fractalnavel

ramblings...

• finally, a little cool down in the temperatures - and i come up with some sort of sinus infection.  is it one of those post-visit(ing) things where i get exposed to whatever was going around but missed ?  hard to say, since i've been around a lot of people-full events for the last six weeks and this is the first time something has come up.  bummer.  so i'm trying to vitamin-c and echinacea the thing to death.  although vitamin c is well known as necessary for healthy mucous membranes, and has claims for many other benefits from mega-doses, it looks like the echinacea thing is still up on the air.  purple cone flowers ?  maybe i should go out and eat the daisies.
• i posted a reference to a michael crichton piece on environmentalism some time back, mainly for his introductory comments.  ran across some stuff in rebuttal to the main content of his talk in this week's scifi weekly.  well, indirectly, as the letters were wrtitten in response to another letter supporting one of crichton's recent books.  just cross-referencing for completeness here.
• i got used to slacking on the lawn because it has been so dry for weeks.  so i wasn't paying attention to the effects of dennis parking its ass over the region for the last week and a half.  bushy green lawn again.  i'm not up to mowing today.  i need to steal one of those “growing, not mowing” signs from the parks.  can't find a sign image, but there sure is a lot of stuff on the web about lawns.  lawn growing is a silly, imported practice that may actually hurt the environment.  i wonder if there are lawn-free neighborhoods to move into, in otherwise average suburban settings.  but my ultimate goal is to escape such things altogether, so the curiosity is minimal.
• woth, an off-brand cincinnati tv channel, has been showing some obscure scifi movies this week.  today, it's Slipstream (1989).  there's also a 1967 movie by  that name, made by spielberg - !  but there's no imdb details beyond cast.  “unfinished” it says (and a rating of 8.2??).  may be his first truly professional effort.
• my monster resume expired, and i finally got around to reactivating it last weekend.  on monday, several leads popped up in my inbox, followed by a slower trickle the rest of the week.  it's like i thought, if you want to use monster (and maybe any other job site) to its full effectiveness, you need to “touch” your resume daily, keeping it at the top of freshness lists. (i think this applies to dating sites as well.)  in my case, even with a three and a half year gap, it's the sharepoint experience that seems to get the most attention.  i don't really understand that much, as it's no longer a new technology, and takes little effort to pick up the skills.  yet prospective employers seem to think specific experience is necessary.  for my own sake i probably shouldn't disabuse them of the notion, but as an ethical consultant i feel something should be said.  so there, consider it said.  i've tried making a bigger fuss over this, but no one believes me anyway, so this “effort” is merely for the record.