Earthquake map brings seismic updates, anxiety

How close are we to the Big One?

Or, was that last shaker really the Big One?

Might it be a good idea to buy property in Arizona, thinking it may become coastal land?

Or am I talking through my tinfoil hat again?

Anyway, here's a Web site that gives the latest fault line activity, by the hour, by the magnitude, and all that good stuff. If you live in,  say, California (like I used to), this might give you hours of anxiety-fueling entertainment. Or not.

Enjoy.

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Saying goodbye to a friend

"My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today."

- Rabbit proverb, quoted by Richard Adams, "Watership Down."

I made one of the hardest decisions in my life over the weekend. I had my best friend, one who was a part of my life for 15 years, euthanized ... [read more]

Rest easy, Hoodoo.

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'Duck And Cover' brings back some memories

Remember this?



I think I saw this in my kindergarten class. Rather a tense time, what with Khruschev and Castro feeling their oats.

Anyway, I was doing my usual manic Google thing, and uncovered this. I think it was originally done in 1951, and became a schoolhouse staple until the 1980s.

I forgot the turtle had a name. It's Bert.

Thought I'd share this little piece of nostalgia with you. Enjoy.

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Everyone wants to crash Cinco de Mayo party

Or something.

This video was shot over a 35-day period in mid-2009, with the camera perched over one trail. Notice how well-enforced our borders are.

Understand, not all illegal aliens are Mexican. They're not even all Latinos. Not all Mexicans are illegal aliens, either. In fact, many second- and third-generation Mexicans do not like illegal aliens. Let's get that up front.

But this invasion -- and I can't think of a cleaner word here -- has changed the population dynamics in the southwest. And the southeast. And everywhere else in the country. While it's an underhanded compliment that people would want to sneak into this country, it's also a slap in the face to working people everywhere, our policy makers, and our law enforcement.

Just sayin'.

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I guess he's not running for President either

Maricopa County (Arizona, home of a half-million illegal aliens) Sheriff Joe Arpaio discusses his political future: He won't run for Governor.

Too bad. Even at his age (77) he's got potential. Plus he makes a lot more sense than most of the idiots in politics.

Here's a bright moment with Arpaio and Al Sharpton, as seen on MSNBC. 

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My Facebook officially shut down, now what?

OK. My Facebook account is officially shut down. I euthanized it this morning.

Now, there's the problem of filling some of that void; social media without the social media.

I found this article in some blog called the Dead Dog Cafe (hey, I don't name these things) that is worthy of my consideration. In truth, there are no real secrets there. The writer suggests using:

• Twitter for status messages. I do use that, but the signal-to-noise ratio is ridiculous. The infrastructure is too wide open, and you usually need some third-party software or service to filter things. It's not as completely messed up as Facebook (give it time), but in the interim it handles my short messaging needs.
• Pidgin for chat (although Meebo is also good for this). Generally, dust off your old chat accounts and instant messaging and use those. Do people still send instant messages?
• Regular email for messages. OK. I still use email, and a lot of it, but I'll admit I'm an anachronism. Email is, like, so '90s. Do the folks of the "millennial" generation use email?

The Low Tech Times (I love the layout, by the way) echoes some of this, but adds blogging to the roll-your-own social media mix. The writer, S. P. Gass concludes: "The only reason I can think of to sign up for a Facebook account is to drive traffic to my own sites."

Which, said and done, is the only real reason I can see for keeping Facebook around (except for my friends who are used to exchanging political comment & other nuggets of wisdom with me). But does Facebook actually drive traffic to these blogs? I can't rightly tell, though it's helped make my circle of friends aware of my doings and writings. 

Gass (great name) further stirs the puddin' in an update to his original 2009 piece: Spend time with family and friends in person. Send a postcard every so often. Send an email. And he reiterated the concept of blogging, preferably in a platform where you own the words you write.

On Facebook the natives are getting restless, and you might find some new flavors of Kool-Aid around. But it doesn't matter what flavor you're drinking, the results are still the same.

