Furry Feet, Cotton Mouth, and a Big Dorky Smile

Through most of my life, I've had some serious misconceptions about depression. I have long believed that depressed people were just irritating weak-willed whiners who needed a kick in the ass and to shake it off. So naturally, I got a nice dose of the irony of life and wound up with depression myself. The more I read about depression, the more I realize how long I've had it without knowing.

Actually, a big sign of depression isn't necessarily crying/sadness or a tendency to listen to emo rock at all. It can often be severe detachment and apathy. I know there's probably a lot of people out there saying "Duh!" right now, but that was news to me. Actually, three of the big symptoms are:

- Apathy/Detachment
- Lack of Motivation/Drive
- Forgetfulness

All of these, I've had in spades for some time. A lot of the reading says if these last for more than two weeks at a pop, you could be considered clinically depressed. Now that it's been pointed out to me, I think mine's been going on for about six to seven years. There may have been occasional dips before that, and it didn't get really bad until about three or so years ago, but six to seven seems about right.

So I went to the doctor today to see about getting my (legalized) "happy pills". While I consider it completely worth it in order to get my life back, based on the list of side effects, I'm likely to end up with hobbit hair on my feet and some sort of horrid excretive disorder from random body holes. Oh, and I have a slim chance (less than 5%) of spontaneous human combustion. I'll try to post some pics of the new feet next week if I'm not on fire.

Economic Eats and One Evil Bunny

I am geekishly impressed by the cabbage! I've been eating one for a couple of days now, and I can't help but marvel. Not only is most of what you buy technically edible (if you don't mind the taste), but apparently half of the vegetable isle is some type of cabbage or other. From TFA linked above:

Cultivars of Cabbage include:

• Broccoli
• Brussels sprout
• Cauliflower
• Kale (Regular and Chinese)
• Collard greens
• Kohlrabi

Ok, Brussels sprout was an obvious one, but Cauliflower and Broccoli I did not know!

Two Days, 4 Meals, $1.79

Have to love it.

Cabbages, cabbages, yum, yum, yum. Cabbages, cabbages, gimme some!

- "Cabbage" Jack, Evil Rabbit c.1983

Productivity Pr0n and Self-Revealing Ick

I was looking over some various productivity Pr0n when I came across a nice bit of advice for maintaining focus and productivity: Care.

It seems so simple, but for someone who has been going through mild clinical depression, it's really difficult. Oh, yeah, I skipped that part. I've been going through mild clinical depression. No bad thoughts about hurting me or others, no medicine; Just a lot of apathy towards mostly everything. It runs in the family. Thanks, parents. ;P

Caught up? Good. Lets continue.

So there are some things I do care about. Intensely, as a matter of fact:

1. My family
2. My friends
3. The socio-economic plight of the indigenous tribes of Madagascar.

Granted, two of those are pretty far ahead of the third.

So, I am trying to figure out what I want to do next, since I'm more or less in a forced reset mode. Self re-invention is an awkward and somewhat overly revealing process. Ever take a long, honest look at yourself without the sugar-coated happy filters? Ugh! There's a lot of, as the open source geeks say "Cruft" around some pretty decent code. Time to take out the trash on my psyche.

So rather than blog about some project that I want to finish (and likely won't) because I think it's interesting, I think I'll just write about something I am guaranteed to finish. Crap I've just done and care about (see earlier link) because it helps me get what I want.

I'll let you know if I actually do anything.

That was fast

Yeah. The whole J2EE stuff lasted all of a couple of weeks.

I'm out in Baltimore, and the whole research project thing isn't really doing it for me.

Right now, I need to find a crappy second job.

It is damn near impossible to find a second job around here!

A New Start

My gods, it's been a while. Well, I lost my job at Lockheed Martin. That sucks pretty badly, but now I have a great opportunity to reinvent myself and learn some new things.

To that end, I've started learning J6EE platform. I installed Tomcat and wrote a basic web app. That was pretty easy.

Then I installed the Android Development Kit and wrote a really basic Android application (for 2.1). Again, easy, but really basic.

So I'm trying to think of a project I can do that will allow me to play with some new stuff, but yet build on what I know with XML and related stuff.

I'm open to suggestions.

We should repeal the 17th Amendment

Article 1, Section 3

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.

Amendment 17
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.

...

-------------

It's an important note that the purpose of a Senator is to represent the state government of his or her state. Senators do not represent the people, that's what representatives are for. That is why there are 2 and exactly 2 for every state regardless of population.

Notice that the Amendment was ratified in 1913, which was during the administration of Woodrow Wilson. Wilson is one of the more progressive early century presidents. He created the progressive tax code, which is one of the cornerstones of Marxist doctrine as outlined in the Communist Manifesto. Note especially the second section, titled "Proletarians and Communists" where it says:

The section ends by outlining a set of short-term demands. These included, among others, the abolition of both private land ownership and of the right to inheritance, a progressive income tax, universal education, centralization of the means of communication and transport under state management, and the expansion of the means of production owned by the state. The implementation of these policies, would, the authors believed, be a precursor to the stateless and classless society.

You can see by this description of demands outlined in the manifesto that many of the things that Wilson set in motion have been increasingly embraced by both major parties. Wilson also started the draft and heavily advanced the Labor Union adjenda.

The reason I point this out is to show that Wilson was not a big fan of the Constitution. The 17th Amendment is a major power grab in that it takes representation away from the state governments in the halls of congress. The Senators are now not much different from Representatives.

Any thoughts?

Discussions

Anyone notice that there's lots of noise going on in the political world, but very little actual discussion?

I think I may start placing some thoughts on this blog and invite others to comment. If you can't back up your comments with something credible, then I'll delete it.

In other words "Bush lied! People died!" or "Obama is a secret Muslim!" will be taken down and ignored. Use sources, use logic.

I'll start soon.