Cartoon genesis

Anouncing cartoons in my blog! Or an attempt at them, anyway. I haven’t drawn cartoons for many years so you’ll see the evolution of my development. Eventually, they are going to be on my other blog at
http://benhoffman.wordpress.com.

Right now, I’m practicing and trying to create some characters. I don’t have a scanner yet so I’ll just take photos with my camera. Here are a few sketches I did yesterday.

Here’s one character — maybe a young manager or salesman

This one is the engineer who always wears a suit, even though everybody else dresses casually.

Larry’s a bit of a slob. I thought about naming him Rob, which rhymes with slob, but Larry seems more fitting.

And this, of course, is Hillary.

Seven Factors of Awakening

Many people who meditate have problems with monkey mind. Like a monkey swinging from branch to branch, their minds move from thought to thought. I’m no different, which is the motivation for this blog.

The three elements of the Noble Eightfold Path related to meditation are Right Effort, Right Concentration, and Right Mindfulness. It takes a lot of effort to concentrate on your breath for an extended period of time.

There are several possible sitting positions for meditation. Buddha statues and hard core meditators use the lotus position. Many people have a problem with their feet falling asleep in the lotus position, or they simply are not flexible enough to even achieve that position. A kneeling bench is an improvement for many, but for us older folks, a comfortable chair might be your best bet. Whatever your position, it’s important to keep your head up and your back straight.

Discomfort can actually be a focal point for meditation, but there are countless other things to be mindful of that are much more enlightening. They are defined in the Four Foundations of Mindfulness as Contemplation of the Body, Contemplation of Feelings, Contemplation of Consciousness, and Contemplation of Mental Objects.

The Seven Factors of Awakening are part of the Contemplation of Mental Objects. They are Mindfulness, Investigation, Energy, Joy, Tranquility, Concentration, and Equanimity.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is simply being in the present. When the mind wanders during meditation, you can mindfully observe your thoughts, which will bring you back to the present.

Investigation

When you’re having problems during meditation, you can investigate the causes. This does not involve concious thought, but simply observing. If there is anxiety, you investigate the anxiety and the source will reveal itself. If you are tense, observe the tension. If you are distracted, observe the distraction.

During investigation, events from the past may surface — events you might now want to deal with, but you must if they are the source of suffering in your life. By simply observing the events during this time of clarity can help you to understand why they happened. It can be like an oasis in the baron desert. Your answers are there. You simply need reach the oasis in order to understand them.

Energy

Meditation requires energy to apply the Right Effort. We can gain energy by eating right and exercise. The practice of mindfulness is refreshing when successful and can generate energy.

Joy

I’ve heard people say that the joy they get from meditation is even better than sex. There is a deep tranquility that can be achieved during meditation and if that tranquility is sustained for a long period of time, I can understand how it can be that good. I’ve only felt it for a few minutes at a time, but it’s good incentive to continue when things are tough.

Tranquility

This can be described as complete relaxation of the body and the mind. Imagine relaxing on the beach, simply observing the waves rolling in. You can achieve that feeling at any time through meditation.

Concentration

Concentration is like a rudder guiding a ship and is essential for the practice of mindfulness. In contemplation of mind objects, you concentrate on what’s going on in your mind.

Equanimity

Equanimity can be compared to getting lost in a movie or book. You see and understand what is going on, but you’re watching as an objective observer. There is a lot more to it than that, but it’s a feeling of contentment and satisfaction.

During meditation, we can recall the Seven Factors of Awakening, which will provide mindfulness focal points. You can go over the factors immediately before meditating. Remember: don’t think; simply observe.

Tips for getting a good night’s sleep

First of all, a little background on my sleep problems. I had bouts of insomnia through my teens and 20s, and it become a chronic problem in my 30s. I didn’t get any relief until three or four years ago. Regularly getting a good night’s sleep has improved my life immensely.

Here are some things that have helped me (in no particular order of importance):

• Meditate before going to bed. Meditating can help calm the mind and put things in perspective.
• If you find your mind racing when trying to fall asleep, write down your thoughts. That will quiet your mind.
• Wear a sleep mask. It’s a lot easier to sleep when it’s dark and the early morning light won’t wake you up.
• If you are worrying about something, write it down and tell yourself you’ll worry about it in the morning. Chances are, when you look at it the next morning, you’ll find that there was nothing worth worrying about.
• If you can’t sleep for more than 20 minutes or so, get up and have a bowl of cerial. Honey Nut Cheerios works best for me. It contains many ingredients that can help you sleep such as oats, almonds, honey — those plus the milk contain a lot of tryptophan, and the carbohydrates help your body absorb the tryptophan.
• Practicing mindfulness in bed helps. Feel the comfort of your bed and the warmth of your covers. Listen to the sounds of the night. Observe your breath. Listen to your companion breathing. All these things can help you relax and fall asleep.
• I’ve never found exercise to help me sleep, but the times in my life when I was overweight, I seemed to have more difficulty getting a good night’s sleep. Often, I didn’t feel rested even after seven or eight hours of sleep. Some apnea was detected during a sleep study a few years ago.
• Finally, if all else fails, you might want to try a medication like Paxil, which WILL make you sleep. I admit it; I’ve been on Paxil for a few years. I take 15Mg about an hour before bed every night. It has a few annoying side effects like difficulty urinating or achieving orgasm, but those fade over time. For me, the benefits far outweigh the annoyances.