Meanwhile, there's a new Facebook group that apparently started within the last few minutes: "10 Reasons To Delete Your Facebook Account." Uhh, it ought to be interesting to see how many members it attracts:

• Hypocrites will join the group, maintaining their Facebook accounts to do so.
• Non-hypocrites will merely delete their accounts.

But then, you find that in the real world, too. Some folks will complain and start a movement about something that upsets them, and in doing so feed the problem. Others will quietly (or maybe not so quietly) cease to be a party to the problem. Unfortunately, our society -- particularly our political structure these days -- seems to favor the first course of action. 

See you around the Web ...

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Subscribed to The Column Reloaded yet? Well, what are you waiting for?

Why I'm dumping Facebook like a bad habit

I never could get into the online games and other trappings, but Facebook was still one of my guilty online pleasures. Well, not exactly guilty; many of my friends are on it and that's how we correspond.

Put all that in the past tense. By the end of this week, I will shut my Facebook account down. It's not so much that it's a waste of time -- though in many respects it is -- but the Facebook interface has gone from bad to worse.

Like it or not, Facebook is a big phenomenon in the online world. It started some years ago as an interactive message board, and from there it grew legs. By itself it made that other groundbreaking social media site, MySpace, into an irrelevancy. OK, MySpace helped Facebook along by being the overloaded piece of junk that it is. For a long time, Facebook's big appeal in the social media world was that it wasn't MySpace.

I'd written extensively about Facebook's problems, mostly in the privacy realm. But many of these privacy issues in the past could be chased down to that great void that sits between chair and keyboard. If the computer operator is brain dead, then all sorts of weird things will happen with the computer.

I've noticed recently, though, that Facebook is playing it fast and loose with user privacy. Several new settings were implemented over the past few months, and all of these -- though billed as something that would enrich your Facebook experience -- tend to "share" your personal settings with everybody.

As I write this, I have a modest 104 friends on Facebook. Unlike many social media users, these are people I actually know. I've met nearly all of them, and the few I haven't met I've corresponded with enough to call them friends.

A Facebook employee, in an off-the-record chat with New York Times reporter Nick Bilton said that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg really doesn't give a rip about your privacy:  

@nickbilton: Off record chat w/ Facebook employee. Me: How does Zuck feel about privacy? Response: [laughter] He doesn't believe in it.

Bilton's original tweet, and it sure triggered a firestorm online. OK, you can debate this point here from a journalistic standpoint and from a factual one, but this statement certainly lines up with many of the changes I've seen on Facebook.

The final straw came Saturday night, when I got a video from a friend of mine. The still-shot preview showed a nearly-naked young woman, viewed from the hip. Now, I'm scratching my head. This friend of mine is a family man, one of the most honorable people I know, a good Southern Baptist, and just what is this all about? What didn't help is that the caption called this an "optical illusion."

OK. I'll bite.

While I bit, I was told my video viewer was out of date. I was asked if I wanted to download a new viewer. Now, I'm thinking. I use Opera 10.50, which for Linux is still in alpha. I mean, my software is bleeding-edge stuff; why should my viewer be out of date? Like an idiot I clicked on it.

A couple of things then happened:

1) The video was automatically sent to many people on my friends' list.

2) The .exe file to the viewer sat in my /home/download file. I noted the name and ran a Google search. The program in question, flvdirect.exe, is billed as something that would help download torrents but is actually spyware. It'll do all sorts of nefarious things on your hard drive and it monitors your surfing habits.

For the next hour or so, I heated up my high-speed Internet line. Running Google searches on the offending software. Firing instant messages back and forth with a Facebook (actually a real) friend who also got the video -- from me. Posting my findings on Facebook. I finally got to bed at 2 a.m., exhausted. Spreading malware sure is hard work.

The flvdirect.exe file did not affect my computer. I use a Linux system, which is immune to junk like that. The friend I exchanged messages with runs a Mac, which like Linux is also built off the lock-tight UNIX operating system. If I was using a Windows box it might be a different story.

