This is a bit of an update to the man-job theory I wrote over two years ago.

One point of clarification: while the jobs titles listed below may not be the official title of the job (garbageman being ‘civil sanitation specialist’ and the like) if a job can be referred to by a -man name and understood as such, it qualifies.

-man jobs are still at the top of the list of good jobs. -man jobs are nearly always jobs that don’t involve sitting behind a desk, are always interesting, and not very difficult. -man jobs pay well - not enough to live extravagantly, but enough to live well on. -man jobs usually have easily met prerequisites, most training occurs within the job.

-man jobs:
Fireman, Delivery Man, Mail Man, Spokesman, Policeman, Garbage Man, Milk Man, Salesman

-smith jobs are also very good jobs, and while they rank above -man jobs in awesomeness, they rank below -man jobs in everything else. -smith jobs don’t pay any better than -man jobs, but require more training (apprenticeship), and more skill. Make no mistake, -smith jobs are very good jobs, but because of the increased emphasis on training and skill, ranks below -man jobs.

-smith jobs:
Blacksmith, Goldsmith, Silversmith, Locksmith

-er jobs are far more common than either -smith or -man jobs. -er jobs are like -man jobs in spirit, but it isn’t as smooth sailing as a -man job. There is some undesirable aspect that sets it apart from -man or -smith jobs. These jobs embody the -man job spirit, and are a good first step in the direction of a good job. Note: -er jobs are still better than jobs that do not fall into any of these categories.

-er jobs:
Painter, Shopkeeper, Barber, Teacher, Auctioneer, Dog Walker,

I plan on updating this list with jobs in all three categories as they come up. Comment if you have any to add.

Obama’s Speech
Hillary’s Speech
I just finished watching both of them, and all I can say is that they’re both absolutely terrifying. Not Obama or Hillary, but their supporters. People are supporting their candidates with such conviction that you would think that candidate personally saved their life. Is universal healthcare really so exciting? I just don’t think that universal healthcare, or gas prices, or even the war in Iraq are the most pressing issues our country is facing today. They’re a step in the right direction, but none address the source of these problems - how we treat other people. People are at odds with each other over things that don’t matter. Love for other people - complete strangers - can solve all these problems. We should work on that.

It’s almost happening again. Less so this week, but last week I felt it creeping up on me. Habit. More than habit, routine. The same thing, day in day out. It’s a great way to lose track of time, and a great way to cruise through a week of school, or any time when you would rather be doing something else. But that’s not what I’m trying for this summer. Days need to be memorable, or else you lose them.

I always think of blowing through days by way of habit as “tuck and roll”. If you’ll bear with the metaphor, it works pretty well. When life is good, you’re walking through life. You’re not in a rush to get anywhere, and you notice things around you in greater detail than you normally would. When you’re working towards a goal, you’re running through life, and you see things rush by you, but you only pay them a slight bit of attention, since you’re looking at the goal. When you just want to the days to disappear, you tuck and roll, and suddenly everything is a blur, and you can’t really see anything right - maybe you see something, but its upside down - and then suddenly, you’ve traveled all this distance without really knowing how.

Routine is a great way to do this, if that’s the goal. Same thing every day makes days blur together. They’re easily forgotten, which makes it seem like less time doing whatever you’re doing. But I’m not trying to tuck and roll, I just tripped. I’m glad I’m out of the swing of things again, and I’m going to have to try to keep it that way. The other night I found myself with nothing to do, and it was a beautiful night, and I thought about going for a bike ride. I didn’t, but next time I will.

Puttin’ People On The Moon by Drive-By Truckers

I started using AllPeers again recently, and since I had last used it, they added Bittorrent functionality. But even more interesting, is that they let you download individual files from a torrent. Because of UConn’s bittorrent cockblock, I haven’t even opened a torrent client on this computer yet, so I don’t know if this is a wide-spread feature or not.

Whatever the case, a website called BitLet (which I guess has some connection to Mininova) has launched, and it allows you to stream music from within a torrent. Yes, its cool, but apparently, there is video on the way. That is far cooler. So I started snooping around to see if I could find out any more about this technology, and apparently there is something called Bittorrent DNA put out by Bittorrent Inc. which does something similar. As I understand it, its a backend that you could integrate into a site like YouTube, and have users supply some of the bandwidth via bittorrent protocol.

So all of this new functionality got me thinking about my idea for a browser based off bittorrent protocol, where webpages and other things would be served up from the people viewing the site, instead of a central server. I don’t have anywhere near the technical knowledge that I would need to pursue this project, but I’m going to keep designing it to see if it could be feasible. Right now I’m thinking it would be best to have it as a Firefox extension, so it would be easily adopted by users. I’ll post more about this when I figure it out.