Empathy for Hillary Supporters

I’ve been critical of women who have been supporting Hillary Clinton in part because she’s a woman. They’ve overlooked her lies and bad decisions because they wanted a woman to be president.

This morning, my wife said something to me that made me understand. There has never been a woman president and women feel under-represented in our country. They feel like second class citizens — much like many blacks and Hispanics feel.

In 2000, I was excited to be able to vote for a Jew, even if it was only for vice-president. Being Jewish, I overlooked some of Lieberman’s shortcomings simply because he was Jewish and it would be a major milestone in our nation’s history.

If there was a Jewish man running for president right now, I’d probably place a greater weight on all his good points and overlook his weaknesses, just like women are doing with Hillary. Now I can understand why they have such a strong emotional attachment to their candidate.

White House Exaggerated Iraqi Threat, Senate Report Finds

As Gomer would say, “Surprise, surprise!”
Link to Washington Post article
And here all along we thought they were being candid!

Well, we still have a few months left to impeach Bush and Cheney, which may not be a bad idea. If Bush is impeached, he won’t be allowed to pardon anyone. Actually, if he’s under investigation for anything, he won’t be able to pardon anyone. He also won’t be able to shield any documents. If that happens, we’ll finally be able to know to what extent corruption and incompetence has dominated this administration.

Clinton’s claim to have won more votes ignores caucuses

Hillary Clinton’s claim to have won more of the popular vote is just plain dishonest. Say we include Michigan, even though Obama followed the rules and took his name off the ballot — therefore received no votes. That gives Clinton 17,822,145 and Obama 17,535,458. Those are the numbers Clinton has been bragging about.

The problem with Hillary’s argument is that it completely ignores all states that have caucuses instead of primaries. The states that have caucuses are Iowa, Nevada, Alaska, Colorado, Minnesota, North Dakota, Washington, Hawaii, Maine, Kansas, Nebraska, Maine, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. Obama won the majority of those states.

Hillary continues to make big lies, yet the more she lies, the stronger her followers argue her case. Kind of reminds you of the Republican party.

It ain’t over until Hillary is happy

Obama wrapped up the nomination last night, but Hillary’s not going away. She’s already publicly saying she wants to be his VP. Actually, she wants to be the co-president.

If Obama puts her on the ticket, we could have another Kennedy/Johnson situation where Hillary will have to be locked out of meetings. It would guarantee Obama would win the election but it would go against his principles. And after all — he’s running on a platform of change.

Hillary’s campaign has been the left-wing version of Karl Rove’s tactics, although less competent. Obama has taken the high road for the most part, and has run an almost flawless campaign. He can take that decision making ability to the White House and do great things for the country. Putting Hillary on the ticket would compromise his integrity.

But politics in its current form is a game. You have to do whatever it takes to win. In this case, it means appeasing Hillary.

Obama has to offer her something in exchange for her not running as an Independent in the fall. There is already talk of her doing that (running as an independent) and that would mean another Republican in the White House.

So what are Obama’s options? He could put her on the ticket as VP, which would bring nearly all of Hillary’s supporters to vote for Obama, but would be revolting to those who are disgusted by Hillary’s behavior during the past few months.

He could give her a cabinet position, which is probably his best option, but one that may not go over so well with Hillary and her supporters. Maybe if he throws in a little money to help pay off her debts, that might do the trick.

Scary thought: what if Hillary decides to run as an independent

It’s evident that Hillary cares more about her own self-interest than the good of the nation (is the word own redundant in the phrase “own self-interest”?). She relishes in being the center of attention and having what could be described as a cult following. So after it has been decided that Obama will be the Democratic candidate, will Clinton run as an independent? If she does, that almost guarantees our next president will be John McCain.

Flying saucers in my back yard

I took this photo in my backyard this afternoon of two flying saucers.

How to guarantee your website will fail

Unless it’s a low traffic site, if you build it on a .NET platform, there’s a good chance it will have really poor performance. People will eventually get tired of using it and will go somewhere else. Considering building a website often costs 10s of thousands of dollars, choosing the right platform is essential.

One of the local news stations here in Denver recently launched their new website. They’ve been promoting it on their news programs and in commercials. It’s a well designed site with a lot of good features. Just one problem. It uses Active Server Pages. Sometimes when you submit a request it works — other times it just times out.

The performance problem is typical of Web 2.0 applications running on a Windows platform. These kind of sites hammer on the database more than an e-commerce site, and that may be part of the problem. I don’t know. I’ve never developed software on a .NET platform nor do I have any plans to in the near future. Besides the performance issues, there are also the security problems.

Some customers believe (erroneously) that if you have to pay a lot of money for a technology, it must be better than what’s available for free. Sites running on a LAMP platform are generally much better performing sites. When there are problems, often it’s because of poorly written code — not the platform itself.