All this episode did was spread on my Facebook account, and perhaps made my friends wonder if I'd flipped out. It robbed me of some valued sleep, and when you look like me you need all the beauty sleep you can get.

And it ticked me off. Completely. Enough to convince me to shut down Facebook.

OK, folks. Here's how this works. I still have two active email addresses; you can catch me at either one. I have two phone numbers; if you have one of those numbers you can give me a holler if you need to (those who don't have the number, well, there's a reason for that). I have my blog; those who read my posts on Facebook can read the exact same stuff there or even grab the RSS feed for your news raleader. For social media I have Twitter and LinkedIn, and if you're at least 50 years old you can catch my old folks' social media page at Eons. So it's not like I'm disappearing off the face of the earth, or even off the Web. Shoot, I make my living on the Internet; I'm not about to shut that down.

But Facebook? That's a whole 'nother matter.

If you use Facebook and have a Windows system, keep your virus checker and spyware screening system up to date. Seriously. AVG makes an excellent virus checker, it's free, and I understand it does check for spyware.

Don't click on weird-looking stuff, EVEN IF A FRIEND SENDS IT.

Got all that? Good.

In the next few days I'll be checking on other social-media options, and reporting on them. All of these, by the way, will feed directly into my Facebook page so they can be read there. If you access my material from there, you'd better read it fast before I shut the whole thing down.

Here's the upshot: If you're comfortable with the direction Facebook is going, by all means use it and enjoy it. But since I'm not comfortable with any of that, you can deal me out.

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About those comments ...

I get 'em every once in a while, and I like 'em.

Yeah, every once in a while I get reader comments.

But lately, I've been getting a sack full of comments that have little to do with the subject matter in the post, and carry some link to some strange site that I can not endorse.

OK. That said, here's my comment policy:

• Any that are written in a language I cannot understand, I will reject. I might run it through a translator and if the comment makes sense I'll post the translation in English. But for the most part I will delete.
• Any comments that have nothing to do with the subject matter, I will reject.
• Any comments with a link, I will check out. If it's something useful to my readers, I may run it. Otherwise I will reject.
• Other link posters, please email me and we'll discuss advertising rates.
• Comments that meet the criteria outlined above (in English, understandable, germane to the topic, and not an attempt at free advertising) I will run. I will probably answer those.

Enjoy reading, and let's stay on topic. Cool?

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New immigration package calls for national ID

Now how did I know the Democrats would use this immigration crisis to push for a National ID Card?

Duh, the problem is not fixed on the national level, and certainly not by what amounts to a national database.

Do we have anybody in DC who has a clue? At all? Or do we have to vote the whole stinkin' lot of 'em out and try again?

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In the Examiner: Should SC enact Arizona-style law?

It's been a while since I posted on The Examiner -- got a million irons in the fire right not -- but I had to get this off my chest.

Should South Carolina enact Arizona-style immigration law?

It's interesting watching the battle rage on about a recently-passed Arizona law that demands that people be prepared to show they are in this country legally. According to this law, a police officer may ask someone for proof if he suspects the person slipped across the border into the United States without telling anybody.

Meanwhile, folks in Charleston watch as their area's population dynamics change. A dozen years ago, a few Latinos were in the area, and concentrated around Johns Island. Now, whole sections of North Charleston are Latino. Along Ashley Phosphate Road and ... (don't just sit there; read the rest!)

It is good stuff for debate, no question there. And it seems PrezBo is determined to torpedo Arizona's actions.

OK. Why? These are points I didn't bring up in the Examiner article, but they deserve mention:

• Obama is, at bottom, a community organizer. It's what he does. 
• It's not politically correct to say bad things about illegal aliens. It's considered racist, and that's built on the assumption that all illegal aliens are Mexicans, or even Latinos. Many are not.
• Obama needs a power base for 2012. He needs voters. While he won't get votes from anyone who knows and values the Constution, he might as well go elsewhere for this power base. And if he does a fast amnesty law and fast-tracks the citizenship process, that's a bunch of grateful immigrants who are guaranteed to support him.

