamphlets, it is much smarter to get a good SEO partner.  Yet, when the grandparents go online to try and figure out what an mp3 is and wondering why there isn’t an mp1 or 2, they don’t even realize their search results are aided by an SEO partner.  If they happened to hear their own children discuss the SEO partner work being done at their business, it is just like Greek and their use of internet for interpretation of the mp puzzle probably wouldn’t be associated with it.  It’s got to be tough to have learned so much throughout life yet still experience a steady stream of confusion with these new and oddly spelled words.

I realize that high heels are the fashion, people are even wearing them with jeans on a daily basis.  However, I remember the days when people were warned against the use of high heels, at least until you were a teenager or grown.  They may be fashionable to look at, but high heels can be really hard on the feet.  It’s nothing like a ballerina who has to wear toe shoes, but still painful on a daily basis.  If you subject yourself to the torture of high heels, foot reflexology may just become your best friend.

Foot reflexology involves massage techniques that feel heavenly after a long week where you are constantly on your feet.  If you know of a good practitioner, it can’t be beat.  If you don’t have access to one, there is hope.  There are foot reflexology massager tools that have a similar effect.  Most people are familiar with the warm pool of water used in the pedicure process and how you can buy foot baths to use at home.  The foot reflexology massager is like that.  It brings a little piece of the pampering process home so you can use it on a daily basis to make your feet feel wonderful after the high heel torture.