I’m a bit late with this week’s link roundup (surprise) but I have an excuse. As I was driving to work for an early morning meeting on Tuesday, a heavy, driving rain broke out.  The pitch black, heavy rain and early hour (about 6:30) would have been bad enough but my windshield wiper chose that moment to whip off the car.  I had to go retrieve it in the pitch black, driving rain and 70 mile-per-hour traffic and then use a small pair of pliers to try to work it back on – all in cold weather with a light windbreaker on.

Needless to say I was soaked. Traffic accidents on I-95 extended my cold, shivering wait in the car to two hours.  After spending 20 minutes in the gym locker at work with a hair dryer on me, I felt more or less OK.  Then…. bam.  About 24 hours later, I felt sick.  I visited the urgent care clinic and got some help.  24 hours later, with my blood pressure soaring, severe sinus pain and serious weakness, I was off to the doctor.  I had to get a CAT scan to rule out a stroke, but apparently it was just my body’s reaction to the infection.  My blood pressure’s been normal for 7-8 years, and was just checked about 3 weeks ago so the surge was weird, and made the doctor double-check with the CAT scan.  Not a fun experience.  On the bright side, with some antibiotics and a brief course of blood pressure medicine I’m back to feeling more or less normal today (120 over 70 type blood pressure, and sinus pressure greatly reduced).

Too much information?

Well, just wait til you see the boatload of links I’ve got:

• Running Up Debt:  Never having been in debt other than mortgage debt in my life, I’m always slightly fascinated by other people’s stories of debt spiraling out of control.
• Are Over Half of Workers Really Dissatisfied with Their Jobs?:  Doesn’t surprise me, simply because most of us believe our job should pay a bit more, the boss should be a bit nicer or the guy in the next cubicle shouldn’t tap his pen all day long.
• Do Something You Love, Before You Have To Do Something For Money:  Amen – which is why you should go to an inexpensive college, preferably public, and get out of school without needing to go to work immediately to pay off $80,000 in student loans (or more).
• Crock Pot BBQ Pulled Pork Recipe for Under $15 – Easy and Frugal:  We just got a Crock Pot (actually the exact same one Jeremy has in this post) so I’m going to have to give this a shot.  Nothing like pork for healthy eating!
• To Succeed Financially, You Must Know Yourself and Know Thy (Financial) Self:  Closely related articles, and both worth considering:  you need to understand yourself before you attempt to change yourself.
• What Happened to Patrick? A Few Thoughts About Blogging Anonymously:  I’ve written about my struggle with anonymity before, and Ryan (who is the “real Patrick”) over at Cash Money Life finally gave up on anonymity, giving out his full name right there on the blog.  Not a bad idea.  You can find my real name without much trouble, but I still haven’t just slapped it up on the blog.  Patrick Ryan’s probably right – anonymity won’t do much for furthering your online “brand.”
• The Curse Of Making Too Much Money And Not Pursuing Your Dreams: I sympathize with Lyndon in this post. I make enough money that dropping my current lucrative career seems insane, even to follow my dreams (which aren’t that firmly defined, but that’s a separate question).

Some more good reads, but now I’ve run out of steam to comment…

• Overtime Exempt Employee vs Non-Exempt Employee
• The Key To Living Frugally
• Unemployed Tax Deductions Provide Tax Relief
• Best Gasoline For Your Car Engine? Not Always Premium Gas
• How To Get Health Insurance When You are Self Employed
• Happiness, experience, and memory – Daniel Kahneman’s TED lecture

americas-richest-counties: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance: And finally, a nice little bonus read on a statistic that always kills me. “Highest income” is a radically different concept from “richest.” I had a high income in New Jersey, but my expenses were proportionately higher. If you want to get a true look at “richest” you’d have to incorporate some sort of cost-of-living metric.

Follow me on Twitter!

