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Freedom of Speech
Amendment I Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Over on FaceBook, my feed has recently had a lot of talk about the First Amendment and freedom of speech and the right to peaceably assemble. (They are inextricably interwoven). There has been reference to a recent article which talks about how college students feel about freedom of speech, and whether certain types of speech should be protected. Unsurprisingly (at least to me), students who were members of…
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Gratitude Journal #25
It is Sunday evening, and I am actually getting this written/posted! I have decided to try something new. On Thursday, I bought myself a giant (and I do mean giant) new monitor in order to create a docking station for my laptop in the office. Since I am working from home on Fridays, it is nice to have a big screen on which to do my work. Spreadsheets on laptop sized screens aren’t always the best. Anyway, my thought is that I am going to leave the laptop actually plugged in in the office the majority of the time. I can use my Surface in the bedroom. So if I…
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Gratitude Journal #24
I had every intention of writing my gratitude post last night. I cannot tell you how many times during the day I thought to myself that I would actually have the chance to write the gratitude post on Sunday evening, like I had been wanting to do. It was a lazy day. There were no plans. I was focused on writing and online stuff that needed to be done. And then, after dinner, I promptly fell asleep. I knew I was tired; I had not realized exactly how tired. And so, the gratitude post for last week comes once again on a Monday morning instead of a Sunday evening. Gratitude…
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Narrativity – a review
One week ago today, I was in Minneapolis (or close enough) for the start of the very first Narrativity Conference. Let me be perfectly honest, I went to Narrativity for pure fan-girl reasons. Steven Brust was one of the organizers, and I learned about the conference from him via his facebook page. I have been reading Brust’s books since I was in high school. That means he has been one of my favorite authors for over 25 years. Since moving to the Seattle area, I have been very blessed with having the opportunity to attend readings and signings with many of my favorite authors, Gaiman, Gibson, Modesitt, and Megan Lindholm…
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Gratitude Journal #23
I had thought that maybe I would have a chance to write last week’s Gratitude Journal yesterday afternoon. That was when I thought the conference I was attending this weekend was going to end around 4p, and since my flight home was not until 8p, I would have a couple of hours to write. But the programming for the conference went all the way until 6:15p. I actually left an hour earlier to make sure I made it to the airport on time. But basically, it resulted in no time to write yesterday. Normally I try to make the Gratitude Journal about the little things in my life – Starbucks…
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A Review of My Side Hustle (Part 3 of 3)
Back in May I started writing book reviews as a side hustle via Online Book Club. This is a review of my experience so far. Now that I am done complaining about the scoring system (well really, about how parts of it are implemented), what else am I noticing about Online Book Club? This is a community of book lovers, and like all communities, but especially ones that are monetized in this way, it really wants you to be involved. 20 of those 46 points I mentioned you could get without writing a single review? Those come from commenting on the forums. In addition, most of us do not have…
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Gratitude Journal #22
I honestly had planned on writing my gratitude journal last night. Really. But then my night ended in a phone call with Pop Tart instead – something all on it’s own to be grateful for. And I did not write. It happens. But I was grateful for a few things this week. Gratitude Entry #50 – CBD Oil for Dogs Listen, this last week was the 4th of July. And I live in an area where fireworks are legal. And not just the little ones, big ones. And I have dogs, dogs that have lived all of their lives in urban or suburban areas. These are not dogs who are…
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A Review of My Side Hustle (Part 2 of 3)
Back at the end of May, I started writing book reviews for Online Book Club. This is a review of my experience so far. My final issue with their system is with the claim that a reviewer could become a level 5 or 6 reviewer in as few as three reviews. Now, the reviewer score is out of 100 points. You need at least 85 points in order to be a level 5 reviewer. A person can get a score of 46 without ever writing a single review. You do have to have written at least one review to get any other points. 14 of those points come from popularity.…
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A Review of My Side Hustle (Part 1 of 3)
I have been doing my side hustle for a little over a month now, and naturally, I have some thoughts. Let me start by saying, I am overall happy with the process. I have gotten to read some really interesting books that I would not have noticed otherwise. There has also been one book that I could not finish. It just bugged me too much. But that is not the fault of Online Book Review. (And while it seems from the reviews that many people agreed with my issues, many others did not and enjoyed the book tremendously.) Now that I have said something positive (and honestly, my overall experience…
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Gratitude Journal #21
Remember last week when I wrote that I thought doing my gratitude journal on Sunday nights would be a great way to end/start my week, as long as I remembered to do it? Yeah, I forgot yesterday. Or, I did not completely forget. In the morning I thought about it, but by the end of the day, I just plugged myself into a computer game and watching the Democrat debates (because I did not have a chance to watch them live). Gratitude journal was completely forgotten, until this morning. Gratitude Entry #48 – Unexpected time with friends Mid-week last week, the decision was made that my BFF would come hang…
