He also has an unyielding faith that things will turn out right
“It wouldn’t make any sense to manifest all of this, meet all of these wonderful people and then the universe decides to drop you on your ass and you’re asking your friends for quarters,” he laughs.
Schafer isn’t sure where his journey will end, but he has an ultimate plan in the works.
He wants to write a book about his journey, hoping it would inspire others to follow their dreams.
“I meet so many people who really want to do what they love to do, but for some reason they can’t do it, and I think if I could write a book about this process it would be really good for a lot of people to let a lot of stuff go and to continue with their passion.”
“People need to be told that they can paint and write and they can dance and sing no matter how old they are, no matter what level of education or experience, that you can do that.”
***********************
Yeh, in 2007 I cut and pasted a rather ugly story, thought I’d put something a little more uplifitting up this time. Cheers!!
In the early days of the Trade Federation it was decided to create a strong brand image, and strong brand loyalty. The first protocol droid was the A1P0 and was given to the first twenty salesmen outside of their galaxy. They were very small droids and quite cute. They were meant as nannies/toys of the first salesmen. As long as a person was nearby the droid would jabber on incessantly in clear punctuation, polite words and tone. Entertaining children and teaching them manners, discipline, and how to react to a variety of different colours and sounds. Like giving a child a cute older sibling that needed the assistance of the younger child instilling confidence and hopefully compassion. The A1P0′s could learn to a certain level and then get their memories wiped and be handed down to the next generation. As the children grew older they looked for more products from the Trade Federation.
Some of course found them a great way to smuggle weapons and spices and others learned how to record secret conversations or piece together the most often used words to figure out what these high profile salesmen were up to. The A1P0′s were found to have a problem with their memory wipes after the thirtieth time. Words and phrases didn’t vanish and they were able to understand things beyond a child’s capacity. Imagine a toy that could understand what rape is and know ways of stopping it? Imagine a toy that could understand how a repair shop works and the theory of a warp drive? Not many A1P0′s would ever be wiped thirty times so the idea of fixing this problem was considered negligible.
Nute Gunray was a junior trade officer working for the Trade Federation. As a joke someone had left a few broken A3P0′s on his desk and was told to fix them. Instead of breaking his spirit or crushing his massive pride Nute fixed every last one and realized the benefit of such things. He turned them into spies to listen in on conversations, he found ways of moving up the ladder rather swiftly by pointing fingers at others and with his commanding attitude and self-righteousness he quickly gained followers. The B2P0′s were already off the assembly line and Nute realized that he wanted all protocol droids as far away from himself as possible. disposing of all C series protocol droids to other planets then killing the whole protocol droid line was his full intent. Over the years he became viceroy of the Trade Federation, but would always go too far in his high-minded acts. On many occasions Darth Sidious would have to save him from his underlings.
With the Trade Federation following Nute’s lead for so long none had the courage to fight him especially with such loathsome allies. Nute did deals with some planets and would take all the natural resources not even leaving any water or atmosphere when he was done. “Just doing out jobs,” became a voiced monotone down many dark corridors of power.
Nov. 14th
I’m trying to come up with something about the R2 Units. What I have so far is a Duncan Computers style company. They won an award in my city for amazing forward thinking in computers, and the next year they pretty much fell apart. Imagine ten people making a computer with the latest parts and no one really trying to see if anything is compatible with anything else. When it worked it was highly successful when it failed it failed completely. Some programs could only be accessed on DOS, things like that. My R2 Units were created by a very eccentric philosopher and his power hungry brother. Each unit maybe was given a thousand prose poem that explained it’s function and also created it’s own language. It was highly backwards and forwards compatible with the vacuum tubes, welding laser and other instruments. A kind of improviser and quick study of everything that could possibly go wrong. The thousand word poems that were added gave the R2′s the ability to work on their own with little lifeform supervision. Afterall, worse case scenarios usually meant lifeforms were injured or unconscious. R2 D2 was excited to see a C-3P0 that could understand his wit and insults. To have two droids who led exciting lives before meeting and were could at adapting to new situations it was good that they were able to meet.
Nov. 15th
I’m having some miss-givings about how I want to deal with the R2 Units. They were built by a group of trackers who were hunting down the last of the Grevevinians or Greves for short. Their cause had long ago failed but their resourcefulness and cunning were still amazing. For the most part the trackers were more money hungry and impatient than Rastinus.
Nov. 21st
I’m still struggling with this R2D2 thing. The earliest evolution of the R2 series were the G2 series which were very basic border droids. Monitoring the borders, fixing holes, basic maintenance work as well as some minor first aid skills with sentient beings. The G2 series were not meant for bloodshed simply to uphold the boundaries between countries. They were equipped with small heaters and coolers for rations and supplies to help trackers find those that escaped their borders. G2′s were great improvisers. One day a ship crash landed on a border and G2 units from both sides of a border began to discuss amongst themselves what must be done. To destroy the ship and make it part of the border or make it simply fly off the border and repair the border. The ship’s crew were all dead and the G2′s analyzed the ship’s systems and flew it off the border. Border crossers view G2′s in a fairly friendly way and didn’t want to get in the way of the droids. Being a barren wasteland between countries (made that way by both countries to further negate the prospect of border crossers) the droids were the only thing carrying food and first aid kits. Most border crossers let the droids work, or cross in an area they were no longer patrolling. After fixing the ship without any sentient intervention, sentients merely monitoring the procedure it was decided to evolve them slightly, and make them into astromech droids.
