Friday, November 12, 2010

It's That Kind of a Family

This evening, one of my kids said "and whatever you do, don't make eye contact with the blender."

It's that kind of a family.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Well, That's Interesting: Military Occupations

My efforts at being 'creative' have been frustrated, a bit - not by anything big, but by a whole lot of little things. Like a pipe in the laundry room bursting. Well, maybe that was sort of big.

Anyway, I've done what I sometimes do when writers block seems to be made of reinforced concrete. I research.

It's great, not having a deadline. Or not so great - and that's another topic.

Back on track.

A 'Galaxy Cadet' story involves military occupations. I could follow the lead of major motion picture studios, and do my research by watching M*A*S*H reruns. Or maybe be very serious and watch Apocalypse Now. Maybe that's unfair. I'm sure that some folks in the entertainment industry are able to do a little fact-checking. And that's yet another topic.

Instead, I did a Google search.

I know, "I read something on the Web" has come to mean "I have not clue and believe anything I hear." True enough, there's a lot of - somewhat alternatively-accurate assertions out there.

And there is a massive amount of reliable sources.

Like ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) - an ancient (by contemporary standards) repository of knowledge.

Here's what I found:The PDF document seems to have been created from a microfiche copy of the original publication. The original's photographs and most of the illustrations are, well, poorly reproduced. The text, though, is quite readable. By a human being. The document's information is stored as a series of graphics - not text.

I've gotten most of what I wanted from it - and figured I'd pass the links along.

Privacy Policy

Nothing spooky here.

These days it's important to have a "privacy policy" available: so here's mine.

I do not collect information on individuals visiting this blog. If you leave a comment, I'll read what you wrote: but I don't keep a record of comments, apart from what Blogger displays. (In other words, the only record of what you write or who you are will be what people see at the bottom of the post.)

I do collect information about how many hits this blog gets, where they come from, and some technical information. I use the WebSTAT service for this purpose - and all that shows is which ISP you use, and where it's located.

You can stop most of Webstat's data gathering by disabling cookies in your browser. I don't know why you would, but some folks do.

I'm also an AdSense affiliate, so Google collects information on what I've written in each post: but that's mostly my problem.

I'm also considering starting an affiliate relationship with DAZ Productions. You should be able to keep DAZ and Commission Junction, their provider of affiliate services, from collecting information by - again - disabling cookies in your browser.

And you can keep DAZ Productions from finding out anything about you, by not buying any of their products.

Again, I don't know why you would: but some folks do.

Or, rather, don't.