Oh. Something I forgot to mention:

• Obama learned his politics in Chicago, where being a citizen -- or even being alive -- is not necessary a qualifying factor to vote.

'Nuff said.

Whether we like it or not, Obama shows his hand

Another Obama-ism, at a recent Nuclear Security Summit:

That key sentence again:

"Whether we like it or not, we remain a military superpower."

Whether we like it or not? Pray tell, what does our alleged president mean here?

Personal footnote: I used to think he was just overmatched, in over his head, just a community organizer thrown into a job he is not qualified for. But with statements like this, it looks more and more like he has an agenda. A plan. And it's one that turns us into one of those European nations that's going down the drain. The more I think about it, the more it looks like he wants to castrate America.

Enough of that. With that off my chest, here's the deal:

If you happen to be one of those folks who doesn't like it, I just have one thing to say:

"Delta is ready when you are."

Please. Go away. Get your slack butt out of this country and quit bugging me. OK?

(Gee, what's so hard about that?)

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15 years later, Oklahoma City terror attack recalled

I don't rightly remember what I was doing when I heard about the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. I was probably on my way to work. But the bombing, which for the next six years was called "the worst terrorist attack on American soil," became part of my life over the next few weeks. Now, 15 years after the attack, memories come back in a flood.

It's one of those things that you can't forget unless you're lobotomized. Nor is it something that should be forgotten. Maybe if we Americans had a lot more memory and a lot less wishful thinking, we'd be much better off as a nation. But I digress.

I do remember a rather strange incident a few weeks earlier. A bomb went off in a vacant lot near where I worked, and being the dutiful reporter I went to check it out. As far as the cops were concerned, evidence was pretty thin. It didn't merit a lot of attention at the time, and the story didn't get more than a paragraph or two. I could have ended the story with that horrendous news cliche, "the investigation is continuing, police said," and I wouldn't have been far off.

Oh. A little footnote about work. I was editor/reporter/photographer/layout man for The Mohave County Standard, based in Kingman, Arizona.

As news of the Oklahoma City bombing became public and a suspect was named, I knew I was going to live with this story for a while. The prime suspect, Timothy McVeagh, lived in Kingman.

There was more. He worked at a hardware store in town with another Kingman resident named Michael Fortier. He kept a mailbox at a local mail-drop business. He rented his movies at a local video store. He was all over Kingman, and soon the FBI was also all over Kingman. For a while the FBI worked with the theory that the vacant-lot explosion was a test run; if I remember straight, evidence suggested fuel oil and fertilizer was the explosive agent -- same stuff that was used to destroy the Alfred Murrah Federal Building.

I don't know if Mac McCarty is still around. Mac was in his early 70s at the time, and I knew him quite well. Mac was the one who reminded me it is grammatically incorrect to refer to someone as an ex-Marine. Mac always carried a gun -- in Arizona you could carry one openly back then -- and he was upset that he had to check his weapon in at the door whenever he went into the county courthouse. He'd staged one-man protests defending his Second Amendment rights in front of the courthouse, with a sign in his hands and his weapon on his hip.

Mac had a little side business when Arizona revamped its weapon-carry laws. To legally carry a concealed weapon, you needed to take a class in handgun safety, and Mac was accredited as a teacher. For a time, he had two students in one of his classes -- Timothy McVeagh and Michael Fortier.

Mac wasn't sure why these two were in his class. They both knew their way around a firearm, he told me. The closest he could figure was that maybe they were involved in militia activity and they were looking for interested people. Mac said he would have been interested in hanging out with the two if that was the case.

While the FBI staked out Kingman, the national and international media also swarmed my town. And many of the foreign reporters -- from the Sydney Herald in Australia, and the L.A. Times in California -- thought the town was a real hoot. Militia types everywhere, they reported. Strong anti-government sentiment all around. Most people lived in mobile home parks, flush toilets had just arrived, and FAX machines had yet to be installed. Or something.

