Black Belt Judgement

Today I sat at the instructors table during a black belt pretest. It was quite an eye opening experience. I was assigned three of the nine black belt candidates to pay special attention to. It was very strange to watch the test with a critical eye almost a year and a half after taking it myself. I could see the errors and properly executed techniques clearly. I have been training for my second degree but at the same time I have been giving some of my time, every time I go to the dojo, to the other students there. I have been learning how to teach.

With this realization I am more able to see my own progress and find myself on the path to second degree. This is what makes learning alone so much more difficult than learning from a master. Once the test was half way through I already knew who was good enough and who was not. I could see the strengths and weaknesses as if they were written on the student's gi.

After the test, Master Connard took us into his office to discuss the students. I was very uncertain about being included in the group that was judging the progress of the black belt candidates. It felt very strange to be sharing my opinion of their hapkido. He also charged us with showing the other students what they needed to do to master their moves. He told us, "You all know what they need. Make sure they get there."  It is a responsibility that I had only been half-heartedly fulfilling. Now I need to share what I know with those coming down the path.  

Mead Batch 8

Novia and I just bottled mead batch 8. This batch has come out wonderfully. It was made with two vanilla beans, and had oak chips added to simulate barrel aging.

This batch was one of constant adjustments. It started with 12 lbs of honey and a 1.10 original gravity. After primary fermentation the specific gravity had fallen to 1.022 I was concerned that the yeast would not have enough sugar to reach full fermentation. Because of this, I added 5lbs. of honey and brought the specific gravity up to 1.060. During secondary fermentation The specific gravity dropped down to 1.038 but because of excess sweetness I added 1 liter of water and knocked the S.G. down to 1.034.

This batch yielded 18 liters of mead in 16 regular size wine bottles and four double size bottles. Unfortunately because of the constant adjustments, especially the addition of the liter of water, I am not able figure out an accurate percent of alcohol. My guess will have to be based on fuzzy math. I think the resultant mead has 12.3% alcohol by volume.

It will be hard to keep from drinking this one up. I need to keep a bottle for competition next year. I will definitely be opening a bottle tomorrow for my birthday party.

This is Halloween

I miss ceramics

Marketing

I am in a place that I don't like: I have to sell myself to people and I don't like it. I much prefer to do things and let them stand for themselves. I want to show you what I have done, not tell you what I can do. The problem is that what I am selling is an intangible. I am selling my perspective performance.

I just got a call back from one of the resumes I sent out yesterday. I am going to interview for an 'Account Representative' position at a marketing company. I am hoping that it really is a marketing job and not a cleverly disguised customer service job. I don't have problems working with people but I prefer to work with clients and not customers. So, tomorrow at 10:15am dressed in a suit, I will find out what this is.

It strikes me how bad the typical marketing company's website is. Is it a rule that they must use flash (difficult to index by search engines) or music, or shitty site layout? And the copy is always nebulous. Its like if they say too much, then the prospective client will suddenly understand marketing and do it themselves.

Anyway, wish me luck.

Great Western War

I went to another SCA event this past weekend. It always hits me hard when I get there and again when I get back, just how different that world is. When Novia and I arrived on Friday afternoon, the first thing we did after setting up camp was to breathe a sigh of relief. We have both been looking forward to the opportunity to turn our phones off and live without technology for a few days. Last weekend, the most technologically advanced thing that I used between 6:00pm Friday and 12:00pm Sunday was a flashlight. It was a wonderful departure from my normal way of life. If I wanted to find someone, I had to look for them. If I wanted information, I had to find someone who had that information. I left my online social networks behind. Things were wonderfully simple.

I am always so torn between my enjoyment of the SCA and my unwillingness to spend too much time in such a pointless activity. There was a brewing contest (which I didn't enter because I was too lazy) and classes on drumming, armor building, leather-working, and various other things. The only class I took was the drumming class. I didn't plan ahead and was too "in-the-moment" to schedule any of the classes. I only did the drum class because I happened to walk by when it happened. I definitely needed the free-floating weekend but if I am going to do this more, then I need to be more purposeful about it. There is much to learn in the SCA but I need to commit a little more to gain access to it. I think that I must enter the pentathlon this year. It is like a crafts fair where you enter in five different categories.

On another note: A friend of mine has made a new family in the SCA. He has discovered a place where he belongs and is valued. My reaction from the same crowd is one of indifference (at best). On Saturday night he was making an announcement that he was going to be a Man-At-Arms (sworn friend) for a knight (think black-belt with a stick). This is a serious promise, and is the precursor to becoming a Squire. He called me a few weeks ago and asked me to be there for the announcement so I was there. The entire time that they were doing their announcements and congratulations for another member of their group who became a knight, my other friends and I stood outside their circle waiting for the Man-At-Arms thing to be done. We sat there literally on the outside of the circle waiting silently and ignored for what seemed like an hour. We didn't belong and were only tolerated because we were friends of someone who did belong.