If you read brip blap via RSS, you might want to visit the site and see the new theme; if you like it, it’s the frugal theme and if you buy it through that link, you help support brip blap.

linklings, sneezing leads to a CAT scan edition is an original article from the website brip blap.

Move over Atkins and all the other diets that have been telling us that there is some way other than controlling fat intake to lose weight and keep it off.

The low carb versus low fat battle has raged for a while now, and it would seem that the low fat guys have something of an edge.

A study recently published in the Annals of internal Medicine found after 3 years of research, that while low carb diets may lead to quicker weight loss; low fat diets were better for keeping the weight off. Over three years, researchers observed the subjects of their weight loss program and those that were on a low fat diet were seen to have sustained twice the long term weight loss when compared to the dieters who were on a low carb diet.

Of course this is not to say that this is the Holy Grail when it comes to weight loss or that this is likely to apply to each individual. This is a general guideline that people would do well to follow. However, many may find that not a low fat diet but a low carb diet may work for them. What is important is to see what really works for a particular person and work with that.

Source: The Examiner

Belly button odor can be embarrassing and can owe itself due to a variety of causes, ranging from the innocuous to the worrisome.

Bad hygiene, wherein link, dead skin or other debris getting caught can be the reason for the odor.

Then again it could be caused by obesity, wherein, there are folds of skin at the bellybutton and the area does not get enough fresh air.

The belly button is a dark and warm place and could also be moist, which is an ideal breeding ground for a number of fungal infections. And infection or an abscess could be because wherein the multiplication of bacteria can give off an offensive odor.

A yeast infection in the belly button could also be the cause of a bad smell. There could be itching in the area and vigorous scratching could well cause some bleeding in the area.

What however may be worrisome is if there is a discharge from the navel due to a urachal cyst or a previous surgery such as Patent urachus. This is a rare but potentially problematic condition, which would typically require surgery.

A hernia is nothing but a protrusion of any organ of the body out of the cavity that usually contains it and pushes through to another part of the body.

The most common kinds of hernia are those of the abdomen, followed by those of the spinal discs and sciatica.

There are different kinds of hernia, which have different causes and indications:

Inguinal Hernia: This is the commonest kind of hernia (an estimated 70% of abdominal hernias may be of this type).

Usually this kind of hernia happens when a portion of the intestine protrudes through the abdominal wall. This could be because of muscle weakness or a tear. This forms a noticeable and painful out-pouching.

Sometimes, the cause is congenital, in which case the hernia could occur in babyhood. Other causes include old age, obesity or pregnancy.

Inguinal hernias can also occur due to strenuous activities such as heavy lifting, or due to chronic conditions such as constipation, repeated episodes of sneezing and coughing (as observed in the case of smokers). Obesity also could cause this kind of hernia.

Hiatal Hernia: This kind of hernia involves the diaphragm, the stomach and the chest cavity. Here, the stomach pushes up and into the chest cavity through the opening in the diaphragm.

While the underlying causes are not fully understood, these hernias are thought to be caused due to an injury in the area or perhaps a congenital defect that created a larger than normal hiatal opening or weak or defective muscles in the area.

Extreme pressure on the abdomen could also cause this kind of herniation as also other activities that create pressure such as heavy lifting, constipation, chronic vomiting or coughing. Pregnancy could also be a cause.

Incisional Hernia: This kind of hernia occurs when there is a surgical wound that has not healed properly. These hernias are usually very difficult to treat.

Umbilical Hernia: This kind of hernia occurs due to a weak area of the wall of the abdomen which causes the umbilical cord to protrude.

Usually this kind of hernia is seen in babies; however adults can have it too and is usually caused by a congenital defect.

Other causes include extra fluid in the abdominal area, obesity, multiple pregnancies and other pressure such as lifting, coughing etc.

We have long heard the many and excellent virtues of fish oil being extolled and now apparently there is reason to doubt this claim.

According to a report, environmentalists have filed a suit contending that fish oil may not be so good for us after all.

