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In the current state of the U.S. economy, it's pretty difficult to avoid being laid off, fired or, for whatever reason, not having a job for a certain period of time. True, sometimes the employee is entirely to blame for his/her predicament, but more often than that, a company is trying to consolidate, move offices or, in general, save money against the bottom line. Many times, those doing the actual firing and layoffs have to make decisions they would prefer to ignore, yet they have no choice.
During the past couple of days, I've been taking mini-breaks to read Basketbawful, a blog about the worst of the worst in the NBA. If you know me, you're probably wondering why I would be reading this, considering that I follow college basketball exclusively, not the NBA, the NBA development league, European leagues, Upward basketball, etc. If you don't know me, I'm not sure how you ended up on this site, but feel free to look around and DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING.
As a writer, I am usually sitting on a few mildly interesting ideas for books, articles, etc. Last year, I wanted to create a children's book about the winter holidays, but I wanted to avoid writing about Christmas or any specific religious holiday.
In the past, we've seen an octopus blend in with rocks, run on the ocean floor and solve a maze. That's not all they can do. Apparently, some octopuses pick up coconut shells and hide in them, the first evidence of an invertebrate using tools.
Wow, I just realized how far behind I was in posting tidbits about good local writers. I met author Mohamed Mughal last year at a writers' conference, and we shared opinions and the like on our writings.
From the Archive
I will be featuring the Web site Friendster in my August column. If you are a member of Friendster, add me as a friend and send me any comments you have about your Friendster experience.
Friendster, from its site, is an online community that connects people through networks of friends. If you're not a member yet, join and let me know how you like it.
I just wanted to give a shout out to all of the people who stopped by the Inner Harbor Barnes & Noble in Baltimore on Sept. 1. The rain started Friday morning and didn't stop until sometime Saturday, producing more than 4 inches in the city. Instead of drowning, however, I sold a couple of books and met people from all over the country, and a few from distant lands.
In the web world, an upgrade is usually a thing of joy and agony. On one hand, you want to have the latest and greatest, but on the other, there are usually so many hoops to jump through that it can oftentimes be better to wait until the last minute.
I guess in this case, I'm a little late to the game with Drupal 9, but I've finally upgraded this site - all the way to 9.1 with the Gutenberg editor. Now it is time to dance.
A few weeks ago, while doing research (if you can call it that) for a column, I came across a site devoted to myths and legends. I thought I had visited just about every genre of Web sites, but boy did I miss a big one.
Paranormal Web sites seem to be fairly normal these days. Not that I'm completely surprised by this, but I was shocked to see the latest reports of phenomena. I really must be out of the loop because now there are theories on Mothman, Owlman and Goatman out there. I swear I did not pull these names from an episode of "Power Rangers."
Maybe it's nice to be the wealthiest person in the world. I guess it would be nice to have a full-time maid or someone to butter a piece of toast for me, if that's what rich people do these days. But you may want to think again about being rich when you hear the number of spam messages that Bill Gates gets every day.