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Amanda Palmer and the Art of Asking

Amanda’s TED talk hit VERY close to home for me. She, as usual, discusses a topic that I and many others have issues with: asking for help. If you’ve not seen her TED talk yet, you need to take 15 minutes and watch that before you go any further into my post:


I have no trouble sitting at a convention table hawking our wares. I have no trouble posting links to my Etsy shop. I do it all the time. But I have trouble with simply asking for money with no product in exchange. I also have trouble giving money to people for random reasons if there’s nothing in it for me. I hate admitting this, but it’s true. When people ask for money for a camera or something that’s not “essential” for their existence, I get irritated. Especially if the asker is employed. I think “Why should I give YOU money? You’ve got a job!” But why shouldn’t they ask? It’s MY bias, not their asking that is the issue.

I think this is the Southern in me. I was raised by entrepreneurs who did for themselves. They’d DIE before asking for help. I’m not quite that bad, but almost. Nick is the same way. We sure could use a few thousand more dollars to get our moving fund fattened up, but we won’t do a Kickstarter or Fundly for it. We are just scrimping and saving. We are too proud to put out the ole tip jar and put our friends on the spot for cash. Why? Because it makes US uncomfortable and we feel it’s inappropriate. Clearly this attitude is not held by the hipster generation! “Crowd sourcing” is the new way to get what you want. And, well, I guess there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s a completely voluntary transaction. I don’t know why it squicks me out as much as it does.

Asking for money (or any help, really) takes a certain kind of bravery. A kind I lack, apparently.

It’s a conundrum for me. I like to help others and I do Kickstarters and other things quite often. But when it comes to me just flat out asking for money, I can’t do it. I’ll ask you to buy my stuff, but that’s as far as I’ll go.

Amanda brings up a really good point about our resistance to face to face asking/receiving. I hope I can change my attitude about this and become more open to asking. It’s definitely a point to ponder. We absolutely need help making the move to Phoenix. Maybe we should do a Kickstarter for ourselves? Or a Fundly. What do you think, hivemind?

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Shirred Eggs w/ Hashbrowns and Sausage

We had a shirred (baked) egg dish at The Porter recently and it inspired me to try my hand at this fancy looking but easy dish. The first thing you need are little gratin dishes to bake them in. I found the perfect ones at the Dollar Store! They are about 4″ wide and 1.5″ deep. See:

Shirred Eggs

Shirred Eggs w/ Hashbrowns and Sausage

2 eggs per dish
2/3 c hashbrowns per dish (I use frozen plain shredded ones.)
.5 Italian Sausage link (out of skin) per dish, about .5 cup
1Tbl shredded parmesan (or whatever cheese you like)
olive oil
S/P
Chipped Red Pepper

Heat a frying pan over med-hi flame with a few splashed of olive oil. Remove the skin from the sausage and crumble into the pan. Brown the sausage about half way then add in hashbrowns. Continue to brown until hashbrowns are cooked and the sausage is nicely crisp. Season to taste with S/P and add in a few pinches of chipped red pepper. Set aside.

Spray the gratin dishes with food release (Pam). Fill about halfway with sausage and hashbrown mixture. Sprinkle the cheese over this. Make two divots in which to place your eggs. Crack eggs into the divots. S/P the eggs.

Put on a baking sheet and cook at 350F for about 20 minutes or until the egg whites are done and the yolks are still soft and runny. I tried this in a toaster oven and it didn’t work – the eggs were too close to the heat. Use a full sized oven for this recipe.

Calories 319
Calories from Fat 190.8
Total Fat 21.2g
Saturated Fat 7.58g
Cholesterol 20mg
Sodium 650.75mg
Total Carbohydrate 8.53g
Dietary Fiber 0.93g
Sugars 0g
Protein 21.28g

Courtesy of LiveStrong Recipe calculator.

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Invisible Gorillas and Bad Medicine

I am writing this post in the hope that it may help someone who is sick and not getting any diagnosis or help from his doctors. Someone who perhaps finds this post via Google. I hope I can help someone, since I can’t help my own family. Just remember: it’s YOUR body. It’s YOUR care. Do not hesitate to question doctors and demand alternative treatments if you are not getting better. Sickness is NOT normal, health is. Don’t be bullied by the medical system!

I read about a study the other day called the Invisible Gorilla experiment. Basically it is to demonstrate that we will miss unexpected events if we are concentrating on something else.
The Invisible Gorilla Experiment
Go read the details about the Invisible Gorilla Experiment here. I’ll wait.