Yeh, it’s been a long time since I’ve done a SW Scraps story and just for fun I’m doing another one. The Trade Federation created the first protocol droids Series A for children. It had three languages and thirty phrases, just a toy to encourage children to learn three languages and keep it fun. Series B came with 100 phrases and four languages with possible upgrades to learn three more languages and 1000 phrases. Of course Series B was as much a failure as it was a success. Series B could be upgraded and many illegal versions were created copyright through countries then galaxies…Well, very few legal battles were fought and even less won. Series C was a complete departure with the ability to learn languages on the spot by stance, facial expression, tone and finally voice. Series C was used only by nobility and charity missions. The Jedi had created there own protocol droid as well, but part of their religion is to incorporate as many different lifeforms into their religion as possible simply going to school for ten years was enough to learn five or six languages even if it was only slang.
And that is my short intro to The Protocol Droids up to C3PO. No idea if I’ll continue this story either heh.
***********
I’m writing my own fictional Star Wars series this is nowhere near the official stuffs. I like my idea better because I like the idea of a Furby
Furby ‘n’ Chips
The computer chips made the Furby one of the most technologically advanced toys of its time, and some would say the most annoying1. The chip enabled the Furby to be programmed with hearing, learning, speech and motion capabilities. There is about 80K (Kilobytes) altogether. This is roughly shared out as 50K for the speech, 20K for the movements and 8K for the program running it all.
Furbys hear due a microphone inserted on one side of their body. When this picks up sounds, they are amplified and sent to one of Furby’s chips. The software then decides what, if any response to make. The amplifier was designed to be more responsive to selective sounds, such as clapping hands.
Furbys can determine between light and dark. This is achieved by the three electronic devices in between and above Furby’s eyes. One of those is a CDS (Cadmium Sulphide) Cell2, this is used to measure the changes between lightness and darkness: as Furby’s surroundings become lighter or darker, a message is sent to the chip, and Furby responds accordingly: Waking up if it gets lighter, or going to sleep if it gets darker. One of the other two sensors is used to transmit infrared data, and the other works as a receiver of infrared data. These also enable Furbies to communicate with each other. Ferbies
Yet in the past 9 months, not only has the administration failed to fix anything, they have actually made things much worse for anyone who isn’t a Wall Street banker. Therefore, we are past the point where anyone in power still gets the benefit of the doubt — the process of taking back our country for all citizens must begin now.
This is why I think we must ask if U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is still the right person for the job. It has become clear recently that, back in his previous role as New York Federal Reserve Governor, he unnecessarily gave billions of dollars of US tax money to banks and insurance companies with few strings attached. And it is now becoming clear that his lack of meaningful action is helping many of these same banks steal more by legalizing their most economically dangerous, socially destructive and self-enriching practices.
Yesterday on NBC’s Meet the Press, Secretary Geithner again endorsed House bank reform legislation that would allow, by my calculations, as much as 80%, or $475 trillion, of the bank’s $600 trillion in crooked insurance schemes to still be held in secret. It was and is the secret risks held in this very market that led to our collapse in the first place, and that continue to pose massive future risk to the global economy.
Geithner also continued to employ the bankers’ favorite and most ludicrous lie : that the taxpayer must somehow continue to pay executives at companies like AIG ungodly sums of money under the threat that, if we don’t, somehow the taxpayer will never make their money back. Well let me tell you something, the taxpayer and our nation will never get back the lost wealth taken under these false circumstances and this colossal breach of fiduciary duty. The idea that we must somehow perpetuate this system with our tax money and the future wealth of our children goes against the very American ideal of failure, adaptation and innovation, not to mention of our democracy.
Also last week, the Treasury Secretary endorsed a piece of legislation that, instead of stopping a select few companies from profiting from the implicit taxpayer-guarantee of Too Big Too Fail, seeks to officially condone it. If the most prized skill in our society, economically, is the ability to lend and insure the most money without consequences, then our nation’s people are doomed to lose everything in the world’s largest ever betting parlor; and that is precisely the system this Treasury Secretary — Tim Geithner — is seeking to legalize and institutionalize in America today.
However, the smoking gun for Secretary Geithner comes from a recent Bloomberg FOIA disclosure regarding events from last November. It was then that New York Federal Reserve Governor Tim Geithner decided to deliver 100 cents on the dollar, in secret no less, to pay off the counter parties to the world’s largest (and still un-investigated) insurance fraud — AIG. This full payoff with taxpayer dollars was carried out by Geithner after AIG’s bank customers, such as Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Societe Generale, had already previously agreed to taking as little as 40 cents on the dollar. Even after the GM autoworkers, bondholders and vendors all received a government-enforced haircut on their contracts, he still had the audacity to claim the “sanctity of contracts” in the dealings with these companies like AIG.