The claim is that the PCBs and other toxins contain in fish oil supplements and that consumers are unaware of this. The consumers should be made aware of these contaminants contained in the fish oil.

The fish absorb environmental toxins and chemicals, and those same chemicals are extracted into the fish oil which is then sold as a health supplement. Since the supplement seeks to offer in concentrated form, the goodness of Omega 3 contained in fish oil, the toxins are also being concentrated, the plaintiffs are alleging.

The defendants claim that their product meets are industry standards and regulations and labeling meets the requirements of the law.

It does make sense to place some credence in what the plaintiffs say; we are often made aware of the possible dangers of having farmed fish; pregnant women are advised to eschew certain kinds because of their mercury content. So it is not unreasonable to look more closely at fish supplements; particularly if they claim to be good for you and they may actually not be so!

Source: myfoxdc

Here’s a financial lesson for anyone who participates in online social media of any sort. It’s a cautionary tale about online privacy; not the stalker-type issues that most people are worried about; instead, it’s about how you have to be careful to reveal too much online about business dealings.  I was catching up with some relatives who sold their house a couple of months ago, and they told me an amusing story that showed how they “made money” using Facebook…on their home sale.

My cousin Stan and his wife Elaine listed their house about six months ago. They had remodeled it and priced it to sell in a market that had been hit very hard by the collapse in real estate prices.  Fortunately, they weren’t in any hurry to sell; the mortgage was paid off, they were already living in their new empty-nest retirement digs, and the old house had no association fees and only minimal costs (low property taxes, some minimal lighting and heat for the winter, etc.)

They finally received a good but not great offer, accompanied by the earnest money check. No issues came up, and the usual back and forth of the negotiating process went on.  Stan and Elaine are older than I am but (like me, I guess) have stayed right on top of “the internets.”  After they received the check – with the prospective buyers’ names and address on it – it took Elaine about 5 minutes to find the buyer on Facebook.  She was simply curious whether they were serious buyers or not.

What did she find? Posts on their Facebook wall about how they had found their dream home.  How they would pay anything to get it.  Links to pictures – gushing comments from their friends and family.  In short, drool splattered (electronically) all over Facebook.  The buyers were even inviting all of their friends over for a big party the weekend after closing.  Elaine found all of this – before the final price had even been agreed on!

As you can imagine, this gave Stan and Elaine (a) confidence that the sale would go through but also (b) a gargantuan advantage in the ongoing negotiations.  Instead of being tentative and worrying about offending the (still potential) buyers, they were able to become far more resolute about refusing any concessions, changes in the contract or even agreeing to make changes based on (relatively minor) inspection issues.  They didn’t become jerks about it, but they realized that they had an advantage over the buyers.  That advantage translated into a financial gain when they were able to push back on every change not in their favor.  Presumably the buyers never knew about Elaine’s visit to their Facebook page – maybe they assumed she was “too old” to be on Facebook – but more likely they simply never thought of Facebook being used that way.  Maybe they just assumed Stan and Elaine were tough negotiators.

Of course, a similar situation can arise outside of social media – I once made the mistake of being a little bit too complimentary while viewing a home with owners present – Bubelah’s done it, too. But we knew they knew in that situation.  Maybe someone more Facebook-savvy than me could tell me that there are ways of monitoring who views your wall/profile/whatever.  I’m not sure I’d trust that, though, because a more tech-savvy person always lurks around the corner, who can hide themselves from that monitoring, and on and on ad infinitum.

Keep your mouth shut online while the deal is ongoing. I can’t think of any reason that blabbing about potential deals online can help you.  From the other party finding out and being annoyed (prices being revealed, locations being outed) to simple financial loss, how can you benefit?  I am not a social media junkie, but I keep a low-key presence on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn (as well as two forums, 48days.net and a blogging forum).  I have learned from Stan and Elaine’s amusing recollections of their home sale that it never hurts to assume that every single person on the planet may be reading your posts/tweets/wall messages, no matter how unlikely you might think that could be, and even the most harmless comments can have effects you couldn’t predict.

photo by kaibara87

Follow me on Twitter!