Ok, so people who were concentrating on one thing completely missed a huge thing that popped up. What does this have to do with anything? Well, for one, it illustrates that anyone can miss important events or facts if they are not looking for them. ANYONE. Now, let’s take this and apply it to medicine. Radiology, for instance. Another study was done at Harvard Medical School with radiologists, who are trained FINDERS. They are trained to find tumors, abnormalities, etc., and paid huge sums to do so. You would think that they would find a gorilla picture inserted into an xray of a lung, wouldn’t you? Not so much, actually.
Radiologists and the Invisible Gorilla
Can YOU see the gorilla?? Then you did better than 83% of the radiologists. Keep in mind this was on a full sized xray, which is about 14″x20″. The gorilla was about 2″x2″ IRL! Go read the Harvard study. I’ll wait.

Continue reading “Invisible Gorillas and Bad Medicine”

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Friday Round Up

Got a mixed bag of thoughts today, so I’m just gonna free flow them here. Feel free to chime in!

• Sewing machine news! I just took my gran’s early 70s top of the line Singer (with daisy wheels for decorative patterns!) in to see about fixing it. $400 for full rebuild, BUT I can’t buy one that nice for any less than $600. Sigh. That’s a lot of dough for someone who sews once every 6 months. I also have a plain 1973 Singer that is all metal and works great. It just needs a bobbin adjustment (hopefully NOT the feed dogs!). If the basic one will fit in the spooty one’s cabinet, I think I’ll skip fixing my gran’s since I don’t sew that much anyway. AND IT FITS! Yay! I shall take in the plain one for maintenance and just store my gran’s. SWEET.

• Land line decision. I want to get rid of the useless land line that only gets marketing calls, but I keep hesitating. For one thing, it’s the only way the alarm system can work (not w/ cell, not w/ VOIP) and secondly, I use it for customer support calls where I know I’ll be on hold forever. My Virgin Mobile cell plan is pay by the minute (18¢ min) so being on hold for 10 minutes gets pricey. I’m looking into switching plans for the cell IF I can switch back to pay by the minute when I need to. We’ll see. In the meantime, I guess I’ll just let the landline ride.

• Job opportunity. Looks like I’ve got the opportunity to get a gig for a good chunk of change. Yay! Perfect timing! I can’t wait for that to come through. Big relief!

• Weather. I’m so glad we are not having to deal with snow this winter. I hate that crap. I hope all the NE peeps are getting stocked up for being snowed in for a week. Good luck for those who are trying to fly anywhere! The airlines are gonna be CRAZAY with NYC being out of the picture. If you do have to fly, I’d suggest carrying food with you. I’d include water, but we all know the TSA frowns upon proper hydration.

• Birthdays and V Day. I’ve got birthday gifts going out today to my niece and my chosen niece – both of whom have Feb 11 birthdays. I’m also sending my mother a box of chocolates for V Day. I don’t know why I’m sending her shit. I guess in the hopes that it may sweeten her typically surly mood? ::shrug::

• Dumplings (gyoza). I hope I can find a good Asian market in PHX. I’m totally addicted to steamed dumplings. I have them for breakfast just about every day. I’m going to the Asian mart today after I mail out all the packages. Any PHX people reading this: where are the Asian markets in your area??

• Adding a site to WiredTree account. OMFG. Can it BE any more convoluted? I love WiredTree’s stability and all that, but dayam, they need to streamline their systems. I’m letting a friend use some space on our server, so I had to set up a new account – the first one I’ve ever set up on this new host. What a fucking nightmare. Not only do you have to use THREE different control panels to set it up, the employees don’t know what they are talking about, either. The first dude told me absolutely WRONG info, which led to my wasting 3-4 hours of MY TIME trying to fix something that was never done right in the first place. Then I call back and get a chick who a) is foreign with a thick accent and b) can’t seem to articulate what it is that needs to be done. I blow up and demand a manager. So the manager (American, understandable) gets on and I finally get it all straight. You have to use WHM (server side CP) to set up the account, your customer CP (Grove) to make a DNS zone for it (WHY DNS zones are in the customer side is a mystery), then the standard CPanel control panel to add emails, etc. WTF? I’m not happy about this jumping through multiple hoops thing, but whatever. I just won’t set up any more accounts. I just wish that WiredTree and every other hosting company out there had better support. WHY do the support employees ALWAYS give bullshit answers rather than take a MINUTE to find the right answers? It’s beyond me. It’s also beyond me why there are so few AMERICAN support people – even when the company is 100% US based (WT is in Chicago as are all employees). Are there really no Americans or at least English as a first language people smart enough to do phone support in the US? It’s pathetic.

Welp, that’s all I got for today. It’s time to get on the rack (my act of futility for the day). Y’all have a great weekend.