None of us were in the rooms when these decisions were made, so I don’t pretend to know if Mr. Geithner was the one lone, sane voice of reason fighting against mysterious forces or the primary proponent. However, I fail to see the reasoning for why we continue to rely on those who were in the room when these horrendous decisions took place to be the same people that we choose to deal with their aftermath. There are just certain situations that are not suited for continuity. The best analogy I can think of is that it would be like asking Al Cowlings to spearhead the Nicole Brown Simpson murder investigation under the premise that he knows the layout and the “players” best.
The fact is that there are people who understand all of the intricacies of finance and policy as well as Secretary Geithner, but whose allegiances to the taxpayer are much clearer. People like Elizabeth Warren, Neil Barofsky, Rob Johnson, and Senator Maria Cantwell just to name a few.
A bunch of boys talking near a metal fence. A few show guns and then head out. One boy stops and wracks his brain with preconceived guilt at what he’s about to do. Then pulls his skin off to reveal the soccer player inside him and joins the team on the field.
I really enjoy this because the boy doesn’t try to stop his friends, or call the cops. He knows guns are involved and chooses soccer. It kind of reminds me of that fifteen year old girl that got raped outside the prom. How would any of them have felt if it was their sister getting raped? The cops are just a twitter away? Aah, like I’m some holy roller on my shoebox. I guess I’d like to think I’d act differently. Who knows?
Hmm, I do like to try to keep track of these types of things apparently I haven’t changed anything since 2006 so wonder when my water pump will go?? Yep, guess today will get the belts done
Let’s see here, George Bush is making whistle-blowing illegal, bringing back biological weapons and more fun stuff. Minimum wage might eventually go up after years. The housing crisis is going to hit a climax. Europe is trying to force China to increase it’s minimum wage creating a bigger debt and deficit for America.
The one I’ve heard the most about is the housing crisis. For the first two years you don’t even pay the interest on your mortgage. And when you do start paying off your mortgage, your interest will be more than your mortgage.
During major political and cultural moments in our nation’s history—like the Great Depression and World War II—new “types” of people emerge, each with specific traits, attitudes, and beliefs. While the current economic crisis is not over, we’ve analyzed the data from the PARADE survey and found three new groups who have been born from the turmoil of the past 18 months.
Anxious Moms
Anxious Moms tend to live in the suburbs, and most of them are married. In the 1990s, many of the nation’s young mothers were Soccer Moms, upwardly mobile individuals who spent their weekends ferrying kids to games. However, while Soccer Moms played a key role in the 1996 elections, today’s Anxious Moms largely sat out the 2008 vote.
How Have You Been Affected by the Crisis? Take the Poll
What’s occupying their attention? Their families’ finances. One in four in this subset is out of work. Even if they have jobs, the vast majority say that the American Dream is out of reach and they don’t have enough money to live the lives they want. They spend their days trying to make ends meet—they clip coupons, cook meals, and search for employment.
And they’re not happy about it. Beneath the belt-tightening is a lot of anger. These women feel betrayed by the government, and they’ll never trust their investments again. Their bitterness is taking a toll at home, too. Although many people say hard times have brought them together, this group is the most likely to report that their relationships have suffered since the downturn.
But as we’d discovered during our filming, things are now very different. You look out across the wetlands and actually what you see is stunning. The golden hour of late afternoon sun throws a perfect light on the placid waters, free-flowing among a few islands of rushes and reeds.
Pelicans cruise overhead, a sure sign of the abundant waters. A small flock of stunning pink Rosette Spoonbills careen into the sky. There’s a smattering of lilies with purple flowers.
The problem lies in the water – there is just too much of it. Man’s efforts to build navigation channels and oil pipelines have opened up the marshes. Salt water has flooded in, killing trees and loosening soil. And so the process continues.
The Mississippi took 7,000 years to build up the Louisiana coast. Man has destroyed more than a third of it in less than a century. And the Mississippi river no longer deposits sediments – the building blocks of the wetlands – because it’s confined within levees.
A natural line of defence against hurricanes like Katrina has been lost. And slowly but surely, the Gulf of Mexico is advancing on New Orleans. The implications for Cajun and Native American communities is catastrophic, to say nothing of the city folk who look to the skies with fear every time the wind rages.
As land along the Louisiana coastline disappears, so does the rich habitat that supports the most valuable fishery in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as vast populations of migratory birds, local communities, and unique cultures. EDF is working with local partners to implement large-scale restoration projects to reintroduce freshwater and sediment, as well as restore natural water flows, to rebuild the Mississippi River Delta.
**************
Random link
May 10th 2012
Hmm, tried to put the random link Bliss n Eso’s The Sea Is Rising no idea why it didn’t work?