If you read brip blap via RSS, you might want to visit the site and see the new theme; if you like it, it’s the frugal theme and if you buy it through that link, you help support brip blap.

how to make money on Facebook is an original article from the website brip blap.

Once you have an understanding of your own mortality, you either try to ignore it or you think about ways to avoid it. Ignoring it is easy for most people; the drone of American Idol or the smell of another Big Mac are probably all defense mechanisms against awareness of the end.  Avoiding it is tougher, although the most popular solution (reproduction) is easy for most people.  Feeling that part of you will live on in your descendants is a good defense against that self-knowledge.  I found it was an oddly comforting thing which I didn’t expect when having children.  That feeling intensified as I started passing down stories about my deceased relatives to my kids; you’re almost performing some sort of Matrix-like implantation of memories into the next generation.  The memories will fade away generation by generation, but the increasing ease of creating near-permanent media (pictures, videos and so on) provide the cues to spark those memories.

Setting the question of whether children satisfy the desire for pseudo-immortality, you have to turn and look at Stonehenge. Some people got together a long time ago and said “let’s build something.”  We don’t know exactly why, although it was probably some sort of place of worship or sacrifice or celebration.  But we do know someone built it, and in a way the builders put some small part of themselves into that structure which is still sitting there.

Not everyone will build Stonehenge or paint the Mona Lisa. Not everyone will even go to the effort to trace their family tree more than 100 years into the past.  Many people won’t care, and retreat to ignorance.  Many people will care, and cling to their children as proof ‘they’ will live on forever.  Many people will turn to religion and the promise of an afterlife, but even if true it will still be a different life from the life they know.  The happiest people, I think, will build.

Most of us are terrible at building our Stonehenge. I have not created anything of much permanence yet in this life.  I have not built anything, or written anything of any significance, or started anything I expect to last much past my time here.    I suppose I could prepay hosting fees to Godaddy.com for the next 100 years and hope they stay in business and bripblap.com would be here for a while.  But I haven’t started a company, or written music or a novel.

And this is why I try to remind myself to focus on creativity. It’s easy to get up, go to work, eat a sandwich, come home, watch TV and go to sleep.  I’ve been doing more of that than I should, recently.  Doing nothing is a comforting white noise masking the lack of creation in day-to-day life.  Small changes can make a difference.  Even planting a few seeds will make you feel better than your favorite TV show.  Stonehenge wasn’t built in day; the builders must have missed entire seasons of “Druid Idol.”  But we know they were here.  How will people know you were here?

photo by SKI tripper

Follow me on Twitter!

If you read brip blap via RSS, you might want to visit the site and see the new theme; if you like it, it’s the frugal theme and if you buy it through that link, you help support brip blap.

stonehenge is an original article from the website brip blap.

It is advisable to get one’s Swine flu shots as soon as possible; this is a government recommendation on the official flu site.

In particular it is recommended that pregnant women and others at risk such as immune compromised individuals should get Swine flu shots as soon as they are available in the community.

However, many myths and fallacies about the vaccine are circulating; and it is important to sort out fact from fiction here.

There is the apprehension that the swine flu vaccine is unsafe; that it will cause Guillain-Barre (GB) Syndrome etc. as it was seen to cause in the last outbreak of the flu in one out of a million cases. This however has no basis in truth; the Swine flu vaccine does not cause GB syndrome.

Another myth doing the rounds is that the vaccine will actually give you the flu. This is not true either.

It is contended that the swine flu vaccine is less safe than the seasonal flu vaccine, which is also not true.

There is also the widely held view that it is better to take your chances with flu rather than to take the vaccine. However, it is to be remembered that though the illness itself is not serious, it can lead to several serious complications that may even lead to death.