A little more than a year ago, Novia and I were wandering around at a different SCA event called Potrero War, and we met an interesting group. It was all started when a random stranger offered me a drink (this kind of thing is common) and after having a sip of his rum & coke, I exclaimed "Sweet Jesus" to which he replied "Well yes, actually." At this puzzling reply I took a closer look at my new friend and found that he did in fact bear quite a resemblance to Jesus of Nazareth. He was welcoming, friendly, and very drunk. He introduced us to his friends and invited us to his camp that night for a refill of our refreshments and invited us to come back the next day. We did in fact return and have sought him out at every major event since. He and his group are all fun-loving and relaxed. (I really should retell the stories of 'Sean the Blue-Handed' and 'Bucket of AIDS Joe' sometime)

I don't really know how to feel about all of this. I wonder which of these attitudes I would adopt towards outsiders. Would I be grumpy and elitist or friendly and inviting? I know that I had a lot of fun at the event (despite my hay-fever) and that most of that fun was because of old friends inviting us to party with them. An old high school friend, a new friend from Oregon, and a new friend for San Diego, all of whom I only see at SCA events made me feel incredibly welcome.

Occupy Wall Street

We are in a recession.
Economists have been trying to tell us that we are in a slow recovery but that is all spin. Now, after years of high unemployment and a shaky stock market, the american public is reaching it's limit. There are movements now to protest the irresponsibility of the big banks and the lax regulatory stance by the government that havef gotten us in to this mess.

I can't help but see this protest as somewhat ridiculous. The situation that caused this financial crisis is not a simple one and is not something that will be fixed by protests. The American public, for the most part, has no idea what happened to cause this and is reacting by throwing a tantrum.

The domestic crisis has its roots in good intentions. The government wanted to make it possible for the average person to own a house and so they created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two semi-governmental organizations who's purpose was to buy mortgages from banks so that the banks could then use the money that would otherwise be held up in the loan to make another loan to another home buyer. This allowed banks to make many more mortgages because they didn't have to wait for the old ones to be paid off before they could make new ones. This all went wrong when regulations were relaxed to the point that the banks realized that they could just make bad loans, collect the fees and pass off the responsibility to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. The government (who guaranteed the loans held by these corporations) was left with all the risk.

But wait, there's more! The banks, trying to get rid of these mortgage contracts faster, would package them together in a super-group of mortgages called a Collateralized Debt Obligation (CDO) and then sell shares of it to investors. I know that is a lot to take in, so here's the skinny: They would make the loans trade-able so that people could buy them like they were stocks or bonds, and so that mutual funds could invest. The problem is that the CDOs had rotten bits in them and were destined to collapse. The people creating them didn't care because once they sold them as investments they no longer held the risk, just the money.

There is even more! I won't get too deep into this one because it is very complicated. Investment companies created another innovation. They created what is called a Credit Default Swap. This contract acted like insurance without the name (and without the regulation). It meant that one financial institution would pay another to take some of the risk if an investment (like a CDO) failed. This eventually got so out of control that these Credit Default Swaps were being made like bets by third parties who had nothing to do with the investments that they were for. You could literally buy insurance on an investment you thought was bad in the hopes that it would fail and you would get paid for that failure; and you didn't even have to own the investment.

That's all the background that I am going to get into here, now for the response.

 Where did all these bankers get all this money? It wasn't their money, if it had been then they would have been more responsible with it. WE gave it to them! we handed over bank deposits and 401k investments and just ignored what they were doing with our money. We as a society have decided that investments are too complicated and that we had better let someone else do it for us. There are countless retirement funds and college savings plans that have been decimated because of this fiasco but we are not faultless. We have allowed people to run amok with our money and now we are paying for it. 

I suggest to anyone who is willing to listen, that you take your money out of the bank and put it into a Credit Union. Stop investing in a 401k and move your money to an IRA that you manage yourself. Or do what one of my friends does and buy precious metals and micro-loans.  Deprive the people who would be irresponsible with your money of your money.

There are many more contributing factors to the current economic crisis like the housing bubble, government entitlements, and the euro-zone debt crisis but taking personal responsibility for our money is the biggest thing we can do for ourselves. The criminal fund managers, and unethical bankers don't care about protests, they are not elected officials that need our approval, but they need our money, lets take it back!