It's true the folks in northern Arizona are a little different from the rest of the country. We Southwesterners (and I freely use "we" because I lived out there for a long time and these roots still show) don't usually recognize foreign powers, and Washington, DC is about as foreign as it gets. We tend to take matters in our own hands and go to the government later, if we think
about it.

But in the weeks and months after that bombing that killed 168 people -- many of them children at a day-care center -- my memories come out in chunks:

• Spending an evening on a press stakeout in front of Michael Fortier's house while the FBI executed a search warrant. His was easy to pick out; it had the Gadsden flag ("Don't Tread On Me") flying proudly in the front yard. I talked my way into his next-door neighbor's living room for a chat; she was in her 80s and rather thrilled at all this drama in her neighborhood. The FBI sprung for about a dozen large pizzas for the press, so they got on my good side for at least a few minutes.
  

• Stopping in at a military surplus place, Archie's Bunker, to pick up a gas mask bag -- which is great for carrying cameras and film. The place was across the street from the National Guard Armory, which served as the FBI staging area. I know they were monitoring the doors of Archie's Bunker; I'm probably on some federal film archive somewhere.
  
  
• Talking to a man who was bicycling from Kingman to Oklahoma City. He wanted to raise funds and awareness, and to let the people in Oklahoma City know we're not all bad in Arizona.
  
  
• Meeting a delegation of visitors from Somalia. I'm not sure why they visited Kingman, but they sure had some preconceived notions about the place. In broken English, one told me he'd heard about "these people who did bad things and now they're ..." That's when, searching for the right word, he held his wrists together in that international gesture. In handcuffs.
  
  
• Hearing from a magazine called Media Bypass, an alternative publication that was self-described as somewhere to the right of Attila The Hun. They were particularly interested in my editorials, where I suggested the bombing took a lot more financing and organization than what two clowns making minimum wage at a hardware store could muster. 
  
  

I'm no conspiracy nut, but I still think McVeagh took a lot of secrets with him when he was executed; secrets that the federal government wanted to stay hidden. But then, I don't recognize foreign powers.

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The Census Bureau comes a-calling, part 1

I'm at home, working, when there's a knock on my door. I answer it. It's a guy with the Census Bureau.

No, I'm not in trouble. Yet. (Though I might be, as soon as they see my answers.) It was just what you'd call a friendly call.

Nice gentleman. He handed me a flyer. "Hoy, NOSOTROS Contamos!"

Oh, let's check the other side.

"Today, WE Count!" it reads, along with the standard-issue pleas: "Fill it Out. Mail it Back."

Very nicely, I told the gentleman I had already mailed mine back, though I didn't say how many filled-out Census forms I sent. As I mentioned, I got more than one because the Census Bureau wanted to make sure everyone had a form.

The gentleman says they've only had about 60 percent participation on the Census. I asked him whether that was nationwide or just for the area, and he said those numbers are for North Charleston.

OK. The Census Bureau paid this guy to go door to door, handing out flyers, making friendly calls. We already knew the Bureau was marketing this thing like crazy, even down to the Super Bowl ads. See that? We taxpayers paid for Super Bowl time! Now, it's (as it says on the bottom of the flyer, English side) NATIONAL MARCH TO THE MAILBOX CAMPAIGN, 2010.

Are we having fun with this Census thing yet?

I am.

And if you have extra forms, send them over to me and I'll have more fun.

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Vanity Fair: Hillary for SCOTUS? You're kidding, right?

Please. You're killin' me.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/04/supreme-court-justice-hillary-clinton.html

Excerpt:

" ... as you might have heard, there's a Supreme Court gig opening up this summer. And as you also might have heard, the Clinton-for-SCOTUS speculation has already begun ... 