So really at this time, the swine flu vaccine is our best defense against the infection, and so it is one that should definitely be used.

The much talked about ‘vaccine for cervical cancer’ which is actually a vaccine to prevent infection of the Human Papilloma virus or HPV may now have limited efficacy.

According to a new study, women over the age of 40 are not likely to benefit very much from the HPV vaccine, which reduces cervical cancer risk. The recommendation of the vaccine is for females ranging from age 9 to age 26.

According to the study conducted among Costa Rican women, it was found that HPV infections that were newly detected dropped with age: from 35% among women of ages 18 to 25 to 13.5% among women over 42 years of age.

These new infections cleared in about 2 years or so without treatment. Though cervical cancer is less prevalent among younger women than older women, the actual cancer develops a long time, even decades after the actual HPV infection. For this reason vaccinating older women is of little or no actual use.

According to the researcher Dr. Ana Cecilia Rodríguez, the lead author of the research paper says, “Because the HPV vaccine can only prevent infections, and these women are not getting that many new infections, the potential benefit of HPV vaccination among older women is very limited.”

Source: nytimes

If you spend any time working with a small group of people on intense, timeline-driven projects with limited resources you’ve experienced some – or maybe a lot of – tension. You’ve probably also read, with some trepidation, stories of people showing up at the office with an AK-47 dressed all in black.  How likely is it that the person next to you will snap?  Recent events showed us that even mild-mannered professors can snap (although the “mild-mannered” part might have just been a cover for a seething, troubled pysche).  What flips the kill switch?

Anyone who chooses to strap on steel-toed boots, load up an automatic weapon and go shoot at Suzy because she didn’t help him on the March budget presentation would have gone crazy working on a horse farm, too. I’ve never killed anyone, but I’ve wanted to “kill people” in fits of anger.  I never came close to translating that fit of anger into an actual, concrete series of actions to kill that person; for example, going to the gun store, buying ammo and studying schematics of the fourth floor.  Yet office shootings do occur.

I’ve been in arguments in the office over the years. Occasionally profanity-laced and often with raised voices, only twice did they reach the level of actual physical violence.  One was not surprising, the result of a fraud investigation I was leading; the subject threatened me and I had to be escorted by security in the evenings after his termination.  It was all bluster, though, and nothing happened.

The other incident, I’m sad to say, was initiated by me. A fellow manager and I had argued over responsibilities on a shared project, ranging from staffing to budget to the question of “ownership” of the results of the report.  The argument escalated over two days.  On the second day, I was working at a client’s office about an hour by public transportation from my company’s office.  A phone call from the other manager (I’ll call him Jim) came late in the afternoon after a stressful afternoon working on a particularly difficult set of audit items.  In the middle of the Russian winter, I was in the midst of (yet another) semi-cold/semi-bronchitis episode and in no mood for yet another go-around with Jim.  Jim – at least in my opinion – was a bit of a Crip, and I was hanging with the Bloods (you’ll have to read my article on life in the salt mine to fully appreciate that reference).  Jim was everything I disliked about expatriates in Russia; disdainful of the language, the people, contemptuous of their education and unable to stutter out a single word in the language of the country in which he lived.

I’d like to say I remember the real initiator of the afternoon’s meltdown, but I don’t. I do remember standing in front of my (mostly female) staff in a conference room, doing that cartoonish move where you hold the phone receiver in front of your face, yelling at the top of my lungs while his voice rang out in an echo from the earpiece.  Choice words were exchanged.  After slamming the phone down, I calmly put all of my stuff together in my bag and walked out.  My staff assumed I was going home for the day.

