My wife started a tree where you wrote what you’re thankful for on a leaf everyday this month and taped it to the tree.  It helps you think positively.

Go back and read that sentence again and laugh your ass off.  When you’re done, keep reading.

Ok back with me?  Good, let’s continue.

So I went to the aisle in Wal-Mart and there weren’t any ShamWows on the shelf.  From there I made my way to the Wal-Mart Customer Service Counter to see if they had any in the back.

The lady was getting ready to go on her break.  I asked her if there were anymore ShamWows in the back and she paged someone in the back.  She asked the question, and I swear was only on the phone for 5 seconds.  She then hung up and said there weren’t any back there.

WHAT IS WAL-MART DOING TO THEIR EMPLOYEES?  DO THEY HAVE A FLIPPIN’ COMPUTER ATTACHED TO THEIR BRAINS?  Isn’t that quite the coincidence…

As I walked out the store, this scene from “O Brother Where Art Thou” popped into my head.

You have to come up with content, you have to develop the site structure, you have to work on the user interface.

You just can’t get away from it.  So don’t look for the fancy tools…it’s all a smokescreen.  You’re gonna have to work your butt off.

The sale of antidepressants and antianxiety drugs is widespread. In New York their use became common after 9/11. It continued through and, I hypothesize, may have contributed to, the high-flying, wildly imprudent Wall Street of the ’00s. We look for reasons for the crash and there are many, but I wonder if Xanax, Zoloft and Klonopin, when taken by investment bankers, lessened what might have been normal, prudent anxiety, or helped confuse prudent anxiety with baseless, free-floating fear. Maybe Wall Street was high as a kite and didn’t notice. Maybe that would explain Bear Sterns, and Merrill, and Citi.

I’m not so sure about that.  Hollywood has always glorified the financial sector’s decadent lifestyle.  You know the old saying…Sex, drugs, and Balance Sheets.

Here’s what made me sit up and notice:

Five weeks ago, when I asked a Wall Street titan what one should do to be safe in the future, he took me aback with the concreteness of his advice, and its bottom-line nature. Everyone should try to own a house, he said, no matter how big or small, but it has to have some land, on which you should learn how to grow things. He also recommended gold coins, such as American Eagles. I went to the U.S. Mint website the next day, but there was a six-week wait due to high demand.

Well we’re on track with that advice.  We’re goin’ “Old MacDonald”. We’ve ordered some chickens, and we’ll be tilling up some of our backyard this weekend (weather permitting).

The thing is…why are we taking a Wall Street titan’s advice? Weren’t they part of the reason this happened?

I have had alot to post about actually, but that’s all in the past.  Looking forward, I’m going to keep my New Year’s Resolution and keep blogging!

Really no good reason.  I had to keep playing around with different configurations, but FINALLY I have a window that shows 8 hard drives…4 internal and 4 external.  Woohoo!

So now after that 4 hour ordeal…I need to get some work done.

The REALLY fun part will be getting rid of duplicate data…but that’s for another time.

Sean Connery in The Untouchables