"... this morning on the Today show, Senate Judiciary Committee member Orrin Hatch (R-UT) told Matt Lauer that he "heard the name Hillary Clinton today" in conjunction with Obama's possible Supreme Court nominees. "That would be an interesting person in the mix," he said. (Note the use of the adjective "interesting," the most diplomatic of pejoratives.) Lauer asks, "In your opinion, would she be qualified?" To which Hatch responds, "I have a high respect for her and think a great deal of her, but I'm not going to pre-judge that." He adds, "We'd have to be very fair about it ..."

Ugh.

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Twinkies turn 80: Is the original still edible?

It was 80 years ago, on April 6, 1930, when the first Twinkie went on the market. As now they travelled in pairs; selling two for a nickel.

The then-Continental Baking Co. (now Hostess) was looking for something cheap, a snack that would go over well in an economically depressed time. Now, almost 500 million are sold every year, and that snack cake became part of our folklore.

Never mind the fact they became a legal defense for murder (albeit an unsuccessful one) in Dan White's trial for killing San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978. And just ignore the hypothesis that Twinkies are locked in a time-warp of freshness, they're the stuff of legend.

Here are some Twinkies facts, from the Orange County Register:

• Twinkie inventor James Dewar named the snack after a billboard he saw advertising Twinkle Toe Shoes, but never got paid royalties for his creation.
• The Twinkie originally had banana filling, but bananas were rationed during WWII, so vanilla was substituted. Customers liked it so much it stayed in there.
• The deep-fried Twinkie was invented at the Texas State Fair. Here’s a recipe.
• In a nod to the supposed indestructibility of the snacks, the T.W.I.N.K.I.E. Project lists several silly experiments that can be performed on them, such as the “gravitational response test” (i.e. dropping one from a 6th-floor window).

So what's the story about the never-aging, bionic Twinkies? Untrue, says Snopes. But one thing that did catch my attention, according to Snopes it takes a Twinkie 45 seconds to explode in a microwave.

Exploding Twinkies? Cool! I tell you, they're the original fun food.

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A few good writing tips

In an online discussion of writers earlier today, some of us gave our top three writing tips. Of course, being a practicing wordsmith (meaning that if I keep practicing, I just might get pretty good), I had to submit my own.

Here they are:

1. My note pad goes everywhere with me. 
2. Know how you best work, and do that. For me it's in short, 30-minute bursts of kickbutt. 
3. Don't just talk about it, don't just dream about it, don't just think about it or read about it. Write!

There's an anecdote that goes with #3. According to the story, Nobel Prize-winning novelist Sinclair Lewis (who, like the other  American Nobel Prize winners in literature at the time, was known to empty a bottle or three) was invited to speak at a writer's conference. He took the podium, and asked the students: Who around here is serious about being a writer?

Of course, everyone raised their hands.

"Then why ... aren't you at home writing?" 

And with that, Lewis left the room.

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At least there's one man who makes sense around here

Here's a new one from Maricopa County (Arizona) Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the self-styled "America's Toughest Sheriff":

I tell you, he ought to be President.

###

More thoughts: Messin' with the census

H'mmm ... the Census folks sent out another mailer as a friendly reminder yesterday, and with it there's an extra census form.

Two thoughts:

• I wonder how much it costs for the Census Bureau to operate, with all these mailers, extra forms, Super Bowl ads and all that? Ahh, it doesn't matter 'cause it's tax money.

• Why is it so tempting for me to send both forms in? Hey, if I can make stuff up once, I can make stuff up twice.

Just askin' ...

###

Please tell me this is an April Fools joke!

Great joke by a fella who calls himself Penguin Pete, who writes about Linux operating systems and stuff of a geeky nature. It had me going for a minute:

(CNN) -- Every day, nearly 90,000 people in the U.S. reach for a cup of coffee or tea, a soda, or an energy drink, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

And of those, thousands become caffeine addicts for life.

Now, in an effort to fight the war on all addictive drugs -- especially when it comes to children -- the FDA is issuing a new rule titled Prohibition of All Caffeine and Caffeinated Products Act.