Instead, I walked the mile to the subway station seething. I walked into the station, got a token, caught a train, sat and seethed.  It arrived at my company’s office after 45 minutes.  I walked past security, took off my coat and dropped my bags, and walked down the hall.  I turned into the cubicle area where Jim worked, and saw him over the low walls.  Thunderous yelling between the two of us commenced.  I taunted him in Russian, which he didn’t understand.  He grew louder and more threatening until I picked up an office chair and threw it as hard as I could directly at him.  At his head.  All of this I did calmly, premeditated and without any “fog of rage” type of intention.  I meant to do it, more than an hour in advance of actually doing it.

I’m not a small guy and back then I was not small at all. I had the strength and body mass to throw something as awkward as an office chair with a great deal of velocity, and I didn’t take anything off of it.  I missed, though, and both Jim and I were restrained by several of our colleagues.  The odd part was this:  the principals of our little company never even came out of their offices.  Motivated by fear that I was the guy with the bullet with their name on it?  Or just indifferent?

After that, things were better. Jim and I weren’t asked or expected to work on anything together, or even speak.  We crossed paths again but had the good sense not to engage in a fistfight in an office building where the security guards carried sawed-off shotguns.  Jim drifted back to his home country after a while, forgotten by both the expats and the Russians in my office.  I faded away slowly, burned out by illness and rage, until I left Russia for the relaxed pace of Manhattan.

I’m not sure what might have happened if I had access to a weapon that day. Probably nothing; I’m not stupid.  In America that would land you in jail, but in Russia I would probably have ended up having a couple of those aforementioned shotguns’ butts applied to my skull – if I wasn’t having my right arm blown off first.  But for a while I had a brief glimpse of the level of rage that could be set on fire by something as trivial as work; started by work, fanned by exhaustion, stress and contempt.

I don’t get as angry anymore. By stages I’ve moved away from that type of work to contracting jobs, which demand little and pay well.  I haven’t been in a fight of any sort in at least ten years, although opportunities have arisen.  Once you’re married and have children, it’s easy to think of the consequences for THEM and to back down; nobody needs daddy in the hoosegow.   But I wonder how many people lurk in these high-stress jobs in cubicles.  How often does someone spend the hour commute home fantasizing about killing their boss and telling themselves that their fantasy is just “blowing off steam?”

The fantasy occurs more often than we’d like, I bet. The short-term mentality promoted by stock markets and corporations,  far-flung “communities” creating longer and longer communities and the pressure to superconsume are constantly testing the stress points of millions of people.  If we’re “lucky”, the most vulnerable have health problems or depression and drop out before they hurt someone else.  The easy availability of firearms doesn’t help (and yes gun-owners, I know it would have helped if someone else is armed and can shoot the shooter; are you REALLY going to feel better if HR issues you – and everyone else -  a handgun at employee orientation)?

I don’t think there’s a solution; there have always been people who kill for their own dark, unbalanced reasons. But at some point as a society we’ll have to look at the way in which fear of unemployment and consumerism and access to firearms will continue to create fearful office environments, leading to more stress and a downward spiral.  It’s not a path anyone wants to stroll down.  I’m sorry I was part of it.  If you think it’s not lurking out there in the dark corners of the office at 3:45 on a grim Wednesday, you’re more optimistic than I am.

Note: A good read on this subject is Going Postal, a book written by Mark Ames, a guy whose writing I much admire (much like his partner, Matt Taibbi) for their writing for the eXile, both in Moscow at the same time I was there (where I didn’t know them although I think based on hazy recollections that I met Mark at a party). Mark’s got some terrifying stories in his book, which should serve as an anthem to anti-cubicle life if there ever was one.  Oh, and yes, that’s an affiliate link, if you buy the book through that link I will become minutely wealthier-ish, so please, if you were planning on buying it, do so through that link.  Thanks FCC for the requirement to do that extra disclosure:  the world is safer in your hands.

photo by darkpatator

Follow me on Twitter!

If you read brip blap via RSS, you might want to visit the site and see the new theme; if you like it, it’s the frugal theme and if you buy it through that link, you help support brip blap.

workplace violence is an original article from the website brip blap.