My latest world news obsession....

Drum roll, please...........SOMALI PIRATES!
Man, these stories have me glued to my computer screen on a weekly basis. Just when you think these guys cannot get any more bold, they top the latest stunt. I am certainly not making light of the plight in Somalia because it is indeed very serious and there are lots of people hurting/dying at this moment and have been for a very long time. A 17year lack of government structure will certainly contribute to that, but the lack of action by so many nations for such a period of time is astounding to me. In fact, I find it crazy that anyone traveling through the Gulf of Aden does not roll with 3-4 mercenaries. I understand there are laws that prevent weapons going through port, but come on, 2008 has been a freaking jackpot for these lawless clowns in Somalia! Companies have recently started to take their ships ALL THE WAY AROUND the west coast of Africa just to avoid idiots with a few shoulder rocket launchers and a few machine guns rolling up on them in 4-5 skiffs and letting the ships get taken over because they don't believe anyone can be so bold like these guys have CONTINUED TO BECOME. Lots of money is being lost because no one is fighting back and ending these playground-antics on the sea. What other proof do you need that you cannot just roll over? They (European or Asian due to proximity) need to get a few naval ships over there and follow these clowns home and drop a few missiles on their shacks on shore and this mess will be over and then recover the "confiscated" tankers and other sea vessels these idiots STOLE and this ish will be old news...Are you kidding me....any of these nations could send a small team of special ops. over there to clean this mess up....what gives?!

No worries, the Chinese plan to flex....and I await the next move in this drama.

Latest Tech Adoption....

So.....I enjoy technology in my daily life and thirst for more and more knowledge regarding so many aspects of tech, but I am certainly NOT an early adopter in gadgets, software, hardware et. al. I thing my cheapskate frugal nature wins that battle most of the time. This is not to say I am not AWARE of new gadgets, software, hardware and many things tech, but I just hate to use my money for something that adds no significant value to what my current workflow or completion of tasks is currently.I also aim to not allow myself to get too caught up in the marketing-hype machine of many forms of technology.

For the last month, I have tested a new aspect of technology that has been around for almost 10 years, but really snowballed in '05-06' and that technolgy is RSS. I use NetNewsWire on my macbook and currently am running about 20feeds and am loving it! There are so many great things about RSS Feeds, but I have found the rapid nature of viewing stories as well as allowing me to be very selective....I can see the title and in a split second move on or click in for the entire story. If I happen to be traveling and away from a net connection, I can essentially click into these stories before I leave and they will sit in NetNewsWire and I can view them.

I resisted this for a long time because I thought it was pointless. Now, I cannot see interacting with the net any other way. I would say it has moved to about 60-70% of the way I use the net if I am not quickly looking up info/directions/checking email. It sames me tons of time although I can find myself trying to digest so much information that I need to walk away many times because so many stories can populate if I let hours and hours go by without checking and as we all know....life has a way of pulling you in different directions at times.

Get on the RSS train....It's movin' baby!