The rule, which became effective March 31, completely prohibits the possession and sale of all caffeinated products, such as coffee, tea, energy drinks, sodas and soft drinks containing caffeine, and even over-the-counter medications containing caffeine such as stimulants and dietary aids.

This will make caffeine a Class B controlled substance, exactly like cocaine and other illegal stimulants, with the same mandatory jail sentences for possession and distribution ...

Muahahaha!

Gotta be a joke. Can you imagine the problems it would cause my plumbing after I flush a couple of pounds of coffee beans down the john when the police knock on my door?

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Making a living in ObamaNation

Like it or not, Obamacare is the law of the land. The chances of having it declared unconstitutional are only enough to hang a prayer on, and the chances of it being repealed are nonexistent.

OK. I wasn't planning to debate that piece of legislation again; y'all should know by now what I think of it. But Obamacare ushers in a whole different world, and it's especially noticeable if you like to eat, and if you work to keep beans on the table.

Not long ago I was drawing unemployment, and looking for work. I was thinking, anything that moved was subject to my attention, and if it didn't move I'd kick it a few times and make it move. But the job market is, well, pretty slim.

Enter Obamacare. Now, people who hire others are taking a long hard look at whether they can afford to do that. It's bad enough with a tanked economy, but now that the federal government is requiring health care besides? That just kicked any possibility of recovery right between the eyes.

It's a real bad time to look for work.

A few weeks ago I said that one is foolish to depend on one source of income, what with the uncertain economy. Let's amend that. Now, anyone who works for another person in a typical employer-employee relationship faces a bigger disadvantage than ever before.

Welcome to the new world. The independent contactor is king. Instead of punching a clock, getting paid by the hour and banking on those cool benefits, the jobs scenario has people getting paid by the job and seeing to his own benefits.

I'm no stranger to this. For years I worked as a taxi driver and as a freelance journalist. Although the taxi company often played it fast and loose with independent contractor law, it was a pretty good way to work. Call my own hours. If I'm not making money it's my own issue. If I have a problem with the boss, then it's time for some serious therapy.

Now, I'm doing it again. I pretty much gave up on finding actual work for someone else, but am throwing my resources into working for myself. A bit of a high-wire act, admittedly, but it's starting to pay off. I have a couple of income sources for writing Web content, and am making moves toward hire-out writing and editing.

It's a tough go. My biggest hurdle is personal. While it's true that a person with ADHD always has several things in the pot (I'm making no admissions here), focus is my biggest issue. I'm working on that, and making small gains. Except for that, there is really nothing standing in the way.

Meanwhile, I'm making a little hay:

• Got my high-speed Internet up. This in itself is huge. I don't have to run out with laptop and capture a wireless signal; I can work from home.

• Getting my routine together. A few hours in the morning writing and editing today's copy, a bicycle ride in the afternoon (I wrote this column while riding back home from the bank), digging up a little more work, and things like that.

• Working, as I mentioned, on focus. I checked out the "Pomodoro technique," which is nothing but a fancy name for setting a kitchen timer while you work and taking regular breaks. I do my best work in short bursts, living in a bubble of kick-butt for a half-hour at a time.

Meanwhile, I have a to-do list for the next few weeks:

• Continue getting my groove on, fine-tune the routine.

• Get a wireless router. Currently my desktop computer is hooked up to my high-speed Internet, and I do most of my writing on my netbook, outdoors. I move files back and forth with a thumb drive, an inelegant solution. I've priced routers, and I should have one within two or three weeks.

• Start looking at upgrading equipment. My desktop computer is the bottleneck in the system. It's probably 10 years old, and it hesitates a lot when I'm doing high-speed online stuff. I've gutted the operating system and am running one that's little more than a browser and text editor, but it's still the thing that slows me down.

• Dedicate part of my work day to what lawyers call "rainmaking," hitting the wires hot and heavy to drum up some more work.

It's coming together. It's a whole new workaday world out there, and I'm ready for it.

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